In the Break (2 page)

As I tried to get his attention I wondered why it was we got stuck with the people we got stuck with? Me, I was lucky, I guess.
My parents irritated the hell out of me sometimes. But they cared about me. They wanted me to do the right thing and they
did right by me. F not only didn’t care about Jamie, he wanted to break him or something, like a drill instructor in those
goofy movies. The guys in the movies can’t do anything about it cause they’re in the Army, and I guess Jamie’s in the same
boat because he can do nothing either, until he moves out — which will be the second he’s eighteen, maybe before, I know that
much. When I finally caught his eye he flipped me off, though I kept waving to him. After about ten minutes he rode a wave
in.

Jamie smiled his winning smile at me, throwing his long, sandy-blond hair back out of his eyes. He was tall and thin, though
when he got older he was going to be huge. The football coaches were always trying to get him to join the team. “Why you buggin’
me, Juan?” he said, laughing. His voice was a little higher when he laughed.

“F’s here.”

“Ah, crap.”

“He’s giving Amber shit.”

All the joy disappeared from Jamie’s face and he looked empty yet determined as he went up the beach, dropping his board in
the sand next to mine.

Before I knew what happened, he stood before F, arms crossed over his chest, head down, supplicatory, as if he were in the
principal’s office or something.

“Who gave you permission to take
my
car?”

Jamie didn’t say anything, just stood there, looking at the sand.

“Who, goddamit!”

“No one,” Jamie said, now looking right in F’s face.

“What about the lawn? Why don’t you do anything? And your lousy grades. Let me tell you something, after your prank this morning,
your free ride’s over!”

Jamie just stood there taking it, that asshole yelling right in his face before the whole world to see. I don’t know why I
was set in stone but I was. Amber wasn’t though. She jumped up, getting in between them, saying, “Not here, Frederick.”

When F made like he was going to grab her, Jamie gave him a ferocious shove, knocking him on his ass. But F was quick in spite
of his age and size, and he grabbed Jamie while going down. They tussled, rolling in the sand like dogs, F punching Jamie
on the head, the back, the shoulders. When they stood up, Jamie held his hand over his nose and I could see blood leaking
out. In an instant F had Jamie by his free wrist, dragging him up the beach toward the cars.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Amber shrieked. While sitting on the sand she said, almost to herself, “I hate you.” She pulled her knees up
to her chest and buried her face between her knees.

It was brutal and quick, and everybody in close proximity looked at us. Jamie and F were now climbing the small bluff right
before Coast Highway. In an instant they were gone. Where was that ass Robert Bonham when we needed him? He could stand up
to F, was legally an adult. When I looked down at Amber, she was crying, her hands covering her face.

I felt sick but also felt like doing something, so I picked up Jamie’s board and walked it back down into the surf, rinsing
it off. While thinking of Jamie I sat back on the sand, away from Amber, and watched the surf deteriorate.

I had been in only one fight in my life. And it was because of Jamie. When we were in the third grade there was a wacko named
Alex who always picked on kids and stuff. At that time Jamie was so shy that he couldn’t even do his book reports in front
of the class; he would stay after school and do them in front of the teacher. I could watch if I wanted, and I usually did.
At that time he wouldn’t stand up for himself at all. It was only later that he would assert himself for what was right.

This one day we were lined up on the ramp waiting for Mrs. Brown, our third-grade teacher, to arrive when Alex cut in front
of Jamie. Jamie let him. No problem. But then Alex turned around and started flicking Jamie on the head.

“Stop it,” Jamie said after a few more flicks had hit him.

That was ammunition for Alex to flick him harder.

School had just begun and September was always the hottest month, though there were olive trees shielding us from the morning
sun. And Mrs. Brown had to be late this day of all days.

Alex flicked Jamie again, really hard.

Jamie just looked down at that ground.

“Cut it out,” I said to Alex. Other kids were now watching.

Alex flicked Jamie again.

What enraged me was to see Jamie flinch before he was even hit. I pushed Alex hard on his shoulder.

