Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“Damn, Cruz.”

“Got to give you extra special treatment tonight, Bumper,” he said, opening another beer for me. “You look dog tired, and this may be the last we have you for a long time.”

“I’ll only be living one hour away by air. You think Cassie and me aren’t gonna come to L.A. once in a while? And you think you and Socorro and the kids aren’t gonna come see us up there?”

“The whole platoon of us?” he laughed.

“We’re gonna see each other plenty, that’s for sure,” I said, and fought against the down feeling that I was getting because I realized we probably would not be seeing each other very often at all.

“Yeah, Bumper,” said Cruz, sitting across from me in the other old chair, almost as worn and comfortable as this one. “I was afraid that jealous bitch would never let you go.”

“You mean my beat?”

“Right.” He took several big gulps on the beer and I thought about how I was going to miss him.

“How come all the philosophizing tonight? Calling my beat a whore and all that?”

“I’m waxing poetic tonight.”

“You also been tipping more than a little cerveza .”

Cruz winked and peeked toward the kitchen where we could hear Socorro banging around. He went to an old mahogany hutch that was just inside the dining room and took a half-empty bottle of mescal out of the bottom cabinet.

“That one have a worm in it?”

“If it did I drank it,” he whispered. “Don’t want Sukie to see me drinking it. I still have a little trouble with my liver and I’m not supposed to.”

“Is that the stuff you bought in San Luis? That time on your vacation?”

“That’s it, the end of it.”

“You won’t need any liver you drink that stuff.”

“It’s good, Bumper. Here, try a throatful or two.”

“Better with salt and lemon.”

“Pour it down. You’re the big macho , damn it. Drink like one.”

I took three fiery gulps and a few seconds after they hit bottom I regretted it, and had to drain my bottle of beer while Cruz chuckled and sipped slowly for his turn.

“Damn,” I wheezed and then the fire fanned out and my guts uncoiled and I felt good. Then in a few minutes I felt better. That was the medicine my body needed.

“They don’t always have salt and lemon lying around down in Mexico,” said Cruz handing me back the mescal. “Real Mexicans just mix it with saliva.”

“No wonder they’re such tough little bastards,” I wheezed, taking another gulp, but only one this time, and handing it back.

“How do you feel now, ’mano ?” Cruz giggled, and it made me start laughing, his silly little giggle that always started when he was half swacked.

“I feel about half as good as you,” I said, and splashed some more beer into the burning pit that was my stomach. But it was a different fire entirely than the one made by the stomach acid, this was a friendly fire, and after it smoldered it felt great.

“Are you hungry?” asked Cruz.

“Ain’t I always?”

“You are,” he said, “you’re hungry for almost everything. Always. I’ve often wished I was more like you.”

“Like me?”

“Always feasting, on everything . Too bad it can’t go on forever. But it can’t. I’m damn glad you’re getting out now.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am. But I know what I’m talking about, ’mano . Cassie was sent to you. I prayed for that.” Then Cruz reached in his pocket for the little leather pouch. In it was the string of black carved wooden beads he carried for luck. He squeezed the soft leather and put it away.

“Did those beads really come from Jerusalem?”

“They did, that’s no baloney. I got them from a missionary priest for placing first in my school in El Paso. ‘First prize in spelling to Cruz Guadalupe Segovia,’ the priest said, as he stood in front of the whole school, and I died of happiness that day. I was thirteen, just barely. He got the beads in the Holy Land and they were blessed by Pius XI.”

“How many kids did you beat out for the prize?”

“About six entered the contest. There were only seventy-five in the school altogether. I don’t think the other five contestants spoke any English. They thought the contest would be in Spanish but it wasn’t, so I won.”

We both laughed at that. “I never won a thing, Cruz. You’re way ahead of me.” It was amazing to think of a real man like Cruz carrying those wooden beads. In this day and age!

Then the front door banged open and the living room was filled with seven yelling kids, only Dolores being absent that night, and Cruz shook his head and sat back quietly drinking his beer and Socorro came into the living room and tried to give me hell for buying all the presents, but you couldn’t hear yourself over the noisy kids.

“Are these real big-league cleats?” asked Nacho as I adjusted the batting helmet for him and fixed the chin strap which I knew he’d throw away as soon as the other kids told him big leaguers don’t wear chin straps.

“Look! Hot pants!” María squealed, holding them up against her adolescent body. They were sporty, blue denim with a bib, and patch pockets.

“Hot pants?” Cruz said. “Oh, no!”

“They even wear them to school, Papa. They do. Ask Bumper!”

“Ask Bumper,” Cruz grumbled and drank some more beer.

The big kids were there then too, Linda, George, and Alice, all high school teenagers, and naturally I bought clothes for them. I got George a box of mod-colored long-sleeved shirts and from the look in his eyes I guess I couldn’t have picked anything better.

After all the kids thanked me a dozen times, Socorro ordered them to put everything away and called us to dinner. We sat close together on different kinds of chairs at the huge rectangular oak table that weighed a ton. I know because I helped Cruz carry it in here twelve years ago when there was no telling how many kids were going to be sitting around it.

The youngest always said the prayers aloud. They crossed themselves and Ralph said grace, and they crossed themselves again and I was drooling because the chiles rellenos were on a huge platter right in front of me. The big chiles were stuffed with cheese and fried in a light fluffy batter, and before I could help myself, Alice was serving me and my plate was filled before any one of those kids took a thing for themselves. Their mother and father never said anything to them, they just did things like that.

“You do have cilantro ,” I said, salivating with a vengeance now. I knew I smelled that wonderful spice.

Marta, using her fingers, sprinkled a little extra cilantro over my carnitas when I said that, and I bit into a soft, handmade, flour tortilla crammed with carnitas and Socorro’s own chile sauce.

“Well, Bumper?” said Cruz after I’d finished half a plateful which took about thirty-five seconds.

I moaned and rolled my eyeballs and everybody laughed because they knew that look so well.

“You see, Marta,” said Socorro. “You wouldn’t hate to cook so much if you could cook for somebody like Bumper who appreciates your work.”

I grinned with a hog happy look, washing down some chile relleno and enchilada with three big swigs of cold beer. “Your mother is an artist!”

I finished three helpings of carnitas , the tender little chunks of pork which I covered with Socorro’s chile and cilantro and onion. Then, after everyone was finished and there were nine pairs of brown eyes looking at me in wonder, I heaped the last three chiles rellenos on my plate and rolled one up with the last flour tortilla and the last few bites of carnitas left in the bowl, and nine pairs of brown eyes got wider and rounder.