David Corbett: Do They Know I'm Running

“I said I’ll handle it.”

Only then did Roque notice how woozy he was; unconsciously, he’d been holding his breath. Sucking in a mouthful of air, he let his body slump heavily against the wall.

Freckles, focusing on Roque for the first time: “Is that Pablo Orantes?”

“I fucking told you, ass wipe, Happy’s in El Salvador.” Godo turned to the older agent. “Get them to leave.”

“I’ll do that. Meanwhile, be wise to lower the shotgun, don’t you think?”

“They leave first. I’m not getting queered by these two.”

“Nobody’s doing anything to anybody. These two agents are going to step outside, right here in the carport. You and I will talk through what needs to be talked through. We square?”

“They broke in.”

“I hear what you’re saying.”

“I was in my rights.”

“We’ll discuss that.” He gestured for the two agents to pass in front of him, out the door. They did, unhappily-Freckles first, then Widow’s Peak, who exchanged one last eye fuck with Godo. The two agents perched at the foot of the doorstep, at which point the older one said, “Okay now. I’ve asked politely. Lower your weapon.”

Slowly, Godo let the barrel of the shotgun drop, his shoulders unclenched. For the first time, Roque noticed the pungent stench of sweat, not just the others, himself too, then another odor, fouler still-infection. Godo’s dressing, still unchanged.

On the sofa, Tía Lucha shuddered and put her face in her hands. The agent extended a gentling hand and said, “Everything’s okay, señora .”

Godo, swaying a little, steadied himself with the wall, then raised himself up again with a shoulder roll, like a boxer manning his corner. Loud, so the pair outside could hear: “I grease those two shitbirds inside my own home? Not a jury in America would convict me.”

“Let’s both be grateful you don’t have to test that theory.” The agent picked up his pistol from the floor and holstered it. “Shall we sit?”

“I’m good where I am.”

The older man’s glance tripped toward Roque, as though wondering if he weren’t, in fact, Pablo “Happy” Orantes. Tío Faustino’s son. Roque and Godo’s cousin, in a manner of speaking. Turning back to Godo, he again looked hard at the ruined face. “You’ve been stateside since when?”

Godo wiped at some sweat and uttered a small, ugly, disbelieving laugh. “My turn to ask you something.” His pitted skin shimmered in the kitchen light. “Tonight, when you plant your ass on the couch, front of the TV, you and those two glorified rednecks outside-when you’re watching yourselves, watching all the people in these shitbag trailers get rounded up, ask yourself why. They do what you want. They do it cheap. But you watch all that. And when the next bit comes on, the one about the war, when the names of the dead scroll by: Rodriguez, Acevedo, Castellanos, Hernandez…” He counted them off, each name a finger. “Hear what I’m saying? Come on, look me in the eye, tell me honest, two jarheads, goddamn Thundering Third, right? Tell me to my face that doesn’t fuck with you.”

PERCHED HIGH BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS FREIGHTLINER CAB, Faustino impatiently raided his lunch of cheese and beef tongue pasteles , prepared by Lucha, glancing up now and then through the wiper arc on his grime-caked windshield, watching the vast threadwork of lights grow dim along the crane booms and catwalks, daybreak sapping the dark from the sky. A San Cristóbal medallion hung from the rearview mirror, its pale blue ribbon entwined with a rosary.

He was waiting in his queue at the Port of Oakland, the complex as vast as a city itself. At every berth, longshoremen in hard hats scurried beyond the fences like dug-up termites, forklifts growling to and fro and belching smoke amid cursing shouts and horn blasts and siren shrieks. Jumbo cranes hoisted freight containers from the cavernous holds of cargo ships, the vessels so huge they dwarfed the piers to which they were moored.

