Jesus Out to Sea

“Why’d you go off with Frank?”

“I’m gonna be in the Gloves. Frank is Frank. What’s the big deal? Give it a time-out, will you?” he replied.

Angel Morales’s father was a janitor at the Catholic elementary I had attended. Angel used to ride to work with his father on the bus, his lunch folded inside a paper bag that seemed to always have a grease stain on it. His hair was jet-black, except for a white patch in it that had been caused by malnutrition. He never joined in our games at recess, never spoke in class unless called upon, and never let racial remarks made behind his back register in his face. In seventh grade, Angel and three other Mexican boys robbed a grocery store and shot the owner. Angel spent the next year three years in the Texas State Reformatory.

When he came out, he wore a pachuco cross tattooed on the back of each thumb and a purple heart inside his right forearm. Some said the purple heart was to hide the needle tracks from the dope he shot in his veins. But anyone who’d ever put on the gloves with Angel knew he wa

s no junkie. His right cross split lips; his left jab could drive an unprotected eye into the skull. He wasn’t a bad kid; he just didn’t take prisoners.

On Saturday afternoon I paid for Mary Jo Scarlotti’s ticket at the Alabama Theater. In the darkness I placed my hand on top of her left wrist. Her gaze was fastened on the screen and she showed no indication whether she approved or disapproved of my holding her hand. Then I saw her eyes follow a silhouette crossing the space between the screen and front row of seats, a silhouette that was eating popcorn, the shoulders bent in a question-mark posture, the way hoods walked on the north side of town. She took her hand from under mine and turned her head slightly so she could watch the figure walk up the aisle.

“That’s Angel Morales,” I said.

“A Mexican has the right to go to the movies, too,” she said.

“I didn’t say he didn’t,” I replied.

“I’m gonna get some popcorn. You got fifteen cents?” she said.

Her rump brushed in my face as she worked her way out to the aisle.

Early Sunday morning I was throwing my paper route up on Waugh Drive when I saw Angel Morales in a jalopy full of Mexican teenagers. They pulled in to a closed filling station on the corner and went to work on the cold-drink machine, slipping the iron dispenser lock with a coat hanger so they could slide the soda bottles out one at a time without paying. The street was totally deserted, the softness of the morning tinged with the smell of garbage in the alleyways.

Angel lit a cigarette on the corner, blew smoke at an upward angle, and gestured for me to stop my bike. He wore a short-sleeve maroon shirt unbuttoned on his chest, the collar turned up on his neck, and pointed black shoes we used to call “stomps,” his hair cut short, faintly iridescent with oil.

“Want a soda?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Your buddy Nick is telling people he’s gonna rip my ass.”

“Maybe he might do it,” I replied, and instantly regretted my words.

But Angel only grinned and looked away from me. Then his eyes came back on mine, his mouth still grinning. “You’re stand-up, Charlie. Sure you don’t want a soda?” he said.

“No.”

“Tell Nick I’m sorry I got to hurt him. But that’s the way it is. That was you with Mary Jo Scarlotti at the show yesterday?”

“Maybe.”

“I hear she’s hot to trot.”

“Screw you, Angel.”

“Don’t push your luck,” he said.

Nick’s father was a dutiful religious man and firm disciplinarian from a family of boxers in Mobile. He had given Nick a set of sixteen-ounce Everlast gloves when Nick was only ten, but he worked a six-day week at a laundry service to make an austere livelihood for his wife and three children, and he was often too tired to spend a great deal of time with Nick. So our park director, Terry Anne, became Nick’s coach and I was the cut man, even though I could not forget the fact Nick had gone off with Frank one day and perhaps had made a deal with the devil.

When the afternoon began to cool and shadows grew across the baseball diamond, Terry Anne unfolded a metal chair among the weight sets and instructed Nick while he smacked the heavy bag, rattling it on its chain, sweat flicking off his hair against the leather.

“No, no, no, close it up, chin tucked in, head down,” she said, rising from her chair, holding the bag steady. “If he gets you in a clench, he’ll head-butt you and thumb you in the eye. When you’re under his guard, you whack him just below the heart. Then you whack him again. You hook him so hard you make him spit blood on you.”

“How did you learn all this, Terry Anne?” I said.

“You know who Lefty Felix Baker is?” she asked.

“The best boxer in Houston,” I said.