hollow

NACHO / JUNE

FOR A MINUTE, IT looked to Nacho like the city was gone, Rio Seco erased from the valley below and only a dirty smudge left, like when he’d gotten mad at himself and wiped out a drawing instead of just throwing the paper away, rubbing hard with the eraser so that even the trashman couldn’t see how bad this one was. The bus started down the long slope. Most of the other riders had been sleeping the hour since L. A., but Nacho was used to night-shift time, and he’d been awake while the sun rose in front of them to tint the smog.

It hung thin-layered as dryer lint, not graying the entire sky like fog or clouds, just a blanket of June haze held together by car exhaust. The bus was still up in the blue, and Nacho knew once they got into Rio Seco, the smog would just be air, but he stared now. He’d been gone, what, a year and a half?

Past the city, the smog misty and reddish in the new sun, mountains rose up to the east, separating it from the desert, each craggy\ outline lapping the next. If he took a picture of this and asked the white guys, the janitors he’d worked with back in Amherst, they’d never guess where it was. Layers of layers, like mystical lands he’d seen in books at the university library—Nepal, Bolivia, the high mountains of Kenya. California—the only thing the other janitors asked him about was Hollywood and the beach, and they didn’t believe him when he said he’d never seen either. Never been out of Rio Seco except twice to Compton, to visit some girls with Snooter. Nacho smiled. The Irish guy had asked him about blondes and bikinis, and the other guys got mad. Nacho wasn’t supposed to be looking at that, native Californian or not, being a nigger.

He wouldn’t tell his father and Snooter about the harassment, or how he quit the job. He’d just say he got tired of winter, which Snooter was expecting. Snooter—yeah, one of my hundreds of cousins. Zadnek, his boss, had said, “Willie Horton, that’s your cousin, right? I thought all niggers were cousins.”

The river-bottom was mostly dry but for a ribbon of grayish water near the center. Past the bridge, the downtown offramp curved around, and then Nacho was outside the bus station, heading up Sixth Avenue, passing new office towers with sleek, aqua-mirrored windows rippling in the light. Then a square building with salmon walls and mint-green railings—serious Miami Vice. He wondered if his father had cleaned up any of the construction sites, if he’d had to hire one of the winos from Lincoln Park for day work. Probably still cussing if he had to give the dude lunch.

Under the dank freeway overpass, he shivered, and then smelled the old orange packing-houses, tangy scented ground beside the street. Just past the warehouses was Lincoln Park; he saw the circle of men around a fire, more flopping feet dangling from car doors. It would be warm today, and pretty soon they’d abandon the fire for the shade of the carob trees. “What up?” called someone, and Nacho squinted. Victor Miles, he’d gone to school with Nacho. “Not much, homes,” Nacho said.

The Westside. Nacho walked slower, listening to the way haze muffled sound. He would have known it was gray without opening his eyes, just by the softened noise. DaVinci Street, Vincent, Van Gogh, Pablo. Picasso. He was going to have to get on the truck first thing. They’d talk big shit, Snooter and his father. He knew they heard him when he turned the corner. It wasn’t but six on a Friday morning, and nobody else would be up; his feet crunched over a shimmer of brown glass. Their voices stopped. His father and Snooter sat on the rusted folding chairs in front of the house, drinking coffee, looking the same as when he’d gone. I’m ready to sleep, he thought, not in the mood to go to work. I’ma tell Pops I need some rest before I start talking. He slung the duffle bag off his shoulder onto the driveway.

They glanced at him, lifted up the coffee cups. Nacho waited. Okay, it’s on me. Why am I back? Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. That’s what you always say, Snooter. Nacho circled his teeth with his tongue.

Snooter turned to Nacho’s father. “Uncle Floyd, you seen Ed? Nigga done lost his whole grille.”

“So I heard. Roscoe told me.”

