The Shotgun Rule Read online

  One of the school’s five letterman Mexicans, and altogether different from his brothers, Timo cruised through high school, far and away the number one Mexican citizen. Also, far and away the school’s biggest pot dealer. Stoners were compelled to buy his shit brown ditch weed even when there was an abundance of green buds to be found. The penalty for not purchasing his goods being a visit from one of his older brothers.

  He sported his brothers’ lowrider style: khaki chinos, black leather shoes with white socks, long sleeved plaid shirt buttoned at the collar and wrists but open all the way down the front and left untucked to reveal the white wifebeater underneath, a net over his blow dried jet black hair, and a thin mustache he’d been cultivating since sixth grade. He wore the look, but minus the switchblade in his back pocket or the bag of reefer tucked in his sock or the Newports in his shirtfront. His lackeys carried these for him. He was always clean, ready for a patdown. A fine athlete, he was always welcome at the top jocks’ table. Sleepy eyed and handsome, watched not just by the Mexican girls but by the white chicks as well. Cowgirls, cheerleaders, brains, and jockettes had an eye for him.

  All of this concealing from the faculty what an enormous dick he was.

  Infamous Hacksaw

  Rounding the corner onto Fernando’s block, Andy envisions hurling fistfuls of rocks and broken glass into Timo’s face. Throwing things, always his opening bid in a fight.

  Whenever his brother and the guys throw down on a pack of cowboys or some jocks who have been talking too loud about their ragged jeans and torn Zeppelin Ts, he gets pumped to the gills with adrenalin, spazzes out, and runs ahead of the guys, hurling whatever comes to hand before lowering his head and throwing himself into whatever’s in front of him. And man, when his fist makes first contact, when a rock has actually bounced off some asshole’s forehead, for that split second, it’s the best feeling in the world. Then it all goes wrong. All the bloodlust, wanting to grab hair and yank it off along with bleeding bits of scalp, wanting to bite into the cheek of some dick twice as big as him, it goes sick inside him and his imagination takes over. What would happen if one of those rocks hit someone in the eye? What if he actually did bite through someone’s cheek, snapped the line of their lip? What if a lucky punch or kick shattered a bone and sent it splintering through skin?

  What if he really hurt someone?

  Once that gets in his head he’s done.

  The sad part being, he’s never gonna land a good punch. He hits like a girl.

  Such a dildo.

  And then he gets knocked around and put on the ground and the guys are left to finish things up. And they do. They could give a shit if they hurt the pricks they’re fighting. Jesus Christ, it’s a fight, man, that’s the point.

  The guys don’t really fuck with him about it. After all, he’s up for the fight. And it’s kind of cool when he goes berserker and leads the way screaming gibberish. Fuckfuckkillshitbreakyouyoufuckingfuckingdildobreath!

  Far as they’re concerned, he never lasts because he can’t fight worth shit. How much can you expect from him? He’s a kid.

  So when he rounds the corner, it’s pretty much the same old story. He sees himself throwing shards in Timo’s face, and then sees himself trying helplessly to stop a torrent of blood pumping from a severed artery in the asshole’s neck.

  He sees an entire funeral and grieving family.

  He sees the revenge Timo’s older brothers have taken, not on him but on George.

  His brother lacerated by Ramon’s infamous hacksaw.

  And when he sees Timo just up the street, on his bike, bunny-hopping it on and off the curb with an ease he could never equal, he opens his hands and lets the rocks spill out and walks to the middle of the street.

  – That’s my bike.

  Timo hears him, looks up, and glides over. He stands up on the pedals and swoops around Andy, circling him once, twice. Andy doesn’t move, doesn’t turn his face, just stands.

  – That’s my bike. You stole it.

  Timo gives the pedals a couple pumps, just enough to keep the bike cruising in slow circles.

  – This bike? This is your bike? This shitty bike?

  He circles.

  – Shit, man, you want this shitty bike from me?

  Circles.

  – All you got to do is take it.

