Painted Cities

GOD’S COUNTRY

Ask him where he learned to do that stuff and he’d say, “Sonora, God’s Country.” Chuey had never been to Sonora. He spent every day of his life right there in Pilsen, just like the rest of us, playing ball, jumping the freights. We thought maybe he’d resurrected some witch doctor’s memories of being in Sonora. I mean, he resurrected everything else: dead cats, dogs, finally a human being. So when people asked us how he learned to do the things he did, we said, “He learned it all in Sonora, God’s Country.” There seemed to be no other explanation.

He was fifteen when he found out he had the gift of life. It was one of those mornings we skipped school. It was early, right around the end of first period.

“Poor fucks,” Alfonzo said, looking to the high school, the kids transferring classes. “I’d be in algebra right now.”

“English,” I said.

“I’d be in gym,” Marcus said.

“Booo,” me and Alfonzo answered.

“No, man,” Marcus said. “Gym this early is a drag. All sweaty afterward. All sweaty for Brenda Gamino second period.”

“Damn,” Alfonzo said. “You have Brenda Gamino in a class?”

“Second period,” Marcus said. “History.” He pulled out the joint he had in the inside pocket of his leather. We were standing in front of the Pilsen YMCA, just across the street from Juarez High School.

“We’re going to get busted,” Alfonzo said. He said this as a matter of fact. That year, our freshman year, we’d been caught skipping three times by December. The limit was five unexcused absences per year. Our parents had been called. We’d been reasoned with by Mr. Sanchez, the school social worker: “So if you get expelled, what kind of job are you going to get?” We didn’t know. We didn’t care. The only thing that seemed to matter was that the thought of school made us literally, physically ill.

Marcus pulled out his tiny Bic lighter. He lit the joint and took a deep, early-morning drag. He passed the joint to Chuey, who hadn’t said a word all morning. Marcus exhaled.

“Want to walk to Speedy’s?” he asked.

Collectively, we began to move.

It was cold out that day. Alfonzo and I had on our hooded sweatshirts. Marcus had on his black leather. Chuey had on that brown, crusty leather jacket he always wore, the same one he had worn all summer. An heirloom he had called it that first day he showed up with it on. “It was my great-grandfather’s.”

“Looks like it,” Alfonzo had said.

“The fuck’s an heirloom?” Marcus asked.

“Something special,” Chuey said.

For weeks after that everything was an heirloom, a quarter someone had for a video game, a last piece of gum, a last cigarette in a pack. Some people called them “luckies.” We called them heirlooms. “I only got one left, that’s my heirloom,” we’d say. Chuey just continued to wear the jacket.

We walked down Twenty-First Place. The street was empty. All the factory workers had left for work, all the cleaning ladies, the secretaries, had taken their L’s downtown. Twenty-First Place was the only street in our neighborhood that had any trees, tall, full trees that lined the sidewalk for exactly two blocks. On summer days Twenty-First Place smelled good, fresh; birds sang and fluttered in the branches. Out of habit, on winter days we stuck to Twenty-First Place as well, even though by that time the birds were gone, and Twenty-First Place was just like any other street, cold and gray.

We kept our hands stuffed deep in our pockets, reaching out only to toke and pass the reefer. As we neared the corner of Paulina Street a beat-up white Cadillac pulled around the corner. The car jerked to a stop, seesawing in the middle of the intersection. Heavy bass rattled the trunk lid. The four of us stood still, ready to bolt down a gangway, jump fences. At the rear window a hand came up and rubbed out a hole in the steamed-over glass. Someone peered through, directly at us. Then the hand came up again, this time wiping with a blue piece of sleeve. The person looked through. We saw the face, dark, thick eyebrows, wide, flat nose. The person smiled, then held up the Almighty Ambrose hand sign. Then the car took off, tires screeching, tailpipe sparking as it knocked against the uneven street.

“Capone,” Marcus said.

“I know,” Alfonzo said. We all knew. Capone was someone we could recognize from a block away. Pilsen seemed like it would be a better place if he’d never been born.

Capone was an addict. He did everything: coke, heroin, happy stick. His favorite pastime was cornering kids in gangways. “What you be about?” he’d demand, a crazy, mindless look in his eyes. “Am-brose Love,” the kids would stammer out. They all knew the routine. Capone liked to bum cigarettes. When taking one he’d say, “Let me get a few more for later.” If you protested he’d say, “Want to fight about it?”

One time he asked Chuey for a cigarette and Chuey said no. Capone punched him so hard in the chest that Chuey lost his breath. There should’ve been payback. Chuey’s family were all Two-Ones. Chuey could’ve said something and all four of his brothers, a few uncles even, would’ve been out hunting for Capone — and they would’ve found him. But Chuey never said anything. “It doesn’t matter,” Chuey said. “It’s not like that fucker will ever learn.” Chuey was right. Once or twice a year Capone was beaten, bloodshot eyes, cut-up face, casts over broken limbs; even looking like that he’d be out gangbanging. Still, it would have been sweet to know Capone’s ass had been kicked yet again, and that Chuey’s brothers had done it.

