1968 – On Second Thought

Purse Snatch

The following short story is based on actual events. The story was submitted to my Short Story class, English 405, in the Fall of 2021 at California State University, Long Beach. It has been edited for clarity.

The complete version of this fictionalize account can be found at Chacho and the Five Dollar Bag (Part 1) and Chacho and the Five Dollar Bag (Part 2).

1968 — Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

It seemed simple enough. Be the lookout for Carlito at the corner of 142nd and Willis Avenue. Hector’s Barber Shop is two doors down, where Hector himself would give me a razor cut every two weeks on any Saturday. Sitting in that chair as if I was on a throne listening to Doble-OOO radio station and traditional Puerto Rican music and Spanish-language chatter oozing out like milk from momma’s breast. Next door is Sammy’s Pizza, where, on a good day, Sammy would give us small paper cups of water for free instead of filled with the Italian Ice they were meant for. He knew why we wanted them: to drop clean water through an eyedropper into a bottle cap filled with a small blob of cotton and a five-dollar bag of smack in the belief that we could purify the death created in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost.

At least the water is clean. We would buy a slice for fifty cents to say thanks. “Bless you” is all Sammy would say as if it was his last goodbye. Just in case the water drops into the bottle cap full of smack and a small blob of cotton heated over an open flame turned out to be the final act in our dangerous and tragic play titled The End.

It’s winter. I’m cold and shivering. Seven o’clock in the evening, and people are shuffling home from bus stops and train stations and dead-end jobs that paid the rent for rundown apartments in rundown apartment buildings where they have to step over the deadbeat bodies of junkies during the dope epidemic of 1968. Hands in my coat pocket wrapped around my works (eyedropper- check, bottle cap-check, needle safely sheathed, so we don’t stab ourselves-check, a recycled blob of cotton that will not purify anything-check) bundled together with a brown rubber band in a decaying brown bag. A matchbook with 4–5 matches left with the hidden message written across the inside cover “Use wisely, sucker. This is all that is left.”

I’m standing guard looking up and down Willis Avenue and 142nd Street and up to the 14th floor across the street to make sure my fiancé, Chicky, is not looking out the window where she could see me and wonder, ‘Why is that fool standing out on that corner in this cold weather without a hat on and probably doesn’t have any gloves on?” Yeah, that’s not what she’s thinking! I’m sure she’s probably thinking “he’s looking for dope again. I’m done with him.” And she be right. She and I should be done with me because I can’t believe I’m standing on the corner of Willis Avenue and 142nd Street in this damn cold ass weather on the lookout for la Jara as Carlito stalks an elderly woman up 142nd Street toward Willis Avenue while eyeing her black purse with the determination of a beast stalking its prey.

All we need is ten bucks to split two five-dollar bags of dope, smack, skag, and the white horse. Carlito told me that he’s done this before. “Plenty of times. I grab the purse and run. They ain’t going to stop me. If I have to, I push them down. Not hard. I ain’t no animal.” Yeah, but I’ve never done this before. I don’t want to do this now or ever. But the call of the main vein, the road to a good feeling, is just too strong. Stronger than the guilt I would feel if Carlito had to push some old lady down on the ground because she refused to let go of the goddamn purse. Let it go, damn it.

Suddenly, I hear a shout and a scream shooting up 142nd Street, landing in front of me, shutting out the Willis Avenue noise of buses, cabs, and folks just trying to get home before the threatened snow piles up on the streets. They don’t have any boots because they just got here from Puerto Rico or República Dominicana and they ain’t got no snow down there.

Damn Carlito, why you have to push that woman down? She’s screaming madness in Spanish, and I can’t quite make out what the fuck she’s saying as I scope Carlito running up 142nd street towards Willis Avenue. I pray (not really pray) that he’s got that woman’s purse when I see this guy in a doorway of a rundown apartment building on 142nd street. He’s just standing there, hands in his coat pocket, looking down the street. He’s gotta see Carlito running and hear that old lady screaming mad as hell shit in Spanish. I may not speak Spanish, but I know enough that she’s talking stuff like, “Stop him, please!” and “He robbed me!” Damn it, shut up, I scream to myself. I’m freaking out looking for a way outta here. I scramble to run down Willis toward 149th Street and home but I realize I’m not running. Why ain’t I running? Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see the guy in the doorway step down and lunge at Carlito. I figured he was trying to grab him, but his arm was swinging like he missed, and Carlito let out a scream stronger than the woman’s, “Motherfucker, why you stab me?” Carlito is running but tripping, holding his left arm. Now, the guy in the doorway is joined by other men from down the street running after Carlito.

Carlito ain’t waiting for the light to change as he races across Willis Avenue dodging cars and people toward the projects. To this day, I don’t know why I joined the procession of chasers across the Avenue as they were screaming, “Stop that Motherfucker!” I know where Carlito lives, and when I catch up with them, I tell the men that I saw him cut behind the 242 building to run up 141st. They turn the corner and haul ass while I pretend to look exhausted and when they’re out of sight, I run into 242, take the elevator up the 12th floor, and knock on 12B. I see blood on the door.

Carlito’s mother can be heard screaming from inside. His sister opens the door, and she’s crying. I push my way in, rapping some shit about, “I saw some guys try to rob Carlito, and they chased him to the building, but I told them that he ran up 141st street,” and I wanted to make sure that Carlito was okay. I probably didn’t do a good job convincing them because Momma was looking at this black purse on the floor in front of Carlito, screaming at him, asking what did he do now and who did he rob? The whole scene went downhill from there.

Momma is still screaming. Sister is still crying. Carlito has his coat and his shirt off, holding a towel against his left arm, blood dripping down onto the black purse on the floor that he had taken from the old woman. It was open, and I could see that there was a bible inside. Carlito was huffing and puffing. He looked at me and then looked down at the purse with the Bible book peeking through the unzippered opening and back to me, and I’m like, What the fuck? His mother is on the phone calling someone to come over and take Carlito to the hospital, and I grab the purse swearing I’m going to return it to its rightfull owner and Carlito should be ashamed of himself but no one cares because they’re too busy screaming at each other in Spanish and English with a little Spanglish thrown in.

