“What?” Edward fumed.
“I know.”
The dreadful pause reappeared. It was a silence between a father and son and all the air was leaking out. A lifetime of love was damaged, maybe beyond repair.
“And once mom dies?”
“When your mother died I knew what I did or rather what I didn’t do. I drank more—and more. I went to Sue’s every night—drank all night. Could barely get to work. Wasn’t effective in work during the financial crisis. Drank more. Sue finally ended it six months ago.”
There was no air left in the room. Neither man could breathe.
“I’m sorry, Eddie.”
The young Wheelwright got up, looked at his father still seated, and left the room. He did not see Valerie McGuire again. He could not face her, did not return her calls, and when she came to his door, he did not answer.
PART 2
Chapter 16
Recife, Brazil, is that point in South America that juts furthest east into the Atlantic Ocean. If Pangaea, the original supercontinent of earth, were put back together, Recife would tuck nicely into the African country of Cameroon.
In the sky above the city of Recife, on a day when the sun is not baking the red clay roofs, it is filled with clouds. The clouds come in columns, like they were puffed out of a great chimney. Straight as arrow columns, then rows of them. But not too far inland, mainly along the coast, they float along, like a quiet army.
The boy sits on the sand of BoaViagem beach looking at the clouds, thinking about them. He is the only figure on the beach on this cloudy day. The boy is sitting there in tan shorts with no other clothes. It is not that he is going swimming; these shorts are all the clothes he has. He sits with his arms wrapped around his knees.
A dog has been swimming, and now, emerging from the surf, notices the boy. He shakes the water off of his long, short body. It is sort of like a chain reaction; the water flies off in small beads, beginning at his head and progressing all the way down his body.
Chunk smiles as he sees the dog looking at him. The dog notices the smile and comes slowly to the boy and sits beside him. The two sit on the beach, not communicating, just each with their own thoughts beside each other.
After some time the dog gets up and walks off. He stops once and looks back at the boy. Then the dog turns and goes further down the beach before heading to one of the seaside carne-de-sol stands that specializes in sun-dried beef. Usually the dog can count on the owner for a scrap.
The following day the boy Chunk is walking across the Santo Antonio Bridge, which crosses over the Juquia River as it flows to the sea. The river is a filthy brown cesspool carrying all the elements of city trash: papers, boxes, plastics, rubber, fruit, vegetables, and occasional dead birds. Pieces of clothing float lazily on top, next to tree branches.
At this moment late in the afternoon, four brown mulatto boys, clad only in the same type shorts as the boy, are running on the far side of the bridge, their shoe leather like feet scurrying across the hot cement. They have hold of the same dog that sat beside Chunk yesterday. They lift the dog up and toss him in the river. Then the four boys climb the cement rail and one by one dive into the ooze after the dog. All five swim to shore and climb back up to the street to once again to escape the steaming humidity by launching themselves into the river.
As the boys grab for the dog, he barks, then snaps at them, trying to escape their grasp but longing to be with them. As the four mulattos get their hands on him by grasping one leg each, Chunk approaches them. He is smaller than the other four, but about their age, somewhere in the early teens.
“Hola,” he calls. “Put the dog down.”
The tallest of the four boys looks over his shoulder and laughs, “OK boys, let’s put him down—in the water.” And they proceed to toss the mangy cur into the slime.
The new arrival runs to the rail and watches as the dog struggles to get to shore.
The older boy approaches Chunk and tells the others, “Now let’s throw this nosy dog in.”
As they all laugh and start to move in on Chunk, he promptly flattens the older boy with a punch squarely on the nose. With lightning speed and a face now twisted into a battle glaze, looking more bulldog than human, he rapidly punches and kicks one, then another, till all four boys are down on the cement bridge at once.
He does not say a word; he turns his head and walks away. The four boys, not sure what hit them, all get up and watch as Chunk heads toward the beach. The dog now back up on the bridge, looks at the four boys, and then looks at Chunk. After weighing his options, he follows Chunk.
Chunk walks to and then along the beach that has many bathers in the water this day. He finds a place to sit. Walking along the beach about fifty yards behind him is the dog. And about another fifty yards behind the dog are the four boys.
Chunk DeLuna is fourteen the day he meets his new friends. He has been in Brazil for nine months. His father, who took him with him from Puerto Rico, abandoned him after six months, and for the past three months, Chuck has been living along the beach, sleeping on the beach, or when rousted by the police moving under the piers in the harbor. But now he is no longer alone. He has a dog; he has a group of four new friends.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” asks the older boy, the first to be punched and the first to go down.
“My father taught me,” Chunk tells him.
The littlest one, the boy named Rafael, with a dirty patch over his right eye says, “I never saw that punch coming.”
The twins, Pedro and Paco, begin laughing, “That’s because you’re blind.”
“Don’t make fun of him,” Chunk says. “What happened to your eye?”
“I don’t know; it got infected or something. I can’t see out of it any more. When I put this patch over, it doesn’t hurt as much.” Raphael says.
“Can I see it?” Chunk asks.
