The Afterlife Read online

  "Some dude," I answered. I imagined a pair of yellow shoes. I recalled how he wiped his blade on my shirt and hissed in my ear, "What did you say to me, cabrón?"

  "I'm really sorry," Robert cooed. He put an arm around my shoulder.

  "Bad luck," I said, snuggling up to him because he needed friendship more than me. It had probably been years since anyone sat close to him.

  "I got stabbed," he said, "and I lived."

  "You told me already."

  His eyes rolled in their sockets. "Oh, yeah, I did, didn't I?" Even as a ghost his memory was ruined from drinking cheap stuff. "Hey, did I tell you that I once slept on a bus like this for twelve hours straight?"

  I shook my head.

  "Yeah, I paid once and got to ride the bus all day. It was raining. I guess the bus driver felt sorry for me."

  As the bus rolled down the street, occasionally hitting a pothole, I had to wonder about what I called my bad luck. How was it that some dudes got stabbed and shot and lived? How did the Almighty decide? If I had stayed home on Friday night, I would be with Angel right now at the end of a glorious Sunday. We would be grass-stained from neighborhood football, and our worst wounds would be from getting our butts whipped, our pride dented. Our Sunday football game would have been dinner conversation since our families—he at his place, me at mine—liked to eat as a family on Sunday evenings.

  The bus braked and sighed. I watched a dude swagger onto the bus, his pants all huango, his eyes narrow, sunflower seed shells spraying from his mouth. It was Yellow Shoes!

  "Get back here!" the bus driver bellowed. His eyes were raised to the rearview mirror. If he was married and had a son, I guaranteed that son would perk up when his dad spoke.

  "What you want?" Yellow Shoes bawled without respect.

  "For you to drop some coins into this thing." The driver, a black man with a belt of fat around his middle, wasn't someone to play with. He pounded a giant fist on the meter that gobbled coins and dollar bills. The bus didn't get about on courtesy. No, it ran on money, hard-earned or stolen. I was sure the coins that Yellow Shoes let fall from his tattooed fingers were stolen.

  At first, I didn't say anything to Robert, who was staring out the window at two men carrying a couch down the sidewalk—the couch was either stolen or bought at a yard sale. Instead, I slid out of my seat and approached Yellow Shoes, who had fit headphones over his oily ears.

  "You're a punk," I growled. I remembered that he and I shared the same name. I suddenly hated my name—Chuy—and hated the music that was coming out of his headphones. The beat was loud and stupid.

  Alert, Robert got up and approached us. He had lived on the street for years and was a better judge of character than most people. He gave Yellow Shoes a mean look. "Is he the one?"

  I nodded my head.

  "Does he still have the knife on him?"

  "Nah, he tossed it."

  The bus rolled on, its springs squeaky over the rough road.

  "So what powers do we got?" Robert asked. "What do you mean?"

  "Can we hurt him? Jack him up?" He hooked a thumb at Yellow Shoes.

  Hurt him? I hadn't thought of revenge and, actually was trying to keep Eddie, my primo, from seeking revenge. Now this man whom I had saved wanted to do away with Yellow Shoes.

  "Nah, we can't do anything," I answered. I didn't want to let on that we ghosts could cause mayhem with the living.

  "What an ugly face!" Robert snarled.

  "Yeah, muy ugly."

  We returned to our seat. The bus stopped and two kids with skateboards hopped on, laughing. They were dirty but good kids, like Angel and me at one time. Their elbows and knees were bloody from falling, their palms black with oily grime from gripping the bottoms of their boards.

  "What you lookin' at, white boy?" Yellow Shoes taunted. He pulled the headphones from his ears. His rat face twitched.

  The boys' only response was to backtrack and sit closer to the driver.

  "I said, what you lookin' at?" Yellow Shoes hollered.

  The kids, skateboards pressed between their knees, looked straight ahead. They took a sudden interest in the car the bus trailed.

  "I hate that kid," Robert growled. He turned to me. "He killed you and you don't want to do anything about it?" Robert wagged his head in disgust that could have been directed either at me or at Yellow Shoes. "In my time—"

  I cut him off. "I don't want to talk about it." I fumed as I thought of Fausto, bike thief and thug of all thugs. I had a great, painful urge to erase him and Yellow Shoes from the face of our dirty little planet. I boiled with a sudden hatred.