I step out into the hallway, find the stairs, and slowly make my way down 12 floors, hoping not to run into those guys chasing Carlito, my girlfriend, anyone from her family, or anyone who knew her. When I get to the first floor, I turn to look into the purse. The Bible falls out and down on the ground, opening up as it hits the dull gray concrete. An envelope scatters across the floor, and damn if there ain’t money flying out of it. I stoop down and grab the bills and count them. 1-2-3-4-5. There they are, five five-dollar bills. All that drama for twenty-five bucks. Oh well, I guess I’ll be getting high tonight.

I go out the back into the playground, where I walk across the project complex to St. Ann’s Avenue, Third Avenue to Westchester Avenue, and take the number 26 bus to 156th and Westchester and home.

My nose is now running, my body aching and shivering from more than the winter cold. I’m not high and will get high until maybe the next day. Carlito is the one that had the connection. I’m going to be left with keeping the twenty-five bucks warm in my pocket instead of the dope in my veins.

But, I learned two lessons: one, I’m a terrible lookout that is never going to be good at committing a crime, and two, from now until the day I die, I will respect all old ladies that I see walking down the streets with their bibles and purses and ask that they forgive me even as they look at me and wonder, “What’s wrong, boy?” Nothing, I’ll tell them, I just need your forgiveness forever.

1968: A Year of Violent Living

The following essay was written for my final Creative Nonfiction class submission at California State University, Long Beach, Spring 2022.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay copy

War was everywhere, in faraway lands, on American streets, in our souls. The war in Vietnam continued to eat the young even as we protested across this country. The champions of a peaceful revolution were assassinated. Racist forces held their ground against the forward movement of American history. The old voices told us to believe that America was exceptional. That racism, sexism, income disparities, and class warfare were only aberrations. They called us communists, rabble-rousers, and traitors. According to them, we were the real danger to America. They sicced police violence down on us. Bodies and blood flowed like a flash flood across America’s urban landscape.

I battled for survival inside the cyclone, where my life would be defined by two lies: a “normal” life during the day and a dope fiend at night.

It was not what I dreamed 
when I was a kid 
looking into the future 
or what my mother and father 
had wished. 

Amid the violent chaos, 
a quiet but deadly menace 
stalked the Bronx. 
Its campaign for death
swept me up.

I pushed back against the waves of depression with long subway rides from the South Bronx to Greenwich Village to seek camaraderie with other anti-war compatriots. There were the secret Thursday shopping excursions into Manhattan with my girlfriend Chicky, who hid the relationship from her family. We swore we were in love. The Fridays with my boys at Saint Anselm Catholic Youth Organization. We would shoot hoops and pool and then run off to Carlos’s basement apartment to smoke weed and listen to Red Foxx and Moms Mabley comedy albums.

Despite my worst efforts, my life was besieged by a growing heroin habit, the petty crimes to feed it, and the inevitable drug overdoses. I was scared, confused, and angry, and sure I would be doomed to six feet under.

In the dope world,
everyone lies and cheats. 
It’s the bargain with the devil. 
Heroin
imported from some foreign country 
smuggled across thousands of miles 
hidden in suitcase bottoms 
to apartments full of naked women 
mixing it with baby milk powder 
or rat poison 
into a glassine bag 
so you can buy 
from a man with no name 
in some dark hidden hallway.

I was old enough to go to Vietnam but wasn’t ready to die in a faraway land. So, I bluffed my way out with a promise of military service only in a war or national emergency. So what the hell did they call what was happening in Vietnam? The powers in Washington, D.C. couldn’t or wouldn’t admit there was a war there.

Meanwhile, my friends were disappearing from the hood—drafted to become the wounded and dead bodies that kept piling up in field hospitals and black bags 8,637 miles away. Young people, the fodder for the war machine, lost faith in the Vietnam conflict and the illusion that America was exceptional.

At home, another battle raged on between my father and me. Even as the bleak reality of the war filled the evening newscasts and newspaper headlines every day, my father declared America was winning. I only saw death and hopelessness. In protest, I burned my draft card at a UN rally.

Abandoned apartments 
became shooting galleries 
like the one
off Willis Avenue 
where a violent moment, 
a drug overdose, 
played out 
like a bad crime movie 
that would not stop.
  
It was my daily dance with mainline, 
straight into the central vein. 
Slumped in a broken down 
upholstered chair
that had seen a more peaceful, 
relaxing time.
My hands smeared 
with pain and blood, 
surrounded by the smell 
of alcohol, weed,
a grease-stained brown shopping bag, 
a trail of dead food, 
half-empty beer cans,
and desperate dreams.

I left a Wall Street trading job to enlist in the South Bronx social justice army to battle over community control of public schools. The New York City Teachers’ Union closed the city schools against community control, the largest strike in the city’s history. Community groups, parents, and teacher allies vowed to battle the union and the Central Board of Education in the streets and schools. The days were filled with marches, school board meeting takeovers, and Black and Latino parent mobilization to fight for local control.

There is a ritual.
There is always a ritual 
when preparing 
for the violent death
that is sure to come.
 
Don’t worry about sterile. 
Ignore the dirt on the stairs
to the apartment, 
the old blood dripping down its walls, 
or the smell you swear is 
“Man, did someone shit up in here?” 
This is not Good Housekeeping certified.

The parents were there to open the school for their kids so they could pledge allegiance to the flag, become successful Americans, and move to New Jersey, Long Island, New Rochelle, or Connecticut. It could happen. It’s the American Dream.

Instead, they were destined to work low-paying jobs. You could find them at the greasy spoon in El Barrio, shuffling clothes racks down 7th Avenue or sorting through boxes of vegetables at the Hunts Point Market.