Hundreds of truckers like Faustino-out of bed by three, down here by four-thirty to snag a place in line-sat idly in their rigs, waiting hours for a single load. And while they sat, they sweated the constant back and forth of cops and overeager port security flacks who hoped to pop them for a bum taillight, bare tread on a tire, excessive exhaust, anything. Most of the trucks were old-Faustino drove a ’94 day cab-and offers by the Port Commission to help finance new ones were laughable. Who could afford the monthlies, the interest, let alone the hike in insurance? Even the anti-exhaust systems they were hawking, ten to fourteen thousand a pop, were out of reach for most guys.

It sounded like a lot to outsiders-hundred dollars a load for just a drayage run, from the port over to the warehouse in Alameda, a matter of minutes-but the way they made you sit, wasting away the hours, you were lucky to get two runs a day.

And the nickel-and-dime stuff ate you alive. Faustino did his own repairs, juggled his accident coverage with his registration payment month by month, part of the constant trade-off, shortchanging one thing to make good on another. Near impossible to meet costs, let alone get ahead. Desperation became a kind of genius, making you sharp and clever and tight with a dollar, but it was their hole card too. The shippers had you by the throat and they knew it.

With his forefinger, he scooped up a smear of cheesy pastele filling from the crumpled tinfoil, unable to remember the last time he’d sat at the table and shared breakfast with Lucha or eaten one of her lunches without the stench of diesel souring the back of his throat.

Meanwhile, outside his window: “Check this out-I’m moonlighting last weekend, hauling rock? Heavy load, incline. Boost gauge hovers around nine psi. Been a while since I drove a boost, but ain’t that high?”

A circle of drivers, arms crossed, gathered on the pavement, biding time till the line budged. Risky, Faustino thought, gabbing away in the open like that. The shippers will say you’re organizing. Then watch your life turn to hell.

“With a loaded trailer? Twelve psi, easy. Nine’s fine. What’s your speed?”

“There’s the thing. I can barely break forty on an incline if I’m towing.”

Faustino cocked an ear halfheartedly, like it was a game between teams he had no stake in. Even if he’d thought the coast was clear, he wouldn’t have climbed down, joined in. He didn’t feel much like camaraderie these days.

What he felt was ashamed-losing the house, cheated out of it, all because the mortgage broker, a Mexican, all smiles and small talk, said he was dying to give them the Latino dream. They’d found the house, fourteen hundred square feet, three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, nothing extravagant, and the broker had the loan, low interest going in, adjustable three years out. They signed the papers, wrote the check, moved in, no mean trick since Faustino was sin documentos . Two months later? Some guy they’ve never heard of shows up, demands an extra fifteen hundred a month, they’re already behind, says it’s to repay the short-term loan for the down payment. He had all the paperwork, Faustino’s and Lucha’s signatures right there, part of the ungodly stack the escrow officer had slid past them at the title company. That was bad enough but when the rate adjusted and the new monthly kicked in, it became too much. They’d trusted people. They’d trusted a Mexican. They’d been fools.

They lived in that humiliating trailer now, trying to get their legs beneath them again, except Godo was back from the war, body in shreds, brain not right. And Roque, who should be working, helping out. He’s gifted, Faustino reminded himself. “That boy could be the next Carlos Santana”-he was ten when they started saying that. Teachers agonizing over him at school, saying he had the mind but not the will, reading novelas policíacas during class, tapping out rhythms with his pen or just lost in the clouds. Then he met old Antonio, the retired bandmaster who played boleros at parties. That was it, like the guitar descended from heaven and spoke. Roque learned classical and flamenco from the old man, pieces from Spain and Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, and it was magical, watching him turn calm and mindful, cradling the guitar. Then, boom, he’s a teenager and it’s pickup offers, garage bands, jam sessions, sometimes with real musicians, guys who got paid, which was how he met his latest teacher, Lalo, a professor at San Francisco State. He took Roque on as a special protégé, introducing him to jazz. Lucha bought him the electric so he could stand on his own among the others, prove himself. What else was there to do, let him turn out like Godo? Or worse-Pablo?