Riverbed Outcasts

It was that time of the year in the barrio where the leaves on the ground dropped yellow and red. The aftermath of El Niño had just finished and left the smell of rain barraged, oil-stained asphalt across the East Los streets. Usually all of Guillermo’s homies were on the block corner of Sapro and Olympic waiting for nightfall to indulge in the casual debauchery of stealing alcohol and hanging out with hoodlums, but outside on this late Saturday morning, it was vacant. The train that would howl every hour seemed to be running late this morning as well. It was peaceful rather than quiet on this normal, chilly, morning on Sapro Street, until they began arguing. 

“I don’t give a fuck anymore! Fuck it, kick me out, like I give a shit!” Guillermo screamed back carrying his skateboard.

“We’ll fucking see when you come crying back like the coward chicken shit that you are!” His mother screamed right back. The dusty black screen door slammed before the white wooden door sealed with the intention of eternity.

Guillermo had been selling quality sticky green mota for the past 3 months. Not just a dime bag or a half-ounce, but a quantity much larger than what any 15-year-old would possess for their own pleasure. Guillermo got caught by his mother with a half-pound of weed that he was selling in the barrio. In addition, Guill was stealing his mom’s car to go on joy rides at night by himself, sometimes with a homie, or girls his age that were just as curious and eager as he was to have a good time. The school counselor from his high school was starting to get involved because of his truancy. He had small run-ins with police patrols for miscellaneous offenses, from possessing marijuana, to trespassing on private property, underage drinking, and petty theft. In addition to the law, just last week, two lowlife vatos in Guill’s barrio jumped him for slanging in the hood without paying them taxes. Mainly because Guill stood up to them trying to punk him.

Shit, this ain’t my first time being kicked out. I’ve slept in the Beverly Hospital lobby after dumpster diving at KFC and it wasn’t all that bad. 

Guill was coming down on smoking some clavo – crystal meth. His mind is a frenzied storm as he ollies over cracks and curbs on his skateboard, hoping to run into anyone that could give him a reason to take his pent-up anger and shame onto, even the slightest of looks. He ventures down to his local Superior Supermarket to swipe a tall can of some cheap chela. Ever since his homeboy Fat Boy got shot in the leg, shattering his femur for stealing pisto, no armed securities have been hired at the market since. Guill, looking casual with his board, walks down to the back of the supermarket to get a free sample of some orange spicy chicken wings they serve daily. He takes his time while looking at the alcohol aisle after asking for a spicy wing, savoring the freshness of a free sample. Making sure no employees or security are watching him from any corner, countertop, or crevice. The coast looks clear and although his paranoia is at an all-time high, he knows he needs to act. Guill finishes his wing, licks his fingers clean, pops his board up to his waist, and casually walks to the brew he was eyeballing. A tall can of some Budweiser along with the joint of some good mota in his sock would help the comedown. Guill scoops up the Bud and tucks it in his waist and casually walks through an empty cashier lane. He knows employees are looking him or at least he thinks they are, which prompts his gait to move quicker. As soon as he exits, he checks no one is following, adjusts his pants, and pushes on his board southbound towards the riverbed. 

Firme, mission success.

Months earlier, Guill, Fat Boy, and E-Bomb were running up daily to snatch chela. It was a casual thing to do to steal a chela or two but not every day, or it would eventually become hot. Because Guill and his homeboys were burning their own spot, Superior hired an armed security after noticing three youngsters dart for the booze aisle and dip out without paying for anything. One day, as the three morros carried out their beer-run, the newly hired security noticed a suspicious lump in Fat Boy’s jeans and grabbed him. E-Bomb shoved the guard to the ground and took off running left with Guill, Fat Boy to the right. As Fat Boy got away, the frantic security shot Guillermo’s homie with a .38 snub nose. Superior never hired another armed security from that day forward. Guill never forgot that day. Fat Boy survived, but at the cost of having a metal rod in his leg for the rest of his life and on occasion, capped on for being the T-1000 and Darth Vader.

As he gets closer to his destination, Guill ponders on his mother, All of a sudden of all fucking days, she decides to fucking trip today and kick my ass out. Some fucking bullshit!

Even though Guill knew he was doing terrible things to himself, experimenting with drugs, having unprotected sex with girls his age, trespassing, getting into fights, and committing petty theft, he knew he was succeeding in his drug dealing. Nobody at fifteen years of age in his barrio was making the money he was making slanging mota, especially since the early 2000s era was long before marijuana dispensaries existed. He knows the street talk, how to make transas happen with getting olders head to sell weed to him and doesn’t intend on stopping.