Nacho shook, a tiny tremor like a dreaming dog. He’d missed each word and syllable, all those months in Amherst with the Polish and Irish guys whose voices fit together flat and tough as puzzle pieces. All the “niggers” sharp as triggers in his ears. He dropped the bag on the dry grass. “You a lie,” he said. “Who hit Ed’s truck?”

Snooter looked long at him, but his father watched two dogs troop up the street. “I ain’t talkin about his truck, cuz,” Snooter said, bending to lace up his workboots, and Nacho felt the fatigue from days on the bus; he wanted to lie down in the grass, curled on his side. Am I supposed to wait until you decide to jam me up? I don’t know the code no more.

“Huh,” Snooter pushed through his nose. “Truck!” He leaned his chair against the stucco and smiled. “That dude Ed workin with punched him in the mouth, homes.”

Rubbing the hair around his forehead, stretching the skin, Nacho couldn’t see what he was meant to see. “So?”

“Front four, man. The grille. It’s missin when he smile at you.”

Nacho shook his head, laughing, when Snooter walked to the truck. Snooter was going to test him. “You comin?” his father said, standing up.

“Where y’all goin?” Nacho asked.

“Where we goin. To work, lazy nigga. Don’t matter where we goin, it ain’t fun. Where we ever go? We don’t take art classes and travel across the country. We just work.” He and Snooter had put their coffee cups on the hood of the small Toyota pick-up in the driveway, and Nacho knew his mother would take them inside when she came home from the graveyard shift at the hospital. She’d be in her uniform, hair a perfect cap around her face, gold chains and rings gleaming against her penny-bright skin. The blood came back to his head, where it kept leaving after the hours of flashing-past telephone poles and shifting bus gears. He left his bag in the Toyota’s cab and got into the big truck after Snooter.

He could tell—when they headed up Third Avenue toward Hillgrove that they were going to the dump first, and he dipped his head in annoyance. The truck, a 1955 Ford, groaned up the hill because, as usual, his father had piled rubble to the top of the wooden gate—concrete chunks, Sheetrock, plaster. The iron would be gone, given to Leo, who collected scrap metal, and the wood was piled in the backyard for winter. They must have cleaned up another construction site. Nacho smelled his father’s coffee breath, Snooter’s coconut hairdress, but no one spoke, and he closed his eyes, feeling the painful, scraped tingle in his palms already: his gloves had been gone from behind the seat for a year, and Snooter and Daddy would only laugh if he asked to borrow theirs.

“Rest your artistic ass, man,” Snooter called from the window. “We’ll be back.” Nacho’s fingers pulsed from the rough concrete, and his knees felt as though webbing tightened around the caps. Inside, his mother was asleep on the couch, one long earring trailing around her lobe. She heard him, though, and swung up from the cushions. “My baby’s home!” Nacho smiled and hugged her. Angie and Pam were only thirteen and fifteen, but they were her “girls” and he’d always been her baby.

“The girls are at school, and I was just taking a little nap before I start cooking.”

“Where’s Aint Rosa?” he asked. “I thought she was still cooking for you and for Esther down the street.”

His mother paused. “Your daddy didn’t tell you?” she said, frowning. Nacho sat on the end of the couch; his back felt like minty liquid was draining from either side of his spine, painfully cool, collecting in his feet.

His mother said, “Ruskin and them are tearing down Green Hollows and putting up office buildings. Your daddy and Snooter supposed to do the cleanup, next week, I think. Aint Rosa moving to that new Seniors’ Tower downtown.

“Ruskin? Daddy still working for him?”

“Still doing odd jobs, cleanup and hauling.” His mother brought a pile of green beans into the living room and started snapping. “Lord, Aint Rosa drives me crazy, that noise she be making with her lips all the time, and always talking about Tom Cruise’s wife or Burt and Loni’s baby, some such nonsense. But I’ma miss her taking care of the kitchen. This night shift catching up with me after all these years. Didn’t you work nights out there where you was?”