“Just remember that car,” I said.

The Cadillac peeled off onto Twenty-Second Street.

“If they come back around we’ll meet up behind the Farmfoods.”

We continued walking.

We passed the old funeral parlor, the large, arched doorway that was once the entrance to a barn at the back of the building. We passed beneath the stone horse’s head, the words FUNERAL PARLOUR embedded in color tiles in the arch. Now the building was just another place to live, like so many other storefronts in our neighborhood, boarded-up plateglass windows, marquees covered with plywood, everything washed in a deep maroon as if to match the dirty brick of the neighborhood.

We turned north and headed toward Speedy’s corner store. Our joint was running short. Chuey passed what was left to Marcus. “We should get some more weed,” Marcus said. He pinched the lit joint and brought it to his puckered lips.

Chuey took a breath.

“I can bring things back to life,” he said.

I turned.

“What did you say?”

“I can bring things back to life,” he said again. “I did it this morning, a dead bird.”

Chuey was staring down at the sidewalk. His hair hung low over his brow. His arms were locked at the elbows, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Alfonzo and Marcus turned.

Marcus was trying to position the roach in his fingers.

“You can bring things back to life?” Alfonzo said.

“Yeah,” Chuey said. He lifted his head. He gave a jerk to get the hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know how. It was an accident. I was walking by Wolcott and I saw this thing in the alley. It was green, a parrot, with a red beak.”

“We don’t have parrots,” Marcus said. “Too cold.”

“I know,” Chuey said. “That’s why it was weird. Then I went over there and just touched it. And the thing woke up and flew away.”

I wondered if Chuey had been smoking earlier. He did that sometimes, got high alone. I looked at his eyes. They weren’t glossy like they usually were when he smoked too much. They weren’t lit-up either, as if he might be telling a joke. But then Chuey wasn’t one to tell jokes. Generally what he said was serious — even if it was funny, like a story, it was always true.

“Maybe the bird just got knocked out,” I said. “They fly into windows and shit.”

Chuey shrugged.

“Why would you touch a dead bird, anyway?” Alfonzo asked.

“For real,” Marcus said. “That’s fucking gross.”

“Show us where you found it,” I said. And Chuey took the lead. He headed down Cullerton Avenue. We were high. At that point we really started to be high. For some reason I remember snow falling, but I don’t remember any snow being on the ground. In any case, things suddenly seemed to be happening, more things than I could register, and all I recall about the rest of that day is the burnt-orange leather of Chuey’s jacket, and Chuey talking fast and pointing things out in the middle of an alley.

Chuey was a hippie; at least that’s what everybody in school called him. I’m not sure they even knew what a hippie was. Chuey was more a rocker. He’d introduced us to Rush, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Chuey gave us our first taste of reefer, back in the seventh grade — he’d stolen it from his cousin Rom. Even then everyone called Chuey a hippy, we called Chuey a hippy, but back then it was because of those crazy shoes he wore. He didn’t start wearing that funky leather jacket until high school.

White-boy shoes, that’s what they were. Black, brushed suede. None of us would’ve dared to wear such things. They were Herman Munster boots, and if it wasn’t for Chuey’s long brown hair we might have called him Herman Munster instead of Hippie. Herman Munster or White Boy, one of the two. Chuey never tied his boots. They looked like they would get left behind if he ever had to run anywhere. Of course, Chuey never ran anywhere. Which was one of the reasons we hung around with him. We never ran anywhere, either, spending our lunches instead on the Thomas Cooper Elementary School steps, trying to look cool for the girls, trying to believe we were anywhere but school, trying to ignore the fact that a school bell dictated our lives so completely.

By high school, though, Chuey had adopted at least part of the Pilsen uniform: black Converse All Stars. He still wore straight-leg jeans. The rest of us wore Bogarts — baggy pants with sixteen pleats cascading from the waist, tight cuffs at the ankles. It was strange that Chuey didn’t adopt more of the neighborhood style. He had grown up in Pilsen, just like the rest of us. In fact, Chuey’s roots were deeper in the neighborhood than any of ours were. Our parents had come straight from Mexico. Marcus, Alfonzo, and I were first-generations. Our parents worked in factories, didn’t speak English. Chuey’s parents were gangbangers, old gangbangers, sons and daughters of immigrants. Chuey seemed a step ahead. Like if we ever had kids they’d come out like Chuey, a little more worldly than we ever were. We were jealous of Chuey for who his family was, people who had tattoos, people who had served time in jail, men with names like Hustler, Shyster, Red, women named Chachie or Birdie. These were the people a child growing up in Pilsen heard stories about, people who gave someone from our neighborhood life, history. Chuey never seemed to care. He didn’t walk with pimp. He didn’t magic-marker gang initials on the white soles of his Converses. He didn’t tattoo things on the backs of his hands. Rather, Chuey just seemed to be drifting.

Two days after that day in the alley we were sitting in the school atrium. We were smoking Alfonzo’s Kools. We were not high.