Graffiti littered sidewalks are glided and hurdled over with precision as Guillermo makes his way down Roosevelt Avenue – a couple of blocks away from his own barrio. Tall green spruce trees surround him and eventually are mixed with story high palms the city planned and planted decades ago. Regardless of reckless gang members and vandalism, his community is beautiful. Hardworking people that work 5-6 days a week supporting their families, lush trees, tall hills, and blue mountains that can be seen from the distance. But he blocks his setting out – he further blocks out the occurrences that have happened today and focuses on getting some solitude at the cliff of the dry riverbed that stretches for endless miles north to the San Gabriel Mountains and as far south to the ocean to Long Beach. He is so determined to get there that he doesn’t even check for traffic at the intersection on Bluff Road, the entrance to the riverbed itself. He ollies over the curb with no regard for traffic and ollies again over the entrance speed bump that any bike can easily ride over. 

The Montebello Riverbed on Roosevelt and Bluff has a steep hill engulfed with nopales, beer bottles, and used condoms. Guill ventures downward as his board violently vibrates from the rocky and uneven concrete as he flies down the embankment. When he reaches the riverbed, he kicks his board on its feet and sits on it. Tranquility as nobody for miles except the occasional bike rider training for a race or enjoying a leisure ride.

“That was a pretty impressive ride down that hill.” A voice grabs Guillermo by surprise as he swore nobody was around. 

“¡Quiubo! I didn’t see you there. I could have sworn nobody was down here.” Guill looks around for any other homies hiding nearby of this voice he did not recognize, in case they were trying to jump him. 

“I didn’t see you either, and I’ve been here for some years now.” The older male must have been in his mid to late 30s, twice Guill’s age or so. He has long unwashed hair as dark as obsidian with glints of brown and a peppered beard as long and thick as a washboard. His smile was uncanny, yet familiar. The scruffy man’s shoes looks like they had seen a lifetime and it appeared as if he had slept in his grimed-up and bloodstained black hoody and gray jogging pants for a long time. The aroma that permeated his dwelling smelled horrifically of urine and warm beer. The smell is nearly unbearable as Guill scoots his skateboard back a few feet away.

Seeing this man, Guill feels obliged to reply as his visit appears to be this man’s place of residence. “Shit, I been to this spot since I was a youngster…” Guill knows he’s only been here a handful of times.

“…Especially the Hell Hole below this cliff. The homies and I would come back from some backyard punk gigs from the East Side and chill here. The Hell Hole was scary as fuck when I used to come down with the homies back then. What about you? I mean, how long you been coming to this spot?” Guill’s peak high makes him that much more sociable, looking away as he boasts about things he had just done last year. 

The older man scoffs, he has seen this vain “been there, done it” mannerism many times before. “I hear you, young G. By the way, the name is Paco. I had fun back in my day. You know, it’s funny you bring up the Hell Hole. That old legend was in my time as well. We used to get faded, bring hynas, and think it actually led to hell itself. Supposedly someone committed suicide deep inside years back. Another rumor was someone was murdered inside on a rainy day. That last one is a fuzzy memory I can barely recall…” Paco looks slightly disturbed by the memory but tries to move on. 

“…Anyway, did you and your homies think our barrio actually led to hell from here?” Paco laughs it off as he remembers doing the same himself, as well as the reasons so many kids from this barrio come to participate in this rite of passage.

“¡Quiúbole! The homies call me, Guill. So you don’t believe in hell or demonic shit? I don’t know about it leading to hell, but it feels like some weird shit has happened in there,” Guill responds, as he thinks about the things he has seen that were not particularly demonic, but certainly malicious human nature.

“What exactly is hell?” counters Paco.

Guill thinks about Paco’s question. But Guill also thinks that this man may be desperate for attention and maybe ill. After all, a person living in the riverbed might not be all there in the head. Guill ponders that perhaps, maybe, this homeless man has seen some ugly things. Guill wonders if Paco has seen another man shot multiple times in his left leg, leaking from a punctured artery, his left ring finger missing from the bullet onslaught; Fat Boy’s mother crying for his older brother’s life, as the victim’s head thumps the cold concrete. Maybe Paco has seen an instance of another man’s legs and torso shot from slugs instead of bird shot to where one of his legs was no longer functional and screamed to an empty heaven above him. Perhaps Paco’s residence, where feces pass from nearby barrios, has seen an occasion of a woman slashing her boyfriend’s throat during a fiend fight to decide who hits the last bit of the crack pipe. There are countless scenes that flash in Guillermo’s young mind that he could compare and challenge his experience to Paco, but Guill knows that contrasting won’t grant any street cred with him. 

