Chango's Fire by Ernesto Quinonez Read Free Book Online

racket. She doesn’t even believe in God, but she wanted to mobilize the poor in Spanish Harlem and so she brought God into the mix. It worked, and her church is so progressive that other churches shun her. I was never surprised at people’s acceptance and sweet trust they had for Maritza. Nothing is too doubtful or unimaginable if God is deftly placed into it. I also wasn’t surprised at other churches for shunning her. Church buildings are never built out of glass, that way they can throw stones at will.
    â€œGood Trompo, go to church and read your Bible.” I hug him and get ready to leave.
    â€œJulio, why did God send a bear to kill those kids, just for making fun of that prophet’s bald spot?”
    â€œWha’?”
    â€œYeah, God killed these kids who made fun of his prophet. I wouldn’t have sent a bear to kill the kids. I would have sent them home with no play.”
    â€œYou serious? God did that?” I had forgotten that story but I now do remember reading it in the Old Testament, where God is a warlike, jealous God, right before He does a turnaround and becomes love personified in the New Testament.
    â€œWell I don’t know, Trompo. Ask Maritza, okay? I got to go to school,” I say and hug him again on my way out the door.
    M any times people from the neighborhood have asked me why I take so much interest in Trompo Loco. They tell me, if he wasn’t around, the time and energy I’d save, maybe even find myself a woman. But I can only think that he reminds me of this terrible feeling I had when I was a kid. A feeling that I can’t stomach. It began when I was ten, and my mother, after I had been kicking and screaming, finally let me try out for the Little League team from Yorkville that met in Central Park’s baseball fields. We had missed the deadline to sign up to play with the league that was from Spanish Harlem, and it cost fifty dollars to join that other league from Yorkville.
    But I won and my mother went with me.
    When I approached the coach, a white man with a beer belly and hair on the sides, he only let me try out because my mother was there, plus I had the fifty bucks.
    â€œYou’ll still need to pay for your uniform,” he said to me, and I didn’t say anything, because I knew I could cry and kick some more so my mother would somehow come up with the money.
    â€œTake right field, you’re batting ninth.” I was happy, because I was playing. But I knew right field was for scrubs who the coach didn’t trust. No one hits it to right field. And batting ninth was an insult. But I took it, because I wanted to play. I wanted to play baseball, I wanted to play that great American game that I loved.
    That day I went three for four. I hit a single and two doubles, plus when the only kid from the other team hit the ball to right, I caught it. During innings, I’d take a sneak peek at my mother, who was reading her religious books, bored out of her mind, sitting among other bored mothers. But she loved me, so she sat there through seven innings.
    We won that game and I knocked in four runs.
    â€œHere’s your money back,” the coach said. “I don’t have a place for you.”
    â€œBut I went three for four?” I said, and the coach shook his head and started putting away the bats and gloves. The kids and their parents were all getting ready to go out for pizza or Burger King.
    â€œAren’t there any Puerto Rican Little Leagues?”
    â€œYeah, but they’re full,” I said, and I knew these white kids could use me.
    â€œSee, you should have joined sooner, that right there tells me you have no discipline.” And he walked away.
    When I went over to my mother, I knew she would not understand. So I just handed her the money. She was kind of happy she had her money again. She told me, next year, I would make it on time to play with the Spanish kids. I knew that, I knew there was always a