“I did it again,” Chuey whispered.

We were on lunch.

“Hey, bro,” Alfonzo said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in biology or something?”

“Yeah, I know,” Chuey said. He was still whispering. “But listen, I did it again.”

“What?” Alfonzo asked.

“Raised the dead, bro,” Chuey said. He was excited, smiling. “Another bird, man, a little sparrow, right outside my window. It must’ve froze to death.”

I looked to the group of girls sitting behind us. They had heard Chuey. They were laughing, making faces. I smiled at them.

“I asked my great-grandfather,” Chuey said. “He said I had the gift of his people, the Seri, back in Sonora, God’s Country.” By now the girls behind us were paying even more attention. I pinched my fingers and touched them to my lips. The girls started laughing again.

“You’re not an Indian, bro,” Marcus said.

“No, but I have the gift,” Chuey said. “It’s in my blood.”

None of us said anything.

Chuey’s great-grandfather was an Indian. Back in grammar school we once sent Chuey home with phrases to translate. The next day he came back with these crazy sounds that were supposed to be words: “Motherfucker is…” “Give me a beer is…” “Hey baby what’s your name is…” The language had hard t’s and heaves yet still managed to sound somehow Spanish. Chuey’s great-grandfather still lived in Mexico. He sent Chuey things: that ugly leather jacket, a rusting metal pendant, a small sack of tin coins. It was junk, the stuff you’d find in a secondhand store on Eighteenth Street. Chuey called them heirlooms.

“We can go after school,” Chuey said to us.

By this time the girls behind us had returned to their own conversations.

“Go where?” I asked him.

“To find dead things,” Chuey said. And then he walked away.

After school that day we hit the three places we thought most promising: the alleys behind Martin’s hot-dog stand, Del Rey tortillas, and Slotkowski sausage. Each time there was nothing, not a dead rat, dead bird, or dead cat to be found.

“Just our luck,” Alfonzo said. “When you need a dead animal you can’t fucking find one.”

“No shit,” Marcus said. He tilted back a garbage can. “I thought the city was putting rat poison down. There should be a shitload of dead rats.”

“They’re probably immune,” I said. “Super rats.” I peeked down a long, descending gangway.

“Hey, bro,” Alfonzo said. “Does your magic work on trees?”

“I don’t know,” Chuey said.

“They’re dead, right?” Alfonzo asked. “In the winter.”

“No,” I said. “I think they’re just sleeping.”

“We should try it,” Marcus said. “Maybe it’ll work.”

So we walked back to school, back to Twenty-First Place. After a short search we found the tree that looked the most dead: twisted branches, peeling bark, white streaks down the trunk like the tree had been bleeding. Above us the streetlights were just flickering on. The sky had a dark lavender color.

Chuey took off his jacket.

“Does it hurt?” Alfonzo asked.

“No,” Chuey said. “It’s weird. I don’t even feel anything. But I know it’s coming so it almost hurts.”

Chuey took a deep breath. “Ready?” he asked.

We all nodded.

Chuey reached out and tapped the tree. He did it quickly, as if expecting an electric shock.

We waited.

We waited even longer.

There was nothing. No sudden blossoms, no thick, heavy leaves, no fresh bark climbing up the diseased-looking trunk.

“Touch it again,” Alfonzo said.

“No,” Chuey said. “This is not how it works. This is not what it’s meant for.”

“Well, it’s getting fucking cold out here,” Marcus said. He blew into his hands.

We started to move toward home.

Twenty-First Place was flooded with orange street light now. Tree branches cast long shadows against the two- and three-flats. In the sidewalk, messages etched before the cement had dried stood out like miniature mountain ranges: PARTY BOY LOVE, MARIA-L’S-FRIDO 4-NOW.

We crossed an alley. I took a quick glance down to the other end. There, in the middle of the alley, resting in the shallow drainage canal, was a large black mound.

“Look,” I said.

“Damn,” Alfonzo said.

“If that’s a rat…” Marcus said.

We walked down the alley. As we got closer the mound began to take shape: a fat pink tail, a wide belly, yellow teeth propping up a long, pointy head. It was the biggest rat any of us had ever seen.

“That fucker’s huge,” Alfonzo said.

I picked up a rock and threw it. I hit the rat square in the ribs.

Nothing.

Alfonzo stomped on the ground. He waved his arms over his head.

Still nothing.

It was the size of a small dog. The tail alone was so fat that wrinkles were visible, fingerprints, almost.

“You sure that’s not an o-possum?” Alfonzo asked.

“What the fuck’s an o-possum?” Marcus said.

“Just like a rat, only bigger. They got them in Jew-town, by Maxwell Street.”

“That’s a rat, man,” I said. I looked down to the animal, its stiff, short hair. I gave the body a kick. The entire thing moved, a block of ice. Even the tail held its stiff s shape.

“You’re going to touch that?” Alfonzo asked Chuey.

Chuey didn’t answer. He got down on his knees and started to rub his hands together.

