Devilcountry (6 page)

GERALDO

Geraldo
made his way through traffic, it was almost sunset and he had to get to Carin’s
before dark otherwise she’d be too drunk to deal with.  She would try to
grab his package, again.

Aye dios mio, esta bruja es enferma en los
cessos!
thought
Geraldo.  (From here on out, all of Geraldo’s mental monologue will be
translated into English.)

Geraldo had come to Los Estados Unidos ten years
ago almost to the day.  He rode on top of a train as a stowaway for nearly
thirty-eight hours all the way from Southern Mexico, to El Paso, where he had a
cousin who could put him up.  To this day he still experiences back pain
in his lower lumbar, which acts as a reminder of the hardship he endured to
pursue a better life.    It also makes him squirm in his seat
whenever he drives.  He couldn’t imagine how those drivers managed to do
it.  When he first got to Los Angeles he had been a line cook at Mariano’s.
 He’d see the Russians walk in and out with pizzas, jumping into shitty
cars and pulling away.  None of them had a green card, just like him.
 What if you got pulled over? Shit, that was nuts. Better to hide behind
the ovens.  Run out the back fast if INS does a raid.  Those Russians
had balls, thought Geraldo.  He had heard about one of the driver’s outing
the owner as being gay.  He and the cooks had a laugh over that one.
 

Between back pain and having a natural instinct
to run from the cops, Geraldo liked
being  on
his
feet, to be in motion.  Even after he got resident alien status, thanks to
Carin who sponsored him.  Still, he hated driving.  But he was doing
it now, for Carin, his queen.

Carin had to sign some paperwork that would
settle some financial crap between she and her now ex-husband Dickie.
 Dickie had refused to courier it himself out of sheer asshole-ness, so it
fell to Geraldo.  But that wasn’t the only reason he volunteered for the
errand.  Geraldo knew he had to do what he had to do now, while Carin was
more sober as opposed to more drunk, otherwise it would never happen.

Geraldo had become the manager after Dickie
opened up his Anaheim stores and had fleeced all three of the Beverly Hills
stores of cooks, dishwashers, cashiers, drivers, and a hundred-grand in
untraceable, untaxable cash.  That was the reason Geraldo was driving over
to Carin’s, he’d had enough.  He’d seen too much of this bullshit back
home to put up with it here.  And the stakes were always higher back across
the border.  One time he saw a
Federale
take a knife to a waiter’s
throat because the waiter attempted to charge him for a
cerveza
.

But here, in ‘Loco Town’ or
‘La
Pais de Diablo’
as he had heard it vocalized by Craig, things were a
different kind of crazy.
 Every night a crisp one
hundred-dollar bill would be rolled up into a slip of green paper and tacked to
the board near the schedule, with the word “Dickie” written on it.
 Everyone knew what it was.
Everyone except Carin.
 She had no clue.  And had not agreed to it in the terms of the
divorce.  It took the shape of a small green Bic lighter when it was
tacked, and it was pure money.  Pure theft.  
Plain
and simple.
 

Now you may say to yourself, “But it’s his
store, he’s the owner, he can do whatever he wishes.”  This is true.
 But three things to that:

1.
 
Dickie
is forcing his employees to be accessories to embezzlement at the rate of
three-hundred
dollars per day, seven days a week,
three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. (There are three stores in which
Dickie has a stake, the resulting sum per year being $109,500).  This is
known as a “skim”.

2.
 
If
Carin found out about it she would have his balls.  Dickie had already
taken her for roughly half of everything before the skim.  This was just
him
being greedy.

3.
 
If
Dickie keeps up the skim, The Big Pizza will be out of business within one
calendar year.  Dickie’s Anaheim endeavor will be all that is left, and
Geraldo would have to work in Anaheim.  Geraldo hates Anaheim, and would
have to quit and possibly go back to Mexico. This would not do.  

Dickie was feeling the pinch of late.  New
stores, a new, high-profile girlfriend who was a C-list, Cougar actress who got
her head cut off on the season finale of the short-lived, yet highly profitable
Slut Cakes Of Encino.
 It was huge on cable for a time. Dickie knew
he could take advantage of a drunken Carin.  So he did.

