Do They Know I'm Running? Read Online Free PDF

Twelve psi, easy. Nine’s fine. What’s your speed?”
    “There’s the thing. I can barely break forty on an incline if I’m towing.”
    Faustino cocked an ear halfheartedly, like it was a game between teams he had no stake in. Even if he’d thought the coastwas clear, he wouldn’t have climbed down, joined in. He didn’t feel much like camaraderie these days.
    What he felt was ashamed—losing the house, cheated out of it, all because the mortgage broker, a Mexican, all smiles and small talk, said he was dying to give them the Latino dream. They’d found the house, fourteen hundred square feet, three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, nothing extravagant, and the broker had the loan, low interest going in, adjustable three years out. They signed the papers, wrote the check, moved in, no mean trick since Faustino was
sin documentos
. Two months later? Some guy they’ve never heard of shows up, demands an extra fifteen hundred a month, they’re already behind, says it’s to repay the short-term loan for the down payment. He had all the paperwork, Faustino’s and Lucha’s signatures right there, part of the ungodly stack the escrow officer had slid past them at the title company. That was bad enough but when the rate adjusted and the new monthly kicked in, it became too much. They’d trusted people. They’d trusted a Mexican. They’d been fools.
    They lived in that humiliating trailer now, trying to get their legs beneath them again, except Godo was back from the war, body in shreds, brain not right. And Roque, who should be working, helping out. He’s gifted, Faustino reminded himself. “That boy could be the next Carlos Santana”—he was ten when they started saying that. Teachers agonizing over him at school, saying he had the mind but not the will, reading
novelas policíacas
during class, tapping out rhythms with his pen or just lost in the clouds. Then he met old Antonio, the retired bandmaster who played boleros at parties. That was it, like the guitar descended from heaven and spoke. Roque learned classical and flamenco from the old man, pieces from Spain and Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, and it was magical, watching him turn calm and mindful, cradling the guitar. Then, boom, he’s a teenager and it’s pickup offers, garage bands, jam sessions, sometimes with realmusicians, guys who got paid, which was how he met his latest teacher, Lalo, a professor at San Francisco State. He took Roque on as a special protégé, introducing him to jazz. Lucha bought him the electric so he could stand on his own among the others, prove himself. What else was there to do, let him turn out like Godo? Or worse—Pablo?
    Outside, the men continued: “Motor got rebuilt with a new pump maybe ten thousand miles ago, idles and runs like a champ, just weak on towing.” Faustino resisted a smile, not just at their rough-edged English, which to his ear, even after all this time in
Gringolandia
, could sound like rocks tumbling inside a bucket. The way
norteños
go on about their trucks, he thought, it was the same way they talked about family, sickness, politics. All you needed were the right tools, a good manual, everything would be fine. They listened to these people on the radio, Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, hoping to fix their problems. They’re like children up here, Lucha said, they want to be told what to do, get punished but not too bad. Things are too easy, they get bored, which is why they spend so much time thinking about how to improve themselves. The divine, the invisible, death, it scares the living crap out of them, which is why they’re so noisy, so devoted to money and war and machines. Faustino knew what it meant to rely on his truck, he was no stranger to an obsession with its workings, but it was different. He knew there was no such thing as a diesel that could change his life.
    He wondered what the loads would be today. Hopefully not avocados. Or bottled beer or boxes of slate tile, especially if they were packed