He came forward, trying to flick my head, but I just kicked him in the stomach, the way I’d seen these Thai kickboxers do
on television. Nestor, my father, would sometimes watch sports on TV before he went to work and I’d watch with him. The kickboxers
just wailed on each other using their hands, feet, knees, and elbows even. I noticed when they came forward they led with
a kick, a lifting of the knee and snap of the foot. That was what I did to Alex. And it caught him right in the belly.

Right when Mrs. Brown showed up.

Jamie was as surprised as I was that Alex was suddenly crying. I was sent to the principal’s office, where my only regret
was that I cried too when she told me how much trouble I was in.

Now, I almost felt like crying. Rather than help Jamie moments ago, I had just stood by. Amber was the one who had intervened,
not I.

After some time she said, “That’s why he wasn’t at school.” She stared at the waves and her voice sounded scratchy.

Jamie had told me he didn’t feel well, was why he missed school on Friday. “What?”

“F wouldn’t let him out of the house until he mowed the lawn. He wouldn’t do it Friday and he wouldn’t do it yesterday. He
just sat in his room. Until this morning.”

We had talked on the phone and he’d said he didn’t feel like doing anything. But the hurricane swell got him off his ass.
And it wasn’t even here yet. I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing.

Some of our friends came in from the water, though most of them hadn’t seen anything. Greg Scott had but he was too polite
to mention it. I could tell by the way he looked at Amber that he
knew. In fact, everyone knew that F was an asshole and yelled at Jamie sometimes. Nobody talked about it, it was just growing-up
shit. F was a cheap jerk. Jamie was big now. Some shit would go down, no doubt about it.

While picking up my board I told Amber we should go. She got her board, stuffed her towel into her backpack, and, in a slight
daze, followed me, Greg Scott walking with us. When we got up to the highway, there was no car. F must have taken it.

“Now what?” Amber said. Her long brown hair was coming out of its tight braid. Her face looked more linear than it really
was, making her look older, tired.

“You can leave your boards at my house,” Greg Scott said. He was such a pal, unlike Mr. Has-It-All Greg J.

And we did, which was nothing new. I carried my board under my right arm, and Jamie’s under my left arm. An hour ago we had
two cars. Now we had no car and four boards to carry. Greg Scott’s father saw us approaching and came out and took Jamie’s
board from me, helping us to place them all in the garage.

“Where’s Jamie?” Mr. Scott said.

“He had to get home suddenly,” Greg Scott said. He looked at his father. His father asked no more questions.

I didn’t feel like carrying my pack all the way back home, so I left it with the boards. Amber left her wetsuit and stuff
too.

Greg Scott walked with us back to the street. His father resumed the weeding he was doing. “Take it easy,” Greg Scott said.

“Yeah,” I said. Then Amber and I began the long walk back toward our houses.

Behind The Strand, the name of the beach houses just north of Playa Chica, were large tract homes where Jamie lived. His father,
Mr. Watkins, had been a really nice guy, coming to our ball games when we were young, putting a basketball backboard in their
driveway and shooting hoops with us far into those summer nights that seemed to go on forever when I used to spend the night
at Jamie’s. His house was bike-riding distance from mine, and he and I spent all our free time together.

For a time I think I secretly wanted to be a Watkins, to be their second son, to have those soft searing blue eyes that Jamie
and Amber had, to have the sandy blond hair, to be in a two-child family, to acquire the ease with which they all seemed to
do everything. Jamie’s father was a professional, an up-and-coming architect, someone who was in the paper sometimes for awards
and things. Mrs. Watkins was athletic and perky (my mother’s term — I think she was jealous), and stayed home.

My parents were the same age as Jamie’s, but they were not Claire and Eddie. My father was a printer, my mother a secretary,
and sometimes they fought over not having enough money. There were four kids in my family and money was tight. Our land was
worth a lot, though, and that was something.