  He puckers his lips, makes a kissy noise.

  Andy doesn’t move.

  Timo tightens his circle. Makes the noise again.

  Andy stares up the street.

  Timo circles closer, reaches out, slaps the back of Andy’s head.

  Andy does nothing.

  Timo stops, puts his feet down, straddles the bike right in front of Andy. Waits.

  Andy doesn’t move.

  Timo gets back on the bike, circles him one last time, and rides back up the street.

  – Mujera.

  He laughs and Paul skids around the corner, cutting off the path to his brother’s house.

  Timo turns back and finds George braking to a stop next to Andy. Further down the street, Hector’s blond mohawk.

  Timo rides up onto the sidewalk. George pushes off, chasing him. Paul cuts toward the gutter, popping his front wheel in the air, taking his bike hard over the curb. Timo swerves onto someone’s front lawn and scoots past him.

  Paul skids across the same lawn.

  – Get off the fucking bike!

  George stays in the street, paralleling Timo.

  – Don’t be a dick, Timo, get off my brother’s bike.

  Timo lifts a hand from the grips and flips him off.

  He’s starting to leave Paul behind, but George paces him, searching for a spot where he can put on a little burst, get around one of the cars parked at the curb, and cut his bike in front of Timo’s.

  A car door opens in front of him.

  He hits front and back brakes, skids, releases the front brake, kicks his rear wheel out and edges around the door further into the street as an El Camino comes around the corner, horn blasting.

  Hector has reached Andy and they both watch as George wrenches the bike back into the side of the parked car, bounces off it, and falls into the street as the El Camino drives on.

  Andy starts running, Hector riding ahead of him.

  George lifts his head from the pavement. He can feel the scrapes on the side of his neck. He wants to turn his head to check on his bike, but he can’t take his eyes off of Fernando Arroyo as he climbs out the open door of the parked Impala.

  Paul jumps off his bike and lets it run into the ice plant bordering the driveway at the house next to Fernando’s, leaving Timo to ride up onto his brother’s porch and straight into the house. Running to his best friend, he’s forced to pull up as Ramon emerges from the driver’s side of the Impala.

  Fernando looks down at George, takes a hit off the joint he and his brother have been smoking in the car.

  – You fucking with my little brother, Whelan?

  George is still seeing the primer spotted hood of the El Camino scraping past him. One of Fernando’s shiny black shoes smacks him in the thigh.

  – I say, you fucking with my little brother, puta?

  Standing on the opposite side of the car, Paul sees that Hector was right about Ramon; he’s fucking huge. His sweat stained wifebeater is stretched tight over mounds of jailhouse muscle covered in jailhouse tattoos. He’s come out of the car armed, the hacksaw, his weapon of choice, dangling from loose fingertips.

  Eyes hidden behind wraparound black shades, Ramon waves the rusty bladed saw conversationally.

  Timo comes strolling back out of the house.

  – Fuck ’em up, bro.

  Ramon shakes a finger at him.

  – Settle down, ese. Don’t be getting all bloodthirsty right after running away and shit. Don’t look good.

  He smiles at Paul.

  – So, big Paul Cheney. What’s up, man? You wanna fight?

  Paul blinks, looks from Ramon’s face to the saw.


  – Drop the saw, I’ll fight.

  Ramon looks at the saw, points at it with his free hand.

  – This, ese? I drop it I might bend it or some shit.

  – Fucking drop it, pussy.

  – Pussy?

  He looks over the roof of the car at his brother.

  – Yo, vato. Called me a pussy over here. Thinks he can get away with that shit.

  Fernando kicks George again.

  – This one don’t say shit.

  – What you gonna do to him?

  Fernando hits the joint, flicks the roach away, and gestures at Timo.

  – Stick me up, joven.

  Timo joins his brother, reaches into the car, and brings out a green and gold minibat from an A’s game and gives it to his brother.

  – Here, bro. Bust him up.