Nacho nodded, closing his eyes. Ruskin. He couldn’t believe his father and Snooter still did Ruskin’s shit work. He remembered a few months before he and Snooter had gone back East, when Snooter was tired, had been out all night with Juanita, and Daddy was hollering all day. “Back that damn truck up, boy!” he’d shouted at Snooter, and Snooter accidentally grazed a mailbox, one of those big-money cast-iron types. Ruskin came tearing out of his front door. “I just bought that, King!” he yelled at Daddy. “You can damn well pay for a new one if it’s damaged.”

“I’ll check it out right now, Mr. Ruskin,” his father said. “My boy here’s sick today.”

“No, he’s too damn lazy to turn the goddamn wheel.” Ruskin must have had a bad day, Nacho had thought, standing near the truck. “Goddamn scatterbrained nigger ruined my wife’s irises last year digging where he wasn’t supposed to,” he muttered, and Nacho looked into Snooter’s eyes, but saw his father’s shadow cross the fading sun. Nacho heard rising cement costs, Mexican laborers who didn’t understand English, rain in Ruskin’s voice; he saw calculations and remembrances of that mailbox price tag at HomeClub in his father’s sloped shoulders and quick stride. Snooter came around the back of the truck and laughed.

“Ruskin just making money left and right,” his mother said softly. “He did that new freeway to Coronita, and your daddy said him and his wife just bought them a house down at the beach. Must be nice.”

“Aint Rosa can’t cook for you then, huh?” Nacho said. Slow—his brain was still concentrating on the fiery-cold in his muscles. “She can’t walk to the Westside from downtown.”

“Baby, you don’t sound right. You better go in the back and lie down. Your daddy and Snooter be home to eat soon.”

Nacho pushed himself up from the couch. He didn’t want to be home when they came in and talked about his softened hands. “She probably need some help moving her stuff, huh? Who’s packing it up?”

His mother raised her brows. “Ain’t nobody that crazy, Nacho. She got forty years worth of junk down there.”

“Well, I need to take a walk. Been sitting on the bus too long.”

“If you really going down there, bring me some a her greens. They grow sweeter in the hollow.”

The grass in vacant lots was brittle yellow, but when he crossed the arroyo and neared Green Hollows, he could smell the wet. Under the trees, in that deep dent, the earth was always moist, kept a film of water. He saw only four of the long, thin shotgun shacks left, their olive-green sides peeling. The greens that grew around each house, the always thick, tender grass, the springy tumbleweeds at the edges of the hollow, that was what he’d thought Green Hollows was named for when he was a child, he realized, but it was for the paint, uniform on all the houses that had once been quarters for the orange-grove workers. The big farmhouse, white and three-story with scalloped shingles near the roof, was gone. A block wall ran along the edge of the hollow, and gray-stucco office buildings butted up against the cement.

Aint Rosa had never worked in the groves; she had been a cook for one of the elementary schools since she came to California, and she still wore her white nylon uniform every day. He saw her ghostly form in the doorway, waving.

“Nacho! I got a cobbler, oh, yes, I knew somebody was coming!” He stepped onto the tiny porch, stacked with National Enquirers and People magazines. “You know, Fergie’s fixing to have her baby any minute, and it’s gon be another girl.”

“Yeah?” he said, following her into the kitchen. The cobbler’s sweet steam hung around her gray braids for a moment and went out the window. A pile of greens, trimmed but not washed, sat on the table.

“These are for your mama, when we go back,” she said. “My greens is always more tender.”

“You planning to walk over there today, Aint? I thought you were packing up to move over to the Tower.”

She jerked her head impatiently. “Don’t nobody want this land—your daddy’s just talking to hear his own self. I got too much stuff to fit into one a them little tiny rooms. I seen them, your mama took me over there once. A bitty closet and a hot plate—uh uh.”