“Those things got diseases,” Marcus said.

“Shhh,” I told Marcus.

“Those things can jump too,” Marcus said. “One time, in my gangway…”

“Shut up, asshole,” Alfonzo said. He yanked back on Marcus’s hoodie. They both fell in behind Chuey.

Chuey pushed the sleeves of his brown jacket up to his elbows.

I scanned the porches of the apartment buildings around us. In some windows Christmas lights had been hung, tight crisscrossing patterns, steep triangles. In a few windows the designs had collapsed, leaving only sagging, drooping strings of lights, barely hanging on, like a wino’s pants. Through some windows blue TV reflections could be seen, brilliant flashes against white plaster ceilings, Christmas specials probably, Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life. At that moment the whole city seemed asleep.

Chuey blew into his hands. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them. Then he reached out and stabbed with his finger at the rat’s hind leg. We waited. I looked to Alfonzo. Beneath the powerful alley lamp his breath was luminescent. I looked to Marcus. He was on his tiptoes, trying to see over Alfonzo’s shoulder. Nothing seemed to be happening.

“There!” Chuey said. “There it is!” Down on the concrete the rat’s large body began to move.

That night, in that alley, we witnessed creation, maybe re-creation. Life came to the rat in a wave that spread from the hind leg, where Chuey had touched it, to the front and rear of the rat’s body. The tail whipped. The front legs jerked and twitched. At the head, the rat’s mouth clapped shut. The rat thawed before our eyes: its belly dropped; its back arched; its hair stood on end. There were no flashes, no sparks, just the rat heaving, then breathing, then darting for the nearest bank of garbage cans. We jumped and screamed. We yelled for Marcus, who had run to the end of the alley. We hugged Chuey. He had the gift of life.

Those months we missed a ton of school. First there were the pigeons kids would shoot from their apartment-building windows. Then there were the stray cats the Ambrose tortured and left hanging from alley light poles. Then there were the puppies left in cardboard boxes, dumped in empty lots. Really, there was so much to do.

At first we experimented. Did the power work best at night or during the day? Did Chuey always have the gift or did it flicker in and out, off and on, like the W in the Woolworth’s sign over on Twenty-Second Street? As it turned out, the power was always on. Chuey could raise the dead whenever he wanted. Only time of day seemed to make a difference, and that affected only speed. Early mornings a cat would come back in a matter a seconds. Later at night it seemed as if the power had drained slightly. Things came back reluctantly. The process even appeared to hurt a little.

Within a couple of weeks we had a set routine. I was security. I made sure there were no witnesses, gave a whistle if someone was coming. Marcus tended to the animal, herding it in the safest direction once it came back. And Alfonzo, who had been an altar boy for two weeks back in the sixth grade, gave the invocation.

“May the holy ghost follow you through your new life. May you hold dear this blessing from God’s Country.”

Chuey did the work.

Besides us, only Chuey’s great-grandfather knew what we were doing. Since the discovery he’d become a coach, instructing us on how to use the power. “Ask him if we can bring back humans,” Marcus once told Chuey. “We could go to Graceland and bring back Elvis.”

The following day Chuey had a response. “My great-grandfather says the power is to be respected. It can be used only for the common good.” His great-grandfather’s answers always begged more questions. Eventually we stopped asking things altogether.

We met under the trees on Twenty-First Place. From there we combed the streets. After the streets were cleared, we moved on to garbage cans, where we found parakeet mummies wrapped in newspaper, cloudy-eyed goldfish wrapped in toilet paper. The goldfish we collected in a Tupperware dish Alfonzo had stolen from his mother’s kitchen. Then we took the fish back to Marcus’s house and gave them life in the warmth of his basement bedroom. By late February Marcus had more fish than he had space for, and we started calling him Aquaman and telling him he was going to grow gills. Every time we found a new fish Marcus would say, “Hey, you guys need to take some.” But we always protested and said our parents wouldn’t let us.

We all started collecting things. Alfonzo had a puppy he’d named Cloudy. We’d found Cloudy frozen behind the junkyard on Peoria Street. His legs were stiff. His white coat was matted and ugly, bald in some spots. When Cloudy came back his coat was fresh and new, thin and wispy. We could feel Cloudy’s ribs as we held him up and had him lick our faces. He was a puppy again.

By March I had three birds: a finch named Ron Kittle, and two parakeets — Harold Baines and Mike Squires, my White Sox all-stars. I had found a birdcage in the dumpster behind my apartment building; I began calling the cage my dugout. I was anxious to add Carlton Fisk to it.

By late March, by spring, all four of us had maxed out on absences. Our parents were called in. We made excuses. I claimed that gangbangers were after me, that they had threatened to kill me unless I joined their gang. Mr. Stoner, the disciplinarian, asked me to name names, and I rattled off a few I had seen spray-painted on our neighborhood’s walls. Tom Cat, Jerry Mouse, Player, Jouster. My parents were sympathetic. So was Mr. Stoner. He let us all stay in school with promises that we would not miss another day. We even signed contracts. By April, though, we were missing days again, and by May, by graduation, we had stopped going completely.

