Alberto earned himself a tattoo that same day. It was why he’d gone off in such a hurry, I learned, when he found me out on the scrub with the rusty swings. I had been there for a while – avoiding my mother after she went crazy at my uncle and me.
‘What do you mean, you shot yourself by accident?’ she had demanded to know. ‘You need a gun to do that and so help me Jairo, I’ll put a hole through your heart myself if I ever find one here.’
My uncle took the rap without complaint, and weirdly I felt some respect for him. We had been through so much that morning, and come out of it with a shared secret. Even so, I didn’t want to make it any harder on him, so I left them to bicker and row. It was no day to be outside, however, and the sun had soon driven me from the rooftop. The scrub was really just a broad and uneven cut-through between two blocks in the barrio. Like most kids, I often went there when the city started cooking and it became impossible to stay cool in the shadows. Graffiti tags on the back of the buildings told you how many gangs had tried to claim it as their own, so there was always something going on. Lately shacks had begun to appear on the fringes, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it became a block in its own right. This kind of space in the city was hard to find, but then a storm drain ran the length of it that had become an open sewer over the years. The banks were steep, creating a deep and narrow channel that often lured dogs to their death. You only had to dip a stick into the soupy depths to feel a dead weight down there of some sort. Still, it made a good sideline for soccer runs, even if most players melted away when their turn came to fish out the ball.
A frantic match was in progress when I turned up, but as bits of me had begun to ache again I chose to watch from the swings on the other side of the drain. They had been there since before I was born. Whoever was responsible must have figured we would put up with anything if it gave us a chance to get away from the grown-up world for a while. The stink out here was revolting, even the breeze refused to carry it away, which forced you to breathe through your mouth. Maybe that’s why Alberto asked what was with the sour face when he showed me the design that adorned almost the whole of his back.
‘Sonny, I’m relying on you here. I can’t see it with my own eyes.’
‘And I can’t believe it with mine!’ I declared, feeling shocked to the core for a second time that day. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘You make it sound like they held me down against my will. Man, it was an honour! I came clean about the missing bullet, and the boss said he respected my honesty. I thought I might be in some trouble, even when I explained that your uncle deserved to be punished after what he had done, but you know what? He took it all in and told the guys what a fine young man I was shaping up to be. That’s when he took me for the tattoo. He arranged everything up front, kept saying how far I’d come these last weeks, and stayed at my side all the way through.’
The way he went on about this guy, I thought – like it was his father all over again.
‘Did it hurt?’ I asked, thinking it would’ve killed me.
‘Like all Hell,’ he said with a grin, his voice cracking in the excitement, ‘but I swear I didn’t cry. I held it together until the cab ride home, and just told the driver I was happy.’
‘Are you?’
‘Sonny,’ he said, sounding offended now, ‘don’t you know what this means?’
I pushed back on the swing to think about it. ‘Let me see it again,’ I said finally. Alberto slipped the shirt down to his elbows and turned for a second inspection. Once more, I found myself looking at the two grand black outlines on his back. Each started from a point midway up his spine, fanned to his shoulder blades and then swept down to his waist.
‘Angel wings,’ I said, just as I had the first time. Then, I had assumed someone had taken a marker pen to him. Now I looked again, I saw the skin was raw like sunburn. It looked painful, especially where the holster strap crossed over, but Alberto seemed numb to any pain. ‘Oh boy,’ I declared, ‘this is gonna kill your Mamá.’
‘Which is why I bought myself the shirt.’ Alberto came round proudly and buttoned himself back into it. ‘She won’t know,’ he said, and tried to drop his voice a notch, ‘less some fool tells her.’
‘Get real! You can hide it for a week maybe, but what about the rest of your life?’ I looked up from my seat on the swing, expecting some kind of explanation, but all he did was shrug.
For the first time ever, we had nothing to say to each other. I sensed Alberto felt as awkward as I did, because we both turned our attention to the soccer on the strip opposite. The last thing I wanted was to talk about what had happened at the apartment. Alberto appeared to have moved on like it was no big deal, and I didn’t want him thinking I was still shaken. The gun, and now this tattoo, was turning my friend into a stranger to me. I had sometimes seen other boys floating around the barrio with black wings like his – always folded in the same way, as if primed to spread wide. Whatever was going on in Alberto’s life, there was no way on earth I could say how much I envied him.
‘Let’s play some football,’ he suggested next, and shook out his limbs like he was busting to get going. ‘What do you say, Sonny? I feel like I could fly with the ball now I got these on my back.’
‘Nah.’ I patted my ribs. ‘Everything hurts when I move. I’ll be fine real soon, but I should take it easy for now. I want to be in good shape for the big match, even if we are just watching it.’
Alberto said that was a damn shame, and fished around in his jeans pocket.
‘Still got my ticket?’ he asked, and I said sure. Then he came back with a silver wrap from a stick of gum, all folded up at the edges. ‘You can finish this, if you like. I don’t mind losing it to you.’
‘What is it?’ I asked, knowing I was holding a powder of some kind.
‘Something to make you feel brave,’ was all he said, because next thing he winked at me and charged into the match. I watched him leap the drain with both arms flung open, already yelling at the kids on the other side. I smiled to myself, and opened up the wrap. Inside was a small amount of white speckled powder. If this was cocaine, I thought to myself, Alberto would’ve sold it already. Like a lot of kids, we had grown up believing the cash you could get for this stuff was worth more than the kick. It was a drug for people with too much money, we decided, and you could never have enough of that. Even so, I didn’t want to hassle my friend about what I had here in case he laughed at me for not trusting him.
The breeze was stirring it a bit so I cupped the wrap and dabbed some with my fingertip. It was chalky but bitter-tasting, and sort of crackled on my tongue. Then a shout went up from the match, and I looked across to see that Alberto was holding his own already. He had bundled his way into possession and was moving with such a purpose I wondered if those wings of his actually had blessed him in some way. He seemed so focused as he took a long, wild shot for goal, and would’ve seemed invincible to me had it not been for a superhuman keeper. I just wish I had kept my wits about me in the same way. For when I looked down into my hands again, all the powder had been blown away.