The Tattooed Soldier Read Free

Antonio said suddenly, dropping his end of the Hefty bag. He felt disoriented, as if someone had spun him around in circles. He wanted to scream at José Juan, at the people on the sidewalk who would not look at him. There was a word the Americanos used when they were angry, a word Antonio liked because it sounded so harsh and mean and ugly.
    â€œFucking bag,” he said in English. “Fuck it.”
    José Juan let out a sigh and looked up at the sky. The sun was low, but his face was covered in sweat. The freeway was within sight now, an overpass just down the hill, only two blocks away. Without a word, Antonio picked up his end of the bag, and they began walking again.
    They reached the freeway and stood underneath it, dwarfed by the immensity of the structure. This overpass was higher than most, an underbelly of concrete covered with a fine network of leafless ivy branches that spread out like capillaries across the gray surface. Water oozed like blood from the cement, and the damp air around them smelled of feces and urine. Antonio could hear trucks passing overhead with hurried rattling sounds, hydrocarbon winds rushing by in their wake.
    â€œNow what do we do?” José Juan asked.
    Antonio decided that they should walk a little farther, to the spot where a series of overlapping concrete spans vaulted and curved in the air, the interchange of the Harbor, Hollywood, and Pasadena freeways: inside the shadows cast by all these overpasses and underpasses, on-ramps and off-ramps, there had to be, surely, a place to sleep.
    They threw the bag over a cyclone fence and then jumped over themselves, following a trash-strewn path that cut through a slope of ivy landscaping. They walked a few hundred feet to a two-lane transition road where cars passed under a bridge and into a tunnel, the sound of their engines echoing into a fluttering roar. Across this narrow road, hidden in the concrete hollows at the center of the interchange, Antonio could see the makeshift shelters of human beings.
    â€œ Ya llegamos ,” he said. “We’re here.”
    To reach the shelters they would have to cross the transition road, which was filled with rush-hour traffic, two lanes of cars snaking past them at about twenty miles an hour. Inside the cars, everyone seemed to be wearing sunglasses. Antonio stood and waited for a break in the stream of sedans, RVs, trucks, buses. Fifteen minutes later he shouted, “Now!” and they ran across the tarmac, dragging the Hefty bag and its hotplate cargo behind them, a blue sports car speeding by on their heels.
    Antonio bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, and began laughing as he hadn’t laughed for days and days. José Juan smiled broadly. The absurdity of their situation was sinking in. Antonio felt silly, scampering across the freeway with this impossibly heavy plastic bag, like some Mexican comedy act, Cantinflas or Tin Tan.
    They examined their surroundings. Now that they had stepped into the shadows, Antonio could see the shelters more clearly. He made out a sofa, a director’s chair with the back missing, several mattresses tossed about. Maybe twenty or thirty people lived here. At the moment, however, the lone resident was a black man with a long beard who was sitting on a blanket on the dusty ground. He stood up and walked toward them.
    â€œYou must be visiting, right?” He examined the plastic bag at Antonio’s feet and shook his head. “Because I know one thing. You sure as hell ain’t staying. This spot right here is taken, it’s our spot. There ain’t no more room here. And we don’t need any neighbors. Comprende? ”
    Antonio looked at José Juan. Silently they picked up the Hefty bag and turned around. They were outsiders here, and there was no use arguing with the man. A fresh wave of defeat now, a sense of pointlessness as they ran back across the lanes of traffic and followed the path through