Fuck Anaheim.  No way in hell I’m going
back to Anaheim
,  Geraldo
thought.  Geraldo
hated Anaheim, the disgustingly white-bread enclave one hour south of Los
Angeles.  
Home of the Angels, Steve Martin and
Disneyland.
 ...And fuck Disneyland, thought Geraldo.  Steve
Martin was cool, but that wasn’t enough to hasten his return.  Disneyland
was Geraldo’s Devilcountry.  

Just like Devilcountry, there are two Anaheims.
 
The white – which was predominantly rich and
powerful with some exceptions; and the brown – which was predominantly
working class or undocumented.
 
The Latinos took care of all aspects of servicing white Anaheim.
 All the fast food, all the gas, all the supermarkets, all the landfills
were worked by Latinos.  Yet owned by Whitey.  Latinos also raised
all the children.
Whitey’s and their own.
 They
cleaned their houses, cooked their food, and everything else.  

The Latinos of Anaheim all stayed in
a
lower income sprawl known as
The Flatlands.
With the majority of white
people living just over the Riverside freeway in the northwestern stretch of
town known famously as
The Hills.

It was the same in Beverly Hills.  In
Beverly Hills when Geraldo had to run food or cash up to the cougar’s house
where Dickie had moved, he’d see the exodus.  All of the nannies and
housekeepers making their way on foot down Beverly Drive towards Sunset
Boulevard where the number two bus heading east would pick them all up.
 Geraldo could always tell
who
the decent
homeowners were by how far down the hill they would drop the help off.  A
few of them never got a ride.  For years the Latinos trudged up into the
hills.  
Raising
entire generations of children.
 
Some of them growing up with an abbreviated
understanding of work or sacrifice.
 Strangers to their parents
with behavior bordering on sociopathic and only given the faintest images of
childhood affection granted to them mainly from the help. Up and down they
would walk to the homes of their wealthy employers.  Raising the children,
cleaning the house, and then magically disappearing at the end of the day and
reappearing the next morning.  It was a giant magic trick that Geraldo
bore witness to each time he had to cater to Dickie’s bullshit.  He was
tired of it. Tired of Dickie and his immense mountain of crap that Geraldo had
to climb everyday. He was tired of seeing his friends suffer. He was tired of
seeing Carin be neglected by Dickie. Tired of being reminded of the poverty of
Mexico and the decadence of Anaheim.  

Se conte el dinero en frente de los pobres,
echoed
through Geraldo’s head.  
It had been said to him by his
uncle
when Geraldo worked as a teenager in his uncle’s restaurant.
 He was in partnership with the local Cartel boss. It was either enter
into a partnership or be killed.  His uncle always paid the Cartel off,
and always let them wash money through.  
Always on time,
always with a smile.
 The
Jefe
would take his roll out and
add his Uncle’s rent to it.  It was a huge fat wad of American dollars
intertwined with the slightest of Pesos.  Sometimes the
Jefe
would
have a lady with him.  
Both of them smiling with bad
teeth.
 He’d hand her some of the cash.  They’d both stand
there, at the counter, their free tacos getting cold.  Counting fifties,
hundreds and beyond.  Laughing.  It didn’t matter who was staring.
 

Geraldo thought he had escaped all of that.
 That phrase became the mantra the cooks, dishwashers and Geraldo said
about Dickie.  It was whispered to each other or said with just a nod,
quietly as Dickie or one of his asshole friends would stand at the counter,
laugh and count his money. Swooshing through the hundreds, fifties, twenties
and tens for a single dollar bill to place in the recycled plastic canola oil
container the counter-help had converted into a tip jar with the word, “GRATZI”
written on it in black ink.  Sometimes they’d put a ten or a
twenty dollar
bill in.  
But only
sometimes.
Cops were always the big tippers.  Go figure.  This
time he was driving to Carin’s who lived down La Cienega, not in the hills.
 He had hatched a slight plan.  If his plan worked he’d never have to
drive into the hills atop Devilcountry again.

Geraldo’s cousin, Julio, was the son of a
popular doctor and herbalist back in Mexico.  Julio lived in the heart of
Latino Anaheim. Julio loved being amongst his
raza
.  He was short
and stocky, and looked like a linebacker, but he was brilliant in what he could
do with medicine. He had studied it for a while, and when he came to America he
was pre-med at U.C. Irvine. But he hated it.  Julio felt western medicine
to be too stringent in its practice.  It had no means of catering to the
soul.  
Particularly the indigenous soul.
 He
had learned herbology from his
Tia
and knew several-hundred different
remedies pharmaceutical companies would kill for but Julio preferred to keep a
low profile.  He knew the drug companies would just steal the recipes and
destroy the forests and lands where the herbs grew.  Julio felt until a
drug company could sit down and show respect, guarantee a contract, and pay up
front, they would be shit out of luck.  Julio had no sympathy for American
corporate medicine.  None.  He would rather work for the cartels.
 At least they showed respect and paid.  

