Seeing Off the Johns (20 page)

The look in Domingo's eyes got crazy. He stepped forward. Chon stepped up too.
Araceli pulled his shoulder, but Chon shrugged her off. If he was going to be beaten with a baseball bat, he was going to make himself a moving, swinging target.

Chon's words and the psychotic, murderous look on Domingo's face sobered up enough people in the crowd for them to step between the boys and stop what would have been an ugly fight. Domingo's own partners in crime, the ones who had walked over with him and goaded him on, restrained him and took away his baseball bat. They pulled him screaming and crying to their car and drove off. Everyone else stared at Chon. He didn't give the slightest of damns what they thought about him.

He went back to Araceli. She was shaking.

“I'm so sorry,” he said. “I had to make sure he didn't hurt you.”

Araceli shook her head. “Goddamn, we need to get out of this town,” she said.

Chon wrapped his arms around her and held her until she calmed down. As the crowd of people around the Dodge-nasty dispersed, each of them walking behind the car, appraising the damage Domingo had done, Henry made his way over from the circle.

“And where the fuck were you?” Araceli said.

“Marie Canales,” he said, pointing a thumb behind him.

Marie was one of Araceli's former cheerleader friends, the duchess for every dance court over which Araceli presided as queen. Henry stood there, flush of face, breathing heavily. Seeing his concern, measuring the magnitude of a score of Marie Canales' proportions, Chon had to stifle a laugh.

“This is serious,” Araceli said.

“What is?” Henry said.

She looked at him, said, “Oh damn it, Henry.”

Henry looked around, confused. He finally saw what had been done to the Dodge-nasty.

“Holy shit, who did this?”

“Domingo Talamantes,” Chon said.

“The baseball player? Is that motherfucker still here? Let's go get his ass.”

Araceli told Henry that he had been dragged away and driven into town. Henry started screaming and cursing. Chon was glad that he hadn't been there for what went down. If he had been, one or both of them would have gotten baseball bat-sized dents in the sides of their faces.

When he finally calmed down, Henry admitted, “You know what, I'm glad I was where I was. You survived. And did I mention Marie Canales?”

“Cochino,” Araceli said. “Let's go home.”

“Alright,” Chon said. “But you have to ride with Henry.”

The next day was graduation. The GHS band's tuba player fell off beat over and over again, making a train wreck of “Pomp and Circumstance.” After the salutatorian's speech, (he mentioned disappointment at the turn of the century arriving without any of the Jetsons' ‘promises,' as he called them, being fulfilled), Chon wished his parents hadn't forced him to dress up and go. After the valedictorian's (she mentioned Jesus carrying her along the shore during times when she could only see one set of footprints in the sand behind her), Chon wished only for death. Even sitting with Araceli and Henry on either side of him didn't make it better. Well, Henry made it a little better with his comments and jokes about how full of shit it all was. And how right he was!

That night, Chon and his family went over to Araceli's house for a big barbecue celebrating the graduations of two Monsevaises and one Gonzales. They would talk about the plans the kids had for going up to Austin—leaving the next day to set Araceli up in her summer school dorm. Chon would drive in the Dodge-nasty, while Henry
followed in the Dos Reyes truck, filled with all of Araceli's possessions and some of Chon's. Chon would stay with a cousin of the Monsevaises' (an ingenious plan, Araceli's parents thought) while he looked for an apartment.

The kids had talked the parents into a weekend alone, chaperoned as it would be by Henry and the Austin-based Monsevais. They had worked hard, they told their parents, in the books and in the store to make it up there and they wanted to get up there alone, then to be visited by their parents who could then dote on and criticize their living arrangements and the crazy city they had decided to move to.

That night they would all drink and eat together and share reminiscences that included the Johns' time in Greenton. This didn't bother Chon in the least. They would speak, late into the night and after many rounds, about their fears—the parents' for their children, the children's for themselves. They would get to know each other very well. They had to, they were tied to each other now. It would be a night of great fun and hidden sadnesses. It would end with teary-eyed parents remembering when.