“Check it out OG, con respecto, I’ve seen some shit, and hell does exist. Not in that fucking corny way through religion, but in the literal human sense. I’ve seen the worst in humans from my own experiences and that shit isn’t going to stop, whether you believe in a god or not. We are living in a literal hell here.”

Paco smiles and looks towards the mountains away from Guill, “I mean no disrespect,” he briefly pauses. “But I doubt you have seen the likes of hell. You seem to have a place to live by the way you dress and the way you look. Probably family that cares about you. Just as you said that hell can be a place or concept here in our community, can’t heaven also be something that coincides?”

“¿Como güey?” Guill becomes slightly intrigued.

“Our gente have been brainwashed to believe a westernized god is responsible for all the good things that happen to people and punishes those who live with sin. Our gente are raised to believe that this same god blesses those that praise him and punish those that don’t and who are wicked. The way I am explaining heaven is in our minds. To be grateful for what we have as opposed to what we don’t. But too many of us focus on our wants versus our needs, and often lose sight of what we take for granted, like familia, clean clothes on our backs, and a roof over our head. ¿Entiendes, mijito?”

Guill feels a stabbing guilt that rotates in his gut. “I don’t know…I just trip out on all the bad stuff that goes on in our barrio. And cannot help but wonder what happens to us that are in fact, bad.” Guill thinks out loud. 

“What is bad young, vato?” Paco asks.

Guillermo thinks about his mother, the shootings and stabbings on his own street, the senseless fighting between neighbors, homies, the blood, the violence, the feelings of hopelessness. He feels existential and impending doom – a belief that he may in fact truly be damned.

Paco breaks the silence, “¿Sabes que, you grew up in a dysfunctional home, que no? I’m no different. You think I chose to live here in the riverbed? Well, I did, but I didn’t have much of a choice when it happened.”

“Everyone has a choice. And you chose yours. Nobody put a gun to your head, que, no? You cannot expect anyone to feel sorry for you,” Guill grows defensive due to the uncomforted feeling of vulnerability. 

“Is that why you think I am talking to you? Because I am lonely, wanting sympathy? I was your age once upon a time and sabes que, I doubt you have the slightest notion of what you are doing, let alone, who you are, which is okay. I mean no disrespect by that. Many of us Hijos del Maiz, grow up in the barrio seek to find and understand who we are, getting jumped in the hood, falling into drugs and despair, mamadas. Look at you, with your sweaty palms and shifting jaw, you’re probably on skante or yayo right now… I look at you…and I see a repeated episode of the same show and it’s fucking depressing.”

Guill feels attacked and scoffs. “Y que if I’m fucking with clavo? it’s not like I’m hooked or anything. I do it for fun every once in a while, you don’t know shit about me or my life. And the fuck are Hijos del Maiz? Is that some newfound religion you came across down here?”

“You and I are who the fuck they are. The indigenous and proud people of this land, our ancestors that were colonized, raped, and murdered by the invaders from a far land across the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of our history and a part of who you are, young morro,” Paco slows his words to make sure Guill understands. 

“We have become ‘modernized’ to act and behave a certain way in our barrio; it is why we gangbang, why we lose our identity to where we come from and who we are, why we kill each other, and why we kill ourselves with drogas.” Paco looks to Guill with nonjudgmental eyes. “…But we must not forget who we are and where we come from.” 

Paco pauses to make deliberate eye contact with Guill, “Our ancestors understood nature, studied science and philosophy, mapped out the stars and had their own calendar to know when to harvest food. They even invented the concept of zero…”

“Then why the fuck are we down here, huh? I’m coming down from my high while you live down here in the riverbed. The fucking riverbed of all places, pero sabes que, OG, no offense by that, I may very well be your neighbor in time to come, shit… Proud people you say?” Guill interrupts emotionally, frustrated with his own life, knowing there may be some truth to what Paco is sharing with him.

Paco scoffs, pauses, and sits back down. “…At 10 years old I saw my baby sister’s head get crushed by my drunk father reversing his sedan. Have you ever seen your abuela’s chronic methamphetamine abuse, dancing with no music on, glaring with the same eyes she used to gaze upon you as a child, now empty lifeless holes you can no longer recognize? ¡Chale! Even that doesn’t give you the reason to blame your circumstances and piss it down the drain, let alone piss it here in the riverbed…”

Paco lays his eyes back to the mountains and down to his feet as silence holds both their tongues hostage.

