I heard Daniel coming up the stairs. I opened the door and put my hand up like: Stay down here. Then I heard the sound of glass crashing. Manny and his dad had gone through the glass table in the living room. In their struggle Manny had managed to turn them around, so he landed on top of his dad on the glass table. Manny was cut a little on his arms, but his dad was all sliced up. He got knocked out too. I thought he was fucking dead. “Help me get him in the car,” Manny said to me. And I did. I picked his dad up from under his arms. On our way out the front door, when I was almost out the door, with Manny at the other end, holding his dad’s legs, I saw Daniel and Aunt Sylvia watch us carry him out of the house. Something about them seeing us. Crying because they wanted him gone. Crying because they wanted him back the way he used to be. That shit killed me. We dropped their dad off in the front of Highland, where the ambulances come in. Left him on the ground. Honked the horn once real long, then drove off.
* * *
—
I was around more after that. We didn’t even know if we killed him or not until a week later. The doorbell rang and it was like Manny knew, like he felt it. He tapped my knee twice and sprang up. At the front door, we stood there and didn’t have to say a thing. We stood there like: What? What the fuck do you want? Go. His face was all bandaged. He looked like a fucking mummy. I felt bad for him. Sylvia came up behind us with a trash bag full of his clothes yelling, “Move!” So we moved out of the way, and she threw the bag at him. Manny closed the door and that was that.
It was around that time that me and Manny stole our first ride. We took BART to downtown Oakland. There were certain pockets of uptown where people had nice cars and people like me and Manny could be seen without someone calling the cops right away. Manny wanted a Lexus. Just nice enough but not too nice. Not noticeable either. We found a black one with gold lettering and tinted windows. I don’t know how long Manny had been stealing cars, but he got in quick with a coat hanger, then with a screwdriver in the ignition. The inside smelled like cigarettes and leather.
We rode down East Fourteenth, which had been International, but shit got so bad all up and down International that they changed the name to something without the history. I rummaged through the glove box and found some Newports. We both thought it was weird for someone we assumed was white to be smoking Newports. Neither one of us smoked cigarettes, but we smoked those, blasted the radio, and didn’t say a single word to each other the whole ride. There was something about that ride though. It was like we could put on someone else’s clothes, live in someone else’s house, drive their car, smoke their smokes—even if just for an hour or two. Once we made it deep enough east we knew we’d be fine. We parked it at the Coliseum BART Station parking lot and walked back to Manny’s house high on having gotten away with it so easily. The system scared you so you thought you had to follow the rules, but we were learning that that shit was fucking flimsy. You could do what you could get away with. That’s where it was at.
* * *
—
I was at Manny’s house when Sylvia called down into the basement to tell me Fina was on the phone. She never called me there. Daniel took the controller from me before I went up.
“He killed them,” Fina said.
I couldn’t even understand what she meant.
“Your uncle Sixto,” she said. “He crashed his car with both of them in it. They’re dead.”
I ran out the front door, got on my bike, and hurried the fuck home. My heart was some crazy mix of fuck-no-fuck-this and like it had slipped out of me. Before I got to Fina’s I thought, Well then Six better be fucking dead too.
Fina was standing in her doorway. I jumped off my bike in one motion and ran inside the house like I was gonna find someone else there. My mom and brother. Sixto. I had to believe it was a joke or any fucking thing other than what Fina’s face was telling me in that doorway that it was.
“Where is he?”
“They took him to jail. Downtown.”
“What the fuck.” My knees gave out on me. I was on the ground, not crying, but like I couldn’t move, and I got real fucking sad for a minute, but then that shit did a one-eighty and I yelled some shit I don’t remember. Fina didn’t do or say anything when I got back on my bike and left. I can’t remember what I did or where I went that night. Sometimes you just go. And you’re gone.
* * *
—
After the funerals I moved in with Fina. She told me Sixto was out. They gave him a DUI. He lost his license. But they let him go.