mirror outside his window: Puchi and Chato standing at the back of the truck, shaking down the couple whose furniture the crew had just hauled to their new home in Pinole. The man taught high-school history. His wife, flamboyantly pregnant, worked for a florist.
Happy sat behind the wheel. He was smoking, waiting for the word: Unload or take off. In time, he said, “You got some better idea how to pay for Godo’s meds, cover the nut on getting my old man back here, I’m all ears.” Cocked head, reflective smile. “Into each life,
Roque turned his gaze toward the sky. The winter sun hovered beyond a filmy mass of noonday cloud. “Thanks for the update.”
“Life’s full of things you gotta do, not wanna do.”
“No shit? Try practicing scales six hours a day.”
Happy stubbed out his smoke. “Scales, yeah. I bet it’s a bitch.”
Let it go, Roque told himself. He regarded Happy differently now, admiration too lofty, respect too blase, but that was the emotional territory.
He’d asked Roque’s help writing a letter to his father, asking forgiveness for being such a crap son, explaining what the last two years had been like since being deported. Roque could hardly believe some of the things Happy told him to write down: the cops with dogs at the airport in Comalapa, who led him to a dank basement room, called him a faggot, told him to strip, just to check for gang tats; the hunchback priest who played harmonica and let him stay at his shelter for three days in the capital, then kicked him loose; old Tripudo the truck driver, a friend of the humpback priest, who took him on, teaching him how to handle a rig, only to betray him, turn him over to some rogue cops who handcuffed him, hooded him, drove him to the prison in Mariona, the one they call La Esperanza: Hope; the
Roque didn’t know how he’d survived it, not that Happy had come back unscathed. The sullen moods he’d always been known for now seemed not just more severe but even a little sinister-but who could fault him for that? And yet he never complained, not about what happened in El Salvador or Iraq or anything else. Roque sometimes marveled at that, how Happy stared life down, standing there at the edge of every moment, unrushed, unworried, as though, by expecting nothing anymore, not from life, not from people, he’d somehow been set free.
At the same time, within the family, he was kind. He spoke to Godo like an equal, not a rival, not that they didn’t get into it now and then. Like a pair of dogs in a pit sometimes, those two, but not near as bad as before he went away. And he showed Tia Lucha a level of deference even she found unsettling. The only person he treated the same as before was Roque. He was the one person Happy still expected something from.
Meanwhile, at the back of the truck, Puchi was explaining to the parents-to-be how it would go. The couple could pay an extra three grand to get their stuff unloaded or everything stayed in the truck, the crew would drive away and put everything they owned in storage until they came up with the money. It was their own fault, he’d tell them, not quite those words, their failure to realize that the initial low bid was just an estimate (a lie-the lowball quote was presented as final), and that only once their belongings were loaded could a full and fair price for the move be calculated (another lie-the setup was in play from the start).
Insinuated but left unsaid was a hint of accusation. The couple had been greedy, hoping to score off a bunch of wetbacks, rather than pay the going rate. Well, they deserved what they got and it would only get worse if they didn’t play smart. American Amigos Moving wasn’t licensed, so the couple had no real recourse. There was no agency to complain to, no cops to call; this was a civil matter, the officers would say, not a criminal one. That was the mind-bending irony at the heart of the scam, your only shot at justice was with a company that was straight to begin with. Basically, the lovely couple could cough up or get screwed. Puchi was explaining all this with Chato sulking nearby in his hairnet and hoodie and work gloves, chewing on a toothpick, smirking at the lady, eye-fucking the man.
“When I was in Iraq,” Happy said, “sometimes the foreman would tell us to drive the route even if there was nothing to carry. Several times a week we did this, one direction or both. This one time, I hauled a single bag of mail, nothing else, on a fucking flatbed. Know why? Because the company was getting paid by the trip, not the load.” He glanced at Roque, smiling as though the things he knew could cripple the mind. “This is a war zone I’m talking about. You never knew what was out there. But hey, shut up, it’s money. You die, tough luck. It was insane, the arrogant dumbfucks you had to deal with, the I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, the rip-offs, but the geniuses who run things, they’re all, Hey, don’t ask questions, you’re fucking with the war. So you think this couple here’s getting screwed by us? Trust me, they’ve already been fucked so bad by Uncle Sam we’re practically the good guys.”
Even given all Happy had been through, there were limits to what Roque would swallow. “That’s messed-up thinking.”
Happy nodded and said, “Maybe so.” Lighting another smoke-he’d developed an incredible habit during his years away-he added, “I was just trying to make you feel better.”
Roque glanced toward his mirror again, just in time to see the history teacher shove Puchi in the chest. “Ah nuts,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
“What?”
“We got a scrapper.”
Roque hustled to the back of the truck and was shortly joined by Happy. The history teacher, who was lanky but muscular, had Puchi in a headlock now, the two of them thrashing around on the ground. Puchi wasn’t fighting back very hard. In fact, unless Roque was mistaken, Puchi was laughing.
Meanwhile Chato hovered nearby, the same nervy smile on his face he wore no matter what was happening. In the driveway, the woman with the basketball belly stood there aghast, hands in the air, watching her husband try to claim back some manhood. She was dressed in a shapeless smock, a stretched-out cardigan, kneesocks with worn heels, scuffed clogs. Roque wondered what they intended to name the baby.
The neighborhood was one of those forgettable developments shooting up everywhere now, the houses all basically the same, neat but slapdash, too close together, bottom rung on the American dream. No one was looking out their windows at the wrestling match. Why bother? The new neighbors would be gone, or you would, before any favor could be returned.
Finally Puchi broke free, stood up, brushed himself off. Sure enough, he was chuckling. The teacher scrambled to his feet, scavenged around for his glasses. “You’re not getting away with this!” Tufts of hair stood out from his head, his face shiny and red.
Puchi signaled to the crew: Back in the truck. “Let’s go,” he said.
The teacher found his glasses. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I have to call the office,” Puchi said. “You attacked me.”
“You’re cheating us!”
“May be an extra thousand on top of the three you already owe. Have to call, find out.”
That was when the woman spoke up. “For God’s sake just pay them, Peter.” Her eyes were dull with disappointment but her voice had an odd allure. Throaty, an alto, it reminded Roque of a young Celia Cruz. The man’s head snapped toward her. Something between them suggested a bitter history and Roque guessed the baby played a part in that. He sensed as well that the woman had reached a truce with her life in a way the man resented.