Mainlining, 
injecting directly into my vein 
was the only way 
to enjoy the fruits of the opium poppy. 
I pulled out the eyedropper
 and a small needle 
ready to shove heroin
Smack, H, Chiba, Junk, Skag, Dope 
 into my body.

An old bottle of murky water 
the rusting bottle cap 
on an equally rusting coffee table
leftover from the last fool 
who overdosed while 
crying for his mommy, 
“Don’t take this ride on the mainline home.”

I’m choking from the stink 
that’s floating around me. 
I needed to get high 
with my last five dollars 
until payday Friday.

The police megaphone announced there would be no trespassing that day. Not on their watch.

The spotlight turned to one constable, a defender of the social order, the vanguard against disorder. A young, fresh-faced stalwart for a way of life, an ax handle in his hand. This ax handle, typically 32 to 36 inches long, was not the usual official policeman’s nightstick. The longer ones worked best for big timber and splitting wood. The shorter lengths were superior for smaller timber and general utility work. The latter was also best for beating those black and brown people who thought they could trespass onto public property as if they were taxpayers.

On this day, the American Dream turned into an American nightmare. The one defender of the social order would use that ax handle as he saw in those news reports from the south. They knew how to use the ax handle properly. Swing and never miss.

Into the bottle cap 
I so carefully squeezed 
one, two, three drops 
of unclean water.


The water slowly mixed 
with the off-white specks of heroin. 
Cooked it with a match 
underneath the cap 
until it blends into a muddy liquid.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

The message was clear. The ax handle would crash through some heads and bodies to teach them a lesson. “Don’t fuck with us. We’re the man. We are the power.”

No amount of black and brown mothers with their innocent children at their sides could stop them. Not one. It was madness run amuck. They went after the first black guy they saw, swearing that he was the Black Panther Party. As if they all looked alike. Brown hands reached out to stop the arrest. Nightsticks and the ax handle blocked the charging crowd.

I grabbed a blue uniform. A club and an arm then wrapped around my throat choking me. My eyeglasses crashed onto the sidewalk. My breath escaped from my lungs. Two arms became four become six as I was lifted and hauled to a waiting police car.

My belt wrapped around my upper arm 
looked for the central vein 
that cried for the high.
 
And the muddy water sucked up 
through the thin needle
from the rusting bottle cap 
through the weeks-old cotton ball 
up into the eyedropper 
back down through the needle 
and down I plunged 
and the rush of warmth
that turned to panic
while my soul was
falling and falling and falling.
 
And I realized
this is not a trip home or into paradise.
No one would save me here.

Those guardians of society proved they would do anything to protect their American Dream. The war for social justice continues until this day.

Suddenly, I was falling out 
out of the apartment
down broken stairs
spilling out into the street
cursing 
where I heard heavenly music 
crashing with the sounds of sirens, 
imagining 
what my father would later call me 
in the emergency room,
desagradecido,
ungrateful.
 
I’m shrieking, 
But I’m alive,
I’m alive.

1968 A Year of Living Violently

The following essay was submitted as my final project for English 404 Creative Nonfiction Spring 2022.

In 1968, I was nineteen, living in the Bronx. I couldn’t feel how deep was the water around me or know I would almost drown in it. My mind and life were mired in an ocean of depression and anxiety. The turmoil was lurking on the horizon. Youth were challenging the world order. War was everywhere, in faraway lands, on American streets, in our souls. The war in Vietnam continued to eat the young even as we protested across this country. The champions of a peaceful revolution were assassinated. Racist forces held their ground against the forward movement of American history. The old voices told us to believe that America was exceptional. Racism, sexism, income disparities, and class warfare were only aberrations. They called us communists, rabble-rousers, and traitors. According to them, we were the real danger to America. They sicced police violence down on us. Bodies and blood flowed like a flash flood across America’s urban landscape. I battled for survival inside the cyclone, where my life would be defined by two lies: a “normal” life during the day and a dope fiend at night.

It was not what I dreamed 
when I was a kid 
looking into the future 
or what my mother and father 
had wished. 

Amid the violent chaos, 
a quiet but deadly menace 
stalked the Bronx. 
Its campaign for death
swept me up.

In the dope world,
everyone lies and cheats. 
It’s the bargain with the devil. 
Heroin
imported from some foreign country 
smuggled across thousands of miles 
hidden in suitcase bottoms 
to apartments full of naked women 
mixing it with baby milk powder 
or rat poison 
into a glassine bag 
so you can buy 
from a man with no name 
in some dark hidden hallway.

I was old enough to go to Vietnam, but I wasn’t ready to die in a faraway land. So, I bluffed my way out with a military service deferment only in a war or national emergency. But, the powers in Washington, D.C. couldn’t or wouldn’t admit there was a war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, my friends were disappearing from the hood—drafted to become the wounded and dead bodies that kept piling up in field hospitals and black bags 8,637 miles away. Young people, the fodder for the war machine, lost faith in the Vietnam conflict and the illusion that America was exceptional. At home, another battle raged on between my father and me. Even as the bleak reality of the war filled the evening newscasts and newspaper headlines every day, my father declared America was winning. I only saw death and hopelessness. In protest, I burned my draft card at a UN rally.

Abandoned apartments 
became shooting galleries 
like the one
off Willis Avenue 
where a violent moment, 
a drug overdose, 
played out 
like a bad crime movie 
that would not stop.
  
It was my daily dance with mainline, 
straight into the central vein. 
Slumped in a broken down 
upholstered chair
that had seen a more peaceful, 
relaxing time.
My hands smeared 
with pain and blood, 
surrounded by the smell 
of alcohol, weed,
a grease-stained brown shopping bag, 
a trail of dead food, 
half-empty beer cans,
and desperate dreams.

It was the year of cities burning. New York, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C. I wanted to join the urban guerrillas committed to tearing it all down. I was no longer willing to sit on the sidelines watching televised pandemonium. I left a Wall Street trading job to enlist in the South Bronx social justice army to battle over community control of public schools. The New York City Teachers’ Union closed the city schools against community control, the largest strike in the city’s history. Community groups, parents, and teacher allies vowed to battle the union and the Central Board of Education in the streets and schools. The days were filled with marches, school board meeting takeovers, and Black and Latino parent mobilization to fight for local control.

