Free Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez Page A

fighter transformed him overnight. He was somebody who some feared, some looked up to. Then he developed skills for racing and high-jumping. This led to running track and he did well, dusting all the competition.
    I didn’t own any talents. I was lousy in sports. I couldn’t catch baseballs or footballs. And I constantly tripped when I ran or jumped. When kids picked players for basketball games, I was the last one they chose. The one time I inadvertently hit a home run during a game at school—I didn’t mean to do it—I ended up crying while running around the bases because I didn’t know how else to react to the cheers, the excitement, directed at something I did. It just couldn’t be me.
    But Rano had enemies too. There were two Mexican kids who were jealous of him. They were his age, three years older than me. One was named Eddie Gómez, the other Ricky Corral. One time they cornered me outside the school.
    “You José’s brother,” Eddie said.
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Wha’s the matter? Can’t talk?”
    “Oh, he can talk all right,” Ricky chimed in. “He acting the pendejo because his brother thinks he so bad. Well, he ain’t shit. He can’t even run.”
    “Yea, José’s just a lambiche, a kiss ass,” Eddie responded. “They give him those ribbons and stuff because he cheats.”
    “That’s not true,” I finally answered. “My brother can beat anybody.”
    “Oh, you saying he can beat me,” Eddie countered.
    “Sure sounds like he said that,” Ricky added.
    “I’m only saying that when he wins those ribbons, está derecho,” I said.
    “It sounds to me like you saying he better than me,” Eddie said.
    “Is that what you saying, man?” Ricky demanded. “Com’ on—is that what you saying?”
    I turned around, and beneath my breath, mumbled something about how I didn’t have time to argue with them. I shouldn’t have done that.
    “What’d you say?” Eddie said.
    “I think he called you a punk,” Ricky agitated.
    “You call me a punk, man?” Eddie turned me around. I denied it.
    “I heard him, dude. He say you are a punk-ass puto,” Ricky continued to exhort.
    The fist came at me so fast, I don’t even recall how Eddie looked when he threw it. I found myself on the ground. Others in the school had gathered around by then. When a few saw it was me, they knew it was going to be a slaughter.
    I rose to my feet—my cheek had turned swollen and blue. I tried to hit Eddie, but he backed up real smooth and hit me again. Ricky egged him on, I could hear the excitement in his voice.
    I lay on the ground, defeated. Teachers came and chased the boys out. But before Eddie and Ricky left they yelled back: “José ain’t nothing, man. You ain’t nothing.”
    Anger flowed through me, but also humiliation. It hurt so deep I didn’t even feel the fracture in my jaw, the displacement which would later give me a disjointed, lopsided and protruding chin. It became my mark.
    Later when I told Rano what happened, he looked at me and shook his head.
    “You didn’t have to defend me to those dudes,” he said. “They’re assholes. They ain’t worth it.”
    I looked at him and told him something I never, ever told him again.
    “I did it because I love you.”
    Along the spine of the night, through the shrubbery, on the coarse roads, past the peeling shacks, past the walls filled with the stylized writing that proclaimed our existence, past La India’s shed where boys discovered the secret of thighs, in the din of whispers, past Berta’s garden of herbs and midnight incantations, past the Japo’s liquor store, past the empty lots scattered around the barrio we called “the fields,” overlooking Nina’s house, pretty Nina, who lavished our dreams, there you’d find the newest and strongest clique. There you’d find the Animal Tribe.
    We lingered in the dust: Clavo, Wilo, Chicharrón and I. We walked through these streets in pairs with a rhythm, slow, like a bolero. I had on a