The wind moves the palm trees on Delano Street, the soft warm breeze gently shaking their long branches, moving the chain-link fences and pushing the empty beer cans down the sidewalk.
The Latino day laborers are drinking outside of the apartment complex, reminiscing about the long day's work at the house off in one of the rich parts of the San Fernando Valley, Encino, dry walling the inside of a garage and putting up the stucco on the chicken wire all over the house, talking about how the contractor lost his grip on the wheelbarrow carrying the cement and had it tip over, yelling, "shit, fuck, coño, hey, help me!"—and how hard it was to keep the laughter in. Man, what a pussy.
Carlos asks, "Hey, how much he pay you?"
Juan replies, "Shiit, 60 bucks, por que?"
Carlos says, "Man, fuck!—40, just 40."
The other day laborers comment on how Carlos got ripped off, how everyone else got paid $60. Carlos gets pissed.
"Those fuckers. Those fucking guys, man. They always do that shit, cada vez, every time!" Carlos says, referring to how private contractors notoriously rip off and exploit the immigrants that crossover illegally—Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, and other Latin American spics for the promise of a better, more livable life in exchange for cheap labor. And at the end, the contractors, being private and not having to answer to unions or companies, don't pay some of the workers if costs start piling up and get too high.
One of the other workers says, "I think I saw him driving on Whitsett Ave in North Hollywood."
Carlos says, "Yea? ...Fuck it, what's the point. The cops aren't gonna do shit, nada. Who they gonna believe, defend? Me? Shit."
Everyone looks at each other, without nodding or making any signs or gestures of agreement but collectively knowing Carlos is right. They've all been there before. A crooked-ass contractor tells them $60 for 8 hours; but when the job's done the contractor hands them an envelope and takes off. And the envelope only has $40. But you can't take him to small claims. You can't take him to the police. You can't take him to a contractors association. Because you're here illegally; you can't afford to draw any attention to yourself and jeopardize your fragile situation; your family is depending on you being in this fucking country to send back some fucking money. So you just work and hope to get paid fairly.
They continue drinking.
Up the street two Mexican gangsters are talking loudly, drinking paper-bagged 40-ouncers, passing back a speed pipe. The workers hear them and get scared. They're cautious of the young cholos from what they hear about them: how unpredictable and crazy they can be, how they look down on the Latino day laborers, how they pick on them, rob them, beat them and sometimes worse. None of the workers have had any direct experience with them, but Carlos' cousin said he once was robbed by a cracked-out little cholo, no older than 20, hopped up on crystal meth, who afterward cracked him in the face just for the fuck of it. They were all intimidated by the story.
The cholos stop in front of the laborers. The more talkative one says, "¿Que honda, páisa?" not speaking to any of the laborers in particular as he takes a gulp from the 40-ouncer, his eyes glossy and red, rhythmically tapping the side of his leg as if keeping the beat with some song in his head. The other cholo is quiet, constantly and aggressively biting the inside of his mouth. They're both skinny, wearing just their undershirts and dressed in huge Ben Davis slacks, neatly ironed and creased down the center of each pant leg. Carlos says, "Aqui no mas," avoiding eye contact, scared but not wanting them to sense that. One of the other laborers offers them a beer. The quiet cholo takes it, twists off the cap and drinks it, his eyes fixated on Carlos.
"Lotta work, huh páisa?" the talkative cholo says.
"Yea, gracias a Dios. We're lucky to be working so much," Juan says.
"Is tough, huh páisa?" the cholo says.
"Yes but not too much, you know?"
"And you guys get paid straight cash n shit, huh páisa?"
"Si, claro, yes."
"Thas cool, thas cool man. Hey, páisa, has me un favór, yea, gimmie your money," the cholo says, his demeanor unchanged.
The laborers look at each other in disbelief. Juan and Carlos each wait for the other to say something, to do something. The other laborers start opening their wallets.
Carlos can't help it; he's still pissed off from the contractor ripping him off so he says, "Hijo, why you do this? We didn't do nothing to you. We need this money for our families, por favor, hijo."
The quiet cholo is still staring at Carlos, but doesn't see Carlos anymore. He sees his drunken deadbeat, pieceofshit dad, getting drunk in public, not taking care of all his little fucking kids, beating his wife, losing shit job after shit job, and just being a dumb motherfucking páisa, and his friends all making fun of him at high school, calling him a son of a lazy maricón boracho who waits on corners like a fucking prostitute to jump in the back of a pickup truck; and when he can't find work, he probably sucks the contractor's dick for money. The quiet cholo hits his dad over the head with the glass bottle, the image of his dad's face going away and it being replaced with Carlos', the bottle not completely empty, the glass shattering upon impact, the blood and beer instantly mixing together and gushing down his face. Juan and all the other laborers scream and run away. Carlos falls to his knees, grabs his face and screams, "¡AYUDAME, AYUDAME!" The other cholo puts down the 40-ouncer and they both start kicking him in the ribs and back. The quiet one takes a couple steps back, gets his aim ready and perfect and sprints up to Carlos' chest and kicks it hard with his steel toe boot, cracking the sternum, knocking him over, forcing the wind and blood out from his mouth. The quiet one says, "You lazy páisa piece of shit!" now stomping down on his face, each stomp causing his head to bounce off the pavement. He notices a silver necklace of La Virgin de Guadalupe around Carlos' neck. He reaches down and yanks it off. Carlos' consciousness becomes clearer and he reaches up with his bloody hand to grab it back, his voice soft and almost completely gone from the beating, only being able to say a few words from the lack of breath, "no, hijo, no." The cholo yells, "Stop calling me that!" and smacks Carlos' hand down to the pavement but not before he snatches the necklace back. He stomps down hard on Carlos' hand, crushing it with the heal of his boot. And as Carlos screams, as the cholo reaches down to grab the necklace from his crushed hand, they hear police sirens close by, and the other cholo grabs the 40-ouncer and smashes it over his head and kicks him in the right side of the face and Carlos' entire body goes limp, his wide eyes staring back, lifeless.
They run away leaving Carlos' beaten, glass-shard riddled, bloodied body there with his cracked-open head, the blood and brain spilling out and mixing in with the beer on the pavement, his hand tightly gripping La Virgin de Guadalupe necklace.
Luis Rivas lives in Echo Park and works in the San Fernando Valley, California. He was a telemarketer, construction worker, assistant drug dealer, flower delivery driver, fast food cashier, sales clerk and package handler/zip code sorter. His work has appeared or will appear in the following publications, some of which he contributes to regularly: Zygote in My Coffee, My Favorite Bullet, Cherry Bleeds, Red Fez, Rural Messenger Press, Thieves Jargon, Origami Condom, Outsider Writers, Full of Crow, Counter Punch, Polarity e-Magazine and Gloom Cupboard, where he is currently non-fiction editor.