“Mama said you were moving next week.” Nacho saw that she wouldn’t listen; she put a piece of too-hot cobbler in front of him and started to wash the greens, putting them into a grocery sack. The oilcloth was slick and cool against his forearms, but the air was summer-warm, and he pushed the plate away.

“Blow on it a little,” she said. “You got time, cause I needs to wash these dishes before we go to your mama’s.”

He stood in the yard, watching her lock the door, remembering all the summer days he and Snooter had come to the hollow to climb the pepper trees, lie behind Aint’s house in the shade of the huge peach tree, beg her for teacakes. She took her time, and then they walked up the slope to the street. On Picasso, she stopped at Esther’s. Esther did hair and sold lunches, and Aint Rosa leaned in the doorway to call, “I’m coming back soon.” To Nacho she said, “Your mama keep insisting she want to cook for herself. I won’t be long over there, I bet. I don’t know why she going on about this. She need her rest. You see where Liz Taylor went to the hospital for exhaustion? Women got to have they rest.”

He woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep, staring at the shadow of shifting palm fronds against the wall of the bedroom he’d shared with Snooter since they were children. Snooter’s parents had died in a bus crash on the way to Vegas when he was only six. Nacho looked at the empty twin bed—Snooter never slept here anymore, he could tell; he had four or five women calling all the time, and he rotated, depending on who had the best cooking skills if he was really hungry that night, and who had the best bedroom skills if he wasn’t.

Saturday morning, Nacho thought. I’m in this narrow-ass bed; I slept on a bus seat for days, and a mattress on the floor back in Amherst. I ain’t got shit to my name. He went into the kitchen, padding softly across the carpet, and took a piece of Aint Rosa’s fried chicken out to the front yard with him. He sat on the folding chair, the early morning air warm and dry, wondering if Snooter still bothered to sneak in. He’d been a master creeper all through high school, entering the girls’ houses and this one without a sound.

He didn’t want to go to work with them. Saturday morning—the yards all up and down Arroyo Grande, those huge lawns and hedges that always needed trimming. And he’d argued with his father about Green Hollows last night; about working for Ruskin, and helping to make Aint Rosa move.

Back in Amherst, he’d dreamed about the hollow, imagined it always when he cleaned the dark, winter-wet hallways and mopped the linoleum, smelling that same clinging, sharp water. He didn’t want to think about the earth there compacted by bulldozers, sectioned off for parking and block walls. His father would be up soon, Snooter would cruise in and wait for Daddy to bring out the coffee, and they’d say, “Them sissy hands ready to work today? Ain’t done nothing useful in a year.” Nacho threw the chicken bone into the trash can at the curb and headed for Sixth Avenue.

The sun began to rise when he stood in front of Quick Pick Liquor, drinking a cream soda, and a truck pulled up next to him, loaded with mowers, shovels, and rakes. Trent got out. His father had been Daddy’s cousin, had died while Nacho was in Amherst, he remembered. “What up, cuz?” Trent said, exaggerating the greeting like they used to in high school. Nacho thought of Amherst again—“When none of em knows the daddy, they can all be cousins…”

“Just kickin it,” Nacho said. “You gotta work this early?”

“It gets hot quick, man, you know that, and I don’t do too many yards anymore. Mostly setting up the landscaping for the new houses, the irrigation and stuff. I got a big job today, and I don’t feel like frying around noon. Why you up?”

“Avoiding them damn mowers you parked in my face,” Nacho said, and he waited until Trent bought a six-pack of Pepsi and came back outside.

“You just back in town and your pops already working your ass? Bad as mine was.”

Nacho said, “Sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Thanks, man. I don’t plan to work that hard and die that young,” Trent said with a strange bubble in his voice, almost a gargle. “You want a ride, check out my new crib?”

He was surprised when Trent passed through the Westside and headed for the sloping hills where orange groves had been. Row after row of two-story houses terraced the hills now, so close together people could shake hands out their windows. So new he couldn’t see any trees. “Snooter said people were moving out here from L.A.,” Nacho said. “Daddy must got big-time work with these new yards, too.”