“Sure,” and he lifts the patch up. Chunk winces. It is a mess of infection and oozing puss, red and blue and purplish.
“You need to get to a hospital.”
“I’ve been. They clean it up for me, give me some medicine to wipe on it,” Raphael said.
“They’ve got to do more than that,” Chunk says firmly. “I’ll go there tomorrow with you.” Chunk suddenly feels better than he has in the three months since his father left him.
The older boy Carlos asks Chunk,” You talk a little different from us; where are you from?”
“Puerto Rico,” he says.
“Where’s that?” one of the twins asks.
“It’s an island in the Caribbean Sea,” Chunk replies.
After a brief geography lesson, Carlos asks him his name.
“Chunk.”
“Chunk? That’s different. What’s it mean.”
“Nothing, it doesn’t mean anything,” Chunk says, realizing he has no idea why his name is Chunk. He knows his given name is Juan DeLuna, but he never thought to ask where Chunk had come from.
The boys tell Chunk their names. They too are homeless, living in the basements of the public housing buildings inland from the beach.
“I used to live down here at the beach, but the police kept hassling me,” Carlos tells Chunk.
“Yeah, they do that to me too, but I just move along down by the piers. Mostly it’s OK sleeping along here,” Chunk replies, adding, “Tonight you boys stay in my house.”
The boys smile, knowing they have a new leader. Carlos has been deposed with one punch, but he does not seem to mind.
They talk the rest of the afternoon, and as the sun goes down, they move towards the street to hustle some food from the beachside vendors. The dog tags along.
“Whose dog is this?” Chunk asks.
“No one’s, he just comes around,” the twin named Pedro says.
hair falling out of the dog and notices the mange infestation on his skin.
When they pass by a stand cooking churrasco, Chunk sees a large drum of kerosene off to the side of the stand. He quickly grabs the dog by the scruff of his neck, lifts him up and dunks him just short of his mouth in the drum. The dog howls, a screeching agony, as the open sores are filled with the oil.
“What in hell are you doing,” the man cooking in the stand says as he opens a side door to witness the dousing.
“Dog’s got the mange,” Chunk says.
“Yeah, that will kill the fleas alright and the dog too. What are you kids thinking of. Get the hell out of here,” he says dismissively but not angrily.
Chunk puts the dog down, and he runs off, barking at anyone who comes near him. When the boys last see him, he is running towards the water.
“Well, there goes one member of our gang,” the twin Paco says.
“Nah,” says Chunk, “he’ll be back, and he’ll thank us for it.”
“You’re crazy,” Carlos tells Chunk admirably.
“Crazy like a garota,” Chunk replies.
“Like a girl?” Pedro smiles.
“Yes, they’re very clever,” Chunk replies.
Later in the evening as the five boys walk along the beach, they talk of their dreams for their gang. As a couple passes by them, suddenly, Carlos and Raphael hit the man to the ground and begin to pummel him.
“Give me your money,” Carlos screams at him as the man’s girl-friend looks on horrified.
As the man reaches in his pocket from the prone position, Chunk grabs Carlos’ arm and pushes him aside. “No, this is not the way.”
Chunk leans down to help the man up, “I am sorry. My friend has lost his mind. Please forgive us.” He brushes the sand off the back of the man’s pants and gently urges him on his way. The terrified couple’s pace picks up as they headed up off the beach.
Chunk slaps Carlos hard on the head, and Carlos put up his hands as if to box. Chunk promptly punches him hard in the stomach with his right hand and as he bends forward, hits him in the head with his left hand. Carlos falls to the sand; with a hand outstretched, he pleads with his attacker, “Please, boss, do not hit me again.”
Chunk bends down to help Carlos up. The other three gang members hold their ground, not sure what is going on.
“Carlos, my friend, if I am to be your leader, you cannot go attacking people when I am not aware. We do things by planning them. We do not act like retarded people, just jumping on anyone passing by.”
“I’m sorry, Chunk,” Carlos says remorsefully.
Still later in the evening they discuss holding up a beach concession stand that will be far more profitable. Once the plan is worked out, they decide to try it out on a coco-frio stand. The person working the stand would be up front with the machete and coconuts. The twins Paco and Pedro would approach the stand from the front, appearing to buy a coco-frio. Raphael would keep an eye out, one eye. Carlos and Chunk, the two strongest, would come up from behind the stand and grab the vendor, forcing him to the ground and taking the machete. Then they would take money from his pants and from under the counter. They would take the machete, and all five would flee into the darkness of the beach.
The plan works perfectly, and as they are all running for the beach, with Chunk bringing up the rear, an arm goes around Chunk’s neck. It is a police officer who has witnessed the end of the robbery and waited beside a small outbuilding to grab at least one of the robbers. He has Chunk in a choke hold as he calls for help from a partner across the beach boulevard. Just as the other partner is crossing the street and the officer with the choke hold on Chunk is pulling him out towards the street, the officer screams in pain and reaches for his leg. In that second Chunk breaks free and heads toward the dark of the beach, noticing that a small dog has clamped his teeth onto the officer’s calf.