Earlier that day, still in his graduation shirt and tie, Chon took the bruised and beaten Dodge-nasty into the Mejia auto garage in the southwest part of town and was met by Goyo, who sat up straight on his stool when he saw Chon.

Before Chon even got out of the car, Goyo was walking around behind the car.

“Now what the hell happened here?” he said.

“Batting practice,” Chon said.

“This is going to be expensive, a lot of body work.”

“All I need is the rear windshield and a replacement for the passenger-side seatbelt.”

“So now you're Mr. Safety?” Goyo said. “Why's that? You have some new little girl you're gonna drive around town?”

“No, I'm moving. I'm taking it to Austin.”

The hustler's smile that Goyo wasn't trying to hide left his face. He looked at the car again, took another walk around it. He opened up the passenger door and stuck his head in to examine the seatbelt. He came back to Chon, his eyes looking like he was trying to figure out the complicated science of resurrection.

“Okay, I'll need to get a seatbelt ratchet from the Napa. I can probably find a windshield at the dump. Tomorrow? You're leaving tomorrow and you come here today?” he said, more curious than angry.

“Well, the windshield just happened yesterday. I guess the idea to leave did too.”

“You have to be kidding me.”

“But it's what I want to do. I need to do it,” Chon said.

Goyo looked Chon up and down and seemed to decide the kid wasn't a one hundred percent idiot.

“Alright, I'll drop you off at your house and fix the car. It shouldn't take too long, but I have things to get.”

Chon nodded his agreement and opened the driver's side door to get in the car.

“Whoa, what do you think you're doing?” Goyo said.

“Aren't you taking my car to the shop?”

“Yeah, but you get the side without the seatbelt.”

Chon got out and walked around the car. Goyo fired it up and pulled it out of the garage.

“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm a great driver.” Then he peeled out of the alley and hooked a sharp right turn onto Sigrid.

He had the car back to Chon less than three hours later. He knocked on the door to the Gonzales house. When Chon came out, he threw the keys at him.

“You're driving.”

Chon got into the car. When Goyo got in, he pulled the seatbelt down and latched it. He gave it a tug and it pulled back onto his chest. Chon looked at the rear windshield behind him. It looked brand new.

“How much do I owe you?” Chon asked Goyo. He was out of the car and leaning in at the passenger window.

“Nothing,” Goyo said.

Chon looked up at him in disbelief.

“My father would kick my ass if he found out I charged you. But you know what? I'll kick your ass if you don't fix the parking break when you get the chance. The store didn't have the part. You'll be safe with it like this. Right? You'll be safe?” he asked.

“Of course,” Chon said.

“You know I did this for her, right?” Goyo said.

“Yeah.”

“She was like a sister to me. I guess she still is.”

“I know,” Chon said.

“Don't forget it.”

The next day, May 23, was the first anniversary of the Johns' deaths. Chon found himself sitting behind the wheel of the Dodge-nasty, its windows rolled down and the dry wind that blew offering no relief against the heat that didn't know it wasn't actually summer yet. He was parked in front of the Mejia house. He had picked up Araceli, whose bags and belongings were in the Dos Reyes truck. She had asked if he could take her to see John's family before they left.

Chon had been waiting for almost an hour in the car. Araceli had invited him in
to visit the Mejias, but he declined. When Araceli walked out of the house, she was followed by a sobbing Julie Mejia. Andres gave her a strong hug, as did Goyo, who had come to be with his parents to mourn the anniversary of his brother's passing.

Araceli walked out to the car. The Mejias' eyes followed her there. Andres and Goyo gave Chon identical hard nods. Julie waved her hand big and wide next to her ear. Chon waved back. He was parked on the street, which ended as a turnabout four houses up. He drove to the end of the street. When he pulled around and passed the house again, only Julie stood there waiting to watch them pass so that she could wave and cry some more when they drove out of sight.