There is a ritual.
There is always a ritual 
when preparing 
for the violent death
that is sure to come.
 
Don’t worry about sterile. 
Ignore the dirt on the stairs
to the apartment, 
the old blood dripping down its walls, 
or the smell you swear is 
“Man, did someone shit up in here?” 
This is not Good Housekeeping certified.

The cops lined up military-style in a straight-line shoulder to shoulder on that Friday, September 13, in front of JHS 52, with their shiny badges and nice crisp uniforms. Their police hats tipped just right on their lovely crew-cut white heads. Their job was to keep the threatening hordes of black and brown mothers and their children from conjuring up a new life and future beyond the South Bronx and public housing and run-down tenement buildings. The parents were there to open the school for their kids. They could pledge allegiance to the flag, grow up to be successful Americans, and move to New Jersey, Long Island, New Rochelle, or Connecticut. It could happen. It’s the American Dream. Instead, they were destined to work low-paying jobs. You could find them at the greasy spoon in El Barrio, shuffling clothes racks down 7th Avenue or sorting through boxes of vegetables at the Hunts Point Market.

Mainlining, 
injecting directly into my vein 
was the only way 
to enjoy the fruits of the opium poppy. 
I pulled out the eyedropper
 and a small needle 
ready to shove heroin
Smack, H, Chiba, Junk, Skag, Dope 
 into my body.

An old bottle of murky water 
the rusting bottle cap 
on an equally rusting coffee table
leftover from the last fool 
who overdosed while 
crying for his mommy, 
“Don’t take this ride on the mainline home.”

I’m choking from the stink 
that’s floating around me. 
I needed to get high 
with my last five dollars 
until payday Friday.

The police megaphone announced there would be no trespassing that day. Not on their watch. The spotlight turned onto one constable, a defender of the social order, the vanguard against disorder. A young, fresh-faced stalwart for a way of life, an ax handle in his hand. This ax handle, typically 32 to 36 inches long, was not the usual official policeman’s nightstick. The longer ones worked best for big timber and splitting wood. The shorter lengths were superior for smaller timber and general utility work. The latter was also best for beating those black and brown people who thought they could trespass onto public property as if they were taxpayers. On this day, the American Dream turned into an American nightmare. The one defender of the social order would use that ax handle as he saw in those news reports from the south. They knew how to use the ax handle properly. Swing and never miss.

Into the bottle cap 
I so carefully squeezed 
one, two, three drops 
of unclean water.

The water slowly mixed 
with the off-white specks of heroin. 
Cooked it with a match 
underneath the cap 
until it blends into a muddy liquid.

The picture in front of me was vivid, living in my nightmares for years into the future. Swing baby, crush some heads, some Friday daydreams. Swing that ax handle like it’s 1968. The angry spittle foamed from his face and those of his comrades. The message was clear. The ax handle would crash through some heads and bodies to teach them a lesson. “Don’t fuck with us. We’re the man. We are the power.” No amount of black and brown mothers with their innocent children at their sides could stop them. Not one. It was madness run amuck. They went after the first black guy they saw, swearing that he was the Black Panther Party. As if they all looked alike. Brown hands reached out to stop the arrest. Nightsticks and the ax handle blocked the charging crowd. I grabbed a blue uniform. A club and an arm then wrapped around my throat choking me. My eyeglasses crashed onto the sidewalk. My breath escaped from my lungs. Two arms became four become six as I was lifted and hauled to a waiting police car.

My belt wrapped around my upper arm 
looked for the central vein 
that cried for the high.
 
And the muddy water sucked up 
through the thin needle
from the rusting bottle cap 
through the weeks old cotton ball 
up into the eyedropper 
back down through the needle 
and down I plunged 
and the rush of warmth
that turned to panic
while my soul was
falling and falling and falling.
 
And I realized
this is not a trip home or into paradise.
No one would save me here.

Those guardians of society proved they would do anything to protect their American Dream. The war for social justice continues until this day.

Suddenly, I was falling out 
out of the apartment
down broken stairs
spilling out into the street
cursing 
where I heard heavenly music 
crashing with the sounds of sirens, 
imagining 
what my father would later call me 
in the emergency room,
desagradecido,
ungrateful.
 
I’m shrieking, 
I’m alive,
I’m alive.

Chacho and The Five-Dollar Bag, Part 2

The following short story was written as part of an assignment for English 405 at CSULB. It is the first draft. A final version is due in December.

Read Part One Here: Chacho and The Five-Dollar Bag

Part Two

He can hear Kiki’s mother screaming behind the door. His sister Gina opens it, and she’s crying. Chacho pushes his way in, rapping some shit about, “I saw some guys try to rob Kiki, and they chased him into the building, but I told them that he ran down 141st street.” He prayed that Kiki had not given them another story.

Momma is still screaming. Sister is still crying. Kiki has his snatch and run uniform off, holding a towel against his left arm full of blood dripping down onto the black case that he had taken from the old woman on the floor. It was slightly open, and Chacho, huffing and puffing out of breath, could see the corner of a bible inside. Kiki looked at him and then at the black case with the bible book peeking through the unzippered opening and back to Chacho. What the fuck? He mouthed.

There’s so much chaos that Kiki’s mother and sister don’t see the black case on the floor. His mother is on the phone calling someone to come over and take Kiki to the hospital. Chacho slowly bends down and picks up the case, catching Kiki’s eye, who’s mouthing to Chacho to take that shit outa here. Chacho backs out of apartment 12B, talking about how he’s going to find those ladrones de mierda, fucking thieves, who tried to rip off Kiki. No one hears him or cares.