  The bus rolled for a mile, but no one else boarded. In Fresno, everyone owned a car. If you didn't, you were elderly, young, disabled, or truly poor.

  Robert nudged me. "You sure you never heard of Robert Montgomery? He was a famous actor. Think he won an Oscar, the whole enchilada."

  "Nah, never heard of him."

  "That's good then," Robert said. "Because now you can just remember me, okay?"

  I was confused.

  Robert rose from our seat, sidled up to Yellow Shoes, and slowly stepped into my killer's skin, as if he were slipping into one of those black diving suits. Robert's head stuck out of Yellow Shoes's body, two heads on a single set of shoulders.

  "I'm going to stir up this little fool," Robert said. He offered up a sorrowful good-bye with a wink of an eye. "Remember me. See you on the other side."

  The other side, I wondered. What is on the other side?

  Robert disappeared into Yellow Shoes's body, not unlike how he stepped inside the tree. Yellow Shoes quivered, juiced up by the sudden appearance of another soul inside him. He looked sick, scared. A sunflower seed shell fell from his lips. He let the bag of sunflower seeds spill to the floor. "Bus driver, I don't feel good!" Yellow Shoes threw his head into the window. The thud left a greasy smear on the glass. He thrashed about. His legs fanned in and out.

  This commotion brought the bus driver's eyes to the rearview mirror.

  Yellow Shoes stood up, then sat back down. His teeth chattered like castanets. His knees went up and down like pistons. I thought of the movie The Exorcist. Was his head going to twist and spray vomit? At the thought, I got up and jumped from the bus as it was moving. I didn't want to see any more. I rolled twice and righted myself in front of a paint store with graffiti on the front. I had never been a hero, though I can say that I saved a man who shared a name with an actor I had never heard of. Then again, I never heard of ghosts who were willing to crawl into another body. Especially a killer's body.

  "Dawg," I muttered.

  The bus braked and the two kids jumped off the bus, their skateboards hitting the pavement. They were sailing from trouble on a Sunday evening when the sky was boiling with rain clouds.

  EDDIE'S APARTMENT. A black suit was laid out like a shadow on his couch. It was from the Salvation Army, I noticed by the tag attached to the sleeve, but the white shirt was new and still in its package. A pair of shoes that needed polishing lay at the cuffs of the pants. All that was needed was Eddie's body to fill those clothes with the warmth of his flesh. I wondered what kind of suit my mom got me. A black one like Eddie's? Or was she going to use the brown one I bought last year for the fall dance?

  I sat on the couch and swallowed my fear. It tasted like wet earth. When was I going to be buried? Monday? Tuesday? I yearned to make my rounds once more in Fresno and beg—but how?—that my mother leave Eddie alone. Why should he seek revenge?

  The telephone began to ring. I got up and found it in the kitchen sitting next to a toaster. His machine kicked in: "This is Eddie. You know what to do, man." Beep. Then my mother's voice in a whisper: "Eddie, you can find him, mi'jo. Please find him. I have more bullets if you need more. I'll see you at the rosary in a little bit." There was the sound of a television in the background. Then the final prodding: "Mi'jo, he loved you a lot. He would do it for you."

  My mom's voice was spooky and her message even scarier.
I imagined her completing this call and shuffling back to her couch, where she would pick up her knitting needles. Maybe she was knitting a ski mask for Eddie, I mused. No telling who's who in that getup.

  I turned and jumped when I spied the towel my mom used to carry the gun. The gun wasn't there, though.

  "Mom!" I scolded. "Why get Eddie involved?"

  I imagined the gun cradled in the pouch of Eddie's Fresno State Bulldog sweatshirt. I imagined the bullets oily and merciless in their drive to hurt someone.

  Next to the towel lay a newspaper article reporting my murder. The suspect, the article said, was Hispanic, early twenties, and lean, with a shaved head. It could have been anyone, even me, and this frightened me. At that moment, Eddie could be tracking down my killer on such vague details. I figured that he could shoot in the sky and the bullet that came down would most likely hit an unlucky soul who fit the description.

