Last Summer of the Death Warriors Read online

  “Who?”

  “Lupita. She works in the front office.”

  Pancho stared at the wall behind the desk. He found it hard to look at the boy directly: the dark eyes sunk in their sockets, the yellowish skin, the cracked lips, the long, thin strands of blond hair poking from underneath the cap. Looking at the boy made him feel ill. He pushed his chair back and stood up. The mattress had a dark stain where someone had once wetted it. Two white sheets, a pillowcase, and a gray blanket lay at the foot of the bed. He put the pile of bedding on the chair and then extended one sheet over the bed. He hoped his silent movements would make the boy roll back to wherever he came from.

  He had to walk around the wheelchair to get to the other side of the bed. He was stuffing the pillow into the case when the boy spoke again. The voice had a raspy, exhausted quality to it, like there was a limited quantity of sound in there and it would soon run out. “The Panda asked me to help you sort out the papers in the storage room.”

  The flat, skinny pillow filled only half the pillowcase. He threw it on the bed and sat down next to it. The Panda? It took him a few seconds to see the resemblance: Father Concha’s white face, the dark circles around his eyes. He almost smiled, then he caught himself. “What’s wrong with you anyway?” He stared at the kid’s ankles. They were the width of broomsticks.

  “I’m training for the Olympics.” The boy tried to laugh but began to cough instead. When the coughing fit ended, he said, “My name is Daniel Quentin, but everyone calls me D.Q. You’re Pancho.”

  “That’s my name. So is everyone here like an orphan?”

  “In one way or another.”

  “What?”

  “Technically, an orphan is someone whose parents have died. Some kids have parents who are still alive but who might as well be dead. You see?”

  He saw. “I always figured orphanages were for little kids.”

  “If the little kids don’t get adopted, they have to end up someplace.”

  It crossed Pancho’s mind that these were the kids no one wanted. He looked around. People were entering the dormitory in twos and threes. One of the walls held a white clock. It was too early to go to sleep, but he wished he could just lie down and close his eyes.

  “You want me to show you around?” D.Q. asked.

  “What’s there to see?”

  “Bathrooms and showers are at the other end, where that orange light is. There’s a TV room, a game room, a library, computers.…”

  “Can we go outside?” He looked at the door marked exit.

  A strange look came over D.Q.’s face. “This isn’t a jail,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a home. There are procedures for telling people where you are, but pretty much anyone can leave at any time.”

  Pancho could not imagine why anyone would not leave for good if that were the case. He felt himself being studied. “Good,” he said.

  “I take it you have a place you’d rather be?”

  He pictured his trailer out in the desert. He remembered the screen porch his father had built, where he slept during the summer. He saw in his mind the flagpole out front and the tattered flag his father had brought back from Vietnam. “Yeah,” he answered.

  “This place isn’t so bad. The best thing is that, if you want, people let you be. I got a feeling that’s what you’d like, isn’t it?”

  Pancho forced himself to look steadily into D.Q.’s eyes. “Yeah, that suits me just fine,” he answered.

  “That’s all right. We all felt the same way when we first got here. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with me for the summer.” D.Q. paused, waiting for the words to sink in. “I’m your summer job. You’re going to be my aide. You’ll come with me to my treatments. You’ll be my companion.”

  “I thought I was supposed to clean up the storage room.”

  “That’ll only take a day or two.”

  “This ‘companion’ job pay anything?”

  “You get to be around me.” D.Q. grinned.

  “I need to make me some money,” Pancho said.

  “What do you need money for?”

  “I just do. The kids here that have summer jobs working in construction and all—they earn any money?”

  “Sure, they get paid. Minimum wage, at least.”

  “Well, what happens to that money?”

  “One-third they give to St. Tony’s to help out. The other two-thirds they get to keep for school supplies, clothes, etcetera.”

  “Etcetera,” Pancho said, mimicking D.Q. Mrs. Olivares had told him he would have a summer job. He was counting on the money.