Chacho steps out into the hallway, finds the stairs, and slowly makes his way down twelve floors hoping not to run into those guys who were chasing Kiki or anyone from his family or anyone who knows them. When he gets to the first-floor landing, he stops and opens the black case. Inside a pocket, Chacho can see money sticking out. His eyes bulge in surprise, then he freaks, thinking about taking money from an old woman. But Chacho’s nose is now running full drip of snots, his body shivering from more than the winter cold. All that really matters now is stopping the shaking.

He falls back onto the wall of the first-floor hallway, and his mind races with calculations. Chacho counts it…twenty-five dollars. That’s five five-dollar bags. That’s at least two, maybe three days of getting high.

As he stands in the hallway to his building’s back door, Chacho thinks that, in the future, he will respect all old ladies walking down the streets with their bibles and purses from now until his death. Chacho will ask that they forgive him even as they look at him and wonder, “¿Qué te pasa, chico?” What’s wrong, boy?. “Nada, I just need your forgiveness forever.”

Chacho turns and hustles out the back of the building into the playground, where he walks across Willis Avenue looking over his shoulder for la jara or the guys still looking for Kiki. He passes Sammy’s and scopes the clock inside. It’s eight o’clock, and he really needs to get high soon. Determined but still shaking, he heads to Westchester Avenue, the number 26 bus to 156th and the man with the best dope in the Bronx.

Chacho has heard of El Gato. Big-time drug dealer. What the fuck was he doing up in here? The trashed-up and boarded-up tenement building on 156th Street is littered with dead syringes, yellowed newspapers, beer bottles, discarded glassine bags, and the lingering smell of too much dope, too much alcohol, and too much death. Chacho struggles up the darkness-covered stairs to the third floor, hoping he doesn’t step on no shit and no dead junkie who gave his life for a high that he will never repeat.

When Chacho left the Seminary, his friends, including Kiki, told him that his student deferment was dead. Nothing was going to save him from the draft. It was only a matter of time before Chacho got the call: next stop, Vietnam. Crazy advice followed.

Carlos told him, “If you shootin’ junk, they won’t take you.”

Herman’s idea was even crazier, “Bro, when they call you down, go high. Punch some holes in ya veins, and they won’t draft ya.”

Kiki had the plan all worked out.

“Chacho, it’s real simple. All you gotta do is get strung out. Ride the white horse into the main vein direct to your brain all the way to the draft board.”

Chacho is in a deep hole. This is not what my mother and father had prayed for me.

El Gato lies on a cot in front of an open oven door, trying to stay warm. His hands are smeared with too much pain, blood, and dirt. It’s hard to believe this broken-down-looking man has got the best dope in the Bronx. At least, that’s what Kiki told him.

“He’s a little messed up now,” Kiki told Chacho, “But, he still got good connections.”

A trail of dead food, half-empty beer cans, old smelly rags spill out behind Chacho as he moves a battered stuffed chair closer to the man. El Gato fumbles with a grease-stained brown shopping bag next to him. Out comes a smaller brown bag also marked with blood and dirt.

“I just wanna skin-pop. I don’t mainline,” Chacho says nervously.

El Gato digs into the paper bag for the improvised tools whose only job is to plunge heroin into one’s central vein, where it will crawl up the arm through the body into the brain. He pulls out an eyedropper. A small needle with a red cap is supposed to protect someone from being pricked. That’s funny, Chacho laughs inside. He’s getting ready to shove heroin…or what El Gato claims is heroin…into his body, and they’re worried about their fingers being pricked.

Up until that moment in that jive-ass shooting gallery, Chacho had been snorting or popping, injecting under his skin. It takes a little longer to catch the rush, but he had been assured by the best street dope experts that he wouldn’t get hooked. They were lying. El Gato wonders what the point is.

“Man, if you main, ya don’t have to use as much. Ya get high faster.”

There is always a ritual when preparing for death. First, don’t worry about sterile. Ignore the dirt on the floor. Ignore the old blood dripping down walls that haven’t been washed since the building began or the smell of old piss and dying garbage all around you. “Man, did someone die up in here?” This is not Good Housekeeping certified.

The old junkie has an old bottle full of water.

“I cleaned the bottle, man, before I put water in it,” he assures Chacho, who knows he’s lying, but he doesn’t care.

El Gato takes the rusting bottle cap off and sets it down on a broken-down coffee table next to him. If that table could only talk, Chacho knows it would warn him, “Don’t take this ride on the mainline home.”

The stench from El Gato, the crying voices from elsewhere in the shooting gallery where the same ritual is happening. All of it is starting to choke Chacho’s mind. He just wants to get high and get out of there, down those dark steps, and rush into the street, praying that he has some coins for the bus ride home.

There’s a small ball of cotton stuck to the inside of the cap like it’s permanently engraved there.

“Gimme the bag,” the old junkie snorts.

There’s one five-dollar bag of heroin. Chacho is holding on to the other bags. A five-dollar bag is best for only one person, but El Gato has the works, the tools for the injection.

“Yeah, since we be sharing one bag, you gotta main, or you ain’t gonna get high.”

Chacho is convinced. See how easy it is. Why be in that cesspool shooting gallery if he ain’t going to get high.

Practice makes perfect as El Gato wraps the belt around Chacho’s upper arm, looking for the central vein crying for the high. The muddy water sucks up through the thin needle from the bottle cap through that week’s old cotton ball up into the eyedropper back down through the needle into his bulging vein. His blood percolates back up and down with a rush of warmth.

Chacho knows the heroin is authentic, imported from some foreign country, smuggled across thousands of miles hidden in suitcase bottoms to apartments where naked women mix it with baby milk powder (or worse) into glassine bags into the hands of Paco down the block onto pissed on steps leftover from the last fool who overdosed crying for his mommy into an overused rusting bottle cap with water that ain’t clean through a dirty needle into the main vein. For Chacho, this will not end with a trip home.