“Cheaper here than L.A. or Orange County,” Trent said. “But the people are cheap, too. I bet your dad doesn’t have any yards up here—all Mexican, cause they work for less.” He turned into a tract with a high block wall screening it from the street. “So you working with your dad again, huh? Snooter, too?” He sounded comfortable all of a sudden, Nacho thought, and he didn’t like the smile in Trent’s question.

“I’m just killing time until summer session at the college, man,” he said. “It’s all about school.”

“I heard you were going to college back in Amherst,” Trent said. “Why’d you come home?”

“I was just taking some art classes, drawing and painting,” Nacho said, looking out the window at the perfect, fresh sod in the yards. “Got tired of winter, man, snow will kick your natural ass.” He spoke quickly, hearing how stupid the words sounded even as he said them.

“So what you plan to do with your art? I mean, how do you make a living? You planning to be a graphic artist or something?”

Nacho was hot in the forehead. “I don’t know, man, I just do it, I like it.”

“Sounds good,” Trent said, the same way Nacho said it to a guy in Lincoln Park who said he was going to stop drinking. “Here’s the latest homestead.”

“Damn, Trent,” he said, looking at the two-story house, with an oak and stained-glass door, three-car garage, and a mailbox like the one Snooter had hit at Ruskin’s. “Latest?”

“I buy and sell them. Sure cash,” Trent said. “That’s number three.” He stopped, said, “You want a tour? It’ll have to be quick.”

“No, I better get back,” Nacho said. “I’ll come check you out one night when we both got more time.” Nacho watched the houses slide past, the immaculate cement driveways. Three Mexican guys were building a block wall to separate two houses, and another crew was weeding the bank outside the entrance to the tract.

“Your dad should have gotten his contractor’s license,” Trent said suddenly. “These dudes are making big money.” Nacho looked at him, and Trent said, “My dad and yours used to do cement back in Mississippi. My dad told me they could have made big cash out here, but they ended up doing yards and hauling.”

Nacho remembered his father doing odd cement jobs around the Westside, curbs or planter boxes. He always criticized other cement work, showing Nacho the uneven slant or rough edges on a job, but that was when Nacho was small.

“He’s getting ready to clean up Green Hollows,” Nacho said loudly. “He got all kinda work now.” He saw the block walls surrounding the office buildings.

“Yeah, it flooded a bunch of times when we were kids, remember?” Trent said. “It’s a health hazard, I read in the paper.”

They drove in silence. When the car slowed to turn onto Picasso, Trent said, “So, Snooter still have a bunch of ladies?”

“More than he can handle,” Nacho said, his hand on the door.

“Some things never change,” Trent said. “Easy, man.” He pulled away slowly, looking at the back of the big aqua truck.

The high snore of the mowers, the weed-whacker almost sparkly-sounding when he ran it around the edges of the lawns—he’d forgotten that the noise could be lulling even as the sun grew stronger.

They drove to a deli for lunch, and Nacho knew that was a big concession for his father, who liked to work straight through noon. Sitting on the curb by the store while they waited for Snooter to bring the sandwiches, Nacho looked at the layers of green stain, craggy as the mountains, on his father’s boots. “I saw Trent this morning,” he said.

“He show you his house?” his father said. “Don’t tell me.”

Nacho felt the heat from passing cars drift around his ankles. “He was talking about you and his dad used to do cement work. I forgot you did that. Why you didn’t get your license?”

“Cause I was busy.” His father lit a cigarette. “Busier than you ever been.”

“Serious, you coulda made your own jobs instead of waiting for somebody like Ruskin to call you all the time. Trent said yards are getting harder to come by.”

“He ain’t lying. Every fool with a Japanese truck buy a mower and start driving around looking for work.” His father stood up, kicked the boot heels against the curb, restless to get back.