  “Oh, relax. It won’t be so bad. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ll see.” D.Q. made an effort to smile, but the smile turned into a grimace. “Oooo. That was a good one,” he said, grabbing his stomach. “Hey, can you wheel me over to my room? Talking to you has pooped me out, literally.”

  “Where is it?” He did not get up from the bed.

  “It’s at the other end.”

  “That’s no room. That’s one of these—I don’t know what you call it.”

  “We call them rooms. The name helps. Wheel me over there. The other kids will show you respect if they see you pushing me.”

  Pancho stood up and walked behind the wheelchair. He turned it around and began to push it. “I can get my own respect,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 3

  Take care of your sister. Those were the words his father said as he left for work that last morning, and those were the words that circled in his head whenever he allowed silence to enter. Then there were the questions. How was it possible that he didn’t know Rosa was dating someone—probably seeing him after work, getting rides home with him? He remembered the sound of a motor idling outside the trailer. How was it possible that he didn’t get up to see who was driving her home? How could he not notice the sound of that engine was different from the sound of Julieta’s four-cylinder Toyota?

  Then he remembered Rosa coming in. “Hi, Pancho,” she said loudly, beaming as she closed the door. He was lying on the sofa. “Whatcha watching?”

  “Nothing much. Some show.”

  “Hey, guess what?”

  He didn’t look away from the set when he answered. “What.”

  “I got a ten-dollar tip today. Wanna see it?”

  “Put it in the grocery jar.”

  “Okay.”

  She sat down in the upholstered brown chair and began to take off her blue sneakers. Her legs were thick and she had trouble lifting one on top of the other. “I’m getting fat,” she said, rubbing her feet. He looked at her briefly. He had never heard her say anything good or bad about her appearance before. “I wish I was thin and pretty like the other waitresses. Julieta says I should use some makeup.”

  “Julieta’s no expert on pretty,” he remarked.

  She giggled. “Oh, Pancho.” She leaned back, slumped in the chair, yawned. “I’m sleepy,” she said.

  “Don’t fall asleep in the chair,” he told her.

  “Oh, Pancho.” She pushed herself slowly up. She was halfway to her room when he saw her turn around. She took the ten-dollar bill from her purse and waved it and grinned at him all at the same time. Then she pried open the lid of the can marked sugar and dropped the bill in there.

  It felt as if he had been asleep all of ten minutes when someone poked his ribs. He willed his eyelids to open. Slowly, the gaunt face of D.Q. came into focus. I don’t need to see that first thing, he thought.

  “Wake up, Mr. Pancho. It’s time to greet the new day.”

  “Shit.” He fished around for the sheet, but there was no sheet to be found. “What time is it?”

  “It’s eight thirty. You got to sleep late today. Everyone is already up and about doing God’s work.”

  This can’t be happening to me, he said to himself. He shook his head the way a wet dog dries himself, and then, in one forceful movement, he sat bolt upright on the bed. He blinked three times and then tried to swing his legs of
f the bed, but the wheelchair was in the way. “You mind moving?” he asked.

  D.Q. wheeled himself backward. “Hey, look. I got you a pair of regulation St. Tony’s shorts and two T-shirts. It’s going to be hot working in that room.” D.Q. was holding up a pair of gray shorts. On one of the legs, a silver circle with the words “St. Anthony’s” curved around a man in a robe, holding a shepherd’s staff. “I also found you a toothbrush and a bar of soap. Not that I’m trying to tell you anything.”

  Pancho stood up and quickly slipped into the shorts. Then he grabbed one of the blue T-shirts and put that on as well.

  “Come on,” said D.Q., “I’ll show you where the dining room is.”

  “I have to take a leak first,” he said.

  “It’s on the way.”

  “You gonna watch me do that too?”

  D.Q. was moving on ahead. “Nah, you can handle that on your own.”

