Drowning Tucson Read Online Free PDF Page B

stepped forward, Ricardo grabbed his hand and held it, just for a second. Then he let it drop and took a step back. The crowd closed in.
    Felipe stood with his back straight and his hands at his sides, facing his brothers. He knew they had to throw the first punches. That’s how it worked. Another test for the Nuñez boys. No one spoke. Felipe scanned the crowd and saw Helena and the two Rosas hugging Lavinía while she lowered her head and cried, unable to watch. He looked each person in the eyes, standing his ground, and spoke two words. I’m ready.
    Chuy was the first to throw a punch. Felipe didn’t flinch. It landed on his forehead, splitting the skin open above his right eyebrow. Blooddrained down into his eye, but he made no move to wipe it away. Rogelio was next. His fist came at Felipe, as large as a cement block, and knocked his jaw loose. When Davíd blasted him in the ear, he heard it more than he felt it. Already he could feel his head swollen with blood, and this was just the beginning. That’s how it worked.
    Felipe’s knees buckled beneath him and his body began to fall to the ground, but someone caught him from behind and held him upright as a flurry of fists pummeled his face, breaking his nose and popping teeth out of his mouth, but Felipe didn’t cry out, he only waited for it to be over, thinking how nice it would be to crawl into bed and tell his mom it’s going to be okay, just bring me a cold washcloth and lay it on my face, and then he felt the sharp sting of someone punching him in the kidneys and he lost his breath, unable to regain it because he was being kicked in the stomach and in the balls and his legs went out from under him but he didn’t fall—how come I’m not falling?—because the crowd had pushed in so tightly around him that there was nowhere for him to collapse, and everyone wanted a shot at this pussy who’d dared to disrespect them, dared to turn his back on the Kings when they had let him in and shown him the ropes and trusted him, only for him to turn around and shove it back in their faces, knowing damn well this wouldn’t fly in their neighborhood, even if you are a Nuñez,
especially since
you are a nuñez, and so many people were beating him from so many different directions that he could no longer discern one blow from the next, nor did he realize he had finally crumpled to the ground where they continued to kick his limp body and stomp on him, yelling and cursing this boy beneath them, who was never going to be a man, despite his courage to stand up to them and take his punishment, which was only supposed to be an assbeating, but had turned into a swarm of people taking their fear and rage out on the bravest man who had ever walked 24th Street, and Felipe opened his eyes and through his blurry red vision tried to decipher the mass of limbs that continued to bludgeon him, but he could see nothing, could only hear the weeping of Lavinía and her friends, and Ricardo watched in horror as the men who beat Felipe came away with bloodied hands, and he tried to plead with them to stop, he’s had enough, but saw that they were not giving up, that theywere so far away from satisfying their rage that he could do nothing to the mob as they kicked Felipe into a pulpy mass, and he knew they would keep kicking and punching in the general area where Felipe once lay, even though they were beating their own hands and feet into bloody stumps, completely unaware that they had begun beating each other, and Ricardo knew they would never stop because this was not a man in front of them, he was less than that, a coward, not worthy of his body lying on the ground in pieces, not worthy of the dirt mixing with his blood and turning into rusty mud, not worthy of the street they were smearing him into, the street Felipe, the last of the Nuñez brothers, had grown up on, the street where his mother, Señora Carmen Nuñez, who wanted nothing more than to turn her boys into respectable men, sat