“So why didn’t you?” Nacho pressed.

“Shit, boy, who the hell are you? I was tryin to feed your ass, Snooter’s, buy you shoes for school. We had a ice box in 1952, nigger, me and your mama living over there off Second Avenue in a cracker-box. Wasn’t about no career and shit. You and your classes. We been here from Grenada two years, just got out the service, and some white man seen me walking near Lincoln Park, asked me did I want a couple day’s work. It was September, and Snooter was cryin for some kinda shoes he seen at the store. I didn’t have time to sit around on my artistic ass and think about life like you do.”

Snooter stood behind them with the paper-wrapped sandwiches, translucent from the salad oil. “And I was stylin in them shoes, Unc.” He smiled and said, “I been tryin to pay you back ever since.”

In the truck, Nacho winced at the sting of jalapenos in the sandwich. His mouth had forgotten. The green heat stayed at his lips all afternoon, and when they were home, sitting in the yard, he kept licking them to feel the momentary coolness. Lanier and Red Man, his father’s friends, came by soon, and they argued about Green Hollows.

“You a hot lie, Floyd,” Red Man said. “That woman was Indian, all that long black hair down to her knees and straight as rope.”

“I remember who you talkin about, Lucy was her name,” Lanier said. “I always heard she was white, too. Had about five kids runnin around in the yard every time I went down there.”

His father said, “She was French, came over here lookin for some nigger she met in the service during the war. I don’t care what y’all remember.”

Nacho held the beer can to his lips. Esther, across the street, came out onto her porch and walked down the steps slowly; she hung a wet cloth on the chainlink side fence, and Nacho’s father and Lanier shouted at her to wait. They walked into her yard, hands in their pockets, and Nacho was puzzled, watching them give her money. A dollar—that was what each handed to her, Daddy’s big bent fingers around her wrist for a second, him smiling with his face down. Nacho couldn’t hear what they said, but then he remembered that she’d just brought home a new baby, and he realized suddenly that his father and Lanier, all of them were the old men of the Westside now, the ones he and Snooter used to be scared of when they rode bikes across a lawn or made too much noise close to the fish at the city lake. Aint Rosa’s husband Johnny used to always give his mother a dollar, press it into her palm and whisper something, when she brought home the girls.

When his father sat down again, he looked at Nacho. “You gon take the Toyota over Aint’s in the morning and move her dresser and bed.”

Nacho shook his head. “She says she ain’t moving. The Towers only one room, a studio, and she says no way.”

“Don’t start now, boy. She know the truth, and we gotta start tearing them things down Monday.” He took a long swallow of beer. “Go over there early, before it get hot. Aint don’t do good in the heat anymore.”

“Yeah, and it’s always cool in the hollow.”

His father turned away, to Red Man. “He think Green Hollows is a valuable piece of architecture like it is. It got artistic qualities, he fixin to tell us next.” He said to Nacho, “Try that on the city. It’ll go over about as well as a fart in a crowded room on a hot summer night.” Red Man and Lanier laughed.

“Man, it’s better than offices,” Nacho said, standing up. “You know what I’m saying.”

“You’re trying to make it sound better than it is,” his father said. “Just like you do with them paintings. You see trees and look right past them big old rats down there, whup a pit bull if they please. Electrical always goin out cause the wires from 1910. Aint couldn’t turn on the TV and the porch light at the same time.”

“Boy getting sentimental, huh?” Red Man said, and they all laughed again. Nacho went inside, to the back room. Snooter was ironing his clothes.

“Who you going out with?” Nacho said, sitting on the bed.

“Me and Beverly headin out to Club Seven.” He sprayed starch on the pants. “What you trippin on, with your long face?”

“Monday.”

“It’s just a job, man.”

“It’s the whole thing, Snooter. Ruskin’s gon make the big cash, Aint Rosa be crowded into the Towers, and we just comin behind to do the shit work.”