  The dining room had five round tables with eight plastic chairs each. A skinny white vase with a fake carnation sat in the middle of each table. There was a serving counter in one wall through which you could see the kitchen. The counter held eight boxes of different cereals as well as two one-gallon jugs of milk, a tin bowl with bananas, oranges, and green apples, and a glass pitcher half filled with powdery orange juice.

  Three boys sat at one of the middle tables, talking loudly. They looked up when D.Q. and Pancho entered the room but then went back to their conversation. “You never even came close to making it, you liar,” Pancho heard one of them say.

  “There’s breakfast,” D.Q. said, pointing at the cereal. “I already ate, but I’ll keep you company.”

  Pancho grabbed a white bowl and filled it with the first box of cereal. He poured milk into the bowl, grabbed a banana and a spoon, and went to sit down at the table where D.Q. had stationed himself. He put a spoonful of the cereal in his mouth and chewed slowly, not lifting his eyes from the bowl. He wished he had a cereal box in front of him so he could fix his eyes somewhere.

  “Want me to introduce you to people?” D.Q. motioned with his head to the table with the boys.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “That’s all right. There’s no pressure here to be social.” D.Q. was wearing a long-sleeve cowboy shirt. It was brown with white designs around the pockets and those pearl-lacquered buttons. His blue jeans looked three sizes too big for him.

  “You and me gonna tag along all day?” Pancho asked. He wiped off the milk that was running down the side of his mouth.

  “Not all day. I usually take a nap, sometimes two. You’ll be on your own then.”

  After Pancho finished the cereal, he peeled the banana and ate it in two bites. He dropped the peel in the cereal bowl. “You never said what’s wrong with you,” he said, still chewing.

  “I have diffuse pontine glioma,” D.Q. said, smiling.

  “What’s that?”

  “An illness.”

  “Is it in your legs, is that why you can’t walk?”

  “I can walk all right. There’s nothing wrong with the legs.” D.Q. slapped both his thighs. The sound reminded Pancho of his father’s flag snapping in the wind. “It’s a question of power. There’s not enough power to move the legs, or if there is, I need to save it for more important things, like answering your questions.” He grinned.

  “And I’m supposed to push you around.” Pancho slumped in his chair. He looked around to see if there was any coffee. There was no coffee. He needed caffeine in the worst way.

  “I have some good news on that front,” D.Q. said. “I talked to the Panda this morning, and he thinks he can scrounge up some money to pay you for helping me out.”

  Pancho thought it over. “How much?”

  “Thirty bucks a day.”

  “Pssh.” He could never do math in his head, but he knew right off that thirty dollars a day wasn’t going to get him where he wanted to be. “Do I got a choice?”

  “Sure. I told you, this isn’t a jail. If a job comes up and you want it, you can take it. But you won’t want to.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re going to like hanging out with me.”

  “Yeah.” Pancho sat up and looked at the three boys at the next table. “Where do they work?”

  “Every day, three different kids stay back to work at St. Tony’s. They help Margarita in the kitchen or Brother Javier out in the yard or Lupita in the office. The rest of the time, they sweep and mop and wipe. See that?” D.Q. pointed to a white sheet of paper taped on the wall. “That’s the new list that just came out this morning. That last name on the list, that’s your name. You’ll be up next Friday.”

  “I thought you said this wasn’t a jail.”

  “Mmm.”

  “‘Mmm’ what?”

  “Are you done? ’Cause we got work to do.”

  Pancho lifted himself up from the chair reluctantly.

  “You need to put your dishes over in that tub with the dishwater. The peel goes in the garbage.”

  Pancho stared hard at D.Q. He took a deep breath, picked up the bowl, and plopped it in a pink tub filled with suds. He walked back and stood in front of D.Q. “What now?”

  “Can you wheel me over to that storage room, the one the Panda showed you yesterday?”

  Pancho got behind the wheelchair. One of the boys at the other table smiled at him. It could have been a friendly smile, or maybe the boy was making fun of his “companion” job. Pancho flipped him the middle finger, just in case.

