andLupe had invited Diablo to lick her face. She let Diablo have the rest of her tortilla, too.
There were two vultures hunched over a dead dog in the road, and two more vultures floated overhead; they were making those descending spirals in the sky. In the basurero, there was usually at least one dead dog every morning; their carcasses did not remain intact for long. If the vultures failed to find a dead dog, or if the carrion eaters didn’t quickly dispose of it, someone would burn it. There was always a fire.
The dead dogs in Guerrero were treated differently. Those dogs probably had belonged to somebody; you didn’t burn someone else’s dog—besides, there were rules about starting fires in Guerrero. (There were concerns that the little neighborhood might burn down.) You let a dead dog lie around in Guerrero—it didn’t usually lie around for long. If the dead dog had an owner, the owner would get rid of it, or the carrion eaters would eventually do the job.
“I didn’t know that dog—did you?” Lupe was saying to Diablo, as she examined the water pistol el jefe had found. Lupe meant the dead dog being attended to by the two vultures in the road, but Diablo didn’t let on if he’d known the dog.
The dump kids could tell it was a copper day. El jefe had a load of copper in the flatbed of the pickup. There was a manufacturing plant that worked with copper near the airport; in the same area was another plant, which took aluminum.
“At least it isn’t a glass day—I don’t like glass days,” Lupe was saying to Diablo, or she was just talking to herself.
When Diablo was around, you never heard any growling from Dirty White—not even a whimper from the coward, Juan Diego was thinking. “He’s not a coward! He’s a puppy!” Lupe shouted to her brother. Then she went on and on (to herself) about the brand of water pistol Rivera had retrieved from the basurero—something about the “feeble squirter mechanism.”
The dump boss and Juan Diego watched Lupe run into the shack; no doubt she was putting the newfound squirt gun with her collection.
El jefe had been checking the propane tank outside the kids’ shack; he was always checking it to be sure it wasn’t leaking, but this morning he was checking to see how full or near-empty the tank was. Rivera checked this by lifting the tank to see how heavy it was.
Juan Diego had often wondered on what basis the dump boss haddecided that he was probably not Juan Diego’s father. It was true they looked nothing alike, but—as in Lupe’s case—Juan Diego looked so much like his mother that the boy doubted he could possibly resemble any father.
“Just hope that you resemble Rivera in his kindness, ” Brother Pepe had told Juan Diego during the delivery of one bunch of books or another. (Juan Diego had been fishing for what Pepe might have known or heard about the boy’s most likely father.)
Whenever Juan Diego had asked el jefe why he’d put himself in the probably-not category, the dump boss always smiled and said he was “probably not smart enough” to be the dump reader’s dad.
Juan Diego, who’d been watching Rivera lift the propane tank (a full tank was very heavy), suddenly said: “One day, jefe, I’ll be strong enough to lift the propane tank—even a full one.” (This was about as close as the dump reader could come to telling Rivera that he wished and hoped the dump boss was his father.)
“We should go,” was all Rivera said, climbing into the cab of his truck.
“You still haven’t fixed your side-view mirror,” Juan Diego told el jefe.
Lupe was babbling about something as she ran to the truck, the shack’s screen door slapping shut behind her. The pistol-shot sound of that closing screen door had no effect on the vultures hunched over the dead dog in the road; there were four vultures at work now, and not one of them flinched.
Rivera had learned not to tease Lupe by making vulgar jokes about the water pistols. One time,
There were two vultures hunched over a dead dog in the road, and two more vultures floated overhead; they were making those descending spirals in the sky. In the basurero, there was usually at least one dead dog every morning; their carcasses did not remain intact for long. If the vultures failed to find a dead dog, or if the carrion eaters didn’t quickly dispose of it, someone would burn it. There was always a fire.
The dead dogs in Guerrero were treated differently. Those dogs probably had belonged to somebody; you didn’t burn someone else’s dog—besides, there were rules about starting fires in Guerrero. (There were concerns that the little neighborhood might burn down.) You let a dead dog lie around in Guerrero—it didn’t usually lie around for long. If the dead dog had an owner, the owner would get rid of it, or the carrion eaters would eventually do the job.
“I didn’t know that dog—did you?” Lupe was saying to Diablo, as she examined the water pistol el jefe had found. Lupe meant the dead dog being attended to by the two vultures in the road, but Diablo didn’t let on if he’d known the dog.
The dump kids could tell it was a copper day. El jefe had a load of copper in the flatbed of the pickup. There was a manufacturing plant that worked with copper near the airport; in the same area was another plant, which took aluminum.
“At least it isn’t a glass day—I don’t like glass days,” Lupe was saying to Diablo, or she was just talking to herself.
When Diablo was around, you never heard any growling from Dirty White—not even a whimper from the coward, Juan Diego was thinking. “He’s not a coward! He’s a puppy!” Lupe shouted to her brother. Then she went on and on (to herself) about the brand of water pistol Rivera had retrieved from the basurero—something about the “feeble squirter mechanism.”
The dump boss and Juan Diego watched Lupe run into the shack; no doubt she was putting the newfound squirt gun with her collection.
El jefe had been checking the propane tank outside the kids’ shack; he was always checking it to be sure it wasn’t leaking, but this morning he was checking to see how full or near-empty the tank was. Rivera checked this by lifting the tank to see how heavy it was.
Juan Diego had often wondered on what basis the dump boss haddecided that he was probably not Juan Diego’s father. It was true they looked nothing alike, but—as in Lupe’s case—Juan Diego looked so much like his mother that the boy doubted he could possibly resemble any father.
“Just hope that you resemble Rivera in his kindness, ” Brother Pepe had told Juan Diego during the delivery of one bunch of books or another. (Juan Diego had been fishing for what Pepe might have known or heard about the boy’s most likely father.)
Whenever Juan Diego had asked el jefe why he’d put himself in the probably-not category, the dump boss always smiled and said he was “probably not smart enough” to be the dump reader’s dad.
Juan Diego, who’d been watching Rivera lift the propane tank (a full tank was very heavy), suddenly said: “One day, jefe, I’ll be strong enough to lift the propane tank—even a full one.” (This was about as close as the dump reader could come to telling Rivera that he wished and hoped the dump boss was his father.)
“We should go,” was all Rivera said, climbing into the cab of his truck.
“You still haven’t fixed your side-view mirror,” Juan Diego told el jefe.
Lupe was babbling about something as she ran to the truck, the shack’s screen door slapping shut behind her. The pistol-shot sound of that closing screen door had no effect on the vultures hunched over the dead dog in the road; there were four vultures at work now, and not one of them flinched.
Rivera had learned not to tease Lupe by making vulgar jokes about the water pistols. One time,
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