Julio created his own practice, catering to the
undocumented workers and went into business.  He made an off-the-books
fortune.  And as a gift to Geraldo upon his arrival in America he treated
him to a full day at the greatest place on Earth:  Disneyland.  Julio
knew he could teach his cousin about American culture and the American journey
in one day by visiting the Magic Kingdom.

Disneyland
to
Julio,
was like Mecca, and he was its humble pilgrim.  Geraldo was told it is
custom for all new arrivals to journey to the Magic Kingdom.  Everyone had
gone: uncles, nephews, grandkids,
parents
.
 Geraldo didn’t want to be rude so he piled into his Uncle Victor’s Chevy
van with Julio and all the family and headed roughly twenty blocks south.
  

“We’re going to a holy place, Geraldo.  A
place where white people worship their God, and this God demands tribute.”
 Geraldo knew Julio was crazy.  Always had been, but Geraldo was
grateful for the couch Julio had offered, and Julio was grateful to the God
that America had offered.  It was important to Julio to show respect.
 And pay tribute.  Julio had Mayan blood.
Shaman’s
blood.
 His mother was Mayan; never a day went by when she didn’t
remind Julio of his heritage and their teachings.  He was brilliant with
Algebra and healing, but his real passion was for guiding people on spirit
journeys, and Disneyland was the perfect hunting ground.  

Julio continued his sermon as the Chevy shook
and bumped forward.  “Their God has big, mouse ears.  
Un
Ratone.
”  Geraldo knew whom Julio was
talking about.   They knew about Disneyland in Mexico.  But he’d
better play dumb.

“Their God is a huge, talking rat that stands
erect and blows fire and sees into your soul.  It knows your every fear
and fantasy and will take you on a journey!” screamed Julio with proper
dramatic effect.  Geraldo tried not to laugh as Julio yelled and screamed.
 He was hamming it up for the kids in the backseat.  Geraldo became
curious to see the monuments these gringos had created that Julio was describing.
 He’d heard about Disneyland and had seen most of the movies.  But
being there for real seemed exciting to him.  He wondered if it compared
to the ruins in Mexico, or down in Belize.  Geraldo and Julio’s ancestors
had built entire amphitheaters and pyramids and dedicated them to the Sun God.
 Anything the white man had built would pale in comparison.  

In the parking lot, under the sign that read
YOU
ARE PARKED IN SLEEPY,
the men gathered in a circle.  Julio stood in
the middle and held the floor.  “We will go into this magic kingdom, we
will journey and pay it its respect.  We will listen to its heartbeat.
 We will hold onto its wings as it grabs us up.
 
You will experience it the way the young
warriors of this region experience it.
 
We will make it our own.  This is your initiation to this world.
 Bienvenidos!”  They passed around a baggie that looked like dried
fruit, smelled like onions and tasted like shit.  The men were laughing
and telling jokes and the women stood nearby, holding the children by the hand.
 Some of the children began to wave to Geraldo, as if he were leaving to
go somewhere else.  Reluctantly he waved back as he took a piece out of
the baggy, unsure of what it was, and began to chew on it.  He was hungry.
After swallowing he needed water, but that thirst would stay with him for the
next twelve hours.  He ate a few more and then passed it to his cousin
Federico, who was one of the top barbers in Mexico City but had to leave town
quickly after an affair with a politician’s wife went bad. Geraldo had gotten
his haircut from Federico a long time ago when he was a kid before his sister’s
quincenera.  Geraldo’s mom had yelled at Geraldo’s dad for letting
Federico make Geraldo look like a Cuban pimp.  Still, Geraldo’s hair
looked great.  As Federico took the baggy from Geraldo, Geraldo couldn’t
help but notice Federico’s hair still looked perfect.  It was a marvel.
 His face had aged but his ‘doo was still impeccable.  Geraldo was
excited.  To be in America, to be with his family, to be at the
El
Monumento de la Anaheim…