  CHAPTER 4

  They sorted documents in the storage room. Pancho opened a box and took out a file. D.Q. read it and instructed Pancho to put it in the garbage or another box. There were bank statements and telephone bills and pictures of boys, all with the same crew cut. Pancho saw no rhyme or reason to what D.Q. decided to keep.

  After some time sifting through documents, they started on the sports equipment. There was no thinking involved here. Everything needed to be lugged to the room next door. They organized the equipment by the different sports. In one bin, they put the aluminum bats and the baseball gloves; in another, they put the shin guards and soccer balls.

  “What about these?” Pancho pointed at a box.

  “What is it?”

  He lifted out a pair of fourteen-ounce boxing gloves. The red leather was peeling in places. The box contained another pair of gloves, three jump ropes, and two sets of protective headgear.

  “I haven’t seen those in years.” D.Q. stretched out his hands, and Pancho threw him the gloves. They landed in his lap. He tried to put one on, but the effort required to push his hand through the opening was too great. “Used to be when two kids got angry, they could request the gloves. One of the Brothers would referee. The kids would put on the helmets and whack each other for a couple of three-minute rounds.”

  Pancho slipped on one of the gloves and smacked his open hand. A puff of dust appeared in the air. “Guess no one gets angry anymore,” he said. He remembered the boxing trophy at the bottom of the case. He took the glove off and threw it back in the box. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Since forever. They left me out front in a basket when I was no bigger than that football.”

  Pancho scrutinized him. “Since before you were ill?” He didn’t mean to sound like he cared one way or another.

  “Yeah. You know that one time when I was about thirteen, I beat the crap out of this kid, Rudy, with those very gloves?”

  “You?”

  “I know. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Oh, well. Being strong and good-looking isn’t everything. It’s what’s up here that counts.” He lowered his head and tapped his skull with his index finger.

  Pancho bent down to pick up a baseball that had rolled to his feet. He thought, What else is someone in a wheelchair going to say? He tossed the ball up in the air with his right hand and caught it with his left. “How long have you been in the wheelchair?” he asked without looking at D.Q.

  “Just recently.”<
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  “But you can walk.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t have the strength.”

  “Correct. They zapped all the strength out of me.”

  “Who did?”

  “The doctors.”

  “How?”

  “Radiation.”

  Pancho was silent. It occurred to him that this was a good time to stop asking questions. He didn’t want to know any more than he already did. Nevertheless, he heard himself say, “You’re dying.”

  D.Q. smiled. “You could say that we all are. You are too. I’m just doing it faster.”

  “How fast?”

  “No one knows for sure. It could be any day. It helps me to look at each day that way. Statistically speaking, people with the type of brain cancer I have usually live twelve months from the time they’re diagnosed. I was diagnosed about six months ago.”

  Pancho laughed. It lasted a second or two at most, but it was still a laugh, and Pancho did not know where it came from or what to say next. “Life sucks,” he finally said.

  D.Q. considered that. “I know what you mean, but no, fundamentally it doesn’t.” He paused. “You know what we’re doing here?”

  There was a tin bucket nearby. Pancho turned it over and sat on it. He hadn’t done any heavy lifting to speak of, but he was tired. Just looking at D.Q. made him tired. “Here? Like on this earth?”

  D.Q.’s face lit up. “That is the question, isn’t it? Actually I was referring to this room. Do you know why we’re here, in this room, cleaning it up?”

  “The Panda said so.”

  “Yes, the Panda has agreed to let me have this room. After we get all the junk out and paint it and put in some curtains and a new toilet, I’ll move in here.…Look out that window. What do you see?”

  Pancho looked. “The basketball court.”

  “The head of my bed is going to be right there where you’re sitting. I’ll be able to lie there and watch the basketball games. I’ll hear the kids argue about calls and complain about fouls. At first they’ll be aware of me and maybe try to keep it down or something, but after a while they’ll forget I’m here and they’ll just play. That’s why we’re fixing up this room. Do you get it?”