Homestretch Read Free Page A

he’d smash their heads to squash. “We’re close enough! Find your own way from here! Out! Out!”
    He didn’t need to speak any Spanish because that baseball bat was doing all the talking.
    I pressed my back up against the cages as they filed past me, jumping off the truck.
    â€œYou too! You’re no better than
them
!” the driver yelled at me.
    Hearing that was nearly the same as getting smacked in the mouth with that bat.
    I wanted to tell that driver how I was just like
him
and should have been riding up front in the cab all along. I wanted to beg him to leave me off anywhere else in the world except next to those beaners.
    But he was as angry as Dad at his worst, without even drinking. And I didn’t want to risk hearing what else he might say.
    He drove off, leaving us stranded on the corner of Lost and Nowhere, sandwiched between the highway overpass, a fenced-off soccer field, and a little park with picnic tables at the very beginning of some neighborhood of identical single-family houses.
    Those stupid beaners stood there arguing with one another.
    The spit was flying everywhere, until the one who’d been drinking raised his middle finger to the rest of them and
me
.
    â€œPutos grandes!”
he sneered, bringing his hands apart wide.
    Then he left. I watched him stagger away, crisscrossing the solid yellow lines in the street back toward the overpass.
    Right then I couldn’t have cared less if some sheriff’s deputy came speeding from the opposite direction with his lights flashing and siren blasting, flattening his ass into Mexican roadkill.
    The sun was blazing hot, so I headed for a tree and some shade inside that park.
    Nacho and his brothers were busy at a corner pay phone, before they came over to where I was.
    â€œChange,
por favor
?” Anibal asked, with the others nudging him forward. “Please,
señor
. Change?”
    Those beaners didn’t even have a dollar bill to trade. They were looking for a handout, and that pissed me off beyond belief.
    I dug deep into my front pocket, then flung a fistful of dimes and nickels at them.
    â€œHere, fuckos!” I shouted. “Like I’m not broke enough for you!”
    Then I watched them pick through the grass and dirt for every last one. And everything Dad had ever said about them taking
our
jobs and
our
money echoed inside my head.
    I was trying to make a plan for myself when Nacho came running back, with his brothers still on the phone.
    â€œ
Dónde?
Where is—here?” he asked, out of breath.
    That’s when it hit me for real that
I
had no idea where I was.
    So I just stared at him cold and blank, without even blinking.
    Rafael went up to a car at a red light and must have got the answer, because he sprinted back to Anibal, who was holding the phone, telling him something.
    For the next three or four hours I sat underneath that tree drawing in the dirt with a stick, wondering if Dad knew I was gone yet, or if he even cared. Nacho and his brothers spent most of that time staring down the service road, like some magic carpet for beaners was about to come sailing through.
    Only, I was wishing it would be the dogcatcher instead.
    The cars that drove past mostly had Lone Star State license plates. But I was seeing more and more cars with Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana tags too. So I figured I was close to the northeastern tip of Texas, where all those states practically met. But it bothered me bad that those beaners probably knew exactly where we were and I didn’t.
    I wasn’t about to ask
them
or anybody else.
    It was closing in on dinnertime and I was still stranded in that park, twenty yards from Nacho and his brothers, like there was an invisible string tied between us.
    My stomach was grumbling, so I broke down and bought myself an ice cream sundae and a soda off a white truck with jingling bells. That left me with just three lousy bucks to my name. But I enjoyed every bit