easily he could be made to land on his diapered bottom and squawl, like a superior sort of toy. When he was a little older they invented elaborate routines and strategies to trip him up and send him tumbling down stairs or into unyielding objects. When it came to something basic, like hitting, their efforts were thorough and varied. They employed flat-handed slaps to the back of the head, knuckles to the ribs, a thumb that hooked you just under the chin, the sudden wrench and pop of a twisted arm. It didn’t help that his mother defended him and doted on him and punished the others for his every bruise and blood letting. The brothers had long ago moved on to their own forms of trouble, but from them he learned lasting lessons of guile, silence, speed, and vengeance.
From his growing-up years he learned other things. That the evil-smelling ditch behind the garage was an excellent place to practice feats of balance and acrobatics. He knew the wealth of tastes available at the corner store, dulces and gumballs and red-hot potato chips and Nehi flavors, and the melting in the mouth when you had a craving for one certain thing. How to make a gun that shot bottle caps, with considerable impact, out of a sanded piece of wood, a nail, and rubber bands. How to ride double on a bike, how to latch on to the bumper of an accelerating car in order to prove skill and bravery. Pussy. You din’t even half-try. Screw you fuck face, screw you puta mamma. They loved theway those words filled up their mouths. Other boys learned that while the standard insults were acceptable, they must not call him Nigger Lips or Brillo Head, not unless they wanted to risk an all-out attack in which the standard rules of combat did not apply.
He was secretive, solitary, on the edge of every group. He kept his eyes open for opportunities, he prided himself on his perfect, better-than-twenty-twenty vision. It was amazing, the number of people who never really noticed anything or took proper precautions. It was also a matter of pride that he had never actually been arrested, although he had been asked many times by the police to justify his presence on the streets, his identity and his intentions, as part of a public safety policy that protected certain neighborhoods from the people who lived in them. From time to time he worked at one or another small job, but for the most part he was engaged in the acquisition of certain items of personal property from careless individuals. It was a way of getting by; he couldn’t remember ever feeling guilty about it. A kind of harvesting, wherein people with too much of things, money that might go sour or bad, were relieved of its burden.
But he had begun to chafe at his old routines. There was a narrowness in his life. He felt he had never really decided on a course of action, only drifted into things. He had cloudy dreams of all the places he had never seen, all the lives it might be possible for him to live, once he broke free from his origins. He had been saving up money bit by bit, fifteen hundred dollars. Counting it out felt like flexing a muscle. He had a sense of possibilities, of unknown currents in himself. Anger had been his only fuel and power, the thing he could most easily lay hands on and call forth. But what if he possessed other qualities and strengths, previously unsuspected? If he could not change his face or his history, he might yet breathe a different air.
He might surprise them all some day, him, Rolando Got Jack, target of a thousand jokes and fists. He might return with hispockets full of wealth, as wise and smooth as one of his mother’s brown saints. Anything could happen.
But first he had preparations to make. That evening, after his mother had finished disbelieving his story about San Antonio, he stepped out into the street. Paused to get a cigarette working. Children called out to each other in the rose-tinged dusk. Traffic noise, never very far away, crested and receded like the ocean.
From his growing-up years he learned other things. That the evil-smelling ditch behind the garage was an excellent place to practice feats of balance and acrobatics. He knew the wealth of tastes available at the corner store, dulces and gumballs and red-hot potato chips and Nehi flavors, and the melting in the mouth when you had a craving for one certain thing. How to make a gun that shot bottle caps, with considerable impact, out of a sanded piece of wood, a nail, and rubber bands. How to ride double on a bike, how to latch on to the bumper of an accelerating car in order to prove skill and bravery. Pussy. You din’t even half-try. Screw you fuck face, screw you puta mamma. They loved theway those words filled up their mouths. Other boys learned that while the standard insults were acceptable, they must not call him Nigger Lips or Brillo Head, not unless they wanted to risk an all-out attack in which the standard rules of combat did not apply.
He was secretive, solitary, on the edge of every group. He kept his eyes open for opportunities, he prided himself on his perfect, better-than-twenty-twenty vision. It was amazing, the number of people who never really noticed anything or took proper precautions. It was also a matter of pride that he had never actually been arrested, although he had been asked many times by the police to justify his presence on the streets, his identity and his intentions, as part of a public safety policy that protected certain neighborhoods from the people who lived in them. From time to time he worked at one or another small job, but for the most part he was engaged in the acquisition of certain items of personal property from careless individuals. It was a way of getting by; he couldn’t remember ever feeling guilty about it. A kind of harvesting, wherein people with too much of things, money that might go sour or bad, were relieved of its burden.
But he had begun to chafe at his old routines. There was a narrowness in his life. He felt he had never really decided on a course of action, only drifted into things. He had cloudy dreams of all the places he had never seen, all the lives it might be possible for him to live, once he broke free from his origins. He had been saving up money bit by bit, fifteen hundred dollars. Counting it out felt like flexing a muscle. He had a sense of possibilities, of unknown currents in himself. Anger had been his only fuel and power, the thing he could most easily lay hands on and call forth. But what if he possessed other qualities and strengths, previously unsuspected? If he could not change his face or his history, he might yet breathe a different air.
He might surprise them all some day, him, Rolando Got Jack, target of a thousand jokes and fists. He might return with hispockets full of wealth, as wise and smooth as one of his mother’s brown saints. Anything could happen.
But first he had preparations to make. That evening, after his mother had finished disbelieving his story about San Antonio, he stepped out into the street. Paused to get a cigarette working. Children called out to each other in the rose-tinged dusk. Traffic noise, never very far away, crested and receded like the ocean.
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