Those days were fun. It seemed quite possible that we could make careers out of raising the dead. We could leave the neighborhood, travel the world, resurrect important figures in history. Already I found myself scanning the obituary pages of the Sun-Times, cutting out clippings of former presidents, kings and queens, rock stars, anyone famous, creating a list of important people we had to bring back to life. We wondered together if there was a statute of limitations on Chuey’s power. Could we bring back Martin Luther King Jr.? Could we bring back George Washington if we ever found where he was buried, or King Tut, who had been on display at the Field Museum downtown? These questions were on all our minds in late May, when Chuey told Brenda Gamino he could raise the dead.

I am not upset. The truth is Brenda could do that to a man. The second week of school I’d tried to ask her, “So how do you like high school?” Only my tongue got thick and it came out more like, “How do oh a hisco?” She just looked at me and smiled. “What?” she said. I wanted to kiss her right then and there. Her voice, even questioning me the way it was, was soft and warm. I think I wanted to marry her.

“No, no,” I said. “High school… I mean… if you like it… is what…”

“What?” she asked again. And I just turned and walked away, my Adam’s apple so far up my throat I felt like I was gargling.

Marcus had done it, and Alfonzo too. Brenda just made people say stupid things. But Chuey had been saved. He was too embarrassed. He’d never said a word to Brenda. I believed Chuey when he said that Brenda had been the one to start talking to him. Her question had been, “What are you going to do this summer?” And in the heat of the moment, in the desperate search to say something of meaning, something she would remember, Chuey replied, “Raise the dead.”

She didn’t mind us much, Brenda. I’m not sure she remembered that any of us had ever tried to talk to her. Those last few weeks of school we used to pick her up, the four of us. They weren’t really even dating, not yet. They would walk together, laugh out loud, hold hands. Marcus, Alfonzo, and I would follow, smoking cigarettes, anxious to get back to the business of Life, hoping someone like Capone didn’t show up to make us look stupid.

Brenda used to say things: “You know, they’re not going to let you guys back in.” “We know,” we would reply. “We have a plan.” But her comments began to have an effect. More and more while out on rounds, Chuey would start talking about going back to school, going to summer school even. Our plans were at risk.

So maybe he showed her at some point. Maybe they were walking after a rain and he found a dead worm on the school baseball field. Or maybe they found a dead bird, a pigeon hit by a bus, or a sparrow who’d ingested rat poison. Chuey said he never showed her, that he never even brought up the power, but he must’ve done something — otherwise she would’ve thought he was crazy, talking about “raising the dead” the way he did. But maybe she thought he was a little off anyway. When you’re a teenager you’re willing to take more things on faith. Reality hasn’t been defined by experience. Anyway, she asked Chuey, the night her brother OD’d, to bring him back to life. And then Chuey called us, and at 11:30 p.m., May 15, we met at Twenty-First Place and started walking to Brenda’s house. The trees were in full bloom by then. Even at night the smell was like inhaling through a sheet of fabric softener.

We didn’t know Brenda’s family. Chuey didn’t know them, and he’d walked Brenda home dozens of times. It’s no wonder, though, that she kept her family a secret. I wouldn’t have admitted to Capone either.

It’s beyond me how they came from the same family. One of them must’ve been adopted. Brenda looked like her mother. They had the same eyes. But then Capone had their mother’s skin — dark, sandy. So who knows, maybe they had different fathers. For so long Brenda had seemed otherworldly — even with her talking to Chuey, she was still beyond us, beyond Marcus, Alfonzo, and me. Yet here she was, sister to the most obnoxious gangbanger in Pilsen. Things suddenly seemed possible.

He’d OD’d in his bedroom. Brenda walked us there after meeting us on the sidewalk. They lived in the back basement of a narrow three-flat. Their apartment was cool and wet; the concrete floor was glossy with humidity. Carpets covered some spots and as we walked through I found myself taking long strides from carpet to carpet.

Capone was sitting on the floor, leaned up against his bed. His head was cocked sideways, his chin dug into his chest. White vomit streaked down the left side of his mouth onto his black T-shirt. He was filthy. He stank. He looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week.

“How long has he been this way?” Marcus asked.

“We just found him,” she said. “Maybe a half hour ago.”

“No, dirty like that,” Marcus said. “When’s the last time he took a bath?”

“Que dijo?” their mother asked.

Brenda ignored her.

“I don’t know,” Brenda said. “He leaves home for weeks, then just shows up for breakfast or something. We haven’t seen him for a month.”

Her mother looked to us like she was waiting for a response.

The last time the four of us had seen Capone was back in the winter, back when that white Cadillac had stopped in the middle of Paulina Street. I wondered if he’d been stoned since then. I wondered if his death was the end of a five-month-long high.

“You sure he’s dead?” Alfonzo asked.

“His heart’s not beating,” Brenda said. She raised her eyebrows like Alfonzo was an idiot.

