John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

A patrol car glides along the four sides of the Park, never leaving, never stopping.

"Viva la Fiestal" cries Rudy. "Viva la Razal"

Amado, wine-high, gives a whoop. For the first time in so long he feels at home outside of the kitchen. He stretches his arms out wide, throws his head back and yelps to the sky. Parrando joins him, howling like a pair of coyotes, howling at the top of their lungs.

"Tas lucas," says Rudy, smiling but looking at them warily.

They meet Jesus and his Anglo girl. She isn't as pretty as Jesus has described, but she's just as blond, sun-and-seawater blond like Skip at work. When she smiles in greeting her gums show. Jesus rolls his eyes and tells them in Spanish what he's going to do to her, and how he'll come back later and find another, a Chicana.

"One for the belly," he says in Spanish, "and one for the soul."

Jesus sees Ramiro and Mendez and some others he knows who work at the Country Club and he takes his girl to show her off.

Rudy sees a girl he knows from the junior high school, walking with two friends. They wear high-waisted, bottomhugging pants, long sweater-coats. Rudy's girl has streaks of red in her hair.

"This is my friend Amado Cruz," he says. "And that is Parrando."

Parrando waves in their direction.

Rudy is very smooth, Amado is glad to be with him. He pairs them up right away. Amado gets Celia, who is pretty. With a good shape at thirteen, brown and thin like Nalda Perez back home. Nalda a mother already. Parrando is left with the heavy, Indian-looking one. She doesn't seem pleased.

Celia has her black hair in a braid for the Fiesta, and a flower behind one ear. Under her sweater-coat she wears a white camisole top, with a small golden cross around her neck. When Amado talks to her in Spanish she doesn't understand.

"I used to know some," she says. "From my grandmother."

Amado struggles with the words as they walk, his stomach tight now.

"Is like Cinco de Mayo," he says, "like Cinco de Mayo down South."

"Yeah, we have that up here too, Cinco de Mayo. The Chicano Caucus puts it on. We have that and the Fourth of July. Lots of fireworks."

"Que?"

"Fireworks. Boom-boom-boom," she mimes an explosion in the sky.

There is a rumbling, a roar, and a pair of low-riders screech onto the street beside them, front hubs running inches from the ground. They hop the curb, drop even lower — Skreeeeeeekl a shower of sparks from their plated bottoms, a cheer from the crowd in the Park, and then they cut hard and thunder away with the patrol car yowling after them.

Amado watches after, their sound fading slowly. "I save my pay," he says to Celia. "I buy one. A low-rider. I give you a drive."

Celia says that would be nice.

The wine finished, Rudy gone off with his girl, Celia and the little one home to their mothers and the field lights shut down for the night. Amado steering Parrando, lost, but somewhere near the ocean. He hears the surf. He hears others still loose in the night, distant shouts, curses, glass shattering. The night hot, still charged with Fiesta but scary now. Amado thinks they're still on the West Side, he looks out for the train tracks — "If you ever get lost, campesino," Jesus always says, "go find the ocean, take a left turn, an just keep walkin."

"Estoy bombo." Parrando's eyes are nearly shut now, he moves in a daze. "Stoy muy borracho."

"You ever drin before this, Parrando?"

"Nunca," smiles Parrando. "De ningi n modo."

Surf breaking close by, the backs of hotels rising, then -

"Viva la Fiesta!" cries Parrando when he sees the floats.

"Chist!" hisses Amado. Parrando covers his mouth, giggling.

The floats are unattended, moonlit in the beach parking lot. Crowded together they seem like a small amusement park, towers and banners and platforms, pennants flapping in the night air. Parrando darts in among them, tearing at crepe and flowers, tosses the bits over his head.

"Viva la Fiesta! Viva 01 Hispanish Day!" he yips.

Amado catches him on the Native Daughters of the Golden West float, tackling him in a tangle of hibiscus, bowling over a trellis. Parrando giggles, agrees to come along quietly, but first he has to pee. Amado has to also, they turn back to back, count five and let go, like duelists.

Amado is tapped and tucked when Parrando is just getting going. Amado stares, it really is huge. Parrando irrigates the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the camellias, splatters the papier- mache wall of the Old Spanish Days hacienda and is baptizing the throne of La Reina de la Fiesta when a strobe light flashes across his back and a loudspeaker crackles -

"STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE."

Amado is off, sprinting into the dark, hurdling driftwood, the beach-sand slowing his flight like a bad dream, and dreamlike, the thought keeps touching his mind — wait till I tell them in the kitchen. Parrando startled in the light, fumbling to stuff it all back in, reeling away with it still out, flapping — Even Jesus, who never laughs at the jokes of others, even Jesus would be laughing.

Amado sprawls into a runoff ditch behind the bathhouse, legs rubbery, wind sucking in through his ears. He swallows his wheezing, tries to hear them. Surf breaking. Others still loose in the night, cursing, crying, shattering glass. Amado will get overtime for a few days if they catch Parrando, both he and Luis doing double shift till someone's brother or cousin just up comes to fill the opening. Parrando will be better off down South.

A spotlight plays across the sand, catches the breaking tips of waves. Amado squats in the ditch, presses tight to the wall. Maybe he'll see his family before Christmas.

RIAN WAS MIXING Pest Killer for the dogs when Serena scratched on the cage door.

"Hello in there."

It was weird seeing her at the kennel, it was like the one time his mother had come to high school with the news about the old man. His mother in her old coat standing next to Jimmy Mahon's locker. It made him uneasy.

"I came to see the puppies."

"Right." Brian put the bucket aside and came out of the grooming cage. Serena stood back beneath the new sign Mr. Pettit had sprung for.

BAD DOGS

it said, above a black silhouette of a bad-looking Doberman wearing a spiked collar -

ATTACK DOGS FOR RENT

PUPPIES FOR SALE

STUD SERVICE

"BAD DOGS MAKE GOOD BUSINESS"

Brian didn't feel right kissing her, not in public and all, and he'd just seen her seventh period. He stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled and nodded toward the whelping cage.

"Over this way."

He walked close by her, though, in case Lovell was watching.

"Oh look at them!"

Women were like that with the puppies. Brian liked to watch them squatting down and making faces and laughing.

"They're only two weeks," he said. "They'll get even fatter."

"She looks exhausted."

use lay on her side, dully watching two puppies tugging at her nipples while the others bumped and tumbled over each other at the water dish.