Chacho slides down the overstuffed chair until he’s now half sitting in the chair and the floor and his legs are splayed in two different directions. El Gato jumps up from his cot. He’s wearing an army jacket over a full-length wool coat. A scarf wrapped so many times around his neck that it must feel like it’s choking him. Chacho’s eyes are rolling back in his head. El Gato is screaming, slapping Chacho across the face. One cheek, then another.

“Get up, dude. Get up. Ya’ can’t die here.”

El Gato grabs Chacho’s feet while yelling out to other people elsewhere in the apartment. Two dope fiends rush in.

“Help me get this motherfucka’ outa here. He dies here, and we’re all fucked.”

But first, business is business.

“Check his pockets. See if got any more dope or money.”

They ransack Chacho’s motionless body, pulling at his pockets, finding the other bags and a black case they open, seeing a bible inside.

El Gato is pissed.

“Motherfucka’ was holding out on me.”

Junkie number one grabs one arm, and Junkie number two grabs the other arm. All three carry an already or soon to be deadweight Chacho out the apartment door and turn left onto the stairs up to the roof.

“Let’s dump him on the roof,” El Gato says thoughtfully, “Man ain’t gonna be dead in my pad.”

And that’s it. Pedro, aka Chacho, is dying alone on the roof of a five-story shabby-ass tenement building full of shooting gallery apartments where heavenly music crashes with the sounds of sirens and people screaming outside. This is not how the day was supposed to end, as Chacho swears to the night sky that he can’t die. He’s got things to do. There’s that job he has to get. The one that Carmen demanded he gets during their last argument so they can get married. She wants a big wedding and a white wedding dress and a honeymoon in old San Juan. But he can’t get a job because he’s a junkie, and mom and pop tell him that he’s got to move out. “I no want a junkie livin’ here,” tears washing over her brown face.

Carmen will not be getting her wedding, and his parents won’t have to worry anymore about kicking him out.

Chacho wonders if people can see their soul falling, life’s breath oozing out as he goes from looking up at the sky to looking down on his body. How is that even possible is his last fading thought.

Feature Image by RenoBeranger from Pixabay

Chacho and The Five-Dollar Bag

The following short story was written as part of an assignment for English 405 at CSULB. It is a first draft. A final version is due in December.

Part One

Pedro was pissed when he found out what his nickname meant. The nickname that Kiki, his best friend from childhood, gave him. He started calling Pedro Chacho when Kiki got back from ‘Nam. At first, Pedro ignored it. He figured it was no big deal. Then, his brother, Tony, told him that Chacho was slang for Muchacho, as in small boy. Now, all his friends called him Chacho. Pedro protested to Kiki.

“I ain’t no boy. I’m eighteen years old.”

“Bro, it’s just a nickname. Everyone in ‘Nam had a nickname,” Kiki calmly explained.

“Yeah, what did they call you?”

“Kiki.”

“But, Kiki is your name.”

Chacho stands at 142nd Street and Willis Avenue, watching the sunset between the project buildings. Dark, ominous clouds take its place. Snow is coming to the South Bronx.

He’s freezing his ass off, his cold brown hands shoved deep into his peacoat, a thin alpaca shirt under his coat, no hat. Even his busted ass Keds are no protection for the crosswinds winding their way through the canyons of the Jefferson projects. All he can fume about is the damn nickname.

Kiki said the plan was simple. All Chacho had to do was to be the lookout at the corner. And Chacho believed him. He and the rest of the boys always believed and trusted Kiki who was two years older than the rest of the group. That made him the leader in his mind. And that was okay with everyone, including Chacho, Carlos, Herman, Junior, Guy. They all looked up to Kiki because he wasn’t scared of anyone, anytime, anywhere. But Chacho was scared now.

“My mom’s bedroom window is like right there…on the eighteenth floor,” he protested, “She could look out and see me.”

“What she going to see from that far? Man, you just look like a bug,” Kiki tried to convince him. “Just look cool and watch for the man. If you see him, ya holla.”

Hector’s Barber Shop is two doors down, where Hector himself would give Chacho a razor cut every time he came home from school. Sitting in the barber’s chair as if he was on a throne listening to Doble-OOO radio. Traditional Puerto Rican music oozing out like milk from a momma’s breast. Spanish and Spanglish chatter reminding him where he comes from and where he is at.

He missed it the last four years while he was away at the Seminary. Yet, he felt more distant every visit when he came home for Christmas, Easter, and summer. Now that Chacho was back in the neighborhood, he was trying hard to blend back in. The old crowd was no longer the fourteen-year-olds he left behind. They were now young men, like him, with their own dreams and nightmares. Carlos got drafted and was in ‘Nam. Herman got a job down on Delancey Street with a baby on the way. Last he saw Junior, he was running from la Jara (the police) across Willis Avenue screaming some crazy shit about Yo momma ain’t got no draws. And Guy, the word was he had graduated to a big-time dope dealer in Manhattan. They don’t got time for Chacho. Only Kiki does.

Directly behind him is Sammy’s Pizza, where, on a good day, Sammy would give Kiki and Chacho small paper cups of clean water for free. Sammy knew why they wanted the water. It was used in a ritual where water would drop into a bottle cap full of smack along with a small blob of cotton and heated over an open flame. The water would help purify the death that they tried so hard to bring upon themselves in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Bless you is all Sammy would say as if it was the last goodbye to Chacho and Kiki. The final act in a dangerous and tragic play called The End.

Chacho is still skin popping. Kiki is mainlining. Bragging how the dope in ‘Nam is the shit.

“Higher than those B-52s dropping their loads. My homeboy told me, some of the brothers be doped up while they dropped their bomb loads on the Cong’s ass.”

Sammy’s clock says it’s five o’clock. Chacho had hocked his watch last week, a gift from his girlfriend Carmen. She noticed it was gone when they went to church to talk to Father Kelly about their planned wedding.

“I lost it in the subway. The strap was loose, and I think it just…,” he tried to tell her, his voice trailing off.

He knew she knew he was lying. It wasn’t the first time that he was nodding in her face. Carmen started crying and ran home. Chacho stood in front of Saint Anselm’s Church wishing he could run after her. But, as high as he was, the only place he was running to was face down on the sidewalk.

