Words Unspoken, Things Unseen

By Joe Rodríguez

A downtown homeless shelter, the Settlement, is targeted for demolition during the Great Recession. In its place, the city wants to build a sports complex. Reverend Stephen Bentham, the Settlement’s founder and director, draws on the loyalty of his assistant, the house physician, and a visiting archeology professor to save the hundred beds. A school-age boy also joins the effort. Fending off the bulldozers tests each character. Their own troubled histories compel them to help. One of the toughest challenges is burying the house physician when he succumbs during the fight. Loyalty to one’s faith or to progress or to honor itself are grand phrases. The actual work at a shelter is hard and tedious, like growing a garden out of concrete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499004557

Joe Rodríguez

Joe Rodríguez has taught at the university and slept on a steam grate at a college during winter. Not at the same time, of course. Writing a novel about the homeless requires a wide reach and diverse experience. In Southern California, your profession doesn’t matter as much as your car because you could wind up living in it. For example, many ex¬-soldiers are homeless, including veterans of color. The author served in Vietnam and has firsthand data on flophouses. The joke about the minister, the rabbi, and the priest has a new twist. After their houses of worship were demolished during gentrification and redevelopment, they wound up as bunkmates in the only downtown shelter.

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Copyright © 2014 by Joe Rodríguez.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014907195

ISBN:                Hardcover                        978-1-4990-0456-4

                          Softcover                           978-1-4990-0457-1

                          eBook                                978-1-4990-0455-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 02/13/2019

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Contents

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Epilog

1

L ORD GOD, APOSTLE of children, shield this boy from his father. Keep Juanito safe in our shelter with us—away from Silvio’s latest binge of repentance. Turn aside this haphazard pretender. No child should be baptized in a bar!

Silvio says he’ll call the police, insists Guzmán at the rectory door. Talk to him, Reverend Steve!

The minister’s head is bowed and his hands clasped. Guzmán lets him finish as he imagines the words:

In your name, our settlement welcomes the alien and orphan as you do in your gospel. Stretch out your hand. Redeem the boy’s future. Otherwise, pride poison’s hope. Do not misguide your servant, this blind man on the road.

He wants his son now, Guzmán says. The law’s on his side.

Damn the law, the pastor replies. Silvio strands him in bars. But then the padre stares at his palms and offers, Let me try patience.

I’ll take out the trash, mutters Guzmán, who’s the shelter’s handyman and the minister’s assistant. He leaves by the fire exit, for Juanito’s sake.

Outside an open window, teams of residents stand and listen, although they’re assigned to help tidy the grounds before dinner.

Once Guzmán reaches the mission garden, the ex-boxer plucks a cabbage white butterfly from a row of sweet basil and squeezes his fist. Wiping away the glittery slime with some mulch, Guzmán surveys the run of pole beans and the mounds of squash, but then he glances back at the shouting.

Juanito sings in the choir, Guzmán mocks the slit sky. Shouldn’t there be some break for him?

A dispensation, he murmurs finally, recovering the term. Cut the kid some slack. Call down some lightning. Guzmán feints with his jab like he once boxed in the ring under his fighting name, Molca. He worries about the punches costing his mind. Juanito’s distracted also, with his father just out of jail.

The traffic beyond the men’s and women’s dormitories rumbles and honks. A car alarm blares as maritime clouds scrape overhead.

Guzmán turns to the tomato vines that teeter in a stiff breeze, swirling between the buildings. He butts a cobblestone against one redwood stake then the next and tests each trellis to make sure that they hold. The strikes numb his arm—the burred splinters don’t register.

The wind shifts from the ocean.

He steps back and eyeballs his work. A few tomatoes have shaken loose from the blows. These he stacks for the kitchen. The soft mulch where they fell didn’t split the skins.

A wrentit chirps close by while searching for bugs. Providence eats sparrows, Guzmán thinks, imagining Juanito crouching within earshot. Keep your head down!

And the boy’s not the only one missing. Doc Reese has been absent the last three days because of cancer, which has spread through his body, not just his bones. Dr. Manfred Saul Reese, MD, the captain of secrets, a blue-water sailor who took to sea with his ghosts. Most people address him as Dr. Reese. The boxing team calls him Doc Manny. Only his friends use plain Manny.

Doc’s father, Osmond Ossie Reese, also served in the navy, including World War II and Korea. Putting on a brave face was expected at home, especially for the next of kin. The enemy’s watching and testing morale.

Molca was also taught to obey, no matter what, though only his cousins served in the military. Do what I say, not as I do. That was his father’s line. Molca didn’t rebel. Instead he made fun of other kids for wearing the wrong clothes or speaking with a broken accent. This fault-finding carried over to opposing boxers, especially those that he branded low class, inferior.

Doc Reese asked him, Why stir up trouble, kid, when boxing’s a sport?

I’m not ashamed of who I am, Molca shot back. But some hard fights ended his taunts, which Manny counted to the good.