Alfonzo nodded in return.

Chuey got down on a knee and reached for Capone’s wrist. He searched for a pulse, using two fingers, stopping at various points like he knew exactly what he was doing.

Capone’s arms were covered in tattoos. On his right forearm, close to his elbow, were the masks of comedy and tragedy, both crying large white tears. Just below was a fat, green, faded crucifix. And then at his wrist, where Chuey was searching, the word AMOR was written in Old English script.

“Can you do something, Jesse?” Brenda asked. She used Chuey’s real name. No one ever used Chuey’s real name, not even his family. I wanted to correct her.

Chuey sighed. “An hour max,” he said. “Easy death, no violence. We’ll take care of it.”

I looked to Alfonzo and Marcus. They both looked at me. Chuey had never sounded so official.

Chuey reached into his pocket and pulled out a penlight. He pried open one of Capone’s eyelids and then shined the light in. He pulled the light away and brought it back quickly. He did this two or three times for each eye. With each flash he gave a small grunt as if whatever he was looking for wasn’t there.

Capone’s pants were stiff and crusty. They were blue but hazy, spotted with dirt and grease. They looked like the pants of an alley auto mechanic. Capone’s socks had been white at some point. Now they were black at the soles, lighter shades of gray toward his ankles. I couldn’t believe Capone was on the floor, dead. I felt a sense of satisfaction. I felt like cursing him, talking to the dead body, making up for all those times he’d hassled me on the streets of our neighborhood. Serves you right, motherfucker. I felt like kicking him.

Chuey continued with his examination. He wiped Capone’s chin and neck with an edge of bedsheet, then felt under Capone’s jaw the way a doctor does, lightly, gently.

I thought to remind Chuey of that time Capone had punched him in the chest. I thought to remind Chuey of what he’d said back then: “It’s not like that fucker will ever learn.” Then suddenly I remembered what Chuey’s great-grandfather had said way back in January, how the power was to be respected, how it could be used only for the common good. We weren’t supposed to bring Capone back. Our job was to bring back harmless things, cats, birds, dogs, goldfish, a decent human being — not Capone. I opened my mouth to say something, but then I saw Chuey look up to Brenda. He smiled and nodded with confidence, reassurance. He was going to bring Capone back, common good or not.

“Qué van hacer con mi niño?” Brenda’s mother asked.

“Mom,” Brenda answered in English. “Just let him be. He knows what he’s doing.”

On a bedside table a burnt-out glass tube sat looking like it was about to roll off and shatter on the concrete floor. In the center of the table a tiny Bic lighter, blue, just like the one Marcus carried, was standing upright.

“You guys let him smoke in here?” Alfonzo asked.

“He just does it,” Brenda said. “I tell her all the time.” She turned to her mother. “But she won’t just kick him out.” She said this last piece forcefully. Her mother didn’t bother to look.

“We’re going to have to lay him down,” I said to Chuey.

Chuey gave a nod.

“They like to kick,” Marcus said to Brenda. He smiled like an apology.

I reached down and started to pull at Capone’s arm. The closer I got the more I picked up his odor. He was sour. I didn’t know if it was the drugs, the death, the filth, or all of the above. Alfonzo and Marcus went for Capone’s legs. I could see the looks on their faces as they pulled at his ankles.

Chuey was on his knees. He started to rub his hands together.

“Qué van hacer?” Brenda’s mother asked.

“It’s okay, Señora,” I said to her. “Somos professionales.”

She was holding her hand up near her mouth. She was leaning to one side, watching us, waiting for what we were going to do next.

“Okay,” Marcus said. “Ready.” He grabbed Capone’s left leg. Alfonzo grabbed the right.

Chuey was breathing deep now. His eyes were closed. He looked like he was preparing for a dive, like I’d seen competition divers do once on a National Geographic special. Then he started humming.

Brenda’s mother turned to her.

“Mom,” Brenda said. “He’s an Indian. This is a ritual.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Does anyone else know we’re here?” I asked Brenda.

“No,” Brenda said.

“You didn’t call the police?” I asked.

“No,” she said again. “We found him and I just called Jesse. I know what you guys do for a living.”

There was a pause. Even Chuey stopped humming. I expected him to open his eyes, to look at me, to us, for our reaction. He began humming again.

“What’s his name?” Alfonzo asked Brenda.

“Leo,” she responded.

And then, as I waited for Chuey to give his gift, for some reason I began to feel close to Capone. I’d seen him around for so many years, spoken to him so often, said what’s up in hopes of avoiding confrontation. I’d even run from him a couple of times, when my appeals to his human side failed. As I stood there looking at his limp body, things started to make sense. I could see him growing up in the tiny basement apartment. I could see him in Cooper Elementary, where I had gone. I could see him making friends, hanging out with the Latin Ambrose, until suddenly, almost unexpectedly, he couldn’t turn back. I felt sure Capone was a father. Maybe his girlfriend was one of the young mothers, the gangbanger girls I’d seen walking their babies on Saturday afternoons. I looked to his mother. She was old and tired, like my mother, like all our mothers. She still had her hand up near her mouth, hiding it, as if her lips might reveal more than she wanted to. Without me realizing it, Capone began to seem normal. I felt like we were all in the same boat, like our neighborhood, Pilsen, was just a rut people fell into. I began to think we were doing the right thing. That maybe Capone had seen God, or someone, or something, and was going to come back a new man, reborn. Maybe he’d seen the other side. I studied his tattoos, the upturned spear, the name CAPONE written in script on his neck, under his ear. Maybe this was what the gift was meant for, second chances, or even a chance at all.