  The article also announced my rosary at Everlasting Light Mortuary. My stomach sank because the rosary was scheduled for 6:00, and it was 5:15, according to the clock on the wall. I was out of the apartment, flying. But the wind sent me into streets and alleys I didn't want to go down. I tightened my stomach and pushed with all my might. I got there "Chicano time," late.

  The Everlasting Light Mortuary didn't appear to live up to its name. The corners of the building were hammered open in search of termites. Dawg, I thought, I'm going to be buried in a coffin eaten by termites? I hoped that my mom and dad had ordered a metal casket. But I had nothing to joke about when I walked through the termite-infested walls and saw my family and friends, a few lingering around the coffin where my body lay. Candles sputtered, incense hung in the air. Organ music droned out of a cracked speaker. The termites got to snack on the woofers, too.

  The rosary, it appeared, was over, but not the grief. My mom was crying, and some aunts I hadn't seen in years were tossing tears freely. Uncle Richard was there, along with his girlfriend, who in her high heels was taller than him and just about every guy in the room. Then I spotted the four Js—Jamal had a middle finger in a splint, a basketball injury. Jason sported a bruise under his eye, also an injury. I felt good for them because their appearance suggested that we had won over Sanger. Coach wouldn't have put them in if the game had been close. After all, they were second stringers.

  "Hey, guys," I greeted, but, of course, they couldn't hear or see me. Still, I thought I'd better greet them. They were huddled together, segregated from the adults because they were young. I was going to miss them, and I think they were going to miss me, too, at least until I became a photo in a yearbook, nada mas, or in ten years' time a name mentioned at a high school reunion.

  I remember when I was little I had ruined the classroom pencil sharpener when I stuck a crayon in and gave it a mighty crank. The teacher called Mom, and Mom called Dad, and Dad, home from work, called me from the backyard, where I was playing with Angel. My nalga whipping took me from the living room to the bedroom and back to the living room. I remembered crying in my bedroom, rain on the window, and thinking that if I died they would be really, really sorry. I was seven at the time, so full of self-pity that I pictured them at my funeral, all crying because they missed me. See? I sniveled back then. You should have been nice to me. Given me more candy! Taken me places! I didn't mean to break the sharpener!

  It had come true. They were crying at my funeral and whether they were thinking they should have been nicer to me, pues, I wasn't able to tell for sure. But those were real tears. And the body in the coffin was real, too. I approached it slowly and almost buckled because I was full of self-pity.

  "Oh, Chuy" I heard someone call. "Oh, Jesus!"

  It was Aunt Sara from Modesto. With a raccoon look from the mascara on her face, she returned to view my body once again. She honked into a Kleenex and her husband ushered her away. When she was gone, I stepped forward. I swallowed my fear as I lowered my gaze to the body in the coffin. It was me, after all. I was dressed in a new black suit and a tie that was the colors of my school, black and red. My hands, laced together, rested on my stomach. I realized that I wasn't too feo-looking, even with my large nose. My hair was combed nice, but my cheeks had too much makeup! There was nothing I could do about that, though. I couldn't do anything about the little smirk on my face. I was smirking as if Angel was in the middle of a joke and I was lifting the corners of my mouth ready to laugh.

  I did laugh. Dawg! I barked to myself. Me in my coffin with a grin on my face. I had to wonder whether it was going to relax or if I would have to wear it as I was lowered into the ground, where I would spin and spin with the daily rotation of the earth.

  I turned and eyed my primo Eddie shoving something large and heavy into my moms hands. My mom tried to give it back, but Eddie—bless him—wouldn't have it. It was back in my mom's care. The world was safer, quieter. I only prayed that someone would roll my coffin away before the termites got a chance to burrow into the polished wood of my snug little bed.

  But I had had enough of these dark thoughts. I wanted more from life, even if I didn't have one. I wanted something to really remember.

  Chapter Nine

  THE COLISEUM in Oakland was jammed with cars, trucks, campers, and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Small barbecues were fired up, sending spirals of smoke into a sky lit by banks of lights. Ice chests brimmed with sodas and beers, and, at one site, champagne—someone with class and better breeding than most of the dudes at the game was ready to celebrate a victory. I watched a guy bringing a taco bloated as a water balloon to his face. Juice ran down an arm decorated with a bluish Raiders tattoo. He could have chosen the name of a girlfriend or wife who could disappear in a huff. But the Raiders? They were permanent.