They were set to meet Henry at Bryan's Stop ‘n' Shop, the Pachanga's number one competitor. They had time before they had to arrive. Chon drove to the park in the center of town. The swimming pool would open for the first time all summer the next day. Kids were waiting eagerly, biding their time playing and loitering at the park. Chon drove to a far end of the park where there was a backstop set up and a team of preteens practicing baseball. He and Araceli got out of the car and said their goodbyes to his parents. They were able to watch one of Pito's at-bats. He watched the first pitch, a high, fat fastball that even Chon in his baseball days would not have been able to resist. When the second pitch came at him, Pito pulled around a compact, efficient swing. The ball was launched far out into the deep recesses of the park. If this were a game, it certainly would have cleared the Little League fence, probably the high school one too. But there was no fence, and the outfielder was chasing the ball like mad. Still, Pito rounded the bases at a slow, steady trot. He was getting practice for all of the home runs he would surely be hitting during summer league and beyond.

Chon and Araceli cheered, shouting and screaming and embarrassing Pito. They went over to him at the side of the imaginary diamond.

“Chon, I'm playing,” he said.

“No you're not, you're practicing.”

“Same thing.”

“Yeah, you're right. But hey, we're leaving. I want you to be good and play hard, okay? When school starts, your grades better stay where they were all this last year,” Chon said.

Chon had never spoken to his brother like this. He had given advice when it was asked for, but never took the tone of someone with any authority on anything. It felt weird, but it felt right. Pito seemed to think so too, because he said, “Alright, Chon. Don't worry.”

“Good,” Chon said.

Araceli gave Pito a hug, and Chon gave him a handshake.

“Drive safe,” Pito shouted at them as they walked away.

They filled up at Bryan's (Araceli paid). Chon went over the plan with Henry. They would take 16 to San Antonio. When they got there, they would take the 410 loop to 35 and then north to Austin. If they needed to stop, they could call each other. Araceli's mom made her take her cell phone, and Henry had the Dos Reyes company cell.

“Okay, Magellan, let's just fucking go,” Henry said. And so they did.

Driving up Main, which was Highway 16, they passed by the east end of the high school. Out his window, Chon could see that there was a ceremony, slapdash and unofficial-looking. People held flowers in their hands and Mr. Adame was standing in front of the assembled, probably speaking absolute nonsense. They drove on. With Greenton behind them, Araceli grabbed Chon's hand. They had made it out. If it all fell apart and they had to come back in a week, they would always have left.

She looked over at him and shouted over the sound of wind rushing in through the rolled-down windows. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Chon said. He didn't bother to shout. He couldn't. He was using everything he had to resist the urge to break down at the thought of leaving everything he had ever known in the orange-red dust behind him. Araceli smiled at the words she read on his lips.

Chon wondered when the landscape around them would change. He wondered if they would be able to roll up the windows as the temperatures dropped more the farther north they went. He thought of the cool he was driving toward and was happy that it would offer him and Araceli peace from the howling wind that made talking impossible. The future seemed endless. Not knowing what it held scared Chon like he couldn't say, but it had to be better than what they were leaving. Of course it would be better. He pushed down on the accelerator, leaned over the center console, and kissed Araceli, the girl of his dreams.

The first anniversary memorial of the Johns' dying was the last formal event that would be held in town to honor the Johns, save for the priest at church blessing their eternal souls and a room full of worshippers asking for the Lord to hear their prayers on the Sunday of every anniversary week to come.

This is not to say that the boys would be forgotten. At Flojos, there will be occasional effusive toasts to the Johns from that day forward until there is no one left in town who even knew them or who could remember any word of them. Still, at Little League games, fathers—standing around the tailgates of trucks pulled around back of the centerfield fence—will crack beers and talk tall about how this boy or that boy—or, if they were so blessed,
their
boy—might just have the stuff to be Greenton's next John.

In time, town will no longer mourn the boys. They will no longer be a wound that fate dealt Greenton. There will barely be a scar left to remind people of their passing.