  – Gonna bust him. Gonna break his head.

  He raises the bat.

  Ramon nods, looks back at Paul.

  – I’m gonna cut this one, cut his dick off.

  He takes a firmer grip on the saw, slashes it through the air a couple times.

  – Cut that shit off so Timo can bounce his futbol off it whenever he wants.

  Timo giggles.

  – Cool.

  Paul goes for Ramon’s face.

  Two handfuls of rocks pepper the back end of the Impala, pocking and scratching the flawless gold flecked deep burgundy paint job.

  Tableau.

  George on his back in the street. Fernando over him, bat raised to smash into his face. Timo behind him, leaning in to get a better view. Paul ready to seize Ramon’s throat. Ramon ready to scythe Paul’s fingers off.

  All of them, their heads turned, looking at Andy, fifteen feet behind the car, hyperventilating, Hector next to him.

  Fernando tilts his head back and screams at the sky.

  – My car!

  Tableau broken.

  Hector flings the eighteen inches of bike chain he’s held bundled in his hand. It smashes into the rear window of the Impala, wedging itself in its own hole.

  – Fuck your shitty car!

  It is as if Fernando never left the game of football, it is as if a ball has just been fumbled into the midst of the scene and everyone else on the field is scattering from it as he charges to scoop it up.

  He barrels at Hector, whirling the minibat above his head, Timo dodging out of the way.

  Hector spins himself about and begins to pedal away. George scrambles to his feet. Paul yanks his bike free of the ice plant, Ramon ignoring him and starting to climb back inside the Impala. He makes it halfway inside before Fernando returns and raps him across the back of the neck with the minibat and shoves him across the seat, climbing in behind the wheel, Timo diving into the back.

  George and Paul are both on their bikes, riding in the opposite direction from Hector.

  Fernando hits the hydraulics, boosting the Impala high on its shocks, screeching away from the curb in a tight circle that takes him after the rapidly disappearing Hector, and reveals Andy, where he has been hunched at the rear of the Chevy, now utterly exposed, but with no one left to see him.

  He stands there.

  Across the street, three small girls are frozen in the midst of a hopscotch they’ve chalked on the sidewalk. Andy waves at them and they run shrieking into their house.

  Rocks and broken glass outline the space the rear half of the Impala occupied at the curb. His eye catches on some flecks of blood; his brother’s. In the middle of the street is the hammer that slipped from George’s pocket when he went down. Andy bends, picks it up, looks both ways along the street, walks over the sidewalk across the dead lawn and onto the Arroyos’ front porch.

  George and Paul ride around the corner.

  George’s handlebars were twisted to the side in the crash and he has to ride with them at an angle. They both pedal onto the lawn.

  Paul picks some ice plant from his front spokes.

  – What are you doing, dipshit?

  Andy points the hammer at the open door.

  – Gonna get my bike.

  George and Paul look at each other. The left side of George’s neck is badly scraped, a trickle of blood runs to the hollow of his throat and stains the collar of his Double Live Gonzo! T.

  He nods.

  – Fuck yeah, let’s get it.

  They hop off their bikes and wheel them onto the porch.

  Andy offers the hammer to George.

  – Hector OK?

  George takes the hammer.

  – They’ll never catch him.

  – They’re in a car.

  Paul shakes his head.

  – Don’t matter. He’ll hit the fields by the railroad tracks before they can catch up.

  Hector rides up the driveway.

  – Hey.

  He stops, kicks one of the empty beer cans littering the front walk.

  – What’s up?

  George points at Andy.

  – Getting his bike.

  Hector joins them on the porch.

  – Cool.

  Andy squints.

  – What happened?

  – They chased me to the fields by the tracks and had to park and come after me on foot and I lost them in the weeds.

  – Cool.

  – Yeah.

  They all stand there on the Arroyos’ porch.

  George touches the blood on his neck.

  – Let’s get the fuckin’ bike before they come back.

  They go in, Paul, George, and Hector wheeling their bikes with them.

