I enjoyed hurting Donnie and the feeling pumped me up so much that after formation, I stopped Rubin in the center of the workout area. “I’m still waiting on Space Invaders.”
“I brought it weeks ago. You ain’t been around, man.”
“I’m around now.”
“I ain’t got the game with me. And what’s this lame-ass crap your dad’s saying about Mexico?”
“We went there for vacation.”
“You ain’t been on no vacation, man. We passed by your house a few days ago and saw your car and truck in the yard.”
“We flew.”
“Your old man’s afraid to fly,” Rubin said. “Your mom told my mom.”
It was true: for all his badass glory Dad was afraid to take his feet off the ground. “It’s not the fall I’m afraid of, it’s that sudden stop,” he’d say.
“Your mom and old man been fighting?”
“No.” Had Mom told Mrs. Lopez about that too? I was beginning to think Dad was right, Mom was too trusting of them.
Rubin walked away, and I followed him to the waiting area, where the conversation continued between Mr. Lopez and Dad. I couldn’t wait to know what sort of line of bull Dad was feeding Mr. Lopez, and whether Mr. Lopez was falling for it. But as we approached they stood and walked out. Mrs. Lopez said hello and asked about Mom, and I said Mom was fine. After learning from Rubin what Mom had told Mrs. Lopez, I kept my answers short and didn’t say anything else to her or Rubin.
Donnie walked by, wringing his hand and casting hateful eyes at me. I glared back. I was beginning to see Dad’s point: there were some people that I would never be able to be friends
with, and knowing this there was nothing holding me back from beating them to the fuck.
I wondered if Dad was beating Mr. Lopez to the fuck in the parking lot. I made my way to the window, partly to glare at Donnie, partly to check on Dad. Donnie assumed his crosslegged
position on the sidewalk and waited for the thundering automobile to come for him, but I didn’t see Dad or Mr. Lopez. I scanned the dimly-lit parking lot, looking especially under the
light posts. A glimmer emerged from a far shadow, but it was only a stray shopping cart. Coming from the other direction was Donnie’s mom, booming in all her mufflerless glory. He was still
cradling his hand and didn’t let go of it as he got in the car. I watched them until the car was out of sight and earshot.
I looked for Dad again and spotted him and Mr. Lopez walking out of the Japanese restaurant next door. Dad’s hand was on Mr. Lopez’s shoulder. If he knew how, Dad could have paralyzed that shoulder with the right amount of pressure. Dad grandly swung open the dojo’s door for Mr. Lopez and both men wore wide smiles.
“Now Saturday,” Dad said loudly, “the boys’ll play together at the house where I can watch ‘em.”
“Fine, Señor Royal, fine. And that night, you bring Rubin and Wesley to the dojo, and afterwards we’ll all go to my house and have some of my butcher’s steaks.”
They shook on it, neither man’s smile diminishing.
I waited for Rubin to say he didn’t want to come, but he fell in behind his mom as his father led them to the door. When Rubin walked by me, I said, “Don’t forget the game and picture.”
CHAPTER 12
“That old salt-water nigger didn’t know what hit him when I took him in that Jap restaurant,” Dad said on our drive home from the dojo. “We did three shots of sake, and Lopez was agreeing with everything I said.”
Dad’s plan was this: by agreeing to eat Mr. Lopez’s steak and by having Mr. Lopez drop Rubin off at the house Dad stroked Mr. Lopez’s ego and allowed him to show off the van, and Dad agreed to all of this because he wanted to have Rubin alone with us for a day just as I was with Mr. Lopez and Rubin at the beach.
The next day Dad and I met Mr. Lopez and Rubin at the front gate. Rubin opened the sliding door of the van and got out. He had a large piece of glossy white paper, carefully rolled into a tube, in his hand. Mr. Lopez invited Dad to take a look inside, which Dad did, while I examined Rubin’s work. Captain America stood on the neck of the Nazi mutant Red Skull, whose swastika, while crumpled with him on the ground, stood out brightly at the bottom of the page. Flames rose from burning Nazi tanks behind Captain America while Luftwaffe fighter planes were chased through the orange-red sky by Blue Angel fighters.
“I figured they couldn’t say nothing if Captain America’s squashing the Nazi,” Rubin said.
I nodded my head in agreement and continued inspecting the drawing. It was bright, colorful, and I felt marvelous knowing this was the product of my first business negotiation. I told him it was good, but I refused to rave over it.
“One hell of a customized van,” Dad said. “I may have to get me one of these. Except mine’d be a Chevrolet, not a damn Ford.”
“Ford’s have never done me wrong,” Mr. Lopez said.
“They work for some people. Just not for me.”
“While mine still works,” Mr. Lopez says, “I’ll go get my steaks.” He tipped his white straw hat to Dad and smiled.
I took the drawing to my room and hung it over my bed, where it livened up the bare white walls. But I didn’t like being in my room alone with Rubin. I looked away from the drawing to him and he motioned his head toward my closet. Was Rubin crazy? Here, at my house, with Dad lurking?
“Where’s the game?” I asked.
“Almost forgot,” Rubin pulled it out of his back pocket and held it out to me but when I reached for it, he jerked back the game.
“Stop playing,” I said. Each time he took the game away, he stepped back, and after a few attempts, he had me in front of the closet. “Give it to me!”
“I will, if you follow me.”
“That’s not part of our deal. You’re supposed to give it back to me just like I gave it to you: with no strings attached.”
“Inside the closet,” Rubin said, his voice soft and low, “it’s dark and you can see the graphics better. I played this game in my closet all the time.”
“Bullshit. I know why you want me in the closet.”
“You don’t like that game?”
“I hate it, and I’ll hate you if make me play it.”
Rubin’s face contorted just like at the beach when I’d told him I’d go to the van with him under my own conditions, and he held the game out to me and didn’t snatch it back. I looked it over and took time to notice it, really, for the first time, and once I saw that there weren’t any scratches on the screen, I slid it under my bed and pulled out my football.
“Let’s go outside and throw the football.”
“I don’t like football,” Rubin said.
“All boys like football. What’s the matter, you not a boy?”
“I’ll show you a boy,” Rubin snatched the football from me and smacked me on top of the head with one of its pointed ends.
I wanted to cry, but Dad stepped to my bedroom door, and said, “Y’all can throw that damn football later. I need y’all out in the birdhouse now.” I had never been so thankful to hear Dad barking out orders before.
In the birdhouse, not all the birds were in cages. Chickens, domestic and imports, bobwhite quail, and pheasants ran wild. There were water jugs, the top a milky white and the bottom fire-red, all around the birdhouse for them to drink from. “Rubin, I want you to fill all the water jugs,” Dad said.
Rubin silently scanned the birdhouse, his lips moving as he counted the water jugs. There were a dozen of them; I knew because this was usually my job in the birdhouse. And I could never fill the jug, screw the red bottom part on, and flip it over and set it on the ground without getting my hands wet. Rubin’s tae kwon do reflexes were quick, and I couldn’t wait to see if his