9 - Kiko
Who is Kiko? 1984
Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.
Last week: 8- Spooked Someone is out there, 1985
Part 1 | History is an Angel
9 - Kiko
Kiko Gonzalez
June 2, 1984
Los Angeles, California
“Mira, the sun is up,” Kiko mumbled to himself. “You gotta move, Kiko.”
A thin veil of silver dew stretched over the grass, dappled by footprints that radiated to and from the soccer field. The sky was already bright behind its light blanket. Kiko’s rattle lay on the ground next to his limp hand, which he shook awake. Children were laughing in the distance. Birds were squeaking like playground swings. Or were they playground swings squeaking?
Someone said, “Stay away from there.” They pointed at him.
Stay away from him. “No. No. I am a superman,” he said to himself. No. Not anymore, Kiko, not a superman. Soy una fantasma. Boo!
Before the draft, there were shining faces and open arms running to him, shouting, “Tio Kiko! Tio Kiko!” But when he returned from ‘Nam, Pops had already flown off to live with the angels, and his nephews and nieces had grown up too much. They forgot ol’ Kiko was a superman. But so did Kiko. There was nothing solid to tie himself to. He stayed rolled in the bubble wrap of chemicals that kept him safe. His sisters sold Pops’ mechanic shop without Kiko there to turn the wrenches and keep it running.
When that last sheet of bubbles popped, it rang in Kiko’s ears like a distant M-16, piercing him through—he died a second time. He left his old body in a soaking wet cardboard box at the bottom of a ravine. The new Kiko climbed an endless hill of slippery iceplant to rise at last to a triumphant chorus of flapping pigeons. This Kiko would return to life or die trying.
Navigating by the scent of las carnicerías, past Salazar Park, he found Anita’s door. His oldest hermana never let him cheat by offering easy smiles. Instead, she offered her sofa, pero only if he promised to go to all the NA meetings at the church. Kiko could not bear the sofa, he stayed on the patio lounge. A veces. Sometimes. But he went to the church. Every meeting. The walls made him loco, made him sweat and shake, his body ache, but he made himself go. This Kiko wanted to live.
He met John at the first meeting. John was a genius, a famous painter de colores vivos, and a fellow veteran and addict. He became a lifeline. Kiko was sitting on the curb outside the church after a meeting, trying to recover from his terrors, when John came and sat next to him. He handed him a simple homemade rattle, seed pods strung on bamboo with yellow and red yarn. He told him, “Find yourself a quiet place and rattle it slowly for as long as it takes, Brother.”
The rattle was a door. If he rattled long enough, it opened, and there behind the door, was peace.
A soccer ball flew by, followed by a kid who gave him an open curious stare as he scooped up the ball. For one second, Kiko was real. He tucked the rattle into his denim jacket pocket. Even with no drugs, he was strange, strange to himself, strange to los niños. He straightened and rose. The tree by his side offered its rough bark to touch, to lean against. He climbed it to his feet, stretched, and yawned. Parents steered their children away with wary eyes.
“Well, Kiko, ahora qué?” Kiko said to himself, “Go back to Anita’s? Maybe she didn’t notice you left.”
He patted his tree. “Goodbye for now, amigo.” The sidewalk met his boots with a rhythmic clump. He touched the rattle in his pocket. No, not now. It would draw more stares.
A man headed toward him on the sidewalk ahead. Kiko said, “Buenas días, señor!”
The man stared through him.
Kiko straightened and tried again, “Good morning, sir!”
Nothing. The man sped up to pass him more quickly.
Kiko slowed and waved a hand in front of him in a hat-tip flourish, digging his boot heel to the pavement, he said, with his best Dick Van Dyke impression, “Cheerio, ‘ol chap!”
The man made extra room as he passed. But was that a twitch of a smile on his lip? Or was it a snarl? A wave of sadness swept through Kiko. That man was heavy. Probably not dangerous, but heavy. He made the sign of the cross. Díos mio, stay with him.
Further down the street, an old woman was shuffling with her chihuahua. She met his eyes and smiled. His heart was lifted. A gift! He returned the smile and gave her a cheerful, “Buenas días, señora!”
As he continued walking, he raised his right hand to the sky, and said quietly, “May she live a hundred years.”
When he reached Anita’s back gate, he let himself in and saw that the furry cheetah blanket on the patio lounge chair had been folded. Anita knew he had not stayed.
“Kiko? Is that you?” Anita called businesslike from the kitchen.
He smelled a fresh batch of beans bubbling on the stove, onions, cilantro, bits of bacon. His mouth watered. “Deliciosa!” he said, staring into he kitchen through the screen door.
Anita was busy by the stove. “When did you leave?” she said, as she lifted the lid of the huge pot and stirred through the pillar of steam with a long metal spatula.
“No sé. It was dark.” Kiko grinned.
“You missed coffee and conchas. Jose already left for work. Where were you?” She asked.
“The park.”
“Drugs?” Her tone was flat.
“No. No. I was rattling. Just rattling.” He put his thumb and finger close together and held them up for her to see through the screen, shaking his shoulders up and down, “El sonajerito.”
She frowned at him, “I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the cops on you.”
“No, hermana! It works on the whole neighborhood. They were so calm out there in their little beds, thanking me in their sleep.” He could never get her to smile.
“I’ll warm you an egg taco. You got a meeting today?”
“Yes.” Kiko shuddered and sighed. Walls.
He saw John’s face; he would get through it. He unfolded a chair and sat at the edge of the patio, listening as cars passed by on the street. Closing in. Everything closing in. His heart sped.
Anita came out with four tacos on a paper plate. She handed them to him and unfolded a chair for herself. “Hold on,” she said, and went back inside.