  From Fighting With Chain

  Their eyes adjust to the darkness inside the house.

  Paul leans his bike against the wall.

  – Fucking A.

  The livingroom is littered with the mutilated carcasses of several dozen bikes.

  Hector picks up the gear assembly from a ten speed.

  – It’s a fucking chop shop.

  Paul kicks a milk crate full of pedals.

  – Bike thieves suck.

  Andy bends and lifts his own bike from where Timo dumped it on the floor.

  – That’s a movie.

  They all look at him.

  Paul starts picking through the pedals.

  – What the fuck are you talking about?

  – The Bicycle Thief. It’s a movie we watched in Humanities.

  He’s inspecting his bike, searching for outward signs that Timo has ridden it. Marks he’ll have to avoid looking at for fear that they’ll remind him of what a dildo he was, not locking up his bike.

  George lifts the edge of a blue plastic tarp to look at whatever is tented beneath.

  – They show movies in Humanities? Fuck, why didn’t we take that class?

  Paul chucks a rusty pedal at Andy’s foot.

  – Because we’re not super mutant brains like your mutant brother.

  Andy ignores the pedal, clutching both the brake levers on his handlebars, making sure the action has stayed springy in the two hours the bike was gone.

  – It’s not that brainy of a class. Just reading and talking and stuff. Writing a few papers.

  George shakes his head.

  – And watching movies. Only movie we ever got to see was the car crash movies in Driver’s Ed.

  Hector is squatting next to a snaked pile of chains. He finds a broken one and unclasps the master link, leaving himself with two lengths, neither the perfect eighteen inches he prefers.

  He chooses the shorter of the two and drops the other.

  – It is a good movie?

  George stares at him.

  – It’s a bunch of people who got creamed on the highway.

  – No, the movie Andy’s talking about, the bicycle thing.

  Andy remembers the movie, the way it made him feel.

  – Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s sad, depressing. But it’s a good story. Black and white. It’s in Italian. You have to read the subtitles.

  Paul has picked out two matching chrome pedals. He drops them
back in the crate.

  – Black and white movies give me a migraine.

  Hector whips his piece of chain back and forth a couple times. It’s a little rusty. He wraps it around his hand, over the scratches and thin white scars on the backs of his fingers that come from fighting with chain. He flexes his encased fist.

  He walks over to Paul.

  – Everything gives you headaches.

  – Fuck you, they’re not headaches, they’re migraines.

  Hector punches the wall, cracking the plaster and leaving a series of deep parallel tracks.

  – Whatever, your head’s always hurtin’ and you’re always whinin’ about it.

  – You ever had one you’d know the fuckin’ diff.

  He turns and jabs Hector’s forehead with the tip of his index finger.

  – And I don’t whine, fag.

  Hector slaps the finger away and takes a boxing stance.

  – Whiner.

  Paul slaps at his head.

  – Fuck you, puss.

  They spar for a minute, Hector jabbing, Paul letting him hit his shoulders and chest and reaching out to deliver open hand slaps to the side of Hector’s head.

  Hector goes up on his tiptoes.

  – Oh meee, I got a miiigrane. It hurts sooo bad.

  – Fuck you, mama’s boy.

  – Hey.

  They look as George whips the tarp away and reveals the final product of the Arroyos’ chop shop.

  Resting on top of several flattened cardboard boxes are two custom BMXers built around Mongoose frames. The bikes are flipped upside down, balanced on their handlebars and seats, the brake cables unattached but the other hardware in place.

  Hector squats next to the electric blue one and runs a finger over the graffiti lettering that runs down the crotchbar.

  – Oh, man, this is trick.

  Andy looks over his shoulder.

  – What’s it say?

  – Chupacabre. It’s like a Mexican demon.

  Paul picks up a box cutter from the floor and slips the blade in and out.

  – Fuckin’ bike thieves still suck no matter how good they put shit back together.

  George takes a look at the yellow bike with the chopped forks.