Finally Chuey stopped humming. He opened his eyes and nodded to Alfonzo. I tightened my grip.

“May the holy ghost follow you through your new life,” Alfonzo said. “May you hold dear this blessing from God’s Country.”

And then Chuey tapped Capone’s ankle.

Like always at night, it happened slow. First his right foot twitched, then his left. Then there was nothing. Seconds passed. Two or three minutes even. Then his fingers twitched. Then his whole body snapped, for just an instant, like his muscles, his veins, had suddenly inflated. Capone wheezed, a breathless, flat wheeze, barely audible, but it was noise, and Capone had made it.

“Dios bendiga,” Brenda’s mother said. She dropped to her knees. “Mijo!”

Capone growled. His chest heaved. It wasn’t breath — breathing hadn’t started yet, but Capone’s lungs swelled, then emptied. Brenda’s mother reached for Capone.

“Don’t!” Chuey barked.

Brenda’s mother snapped back, startled.

Then real breath started. It was obvious. Capone’s chest rose and fell, slowly at first, then quickly, then regular, like his lungs had found a rhythm, had caught up to the beating of his heart. He was mumbling, every breath seemed to carry a sentence

“Mijo!” his mother called out. “Aqui estoy, mijo,” she said.

Capone’s mother reached for him again. This time Chuey let her go.

Capone opened his eyes. He stared into his mother’s face. He had that wild look, the same one he had when he was high, when he was pushing kids up against walls, asking them what they “be about,” ready to kill. His mother was whispering to him. She was returning his stare, praying for him. Then Capone flexed his arms. I felt him pull. His biceps bulged; his eyes widened. I leaned all my weight into his wrist, trying to pin it to the floor.

“It’s all right!” Alfonzo said from below. “It’s okay, man, relax. Leo, let it go!”

“It’s all right, Leo,” Brenda said. “You’re home, you’re here, you’re safe.”

Then Capone gave a cry, a shriek. Another spurt of energy shot through his arms, his body. I leaned into his wrist again. On the other side Chuey did the same. Suddenly Capone gave way. His arms went limp. His eyes went clear. Now he was Capone, Leo. Now he was alive.

“Mamá,” he said. He was breathing hard, panting. Sweat was pouring down his face, beading up on his nose, his unshaven face.

“Mamá!” he cried. “I know what I did.” He was sobbing. “I know what I did, Mamá.” he said again. “I saw the other side.”

Capone’s mother wiped his face with her bare hand. She grabbed his cheeks and kissed his lips.

I loosened my grip on Capone’s arm. Chuey, Alfonzo, and Marcus released their holds as well. Capone was still. He was whimpering. Brenda got to her knees. His mother was hugging him. Then Brenda was hugging him. Then they were all crying and hugging together.

“You’re okay, Leo,” Brenda said to him. “You’re okay.”

“I did something wrong,” Capone said. “I know what I did. I saw myself.”

“It’s okay,” Brenda said to him. “You’re back now. It’s over.”

Capone continued to whimper. His smell was stronger. The whole bedroom smelled spoiled, like clothes that have sat in the washer too long.

“You know,” Marcus said. “It’s easier when we bring them back in the morning.” He wiped his forehead. “They don’t fight as much.”

No one responded.

We waited for a long while. They wouldn’t let go of each other. Finally Brenda’s mother sat up. She looked to Chuey, who was sitting on the edge of Capone’s bed. She turned to him and grabbed his hands. She held them close to her chest. She still had tears in her eyes. “How did you learn to do that?” she asked him. She was speaking softly, quietly. “A donde aprendiste eso?”

“Sonora,” he said to her. “I learned it all in God’s Country.”

Then she smiled and kissed his knuckles.

We were on top of the world. For a while nothing could bring us down. It was a natural high. We woke up feeling powerful, breathing easy, clear. We went to sleep feeling the same. We were rejuvenated, ready to hit the streets. Alfonzo made plans for a bus trip across the country: “St. Louis,” he said. “Gateway to the West.” So we started collecting money; Marcus even sold some of his goldfish to the kids in his building. We were on our way somewhere, out of Pilsen. Then Chuey said the power needed a rest.

A rest was understandable. We’d been going at it since Christmas, nonstop. Maybe Chuey was getting tired. Honestly, we were getting tired as well. Capone had come at just the right time to keep us going, but when we thought about it, we needed a break too. Our vacation was to last two weeks. Middle of June we were to pick up right where we left off. We’d have more money by then. St. Louis was just around the corner.