“We comin before.” Snooter pressed hard on the crease.

“You don’t want to hear. Cool, Snooter, keep thinking with your other head.” Nacho bent behind the bed to get his bag. He hadn’t even unpacked it.

“Well, cuz, thinkin would be some heavy action for yours. Mine’s busier than that. So you think you too good for the truck. Your ass ain’t gon get rusty and dusty. What—you find a new janitor slave? Oh, you was livin large in Amherst, huh?”

“I was studying, doing something I wanted to.”

“Well, I’ll just keep studyin my favorite works of art—Juanita’s ass, Teresa’s lips, and Beverly’s neck. I dig sculpture, okay?”

Nacho took the duffle with him and went out the back door, climbing the fence into the alley. His lips tingled, his chest was tight, not with anger but jealousy. He’d felt the usual foolish warmth in his belly when Snooter said the girls’ names, the same as all the years when Snooter went out, when he described what they did, when Nacho saw them and could only look, not speak. He went to the McDonald’s on Sixth and sat in the back, eating fries. From the bag, he pulled out the hard folder with his sketches, careful to wipe his fingers. He found all the Westside pictures, the tumbleweeds with their tiny pink flowers that bloomed in October. One of the other students in his class had said, “It’s an interesting idea to juxtapose tumbleweeds and flowers, but isn’t the idea artificial? Like those cactus in the store that people glue straw flowers to.” He couldn’t explain it right, that the rosy blooms nestled between thorns for a few weeks, a faint mauve mist in the fields.

The next one would be Green Hollows; he pulled it closer to him, slowly, remembering how he’d pecked and dipped with the pencil, sharpening it over and over; he’d filled in the ferny leaves of the pepper trees, the notched thick bark of the trunk, and the gnarled empty bulges where bees lived. His teacher, Mr. Bowers, had found two Rembrandt prints and brought them to class for Nacho—they were almost the same, the dense black loops and lines, the dark trees and a farmer. Nacho had been shocked when he saw the way the tree branches, in Holland, bent and curved against the sky like his.

He stared at the drawing now. The black and gray against the cream paper made the hollow look misty-dark and shaded, the dust cool enough to cling to the earth and not rise around his feet when he walked. Aint Rosa was a wraith, hanging in the doorway of her house, not in her cafeteria uniform but in a long, white cotton skirt, her headrag above her eyes.

When he got to her porch, it was late, the lights all off, and in the half-moon light, low spiderwebs thick as fog hugged the ivy around the base of the house. He was quiet, listening to the crickets, lying on the long seat his father had taken from the cab of an old truck. Wings flapped overhead twice, and he remembered Birdman, who lived down the street from his father, telling him about a hawk that lived in the tallest eucalyptus tree there. The night was warm, and he slept with a shirt around his neck to keep off spiders.

But as the morning light heated his eyelids where he lay with his head near the edge, and as Aint’s whispering feet scuffed against the floor inside the house, he felt panic; he had nothing good to tell Aint Rosa, nothing to tell her at all, and he pushed the bag softly under the card table near the seat. Stepping off the porch silently, the dust soft around his shoes, he walked past the boarded-up houses; in one of them, he saw a light, smelled match smoke. Someone was getting high in the house where plywood had been pried off the windows. Nacho walked faster, toward the end of the hollow where a ditch led into the arroyo.

The arroyo cut all the way through Rio Seco, and he ducked into the huge flood-control pipe near downtown; the pipe was dry and chalky. His father had said there hadn’t been any rain since December. Nacho remembered hiding in the pipe when they were small, he and Snooter and Darnell and Birdman, their backs curved to fit the clay. He came out and passed through the edge of downtown, watching the winos look frightened when he neared them.

He kept thinking he heard a car behind him, going too slow, but he was afraid to look around and see if it was a cop; he looked bad, carrying nothing and rumpled from sleeping. He knew he was heading for the Methodist Church.