The streetlights are on, and headlights are streaking up and down Willis Avenue. It’s rush hour. That’s a good thing. A lot of distractions. Around him, people are shuffling home from bus stops and train stations and dead-end jobs that pay the high rent in rundown apartment buildings where they have to step over the deadbeat bodies of junkies during the dope epidemic of 1968. No one is going to pay any attention to a purse snatch. People gots to get home.

Chacho is standing guard looking up and down Willis Avenue and then 142nd Street and across the street up to the 18th floor to make sure his moms ain’t looking out the window wondering, ‘Why is that fool standing out on that corner in this cold weather without a hat and gloves?”

Yeah, that’s not what she’s thinking! “He lookin’ for la droga again. Soy done con el.”

And she be right. Mom should be done with Chacho because he can’t believe he’s standing with the hawk kicking his ass on the lookout for la jara.

Meanwhile, Kiki walks behind an elderly woman up 142nd Street toward Willis Avenue, eyeing her black purse with the determination of a beast stalking its prey. Kiki is wearing what he liked to call his snatch and run uniform. Black leather jacket with some African print Dashiki thrown over it, black pants, black sweater, black socks, black and white Chuck Taylor Cons (the best for running, he bragged to Chacho). Kiki told Chacho that the clothes sent a message to old people, don’t fuck with me. I’m dangerous.

All they need is ten bucks for two five-dollar bags of dope. Kiki has done this before, he says. “Plenty of times. I grab the purse and run. They ain’t going to stop me. If I have to, I push them down. Not hard. I ain’t no animal.”

Chacho’s never done this before. And he doesn’t want to do this now or ever. A year ago, he was upstate in a seminary studying to be a priest until he met Carmen during a holiday visit home. He was shaking. From fear. From the cold. From the creeping jones that was making its way up from his feet to his nose. The priesthood wasn’t for him. He told his father that. But his father didn’t want to understand.

“Hijo, why’d you leave? We all prayed for you to serve the church.”

“Pop, the Irish and Italian boys always wanted to fight me because I was Puerto Rican. I was alone in the Seminary,” Chacho tried to explain.

“There is pain everywhere. Maybe God was testing your faith.”

For Chacho, there was too much pain and too much testing of his faith. What he didn’t tell his father was the number of times the kids had called him Spic. His father hated that word. His children were forbidden to ever use it.

Chacho had made up his mind that he was leaving after the last fight. He got his ass kicked by some Italian from Arthur Avenue who was twice his size. Father Burke accused Chacho of starting it. The other white boys just nodded. No one came to his defense. Fuck ’em.

In the end, there were just too many rules and too many daily prayers. Worse, Chacho told Kiki, there would be no sex as a priest. Kiki thought that was the best reason to leave Saint Thomas’s Junior Seminary.

Now he was a junkie “aiding and abetting” a strong-arm robbery of an old woman. Damn, I hope my mom doesn’t find out. But the road to a good high is just too strong. More potent than any guilt he would feel if Kiki in his snatch and run uniform had to push some old lady down on the ground because she refused to let go of the goddamn purse.

Suddenly, Chacho hears a scream shooting up 142nd Street, shutting out the Willis Avenue noise of buses, cabs, folks just trying to get home before the threatened snow piles up on the streets. They don’t have any boots on because they just got here from Puerto Rico or Santo Domingo, and they have no snow down there.

Chacho looks down the block, and an old woman is hanging on to something, struggling with Kiki. She’s screaming madness in Spanish, and Chacho can’t quite make out what she’s saying as Kiki pushes her down and starts running up 142nd street towards Willis Avenue.

Chacho prays that he’s got that woman’s purse when out of the corner of his right eye, he sees some bro’ in a doorway of a rundown apartment building on 142nd street. He’s just standing there, hands in his coat pocket, looking down the street. The man gotta see Kiki running and hear that old lady screaming mad as hell, “Por favor, stop him, please!”

Damn it, shut up. Chacho is freaking out looking for a way outta there. His heart is racing. Run mofo across Willis Avenue and home.

“¡Me robó!”

Then, the man in the doorway steps down and lunges at Kiki. Chacho figures he’s trying to grab him, but Kiki lets out a scream stronger than the woman’s, “Motherfucker, why you stab me?”

Kiki is running, tripping, holding his left arm. The guy in the doorway is joined by other men from down the block running after Kiki. He ain’t waiting for the light to change as he scrambles across Willis Avenue dodging cars and people towards his and Chacho’s building.

There’s a procession of chasers after Kiki as they cross the Avenue screaming “¡Ese hijo de gran puta! That motherfucker!”

Chacho is faster so he pulls up alongside the lead guy, the one who stabbed Kiki, and yells that he knows who that guy is and the building he lives in.

“He’s at 242. I’ll run around 240 and cut him off in case he tries running up 141st Street.”

They turn the corner and haul ass while Chacho pretends to look exhausted and when they’re out of sight, he runs into 240 and takes the elevator up the 12th floor, and knocks on 12B. There’s blood on the door.

Feature Image by RenoBeranger from Pixabay

Next Week: Part Two

That Purse Snatch in 1968

The following narrative was published in Medium earlier this year. We are republishing it in advance of a submission to my Short Story class based on this piece.

It seemed simple enough. I would be a lookout at the corner of 142nd and Willis Avenue. Hector’s Barber Shop was two doors down, where Hector himself would give me a razor cut every two weeks on any Saturday. Sitting in that chair as if I was on a throne listening to Doble-OOO radio station and traditional Puerto Rican music and Spanish-language chatter oozing out like milk from momma’s breast. Next door was Sammy’s Pizza, where, on a good day, Sammy would give us small paper cups of water for free instead of filled with the Italian Ice they were meant for. He knew why we wanted them: to drop clean water through an eyedropper into a bottle cap filled with a small blob of cotton and a five-dollar bag of smack in the belief that we could purify the death created in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. At least the water is clean. We would buy a slice for fifty cents when we could to say thanks. Bless you is all Sammy would say as if it was the last goodbye to us. Just in case, the water drops into the bottle cap full of smack, and a small blob of cotton heated over an open flame turned out to be the final act in our dangerous and tragic play — the End.