“…Sabes que, when I went to high school, I had a teacher who would teach us about our history, and it was the only class I actually paid attention to if I wasn’t ditching and getting high with my homeboys. I learned so much about our ancestors and the history of the land we are on, the battles that took place, the very spot we are sitting on right now. Although those times are over, history has not changed much, and it remains a battleground. We still have racist juras who arrest us, kill us, with no valid reasons. Gabachos, as well as our own people who shit on us, those that are not proud – who are ashamed of their dark skin color that you and I have. Those drogas that you consume, tambien, are all part of this war with our people.”

Guill looks to the ground squeezing his hand as continues to listen. The mixture of his high, feeling exhausted, and the truth that Paco is sharing amplifies his discomfort.

“Whatever you have experienced, I’m not taking that away. You have probably experienced some horrific stuff that will haunt you until you die. But you need to think about your life. The people in your barrio who gangbang, mess around with drogas, and other mamadas are the very poison that kills us. I’ve seen too many of us who are outcasts of outcasts and end up not just in the riverbed, but in the streets, alone, sad, sick, and die young.” Paco takes a break from his urge to make Guillermo think.

“So, what do you propose to win this ‘battle’? That I stop doing what I don’t know how to stop? Being in the street is all I really know. I can’t stand being home. ¿O que? You expect me to go to confession at St. Benedicts on 10th  Street and recite 10 ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘5 Hail Marys’? Come on now.”

“You assume something that I did not propose, morro. But since you brought that up, that makes two of us. Religion from the western world is another form of colonialism. You have white racists and whitewashed coconuts who say Jesus Christ is the one true god, but sabes que, those same people say the same of our own ancestry’s beliefs and our own gente. Those same people called us ‘savage’ and subhuman, and still do. A battle doesn’t always mean there is a victory. The path to finding your own way of survival is something that you have to figure out and you may continue waging that battle your whole life under the circumstances to where and how you live.”

Paco continues, “You may not like what I have to say as this is not a straight answer. But what I do know is that I have found peace in reflecting on these things by myself. And to see a young morro down here talking to the likes of me…vale madre.”

Both share a mutual laugh following a comforting silence. Some of the things Guillermo has learned from family and vatos in his barrio about being Chicano is pride, filled with fragments of what the older man has stated, but in Guill’s environment, it is rife with drogas, transas, and barrio warfare. 

“I don’t know…” Guill stops to think with semi-clouded judgment as he is coming down from the mild meth high. Guill thinks he will most likely do the same stuff that made him end up where he is currently present and continue engaging in mamadas. 

“You’re a strange vato. But I appreciate you speaking to me.”

“Simón, que si.”

“Gracias por todo.” The two shake hands and fist pound. 

“Stay up, young G. Don’t be ashamed of your heritage or your skin color, like so many people I knew. Remember that we are a proud people, and we shouldn’t be remembered for living or dying in a tunnel called the Hell Hole.”

“Simón, OG. You stay up. If I come down here again, it won’t be me coming down for some bullshit, it’ll be to chop it up like this. ¡Al rato!” Guill kicks up his board and skates away to the bridge. Before he gets off his board for the bridge, it dawns on Guillermo what Paco told him about someone dying in the Hell Hold, Paco’s earlier mention of death just below where they were just talking felt so peculiar. Guillermo turns back to the cliff of the riverbed where they both sat. He scans the area from the inclined hill he is on near the bridge, but Paco was nowhere nearby. He quickly hops on his board, rides back to the cliff sensing this was not the typical come down from being faded on clavo, only to find as if Paco mysteriously disappeared.

This fucker must have gone down to the Hell Hole to go to sleep. Yeah! That’s where he went!

Guill jumps and slides down the slanted riverbed walls to the sewer entrance that many say leads to hell itself. However, Guill is met by complete darkness, sounds of droplets, and an eerie howling wind that Guill can only imagine where the source comes from.

Guillermo fears he may have completely lost his mind – a temporary insanity that may lead him to the place this mysterious figure haunts vulnerable and lost beings. He stares north to the mountains and notices the vast rows of nopales sprouting around the riverbed. He hears the birds sing to signal the warmth of the afternoon sun. Guill takes a deep breath and doesn’t worry whether he is losing grip with reality, it never mattered anyway. He unsheathes the tall can he stole from Superior, pops the beer open, takes a swig, cheers to the winds and pours one out as a tribute to Paco, whoever he is or was.