  On that Sunday night I asked myself what I would really like besides snuggling in the arms of Crystal. The answer was clear as the puddles I stepped over: to see a Raiders game live, not on TV It was a simple gift to myself. Luck had it that the Raiders were playing on Monday Night Football.

  That Sunday, as I drifted around Fresno, I found myself on Fausto's block. I thought maybe Robert Montgomery followed Yellow Shoes there. Robert might want to go with me, I thought. But Robert wasn't there, or Fausto, whose house was blown wide open. After I froze off the hinges of the front door, the mocoso kids in the neighborhood had sneaked in and taken off with the bikes. Even the ones with flats and no wheels.

  "Incredible," I muttered.

  Two kids were bike riding at the late hour of nine o'clock when they should have been bathed and buttoned up in bed. School was the next day. But they couldn't care less. The kids rode through rain puddles, their black, black hair parted by wind and drizzle. They were fearless.

  After I had left the Everlasting Light Mortuary, I had walked in the rain and lamented my death. I was feeling sorry for myself and for Crystal, a girl I'd decided I truly loved. She was at home, perhaps watching her parents cry their hearts out until there were no tears left to race down their long, ashen faces. I had promised to return to her, and I was going to keep my word, which was the only thing I had left.

  I ghosted around Fresno that Sunday night, and early the next morning, at a 7-Eleven, I slid into a van with three chubby guys—all raza—who were making plans to escape to Oakland. They worked for the city in sanitation, and decided to call in sick—let the garbage fester in the alleys. They wanted to see the Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs, a rivalry that went back to the 1970s. Back then the Raiders had Stabler at the helm and Biletnikoff running a slow but effective pattern.

  We departed Fresno a little after two o'clock in the afternoon. I rode with these guys, and for three hours straight they talked about what they were escaping: work. They talked about the good stuff people tossed in the garbage.

  "The garbage I handle is first-rate," a guy named Hector bragged. He worked a route in the best part of Fresno and had taken away, cleaned up and repaired, and sold on his front lawn in a yard sale enough goods to put his son through the first year of college. Cit
y College, but still...

  One guy named Manuel was bummed out. His route was in the poorer parts of Fresno, and he never got anything worth salvaging. Even the pork chops were gnawed to the bone, so his dog never feasted on other people's scraps. The cereal boxes were cleaned out, the egg and milk cartons, the soup cans, todo! There was no waste in the area he worked. Times were hard, and getting harder. Even the flies were disappointed.

  They took an inventory of things they had gaffled, and the people who lived on their routes. Hector bragged that there was a woman who liked him, and the others taunted, "Is she blind?" Their laughter rattled the bag of barbecue pork rinds in their laps.

  Near Livermore my name came up—or, to be truthful, my murder.

  "You hear about that chavalo who got stabbed?" Manuel asked. His forehead became pinched with hurt.

  "Yeah," Hector muttered. "I'd kill the dude that killed my son." He was looking out the window at a subdivision of new homes that were going up, their frames like gallows, the tiled roofs the color of dried blood. "Kids got it harder now than when we were running the streets."

  "You got that right," agreed Manuel.

  The three drove in silence the rest of the way. But as the bright lights of the Oakland Coliseum appeared against the gray sky, the gang of three—even the one at the wheel—started to slip into their Raiders gear—hats, jerseys, black under their eyes as if they were players. They didn't moan when parking cost fifteen dollars and scalped tickets set them back eighty each. They were there to party.

  My friends went one way, and I went another, hugging the ground because I was almost being blown away by the wind off the bay. I took in the sights of a pre-game party in the huge parking lot that surrounded the stadium. I had no hunger but appreciated others who stomped their shoes and boots when they dipped a tortilla chip in salsa and couldn't handle the fiery taste. I couldn't catch the footballs that were tossed around the parking lot, and the dudes playing catch couldn't catch them, either. The dogs that ran barking had more natural gifts for catching Frisbees than the middle-aged jocks with sausages for fingers.