Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez Read Free Book Online

liked Gabriela. But she was also quiet, like me. So Earl pulled on her braids, the girl wailed, turned around and saw me standing there. Just then the teacher ran out of the classroom. Gabriela pointed in my direction. The one who never says anything. Because of this, I suffered through an hour’s detention, fuming in my seat the whole time.
    Later that evening, Earl came to my sister’s house where we were visiting. Seni answered the door and looked askance at him.
    “What do you want?”
    “I want to know if the boy upstairs can play?”
    “I don’t know, I don’t think so.”
    “Tell him I got some marbles. If it’s okay, I’d like him to play with me.”
    “I don’t know, I don’t think so.”
    I looked down from the attic window and saw the tall, thin boy in striped shirt and blue jeans. Under an arm was a coffee can. Inside the can, marbles rattled whenever Earl moved.
    But going through Seni was becoming a chore. Earl looked past her to a large, round woman in a print dress: My mom. She looked at the boy and then yelled up the stairs in Spanish.
    “Go and play, Grillo,” she said. “You stay in the attic all the time. Go and play. Be like other boys. ¡Ya!”
    Earl waited patiently as the Rodríguez household quaked and quavered trying to get me downstairs and into the yard. Finally, I came down. Earl smiled broadly and offered me the can of marbles.
    “This is for taking the rap today, man.”
    I looked hard at him, still a little peeved, then reached out for the can and held the best marble collection I had ever seen. I made a friend. Desert winds swept past the TV antennas and peeling fences, welcome breezes on sweltering dry summer days when people came out to sit on their porches, or beneath a tree in dirt yards, or to fix cars in the street.
    But on those days the perils came out too—you could see it in the faces of street warriors, in the play of children, too innocent to know what lurked about, but often the first to fall during a gang war or family scuffle.
    103rd Street was particularly hard. It was the main drag in Watts, where most of the businesses were located, and it was usually crowded with people, including dudes who took whatever small change one might have in their pocket.
    On days like that Rano, Jaime, Earl and I ventured out to the “third,” as 103rd Street was called, or by the factories and railroad tracks playing dirt war with other kids. Other times we played on the rooftop and told stories.
    “Did you ever hear the one about the half-man?” Earl asked.
    “The what?” Jaime replied. “What’s a half-man?”
    “Well, he’s a dude who got cut in half at the railroad tracks over there by Dogtown.”
    “Yeah, go on.”
    “So now he haunts the streets, half of him one place, the other half in another place—and he eats kids.”
    “Man, that’s sick,” Rano said. “But I got one for you. It’s about el pie.”
    “What the hell is that?”
    “Pie means foot in Spanish … and that’s all it is! One big foot, walking around.”
    Gusts of winds swirled around the avocado tree branches as the moonlight cast uncanny shadows near where we related our tales.
    “And you heard about La Llorona, right?” Rano continued.
    “Oh, yeah, sure …”
    “She’s an old Mexican lady—”
    “You mean Mrs. Alvarez?”
    We laughed.
    “Nah, this lady once got all her children and cut them up into tiny pieces.”
    “And …”
    “And then she went all over the neighborhood, sprinkling bits of their bodies everywhere.”
    “And then …”
    “So then God saw what she did and cursed her to walk the world, looking for her children—weeping—for all eternity. That’s why she’s called La Llorona, the weeping woman. And you know what, she picks up other kids to make up for the ones she’s killed.”
    The leaves rustled, giving out an eerie sound. All of us jumped up, including Rano. Before anyone could say good night, we stumbled over one another, trying to get out of