Savages

186

Jesus is no kid anymore.

He’s twenty-three, and he’s spent eight of those twenty-three behind bars. Lucky not to have spent more, all the gangbanging he did. Him and the other 94s, defending their turf against the other Mexican gangs.

Cliché, stereotyped you’ve-seen-it-all-in-the-movies drive-by, eye-for-an-eye bullshit. By age twelve Jesus already had a sheet. Beat the fuck out of another kid, the judge looked at those unrepentant eyes (remorse? for what?) and sent him to the CYA in Vista, where the bigger boys made him jack them off and suck their dicks until he got more angry than scared and grabbed one of them by the hair and slammed his head into the concrete wall until it looked like a sloppy tagging.

Came out, got beat into the 94s (again, cliché, stereotyped you’ve-seen-it-all-in-the-movies), thirteen years old selling dope on the corner, fucking fourteen-year-old chucha on bare mattresses in crack houses, gets caught with the crack in his hand, don’t give up nobody and he’s back in CYA, but this time he is one of the bigger boys (got thick forearms, big hands, some weight on him) and it’s him who makes the smaller boys jerk him off, suck his cock, and he looks at them with those dead eyes and they do it, do what he says.

Out again, the gang wars are on, they just shoot the shit out of each other for drug turf, for revenge, for fucking nothing, he takes a bullet in a drive-by. Just hanging out on the front lawn, smoking yerba, drinking cerveza, getting ready to tip his piton into this sweet little piece when bam he feels this pain in his thigh and the piece is screaming but not like he likes her to and there’s blood running down his leg. He finishes his beer before he goes to the hospital.

When he goes out two weeks later, still with a cane, to get a little of his own back, he has his boys drive him past a house in the Los Treintes barrio, sticks his AK out the window, and lets loose. Gets a Treinte but also gets a four-year-old niña on the rebound, but Jesus don’t care about that.

The prole don’t get him for that, but they’re laying for him because now he’s a jefe and they’re looking to put him away. He fucks up and gives them their shot, too. This lambioso takes a long look at his girl and Jesus just goes off and smashes the guy’s face and they put him away for six in the Q.

Except for the food and the lack of chucha, Jesus liked prison.

Pumping iron, hanging with the same boys he’d hang with on the corner, fighting the Aryans and the Zulus, blowing yerba, skin-popping, fucking punks, getting tatts. He killed two more men in the Q and they never got near him for it. No one was going to talk on Jesus. Ran the 94s, or what was left of them, from his cell. Ordered three more killings on the street and they got done, too.

Out again, back again to the 94s and found there wasn’t much left of them. A lot of them were dead, more in the joint, some were craquedos and junkies. The gangbanging thing was over, finito.

And he ain’t that young anymore.

The years, they slide.

The people, they don’t.

The people, they grind and scrape and it shows.

Anyway, he did his time and now he’s out and now he’s back and they say the days of the gangs are over, we all killed each other off and there’s some truth in that but there’s some false in it, too. The gangs are coming back—like they say, good taste never goes out of style—but in a different way.

A serious way.

A business way.

Making money.

The prison counselors used to yap about “making good choices.” Make good choices when you get out so you don’t come back in.

Good choices.

So you can choose to kill for pride, for some silly-ass gang colors, for territory, for drug turf, or you can choose to kill for money.

Jesus chooses to kill for money.

Like the saying goes, “Do something that you love for a living, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”