Stray Dogs: Writing from the Other America by William Hastings

Author:William Hastings [ed] [Hastings, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Published: 2014-11-19T11:00:00+00:00

Arvey heard the station bells ring, and went to take care of a gas customer. When he came back, he had a ten-pound sledge hoisted over his shoulder. We stood around Alphonso, Pop, Pete Arvey and me, and Alphonso stood slowly up, and he began taking off his clothes, his shirt, shoes and socks, his pants, his shorts. He stood there naked, dripping. You could see the scars on his chest through the slime. It looked like they were bubbling, like they were heated up and boiling through the shit and piss and vomit.

He walked toward us and we moved away and let him through, and he walked through the alley behind the station and cut right. A few minutes later he was back, and he’d wrapped himself in the rolling-towel from the restroom. He looked like an Incan warrior, his hair wet and slick and black, his brown skin glistening with water.

“You don’t know a fucking thing about fighting, little gringo,” he said. He looked each of us in the eye. Then he stared at me. “You might be big, but you will always be a little gringo.”

Pete Arvey switched his sledge hammer from one shoulder to the other.

“Tomorrow,” Alphonso said, “tomorrow, my gringo fucking amigo, I will be clean.”

And he walked off, left his Goat there next to the trailer and just walked off, buck naked under the washroom towel, walked down the street and into Oakland.

In the middle of the night I heard Alphonso’s car start and drive off.

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