On the last few times they’d all walked down the arroyo, Nacho had left the others to keep on toward the river-bottom, and he’d stopped at this church, peering into the arched doorway at the dank, cool wood inside, the stained glass and faint colored light on the floor. He’d been glad that Snooter and the others laughed and didn’t want to come with him, because they’d only get loud and cause trouble. It was always Sunday afternoon when they came, and the church people were gone, but the doors open.

Sitting on the cement bench at the edge of the lawn, looking at the arched, recessed doorway, not open yet for the people in suits and nylons, he imagined how he would draw the sculpted blossoms, the delicate intertwined rope. The most beautiful church in Rio Seco—a dome with a cross on top, blue and gold tile edging it, and the magnificent doorway. Six rounds of carving, each edge just behind the other to draw in the eye, and the massive curves were each a differing pattern. Seashells linked with a curly vine, the point-petaled flowers, heavy braided rope, diamonds, rounded daisies, and a chain of squares.

He heard tires crushing the sand in the asphalt behind him, slowly, and he was afraid to turn around. Johnny Law, he thought, and definitely wanting to know why I’m sitting here. He heard the door slam, and waited with shoulders straight.

“What you studyin?” his father said.

Nacho took his thumbnails out of the pads of his ring fingers and didn’t answer.

“Lookin suspicious as all hell, police be by here in a minute to wonder which old lady you plannin to rob.” His father sat on the other bench. “Or you get in the Methodist habit, too, when you was in Massachusetts?”

“I’m looking at the doorway, okay?” Nacho said. “Art, all right? I was wondering how long it took somebody to carve all those flowers and designs. They’re all perfect.”

His father laughed and threw back his shoulders in a stretch, got up and walked to the arch. “Shit,” he said.

Nacho jerked his knee up and down. “Yeah, like I expected you to see what I’m talking about? You never saw cathedrals in France, not even in books.”

His father was still laughing. “Boy, you don’t know shit. Ain’t you never looked at that?” Nacho followed his father’s finger to the far end of the facade. Etched into the bottom square, the cornerstone, was “First Methodist Church—Erected 1955 A.D.”

“You use a mold on these. I made one for Esther’s mama when she moved into the new house. Made her three benches for her yard, with flowers on the edges.” He was quiet, and Nacho could hear pigeons stirring inside the bell tower. “Only time I did that,” his father said, turning back toward Nacho. “You been sitting there on that bench, sitting back there all google-eyed, thinking about some dude with a chisel, sweatin on each flower. Sweat turning to dew drops on the petals and shit.” He lit a cigarette and flicked the match toward Nacho. “We got a full day’s work.” He walked toward the truck.

“So?” Nacho said, pressing his thighs against the cool bench. “You can go to Lincoln Park. You don’t need me. I’m too ignorant for you, and you too ignorant for me.”

“Boy, stop talking that shit before I whup your back-East ass.” He started up the engine and backed the truck into the street, and Nacho turned back to face the church. He heard the truck move away. When it was quiet again, he walked up to the doorway and ran his hand over the seashells, the braided rope. Tiny holes, like pores, speckled the flowers and shells, and he could see the hair-thin lines where blocks of each pattern had been cemented together. The artist had placed them perfectly, each scallop and leaf fitted together as one. The cement was rough against his palm. He turned, and the big wooden doors swung in, a draft of dark air pushing out. The startled face of a small, old woman, pale skin and hair and pink-framed glasses, floated like a tiny moon in the black doorway. Nacho walked quickly toward the street.

When he turned the corner, the truck was there, idling, and he could see two big pots sitting in the bed, close to the cab. They were greens trees, in the black-plastic containers Red Man raised them in. He knew his father had gotten them for Aint Rosa. Hesitating, he saw the iridescent oil spots at the bottom of the door, where the swirls of color clung to the rust, and he pulled it open.