Luis Alberto Urrea - The Water Museum

“Las morras back there got raccoon eyes,” Shadow confided.

Junior glanced back at the girls. The Sotomayor sisters. Damn. Their eyes were outlined in black.

“What?” said Mousey. “Mind your business, boy.”

He turned back and grinned at Shadow.

“You like that?” Shadow asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“You in love, vato!”

“I’m in love with the world!”

Shadow hooted out the window. “My man!” he said, nodding and jittering in the driver’s seat. “My ma-a-an.”

He honked the horn.

* * *

They drove out to the Silver Strand. It seemed like all San Diego and all Chula Vista and half of National City were heading for the beach. Fat moms and swabbies from the naval air base and old farts in big Hawaiian shirts and all those wetbacks from Tijuana. The vatos didn’t like the fuckin’ wetbacks, that was for sure. Sureños from the south battled it out with Norteños from the north; Chicanos faced off against Mexicanos. Beaners versus rednecks. Everybody against the black brothers. And just forget about the Asians. It was natural selection, just as they had learned from Darwin as explained by Professor Junior. Nobody liked nobody.

“Yo, Junior,” Shadow said as he parked in the sandy lot across the highway from the beach. “What we reading next in Mr. Hitler’s class?”

Mr. Hitler. Junior snickered. That friggin’ Shadow.

“We’re reading about Lewis and Clark.”

“What’s up with Lewis and Clark?”

“They, like, took canoes and rowed all across America and checked shit out for the president.”

“No shit? Like who, Reagan?”

“No, ese. A real old dude. It was a hundred years ago.”

“Reagan, like I said!” Shadow announced.

He jumped out of the car, circling to the back door.

“Ladies,” he said, holding their door open. He was swooping on La Smiley — everybody knew it. Junior was worried: La Li’l Mousey was too much woman for him, he was sure of it.

“Did Louie and Clark find dinosaurs?” Shadow asked.

“You crazy.”

“Read that book, boy!” (Who, Shadow?)

La Mousey terrified Junior by putting her arm around his waist.

They walked to the tunnels under the roadway. Jet fighters patrolled the beach on their way to North Island. Border Patrol helicopters appeared and disappeared to the south. The concrete tunnels were sandy. People had tagged inside them — blurry messages and pictures nobody paid attention to.

Two shadowy thugs were coming their way, and Junior didn’t even look at them, he was so enraptured by Shadow and so sweaty under La Mousey’s arm. The first thug slammed his shoulder into Shadow as he passed. Shadow bounced off the tunnel wall. The thug said, “Lárgate, pocho.”

“What did you say to me, bitch?” said Shadow.

“Pocho puto,” the thug replied.

Mexicans.

Shadow smiled. “You come into my country and talk smack to me? Really? Really? Okay.” He nodded. “Sure, why not.”

Shadow fired a right fist straight into the thug’s ribs and followed with a left that knocked him off his feet — shoes sliding out from under him on the sand-covered cement. His head clonked like a coconut when he went down.

“Shadow! Shadow!” Junior yelled. The girlies backed to the wall and shrieked with pleasure.

“Do him, Junior! Do him good!” Shadow yelled as he kicked and punched the other Mexican to the ground. Junior turned to the fallen thug, who was groggy but rising. He drew back his foot, pausing for a second to consider his black Converse, then kicked the thug in the mouth.

* * *

“I’ma barf,” Junior said as they spun out of the lot and hurried toward the freeway. Shadow was crazy-happy, bloody knuckles and all. He punched the ceiling.

“You ain’t gonna barf!”

“I’ma barf,” Junior said.

“You whipped that asshole but good, peewee!” Shadow hollered. “He’s in love with the world!” he shouted. “Hey — don’t barf. You do not barf in my mom’s car.”

Li’l Mousey leaned over the seat and massaged Junior’s shoulders.

“Junior?” she said. “You okay?”

He groaned.

“Honey,” she said, “you got a tooth stuck in your shoe.”

He barfed.

Shadow shrieked, “Not in my mom’s car, homes! Damn!”

“Sorry,” mumbled the professor as they sped back to the ’hood.

* * *

The next morning Junior was in bed reading The Stand when that knock came again on the screen door. For a moment, he considered not answering. But he did.

Shadow. Bloodshot eyes.

“Heavyweight Champion of the World!” Shadow said.

Chango had wanted to hang the Mexican’s tooth on a thong so Junior could wear it like some Apache warrior.

“Sup?” said Junior.

“Sup with you?”

Junior shrugged.

“Aquí nomás,” he said. “Sup with you?”

“Nuttin. I don’t know. Sup?”

“Hangin’.”

“I hear that.” They stared at each other through the screen.

“Chillin’,” Shadow offered. “After the big fight.”

Junior chuckled.

“Tha’s right,” he said. He made a muscle.

“No shame in your game!” Shadow announced.

They smiled.

“Um, I got you somethin’,” Shadow said.

“Yeah?”

“Like a prize or some shit, right?” Shadow reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flimsy little pink paperback. “Check that out. I di’nt get a word of it, but I know you like that crazy stuff.”

Junior opened the screen and took the book. It was a bent and battered Trout Fishing in America. He already had one under his bed.

“Brautigan,” he said.

“Is that how you say it?” Shadow asked.

“Thanks.”

Shadow bounced a little in place.

“I got you something better, homes.”

“Yeah?”

“Simón, güey. Step out here.”

Junior stepped out on the porch.

“Check it,” Shadow said, pointing to his mom’s station wagon. It had an aluminum canoe tied to the roof. “Sweet, right?”

“Shadow!” said Junior. “Where’d you get that?”

“I stole it!”

“What?”

“I went out driving. I can’t sleep, man. Can you? I can’t. Yo, so I went driving, right? They got this Boy Scout camp up on Otay Mesa. Around the lake. Like, all these tents with sleeping Scouts. I snuck in and stole it. For you!”

“You’re crazy!”

“I stole some paddles, too. They’re in the car.”

They regarded the canoe.

“What are we supposed to do with a canoe?” Junior asked.

Shadow smiled.

“Louie and Clark, homes. Like, let’s go discovering.”

* * *

The marshes and creeks were to the east and the south of Big Ángel’s house. Between the barrio and the border, pretty much. The sloughs.

Back in the day, crabs were attracted to the clotted blood-water that oozed out of the little slaughterhouse about a quarter mile from the gravel parking lot at the bottom of the barrio hill. Big Ángel could catch some supper down in there. Nowadays, nobody went down there except maybe Chango. If Chango was there, nobody else wanted to go there. But Shadow could take Chango any day or night.

They carted the canoe over their heads, the gunnels breaking their shoulders. It weighed about nine hundred pounds, in Junior’s opinion. “How can a piece of shit that weighs as much as a car,” Shadow wanted to know, “float on the water?” They staggered down the dirt road and skirted the gravel lot. Old motor oil in the dust still gave up its aroma of engines. Soda cans crushed flat in the gravel had faded pale orange in the relentless sunlight. Somebody had spray-painted tags on an old truck. Grasshoppers burst out of the weeds as the boys advanced, blasting through the air with clackety ratchet sounds. Jimmy noted the rolling passage of a tumbleweed.