It was winter, and I was cold and shivering. Seven o’clock in the evening, and people were shuffling home from bus stops and train stations and dead-end jobs that paid the rent in rundown apartment buildings where they had to step over the deadbeat bodies of junkies during the dope epidemic of 1968. Hands in my coat pocket wrapped around my works (eyedropper- check, bottle cap-check, needle safely sheathed, so we don’t stab ourselves-check, a recycled blob of cotton that will not purify anything-check) bundled together with a brown rubber band in a decaying brown bag. A matchbook with 4–5 matches left with the hidden message written across the inside cover “Use wisely sucker. This is all that is left.”

I’m standing guard looking up and down Willis Avenue and 142nd Street and across the street up to the 14th floor to make sure my fiancé, Chicky, is not looking out the window where she could see me and wonder, ‘Why is that fool standing out on that corner in this cold weather without a hat on and probably doesn’t have any gloves on?” Yeah, that’s not what she’s thinking! But I know she’s thinking “he’s looking for dope again. I’m done with him.” And she be right. She and I should be done with me because I can’t believe I’m standing on the corner of Willis Avenue and 142nd Street in this damn cold ass weather on the lookout for La Hara as Carlito stalks an elderly woman up 142nd Street toward Willis Avenue while eyeing her black purse with the determination of a beast stalking its prey. All we need is ten bucks to split two five-dollar bags of dope, smack, skag, the white horse. Carlito has done this before, he says. “Plenty of times. I grab the purse and run. They ain’t going to stop me. If I have to, I push them down. Not hard. I ain’t no animal.” I’ve never done this before. I don’t want to do this now or ever. But the call of the main vein, the road to a good feeling, is just too strong. Stronger than the guilt that I would feel if Carlito had to push some old lady down on the ground because she refused to let go of the goddamn purse. Let it go, damn it.

Suddenly, I hear a shout and a scream shooting up 142nd Street, landing in front of me, shutting out the Willis Avenue noise of buses, cabs, folks just trying to get home before threatened snow piles up on the streets. They don’t have any boots because they just got here from Puerto Rico or Santo Domingo and they ain’t got no snow down there.

Damn Carlito, why you have to push that woman down? She’s screaming madness in Spanish, and I can’t quite make out what the fuck she’s saying as I scope Carlito running up 142nd street towards Willis Avenue. I pray (not really pray) that he’s got that woman’s purse when I see this guy in a doorway of a rundown apartment building on 142nd street. He’s just standing there, hands in his coat pocket, looking down the street. He’s gotta see Carlito running and hear that old lady screaming mad as hell shit in Spanish, “¡Detenlo, por favor!” (“Stop him, please!”) Damn it, shut up. I’m freaking out looking for a way outta here. Run mofo down Willis toward 149th Street and home. “¡Me robó!” (“He robbed me!”) Why ain’t you running? Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see the guy in the doorway step down and lunge at Carlito. I figured he was trying to grab him, but his arm was swinging like he missed, and Carlito let out a scream stronger than the woman’s, “Mother Fucker, why you stab me?”

Carlito is running but tripping, holding his left arm. Now, the guy in the doorway is joined by other men from down the street running after Carlito. He ain’t waiting for the light to change as he scrambles across Willis Avenue dodging cars and people towards the projects. To this day, I don’t know why I joined the procession of chasers across the Avenue as they’re screaming “¡Detén a ese hijo de puta!” (“Stop that Motherfucker!”). I know where Carlito lives, and I tell the men when I catch up with them that I saw him cut behind the 242 building to run down 141st. They turn the corner and haul ass while I pretend to look exhausted and when they’re out of sight, I run into 242 and take the elevator up the 12th floor and knock on 12B, and I see blood on the door.

Carlito’s mother can be heard screaming behind the door. Carlito’s sister opens the door, and she’s crying. I push my way in, rapping some shit about, “I saw some guys try to rob Carlito, and they chased him to the building, but I told them that he ran down 141st street,” and I wanted to make sure that Carlito was okay. Momma is still screaming. Sister is still crying. Carlito has his coat off, his shirt off, holding a towel against his left arm full of blood dripping down his arm onto the black case on the floor that he had taken from the old woman. It was open, and I could see that there was a bible inside. Carlito was huffing and puffing. He looked at me and then looked at the zippered black case with the Bible book peeking through the unzippered opening and back to me, and I’m like, What the fuck? His mother is on the phone calling someone to come over and take Carlito to the hospital, and I back out through apartment 12B talking about how I’m going to see if I can find a cop so I can give them a description of those Ladrones de mierda (Fucking thieves) who tried to rip off Carlito of that zippered black case with the bible inside that he had found in the street and was trying to find the owner when a bunch of junkies tried to rob him.

I stepped out into the hallway, found the stairs, and slowly made my way down 12 floors hoping not to run into those guys who were chasing Carlito or my girlfriend or anyone from her family or anyone that knew her. When I got to the first floor, I turned to go out the back way that would take me into the playground where I would walk across the project complex to St. Ann’s Avenue and then Third Avenue where I would walk to Westchester Avenue to take the number 26 bus to 156th and Westchester and home.

My nose was now running, shivering from more than the winter cold. I was not high and would not get high until maybe the next day. But, I learned two lessons: one, I’m a terrible lookout that is never going to be good at committing a crime, and two, from now until the day I die, I will respect all old ladies that I see walking down the streets with their bibles and purses and ask that they forgive me even as they look at me and wonder, “¿Qué te pasa, chico?” (“What’s wrong, boy?”) is wrong with you, Nada, solo necesito tu perdón para siempre. Nothing, I just need your forgiveness forever.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: