Ditch Rider Read Free

somebody and he got offed for it. It was a power play. The guy that shot him was showing his colors, making his name come out. That’s what really happened.”
    â€œWhich gang?” I asked.
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” Patricia flipped her hair over her shoulder. “They’re all the same. No matter what color they carry, they all bleed red.”
    â€œIt could make a difference to the APD.”
    â€œAnybody who killed Juan will be dead before they get him,” Patricia said.
    She had a point. Gang justice was swifter and more effective than the APD’s.
    â€œIt didn’t happen the way you said,” Patricia told Cheyanne. “Those guys were nothing like brothers.”
    â€œMaybe they were alike on the inside. Everybody wants the same things, right?”
    â€œOr they want somebody else’s things.”
    â€œI guess,” Cheyanne said in a small voice.
    â€œAre you thirteen, too?” I asked the world-weary Patricia.
    â€œFifteen in December,” she said. “I’m in high school, but Cheyanne and me, we’ve been friends for a long time from when she used to live on my street.” They were close in chronological age, but Cheyanne had a few months of childhood left and Patricia appeared to have none, the effect, maybe, of high school. Patricia started as if she’d been stung by a bee, then she pulled a beeper out of her pocket. “It’s my mom. We have to use the ones that vibrate now,” she explained, “because of school. They take them away if they beep and you don’t get them back till school’s out.”
    I was standing close enough to see the numbers that had come up on the beeper, 303. “How do you know it’s your mom?” I asked.
    â€œIf you turn the three over it looks like an M, see? MOM.”
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    Patricia punched Cheyanne in the shoulder. “Gotta go, girl.”
    â€œNice to meet you,” Cheyanne said to the Kid.
    â€œMucho gusto,” he replied.
    â€œEl gusto es mio,” said Patricia, looking up at the Kid with lazy eyes.
    ******
    The minute the girls were across the courtyard and out the door he said, “Estas vatas estan corriendo sin aceite.” Those girls are running without oil.
    â€œAn accident waiting to happen,” I replied. “What do you think they wanted?”
    â€œTo tell me about Juan Padilla.”
    â€œWhy you?” Because he was the only man available that day in the hood?
    â€œThe little one is scared. The big one? I don’t know.”
    â€œThere’s no little one and big one. Those girls are the same size.”
    â€œThe one with the dark hair is bigger, no?”
    â€œOlder, not bigger. She was flirting with you. Did you notice?”
    If he had, he wouldn’t admit it. “She’s a little girl,” he said, “she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He turned and walked toward the back of the house where his truck baked in the sun.
    I let him go, went out to the courtyard and sat down on the banco. The wall vibrated as a stereo on wheels pounded by. A lullaby tinkled when the ice-cream truck showed up. Pigeons perching on the electric line fluttered and cooed.
    ******
    In the morning the Kid and I followed the Chapuzar Lateral to Casa de Benavidez Restaurant. The neighborhood I live in is crisscrossed with laterals, wasteways, ditches, canals, acequias and drains. They are the arteries and veins that carry Rio Grande water through a valley that has been irrigated for 900 years at least. There are roads beside the ditches that are supposed to be used for maintenance. They are not a legal access, but that doesn’t stop anyone from using them. Albuquerque has a lawless past it never wants to forget. In some places there are no roads beside the ditches—only footpaths. You can ride or walk all over the valley on the paths.
    The Chapuzar Lateral is a major north-south