Their numbers will still be on the uniforms of the baseball and football teams. Coach Gallegos will still have each of his players touch the plaques that hung at the baseball stadium's entrance before leading them onto the diamond for the first game of the season. Yet the Johns' impression on the athletes of Greenton will fade. As each new season starts, the boys will remember less and less of the baseball gods made flesh and bone. Eventually, all they will have will be memories of a happening they were
too young to understand—the tears, the craziness of everyone around them, the concept of death itself. Then, one day the Greyhound baseball team will be made up of a squad of boys who have no worldly recollection of the Johns or even of the spectacle that was made of their dying. They will see the plaques at the stadium and the jerseys that hang framed outside the main office as just another bit of visual white noise, like so many inspirational posters in classrooms and throughout school. They will be passed by, unnoticed by everyone but the occasional nostalgic teacher and the janitors, who will be charged with Windexing them and wiping them clean to near invisibility.

All of this was just fine with the Mejias, who had stopped taking part in everything that was made of the passing of their son and his best friend. With two boys buried, their public mourning was done. It was back to business as usual, at least for Andres and Goyo. Julie could never bring herself to return to work at the library. She was never fired. They just stopped cutting checks to her, reassuring her every now and then that her job was waiting for her when she was ready to return to it, but she never readied herself for that return.

When she died, almost two years after the Johns, it brought a spark of life back to the story of the Johns. She had been diagnosed with bone cancer that February. She was dead within four months. As went the town's thinking—their contextual read on the real life happenings they watched like a soap opera—she gave up. With John gone—they thought and told each other—she had nothing to fight for. She wanted to be with her boy, and so she let go.

Not only was this line of thinking wrong, it was unfair. It was unfair to Andres and Goyo, who the people of town seemed to be saying weren't worth fighting for as much as John. It was unfair to Julie, who fought as hard as she could for as long as she could, and who suffered a painful fight, whose inevitable end she was ashamed to tearfully tell her husband and son she was afraid of.

But people will have their stories. They'll have their gossip and their assumptions without any regard or compassion for those they are watching, because why should something as pesky as caring get in the way of what is genuine entertainment?

Just shy of their own end, Chon and Araceli returned to town together for Julia's funeral. Araceli cried with Andres—held his hand throughout the whole ceremony. Chon sat by her side, patting her shoulder and wiping her tears. Goyo, on the other side of his father, did not play the tough guy he had played at his brother's funeral, instead taking up his own hyena cackle at the loss of his mother.

Arn and Angie Robison came back to Greenton for the funeral. Though they were in a different car, when the royal blue Cadillac coupe rolled into town, everyone who saw it knew it was them. The plot thickened. Without the death at the center of it all being marked as inordinately tragic or unexpected or devastating—it was just cancer, just a middle-aged woman, not two boys on their way to glory—no one in town felt the need to check their gossip, to hide their widened eyes or pretend to not be eavesdropping at the funeral. They were spectators, shameless and crazy for action.

Lost in their thoughts of the woman they lost, Andres and Goyo seemed thankfully oblivious to the fire behind the eyes of their neighbors, but Chon could see it, and it disgusted him. When they came around to pay their condolences to the bereaved, Chon could see that the Robisons were disgusted by it too. He could have gone back to the Mejia house after the funeral to hear their thoughts on the subject over menudo made by Araceli's mom, but he asked Araceli to drop him at his parents' house instead. He told her he would go if she needed him, but otherwise, it was a time for family, and he wasn't that.

By then, all of the John stars had faded and been removed from the cars they adorned. Even Ms. Salinas had taken the last one off her car. The green on the uniforms bought by the money the stars made was also getting dull with so much washing and
grass and red dirt stains. At home, Chon had dinner with his parents, who didn't much care to join everyone else in town at a funeral, and his brother, who hoped, in two years, to be wearing one of those jerseys. His parents asked Chon about work and school and how he and Araceli were doing. It was quiet and peaceful, and Chon was glad he hadn't gone with Araceli to the Mejia house.

At the Mejia's, the Robisons expressed their sincere and heartfelt condolences. They had lost a friend in Julie, one who, like the rest of their world, they had really lost when the Johns died. They shared in the storytelling and remembering. They laughed at the funny stories and cried at the sad ones. Arn had bought a bottle of the same expensive bourbon he always drank, the kind he had shared with the Mejias in celebration of their boys having made it.