Manny resigned from the navy in the ’80s-1982, wasn’t it? That was long before he coached youngsters at the Settlement. Molca’s seen some of Doc’s files with newspaper clippings about secret weapon tests and military experiments, including some from the ’50s. Manny, though, shrugs and says, Don’t ask. Don’t tell. But he serves as an expert witness for veterans and civilians who were exposed to toxic agents and who are suing the government for medical care and compensation.

Whenever the court bailiffs deliver legal papers, they read Doc an advisory about the National Secrets Act. That Miranda-like warning about censoring what he says puts the old man on trial. His record of service doesn’t count. He’s guilty by association, lumped with protest groups opposing the government, which makes him an outlaw. And that stigma rattles Guzmán because he hails from a barrio named Shelltown that’s under a freeway. He can’t undo how the people there rose up to fight for a park instead of letting the city build a police station.

Recently, Molca enrolled at the university where he takes night classes three days a week. He rides public transit because he doesn’t own a car. On the bus, he carries his birth certificate and identification card, just in case. Once Doc Manny came out and admitted to him, I’m marked too. Not by my skin. Guzmán didn’t know what to say. And now the old man’s gone missing for the last three days.

Move in to the shelter with us, Doc, Guzmán murmurs. Don’t leave your bones in the streets, Commander, just because I judged you wrong. What he wants to tell Doc Reese is that some friends arrive late, though it’s not all their fault. Quality is in the person, not the brand. And Molca’s slow on the uptake.

The ex-boxer brings both fists to his chest as if taking an eight-count in the ring. Manny’s been a boxer himself since his teens, and he was a finalist for the Olympic team. In the navy, Doc trained intramural squads for the fleet tournaments on his own time. Now, the military won’t pay Manny’s pension. His lawyer wants his fees up front, and how can Doc work when the cancer attacks the bone marrow? There’s not enough red blood cells. Now his organs are failing.

You need tranfusions, Molca thinks, and I’m in, carnal. Let me help.

Guzmán turns to an Anaheim chile plant tipping from the weight of spear-point green peppers. A few wire twists secure the stem to the stake. His stomach growls from the scent, which reminds him that Juanito must be hungry too. The kid loves chile relleños. When the savory pods are at harvest, the Settlement serves the relleños fresh made, the cheese filling steamy and hot.

There will be no meal period if the city levels the place. A few votes on the district council pause the demolition. Doc and the minister talk to anyone who listens.

And Guzmán recalls how the the kids’ boxing team turned into zombies in order to save the mission. Save Our Hundred Beds, their video urged, as they stalked the shelter’s sidewalks in ragged formation. Sidewalks Aren’t Pillows, read the captions. Juanito posted the tube on the Internet, and the video went viral clocking thousands of hits. The Young Dead, the team called themselves, and they fit right in at the comic convention downtown, along with the Flash and Wonder Woman. They welcomed attention.

The media picked up the story about the homeless and America’s Finest City, which ate another mud pie for not taking care of its own.

Silvio showed up at the comic convention, though, ordered Juanito home and pushed Doc aside. I know what you are, old man, Captain Queer, Almost Man. Rules stay in the ring.

What do you know? Doc Reese said, tapping his hat. You’re stuck up here.

Silvio slapped away the Panama.

With so many cameras around, Molca retrieved the elder’s fine top and handed it back. He strolled over to Silvio with a soda cup and whispered, This is for teeth, Loudmouth, yours get it! All the while Molca kept smiling as if things were okay.

Good ol’ dad, bendito ’apa, Molca muses in the mission garden about parents who don’t make the grade. Is the disease catching? His own father never should have married, and his mother shouldn’t have stayed. Some children never arrive. Is that so bad?

Wielding the cobblestone hammer like he was training with weights, Guzmán pounds a planting staves’s blunt edge. He stretches his bad shoulder. Molca’s three-year-old son, Tizoc, lives with the boy’s mother, Inéz, and hides when Molca visits. Doubt is the boy’s father, which tangles the relationship. Their DNA isn’t a match. But whoever’s the donor hasn’t come forward. What are the kid’s chances to thrive?

Out of a trance, Molca recalls that Silvio leaves the shelter through an alley, not by the front street. A bar’s closer that way. El jefe buys drinks for the house while his family in Shelltown scrapes beans on tortillas.

Molca jogs over to a nearby security fence where a gnarled pomegranate tree overhangs the side lane. He fingers the keyring on his belt, the keys to the mission. Silvio wants his handyman’s job, always has. To Silvio’s mind, Molca’s not the better man: The minister plays favorites. So to get even, let the place burn. Toss a match!

The ex-flyweight slides a rusted milk crate next to the chain-link perimeter that’s backed with no-see tarp, steps up, and unlocks the gate, peering upwind and down. He turns his good eye to the light. Scrap paper skims the pocked broken glass; a scavenging dog tacks into the shadows.

Molca picks up a stray cobblestone from a pile of rubble. No one’s come by yet—he cradles the love in his fist. An ambush is hard to do, especially with Doc and the boy on his mind. But Silvio deserves worse.