He was holding on. Holding on tight. He picked up a taco. It smelled good. The egg and beans steaming, the salsa warm. He almost took a bite.
A vision stopped him cold. A man he walked by yesterday in front of a taco shop had brushed his shoulder. Kiko felt the stone in the man’s chest. This dangerous stone man was alone, but there was a girl in his mind, a child. Bare shoulders, heavy makeup, old-young. The man was walking five feet behind her in his mind, his right hand was tensed, the index finger slightly pointed. It was pointed at her bare waist like she was on an invisible string. Not protection. Ownership.
Kiko had stopped and held up his hands to take a picture of the man, the tattoos on the back of his neck. He had no camera, but he took a picture. He described the man to the first cop he found, but there was nothing the policeman could do. No crime was committed. Kiko was certain otherwise. They would watch for him though.
Kiko’s heart clenched. Had he done enough?
The twin girls in Vietnam suddenly filled his memory. He shivered and stopped breathing. Their delicate smiling faces, the sound of hard rain on tin. . . Dark rivulets running over. . .
STOP.
John’s face. Come back, Kiko.
“I thought you would have eaten all those tacos by now,” said Anita, “You gotta be hungry.”
The traffic sounds returned. He was on the patio. Anita was there. She sat down by him. He looked at his hand, the taco still inches from his mouth. He took a bite. Cold now. Cold bean and egg. He forced another bite.
She had a pile of his clothes. A pair of his jeans, a t-shirt, socks, underwear, his pearl-buttoned shirt, stacked on a striped wool blanket on her lap, a nylon bag at her feet. Her face was more sympathetic than he thought possible. Then words fell out of her mouth. He stopped chewing and watched them land on the ground just beyond the points of his boots:
Almost a year It’s time Jose is tired Get a job mechanic shops your magic clothes two sets quarters laundromat blanket
“Kiko. . . Are you hearing me? Kiko!” His sister beckoned.
Kiko’s heart was racing. He looked up and tried to refocus. The Anita he knew was back, no more sympathy. She was standing, hip cocked, with a familiar straw cowboy hat in her hand. Kiko’s eyes lit up. Pops’ hat.
She held out the hat. “Pops wanted you to have this. I have been saving it. Now that you are sober. . . At least, I think you are. . . I can’t keep it from you.” She hesitated, and then handed it to him.
The hat was electric on his fingertips. He held it as if it were made of cotton candy. The old man’s hat. His eyes melted. A flood of childhood memories washed over him. Pops wearing the hat in the backyard grilling burgers. Days with Pops in the shade of the garage, working magic together, keeping the big rigs rolling. The smell of oil and tires, the sound of turning wrenches, rumbling engines, tools requested in a language of whistles, the squeak of his own sneakers. He turned the hat over to touch the line of stain at the rim of the sweatband.
“One more thing, Brother.” Anita was holding a business card out to him.
He took the card. She almost smiled, “I had it laminated.”
It was John’s gallery card, his home phone number written in blue ballpoint across the back, so that he could reach him anytime, night or day.
“Gracias, mi hermana,” Kiko said, and hugged her tight. He tucked the card into the sweatband’s inside edge and tried it on. A perfect fit. A superman fit. The Superman. He made the sign of the cross and addressed the sky, “Thanks, Pops!”
Dehesa Valley, 1985
Kiko wrestled through the boughs of one last scrub oak before finally cresting the hill. Vigilant for coils and rattles in the crevices, he hoisted himself onto a stack of granite boulders to survey the valley below.
For many nights after Anita sent him away, Kiko had stayed near the church. He went to the meetings. But everything was too close, too close to the walls. Even the tree at the park felt too close, and sometimes the cops shooed him off when they saw him. He went further, to bigger parks, away from the crush of human stones. He kept pushing on, pushing away from the walls and the stones. Before long, he was rattling in the hills surrounding the city.
The spirits found him there. Sometimes they lifted his body to move among them. He could feel the vibration of their voices through his boots and in his bones. He rumbled and chanted low in his chest, and it calmed his heart with the rhythm of the rattle.
Work was never hard to find. Most shop owners in the area knew Enrique Gonzalez was a master, and Kiko looked just like him, especially in his hat. Once they saw what he could do, and since he had no use for walls and didn’t need much pay, they usually hired him. He worked late into the night if they let him, but the city was still too close. Evil piled up. It smeared together, trapped between walls and tucked under ceilings. Out in the open, he could separate the souls, the bright ones from the stone hearts seeping poison, and the others who were only sad.
Over time, his meandering brought him south. He never strayed far from the highway towns where he could find work, food, and a laundromat, but the desert hills had become home. The spirits that brought Kiko back to himself lived there. So, he moved from one mechanic shop to the next, sheltering along the backs of Southern California’s coastal foothills. He almost always left on good terms, a referral in his pocket.
Today, he had the name, Jerry Blackwell, scrawled on a yellow receipt. From the hilltop boulder where he stood, he could see the highway—plenty of big rigs passing. On his way into the brush he had passed a sign that read, National Wildlife Refuge, promising shelter with easy access to the road.
Looking down from his boulder perch, he could see an avocado farm to his left that bristled with rows of trees clinging to the steep hillside. A tidy horse ranch stretched out on terraced levels between the two low hills directly below him. A few smaller houses cluttered the valley with shade trees, trailers, and animal pens. Across the highway, next to a dry riverbed, a green blanket of golf course was spread, studded with pines and sycamores. And there at the bend of the highway was the sign he was looking for. “BLACKWELL’S” was painted in tall black capital letters on the wide metal roof of a building. All the signs were good.
Welcome home, Kiko.
Some difficult subjects are touched on here.
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Next
Part 1 | History is an Angel
10 - Horses. Honor. Scholarship.
An interview and a tough decision, 1987
where was the picture taken?