“My little dog,” Chunk calls out. And with the officer now on the ground, the dog releases him and run off after Chunk.
The five boys and the dog run in the black night toward the piers. There will be no catching them now.
Under the pier they are all patting the hero of the night—the long short dog with the mange, or less of it now.
“We must have a name for a dog like you,” Carlos says
“We’ll call him Shorty, Cortito,” Chunk says naming his dog, “Come here Cortito,” now looking at the animal, who moved next to him.
“And we’ll call our gang, Rei de Praia, Beach Kings,” Chunk raises his hands up and begins a small dance, and the other boys follow, dancing merrily not in their poverty, but in their newfound wealth: the fraternity of the gang. And Cortito wags his tail and barks with his gang.
The following day the five boys, dressed only in their shorts, and one short dog, enter the San Francisco hospital. They go to the emergencia entrance and are told to wait along with the huddled mass of poor seeking help.
After two hours pass and no one calls Raphael’s name, Chunk rises to get some attention. “No, Chunk, we must wait our turn,” Raphael tells him.
“You sit down, Raphael; I’ll be right back,” Chunk says as he walks through the doors where other patients have advanced for treatment.
After several minutes Chunk emerges with a doctor standing beside him. He waves Raphael forward and then puts his hand up indicating that the others should wait there.
Chunk accompanies Raphael and the doctor to the triage area as the doctor pulls the curtain behind them. He examines Raphael, calls for a nurse, and tells her several things. She brings a few instruments and places them on a metal table beside the doctor. The doctor takes a magnifying glass and a long, thin metal instrument and has Raphael lay back. He turns on a bright overhead light and proceeds to look in Raphael’s injured eye.
After a couple of minutes of probing, he steps back and turns the light off and says to Chunk, “Raphael has a very serious infection under his eye. We need to do a small procedure, get what is in there out, put some antibiotics in, and clean it up. We can do this later this afternoon.”
“Good, we’ll wait outside.” Chunk says.
“No, I need you to leave. Your friend needs to spend the night in the hospital to make sure the infection is reducing. You can come back tomorrow,” the doctor concludes.
“I will come back for him tomorrow at noon time.” Chunk says. He walks over to the table, puts his arm around Raphael who was now sitting up, and says, “You’ll be fine. This is a good doctor. He will make your eye better. Do everything he says and do not be afraid.”
“Yes, Chunk. Thank you,” a grateful Raphael says.
The doctor says, “Raphael, you stay here, and I’ll get you ready in a little while.” And the doctor leaves.
As the boys rise to leave, Raphael asks, “What did you say to the doctor, Chunk? They have never taken this much time to find out what was wrong with my eye before.”
Chunk reaches into the canvas bag he is carrying and shows Raphael the machete they had stolen from the coco-frio stand the night before. “I told him you were very sick, that you had come here many times and no one had resolved your injury. I said I was here to make sure that this was fixed today. I took the machete out and showed it to him, and I said, “I will cut off the hand of the doctor who refuses to help my friend get better.”
That night as the boys prepared to sleep, Carlos asked Chunk to tell them about Puerto Rico, and Chunk began, “It’s a beautiful island, but I have no one left there now but my sister, Silvana.”
“That’s a pretty name, Chunk,” Paco said. “Is she beautiful in all the right places?” he finished with a wry smile.
Chunk reached across Pablo and wacked Paco in the head. “She’s a nice girl; she’s not like the pigs you go after.”
Chapter 17
“I thought I would go mad last night. It was so hot; there was no breeze. I was having trouble sleeping. But it wa
sn’t the heat of the day driving me crazy. It must have been just after midnight—a dog started barking. He was up in the hills somewhere. He kept barking and then another dog joined him in the noise. Then off in the distance other dogs woke up and started barking. Many of them all at once. They made so much noise they woke the roosters, and they started cock–a-doodle, doodling. I thought I would go mad—it was so hot and there was so much noise so late at night. I needed to sleep; I have so much work to do today.”
Silvana DeLuna finished the entry in her diary and got out of bed, placing the diary and pen on the small night stand next to her bed.
In the barrio of San Diego, part of the mountain town of San Blas de Illescas de Coamo, Puerto Rico, she has a three-room home. It is made up of a bedroom, a bathroom, and a pantry and two rooms connected that make up work space and kitchen, although more work space than kitchen. The house sits in the Y of two streets becoming one—Avenue Rio de Janeiro and State Road 744, with 744 the surviving road. The doors on either side of the house are always open during the day, so that it gives you a view through the house from either road. The main door opens onto Avenue Rio, and Silvana can be seen ironing from sunrise to sunset. She does the laundry of many citizens of the barrio—their underwear, shirts, blouses, pants, and skirts. It all comes through to her.
On their way to work, the citizens of the barrio stop and drop their clothes off and pick them up on their way home at night. The washer woman of San Blas labors over these garments with two air fans, one at each door. She is a stunning woman, with no fat, only beautiful round curves. Her skin is olive, her shoulder length hair black as coal, and her smile is the smile of your first love. But she smiles little now.