Hey, brother, Reverend Steve sings out from behind him, setting out the trash? The padre tows up a green barrel crammed with plant clippings and weeds.

Prop it open, my friend. Steady on. The pastor nods at the stone. I tossed Silvio out, the preacher admits. My temper got the best of me. We’re a match there, Molca—God help us!

Guzmán wedges the gate open with the rock as if recycling trash was his plan all along. Jesus might come tomorrow, Padre! The flyweight stands up and fakes the sign of the cross. Sure he will, early . . . to set things right. Sort the wheat from the chaff. Meanwhile, no damage, no foul.

The preacher laughs as they scoot out the rubbish, though he shakes his head. Service to others anchors his faith, not passing judgment. Molca respects him for that. Let’s harvest those big boys, the minister weighs in, and cook up a tub of sauce. Spaghetti brings a full house!

Over a hundred mouths for each and every meal breakfast, lunch, and supper. Guzmán cracks his sore back and yawns. The homeless line up down the block. He keeps his good eye on the alley and recalls their hard luck stories, all sorts, from evictions to catastrophic medical bills. And that doesn’t include the battered youngsters like Juanito. Early afternoons, the padre walks down the waiting line at the mission, person by person. Need decides who shelters that night. Someone has to choose.

And Guzmán recalls the two separate times that he stood in that queue and hoped for a meal and a bed. Twice he hit bottom and checked in to the shelter, unlike Doc who would die rather than accept charity, especially a military funeral. Guzmán’s first time at the mission was at sixteen, right out of reform school, Youth Authority. Doc Reese was his court-appointed guardian (there’s a story), and Guzmán rebelled against his discipline, including being enrolled in Catholic school. Guzmán ran off and slept in canyons with the coyotes, until he started howling back at them.

Uncanny that howling, that wail after dark—echoing out there and a few feet away, close and far at the same time. He felt double. Split off, stuck. Isolation beat him, as if hybrid coywolves were circling round. He slunk back to the mission where Doc staffed the volunteer clinic three days a week. No white flag was more plain than his showing up.

The second time Guzmán queued up at the shelter was at twenty-two, after his busted eye gave out, and his ring days were over. He was a loser, ordinary, the generic brand X—so everyone said, though not to his face. Once he had been a contender, ranked at the top of ring magazines. Suddenly, pawnshops owned the trophies, and he was nobody. He turned his back on his job at the shelter, didn’t work out at the gym, and lost track of his few friends. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop the binges. There were times he came to and forgot how he got there.

One night, he woke up in an alley somewhere, cold and stiff. People get shot in the wrong neighborhood, so he tried to stand up and git. Couldn’t budge, though, not a muscle. Nothing. He could feel his legs, but they wouldn’t obey like being knocked loopy from a punch. He wet his lips to raise a squawk, in case someone might hear. Zero again. Lying flat made music play in his mind, "Red red wine, go to my head, make me forget."

Something must have popped in his brain from the punches and booze. Shut up with the mind games, fool, he told himself, muévete. But when he tried to stand, a different song started up, Whiskey river, take my mind.

The moon creaked overhead, then went blank. When he came to, dawn howled like jungle birds auditioning for Tarzan movies. No more booze, he swore, never again. Too many head shots, no anesthesia required to put him under the carpet. He stumbled to his feet and let the blood settle so he could walk. That’s when he realized the zoo’s over there, to the north. Cages are what you’re hearing. Which means Balboa Park’s close, the city’s in the other direction. His head cleared enough so that he could navigate the streets downtown.

Hours later, he guessed, after arriving at the mission, he stood in single file with the other castaways, wrinkled and stale from his binge the previous night. The padre recognized him, however, though Molca hid his scarred knuckles and wrists.

Welcome, the pastor said, clapping Molca’s shoulder, You dropped out of sight. We were worried. Can you do with a meal?

And Molca glanced around at the other lean faces. We all can make weight, he said, shamed as he was for just disappearing without notice. Bring on the fatted calf. Molca juked a few steps like he was sparring for money, despite his baggy rummaged threads. He was being rescued. Be grateful! The padre was fifteen years his senior and had seen worse than a washed-up punk.

Any chance for my old handyman’s job? he asked pastor Bentham, holding out his mitts. You know I’m good with these.

Guzmán’s jarred back to the present, right then. In the alley behind the mission, the reverend slides a trash barrel, hard. Guzmán makes the stop and pivots at the ready. Something’s coming.

"Oye, it’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Silvio Ron Téllez sneers from the shadows and stumbles up to them. I’ll be back for my boy, he belches. You’re responsible! The kid spends all his time here.

Think you’re so holy? Silvio tugs at Steve’s beard. Juanito’s young, doesn’t know better.

The pastor flushes red but lets the insult go.

I’ll be back with the sheriff, Silvio repeats in the alley. You’re no better than me. No better than that loser. Silvio stabs a thumb at Molca.

The city wants you out, reverend! Silvio taunts his better. "Your reputation’s shot. All that bad publicity! Your messy divorce included. Kind to strangers, bad