I was thinking all this shit as I tried to get comfortable on the shower floor, where I always fell asleep. I don’t know why,
but I liked to nap with the water cascading over me. I liked the tingling feeling the jets of spray made as they hit my head;
I liked the warm, safe feeling I had inside the shower, locked inside the bathroom. None of my family could disturb me here.
While leaning my legs up against the opposite tile wall I couldn’t help thinking about this morning at the beach.

“Hurry up, I need to pee!” my little sister shouted from the other side of the door.

“Go away!”

“I’m telling, you’re not supposed to stay in the shower so long,” Patti whined.

“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute,” I lied. I listened to see if she was actually going to tell, which she rarely did. She could
use the other bathroom, dammit! In time, I forgot about her threat, the warm water making me drowsy.

Jamie and I had met in kindergarten. One day Mrs. Watkins approached my mother, asking if it was okay for me to come and play
at their house. Of course it was, but, still, my mother had to go over and check things out just for form’s sake. From that
time on we had a regular play day — Tuesday — which lasted through elementary school.

After Mr. Watkins died, Tuesdays turned into every day, because I would walk home with Jamie and hang with him. Mr. Watkins
died in a freeway auto accident. He was driving early in the morning on his way to a shopping-center site that his firm was
going to design. A big rig crashed over the center divider and hit Mr. Watkins’s car head on. He died on impact, the Highway
Patrol told Mrs. Watkins. He hadn’t suffered, they said. And his car had hit others, three more people dying in the fiery
crash. The Highway Patrol said the stuff about dying instantly because there was a horrific fire, and not much was left of
some of the accident victims. It was all right there on the freeway, and on television and in the newspapers, really sucking
in its gory details.

Jamie was in the fifth grade, Amber in seventh. People from all over the area attended the funeral, and so did I and my parents.
Even my older brother went because he knew the family, and my father said he should pay his respects.

At that time it was no longer fun to go over to Jamie’s, but I still did. He started coming over to my house more often, and
I knew it was hard for him to see my father, but that was what he wanted, to hang around somebody else’s father, I guessed.

My legs were above my head, my back flat on the floor, which stopped the drain, I noticed, as water was almost overflowing
the shower pan, so I switched positions, leaning against the wall and pulling up my knees into my chest so the water hit my
neck and back as I stretched my upper body forward. I settled in, thinking how hard it had been for Jamie to lose his father,
to lose all his money, to have F live in his house.

Sick shit, I figured, because of a damn big rig.

I must have finally conked out, thinking those thoughts, letting the hot water soak me, when my father, Nestor Barrela, banged
on the bathroom door. My older brother Raul, when he first began to talk, had called him Nestor Barrela, and it had sort of
stuck as a family joke, though I just called him by his first name. “You’re using all the hot water!” Nestor shouted. When
he wasn’t home I wouldn’t wake up until the cold water hit me.

After drying off, I lay on my bed in my room. My brother’s bed was still against the other wall, and I could almost imagine
him lying there in his boxers, talking on his cell, his lean and strong body gangly-like even though he wasn’t that tall,
his brown hair still messed up from showering, his long eyelashes looking wet though they weren’t. I’d shared a room with
him my entire life, and now he was married and going to be a father. It was weird not having his clothes in the closet, not
having stuff I could borrow if I needed it. Or not talking with him when he came home from his job at the pharmacy, where
he had worked the counter and made deliveries.

I must have dozed off again, for the next thing I knew my mother said, “Come on, sleepy head.” She was
in
my room.

“I’ll be right there.”

It was weird with only five of us at the table, my older brother’s seat empty next to me. Across from me sat my little sister
and brother. Patti was eleven, Paul seven, still getting his “big” teeth. My older brother was nineteen (soon to be twenty),
four and a half years older than me.

“How was surfing?” Nestor said. Even though my mother wasn’t yet seated, he’d already begun eating.

My mother had made meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. But my parents put salsa on their meatloaf, something none of my
friends’ parents did. And my father would sometimes wrap the meat in a tortilla, making a small burrito. Another thing my
friends didn’t do. Ever. But they tasted good that way and I did the same as my father.

“How was it?” my father asked again.

I thought of Jamie. “It was fun for a while,” I said.