It was during a lull in the sad festivities that Arn addressed an issue that Andres knew had to be brought up at some point or other. The Robisions were there for him, for Julie, and so Andres did not begrudge Arn bringing up the last of the dirty business that remained in the wake of the boys dying.

What were they going to do to Ford and to Firestone and to all of the other bastards who had made the cars and tires that had a hand in killing their boys?

Arn and Angie had been in contact with their family attorney. He told them the way to go was class action. These accidents were happening all over the country and the companies could no longer hide from the truth or deny blame. There was a big lawsuit being put together, and Arn was going to be damned if his boy's name wasn't going to be on the list of those killed by negligence and greed and poor engineering.

They needed to pay, he told Andres, and not just money.

Andres agreed. He didn't want a lawyer. He didn't want to testify. He didn't want anything but to sign papers and be done with it. Arn said he would have his attorney arrange everything, and he did.

When the payout came, Andres had few wants that could be met by money. He paid off his home and truck, he paid off Goyo's too. He gave Goyo most of what was left and, in turn, Goyo made it his duty to pull Andres out of himself, to get him out of the house and, on occasion, out of Greenton. Andres made his way to Houston pretty often to see the Astros and eventually the Texans. Every time he did, he would visit the Robisons. He would never dream of putting them out by asking to stay with them, but there was always dinner and a few drinks to be shared with old friends.

One year, he had Goyo take him to Corpus Christi to see the Islanders of the university there play baseball against UT. The boys in burnt orange looked bigger, stronger, of a different pedigree than the Corpus team. They won by thirteen runs. Though he never told Goyo, Andres felt it was a personal victory that he did not cry at the sight of all of that youth and power and perfection—athletic and otherwise.

On the night of Julie Mejia's funeral, Henry came by in a big black dooly truck with running lights on the roof and Tres Reyes Welding Works written on the doors. They drove around town silently. They parked by the cemetery, vacated and looking like there hadn't been a funeral that day.

“How's she doing?” Henry asked. He was talking a lot less these days. It would take at least five beers before he got going.

“She's okay,” Chon said. “She went to the house with all of them to have menudo and share memories and all that. I didn't feel like it was my place.”

Henry nodded. He looked tired, old. He had gained weight and put on such a fierce tan that he looked like someone else.

“And you, how are you doing?” Chon asked.

“I'm good,” he said. “Working.”

Chon nodded. Henry reached behind the seat and pulled a couple of beers from the case he had on the floorboard. Chon grabbed one. Henry held firm to it.

“These are mine,” he said, cracking one and taking a drink.

Chon looked for a sign that his friend was joking. When none came, he turned around to grab a beer. Henry reached over and handed Chon one of the beers.

“I'm fucking with you, man. I'm just fucking with you.”

Chon laughed, opened the beer he'd been given, and took a drink.

“Crazy day?” Henry asked.

“I can remember crazier,” Chon said. “It did piss me off the way they all acted, like the funeral was all a show, her dying. I just hoped the Mejias didn't notice.”

“They did,” Henry said. “But they won't realize it until later and even then they won't be too pissed.”

Chon looked at the man who he had counted as his best friend throughout their shared childhood. He was a different person, changed by a life in a welding rig with his father and uncle. He was hard now. Still round, but hard. Chon looked at the grass in the ditch out his window.

“You still come see your mom?” he asked.

“Not as much as I should,” Henry said.

“Do you want to go now?”

“No,” Henry said. “Not just now.”

He turned the truck's radio on and a conjunto song filled the emptiness in the cab. He opened another beer and took a long pull that turned into something of a passionate kiss between himself and the drink. When he pulled the can away, he crushed it in his hand and gave a long belch.

Chon couldn't help but laugh.

“What in the world did you eat today?” he asked. “That smells awful.” He opened his door.

“Now I'm ready,” Henry said.

He grabbed some beers from the pack, then walked around the back of the truck. Together he and Chon broke into the cemetery to pay their respects to the dead of Greenton, TX.