Juan pointed with his head only at the African, who was talking to Jose.
"I'm telling you — at the end of the street, the end," Jose was saying, as he wiped down a table. He looked over at us and shrugged. "Is it my fault he doesn't speak Christian?"
Juan laughed. We were three beers in and our young bodies were pretty juiced up. The African was big and seemed to know he was not in friendly waters. He wasn't going to buck the four of us plus Jose, but he dared us hard with his eyes. Juan grinned and kept his stare on the African when he said to us, "Problem is, picking lettuce makes you dumb." Then he let out one of his I'm dangerous yells.
The African moved off, walking like ten men. I breathed out and tried to change the focus of things. "Let's go to Sierra Nevada," I said. Juan was less dangerous when girls were around. Or so I thought.
The four of us hopped on our quads and revved them loud. Then on Juan's cue we peeled away and ran the town like a racetrack three times before we pulled down Doctor Mendoza Street to Nevada.
The place was going hard by the time we showed up. A lot of people flinched when they saw Juan. He was a loose spark, not grounded in family. Every town had one, and you couldn't take him away until he did something so serious the town would be marked forever. I had joined fire rather than fight it futilely. With my face I couldn't hope for love, my brains didn't promise and the town offered nothing. We took a table and the four of us started scanning the room for eyes and other entry points on bodies.
Kati was dancing. In her tight, white cotton pants she was a light bulb in that bar of darkness. Juan had a visual lock on her ass and he soon stood up to approach her. I felt green and sick because Kati was my sister's friend. When Juan grazed her ass with his hand and she spun around angry and he laughed, I felt like smashing his face. But stronger was the fear, as I watched my sister jump into the scene, that this would not end well.
"Juan," I said. "Let's leave these suckers."
"I want a piece of this ham first." He kept trying to get around the back of Kati with his hands. I looked around and no one was moving. Only my sister put herself in Juan's way. I was proud but afraid Juan would make me choose and that I would choose wrong.
"Control your friend, this beast," my sister said to me. But then Juan threw a glass on the floor and everybody pushed back against the walls. He smiled at the effect he'd had and signaled over to Pedro and Joaquín who had watched in admiration and we left.
We got some beer and walked to the park, leaving the quads at Nevada. We drank, yelled, broke bottles and tried to destroy a bench without any luck. I was ready to go home. But three dark figures approached.
It was the same African as before, with two friends.
"Look at this shit," said Juan.
"Juan, man, let's go," I said. "We're drunk and they're bigger than us."
"Fuck that! Is this our town or theirs?"
"You know it's ours. I just don't feel like scrapping."
But he was already up, provoking. The Africans were five meters away when Juan muttered, "Fucking lettuce-pickers," which was pretty damn funny: Juan's grandfather and father had been lettuce-pickers. But then money came to our town because we had beaches, and all the farm workers switched over to construction, and the Africans came up to fill the empty farm jobs. "Shitty blacks," said Juan, louder. He didn't expect for anything that one of those big Africans understood Spanish, much less that they would rush him all at once.
Pedro, Joaquín and I, we didn't move. They got him on the ground in a hurry and they were kicking him good. The one from Jose's earlier looked over. He caught my eyes and I felt lowered as a person. But I felt no anger coming from him. "You fuckers are dead," I heard Juan spit out. He was talking to all of us. The African kept looking at me. I nodded. Then I realized Joaquín and Pedro were already up and jogging away. I looked down at Juan. He was no longer up to threats, or any kind of talking.
I walked home fast through the balmy quiet of our town. I felt a rush of freedom like I could jump in the air and fly, even as fear of Juan wormed through my body, wrecking my stomach and head.
The next day we heard Juan was in the hospital. His head and ribs were fucked up. His left arm and right leg were in plaster. Pedro and Joaquín went to visit but he cursed them out of the room. Me, I knew I was done with him.
Three weeks later he came out on crutches and went straight to a bar stool, where he stayed ever since. That beating made him old, in body and mind. When I passed him in the street, his face would shadow over and he'd turn his cheek. I felt no more fear of him.
I moved on. The future was open. I learned that a man can be ugly and stupid without being a monster. And I took pleasure in exchanging nods with the big African. He sometimes had a beer in the bar where I worked when he got back from picking lettuce. It was the same lettuce we served him when he ordered a salad. The bar was clean and light, in the new part of town, not like Jose's dump. Juan never came to drink there.