The first day of June, Chuey started summer school. We didn’t even know he’d registered. He’d signed up before the end of May, before we brought Capone back. Chuey said that he hadn’t, that he’d only registered a few days ago, but this didn’t make any sense. We knew he was lying.

But we came up with an alternate plan. During the week, while Chuey was in school, Marcus, Alfonzo, and I would scout bodies. We would list where things were, rank their importance. Then on the weekends Chuey would join us, give his gift. This was a silly idea — even then I knew it wouldn’t work. Marcus seemed like the only one interested. I can say now, honestly, that by then Alfonzo and I were just looking for something to do. With Chuey in school our days had become just as long and boring as they were before we found out about the power.

We continued to meet under the trees on Twenty-First, only now it was just the three of us. Marcus had a little notebook where he’d jot down streets and intersections, types of bodies as we found them. After a few days even Marcus began to see the ridiculousness of what we were doing. One afternoon we found a pigeon in an alley, dead, shot, bleeding from its eye. It had fallen from the telephone wire above. An open attic window was just a few feet from the line, a straight shot with a pellet gun. Marcus crouched next to the pigeon. Then he reached out and touched it. He waited and waited. He asked Alfonzo to give the invocation. So Alfonzo did. Marcus breathed deep and clear. He hummed with his eyes closed. And then he touched the pigeon again. Still, there was nothing. We walked in silence, split up, then went our separate ways home. That was the last day we ever went out on rounds.

A few weeks later, in early July, Alfonzo and I registered for the second half of summer school. It was a painless experience. Our social worker, Mr. Sanchez, wound up being our summer school counselor. He praised us for having “changes of heart” and then convinced us to get the hard classes out of the way first, algebra and U.S. history. Seven hours a day, a half-hour lunch, two fifteen-minute breaks. At least we were in the same classes. Marcus refused to enroll. The day we asked him, his response had been, “You know, I can’t ever see myself in a classroom again.” We knew he was serious.

There were changes of heart in Brenda’s family as well. Capone had become a new person. He’d cleaned himself up. He’d stopped the drugs, stopped the gangbanging. The week after we brought him back to life, Brenda’s mother took him shopping, and not shopping at Zemsky’s Discount, or Goldblatt’s, but shopping like downtown, Stacey Adams, Marshall Field’s. She bought him an entirely new wardrobe, new shoes, ties that matched his socks. Brenda told us his mother would only buy him long-sleeve shirts and we knew this was true because eventually we saw Capone ourselves, walking to the Eighteenth Street L station, a brown bag lunch in his hand. He had landed a job working at a law firm downtown, shelving books. He had a tie clip, wing-tipped shoes, no earrings. At his wrists, peeking out from under his shirt cuffs, were the thick green scallops of his tattoos. At his collar, on his neck, the top edges of his name were visible. But he had a nice smile, and with him for some reason this seemed to go a long way. When he saw us he said what’s up and raised his lunch bag for show. He kept walking like he was in a hurry. He gave us a smile.

That August, Capone was killed in a drive-by shooting. He had just stepped out of the Woolworth’s on Twenty-Second Street. He had bought some T-shirts to wear under his dress shirts. A gang-banger, a Disciple, was walking by at the same time and someone in a passing car, aiming for the Disciple, shot Capone once in the right temple. He was dead on the scene. There was no hope. Chuey was in school.

Alfonzo and I heard the rumors. We were in school by then and we heard how someone had “paid” Capone back, and how he “got what was coming to him.” The whole neighborhood knew the shot was meant for someone else, but the way rumors work, people believed what they wanted. I never said anything. I knew what we had done, that we had served the common good.

I don’t know exactly what killed Chuey’s power, or even if it’s dead at all. Chuey is long gone. He lives up on the northside now with Brenda and their kids. With some investigation I could get Chuey’s phone number — his family still lives in the neighborhood. But I’m not sure what I would ever say to him. It seems as if we’ve already done enough.

Like so many people from Pilsen, Marcus simply disappeared. I talked to him off and on all through high school. He was working at UPS for a while. He met a white girl there and they moved in together. Then suddenly there was nothing. He was gone, disappeared, like childhood.

Alfonzo joined the army. He lives in Arizona now and builds helicopters. I still talk to him, once a year or so. We always remember Brenda, how she made people say stupid things, how Capone was killed just when he was getting started. Beyond that I am not sure what else we say, though our conversations sometimes last for hours.

I still live here, two blocks from where I grew up, four blocks from where we brought that first rat back so many years ago. I still think about raising the dead, every day. Sometimes, in my bathroom, I will find things, a dead spider, a dead ladybug, or, every so often, a cockroach. And just for fun I will close my eyes, open them, and touch the dead body. I’ll hope that my finger will give life, that I’ll feel again what I felt when I was fourteen, when, in this whole damn neighborhood, among all this concrete, all these apartment buildings, church steeples, and smoke stacks, we were somebody.