Page 78 of The Challenger

ChapterThirty

CHAVEZ

Fresno is a divided city,courtesy of the small-minded monkeys who established the area by slapping down a monster rail line that fostered social inequality that exists to this day. All the whites settled north of the line. And discriminatory tactics like redlining made sure all the browns, blacks and yellows remained south. And it happened in business, too. The dirty industries, like the slaughterhouses, lay south to corral all the low-income workers. I grew up in the southwest part of the city on the literal wrong side of the tracks. This town tried to set my fate early on, but I did not allow it. In reality, I only escaped in a physical sense. Today, Fresno gets banished from my mind, once and for all.

Westar Poultry is not a giant facility like some of the beef slaughterhouses, but it’s big enough if you don’t know your way around. I know exactly where I’m going. Forget parking in the employee lot a quarter mile away. I am a visitor to the executive offices and will not hang around longer than I need to. Earl hasn’t made any upgrades to the place since my last visit, and I doubt the cheap bastard ever will. He never bothered springing for security either, allowing me to waltz unannounced into the ghost town of the offices. Just like in tennis, timing is everything when it comes to Earl. The clock punchers are halfway home at 5:15 p.m. on a Friday.

Fury had me by the balls the last time I stormed through these doors. Today, my sneakers are in no hurry. They are silent on the piss-yellow linoleum that’s older than Eisenhower. I empty my thoughts and let go of the endless confusion this place has created, wound tight like DNA threads in my memory. But a cold crackle of trepidation creeps on my skin as I approach his office. I can see him through the sliver of the open door, head-down, busy pushing paper. He never seems to age. Or I should say, he’s looked like a pissed-off lizard who swallowed a cow for as long as I can recall.

I toe the door open and let that creaky old thing swing wide. Earl glances up, and it feels like time stands still. I swear he’s wearing the same shirt and bolo tie he always wore, along with a cold smirk spreading like an ink stain across his face. Funny how he looks unhappy even while smiling.

“Look who’s back,” he says, jawing on a toothpick. “And still walking around like he owns the place.”

I walk in slowly and deliberately. Earl does not move—it looks like nothing has moved in here for a decade—but I feel the rake of his eyes, on the hunt for the bulge of a gun in my waistband or the evil shine of a butterfly knife hidden in my palm. My Dior dress shirt from Monaco is overkill for a dump like this, but I want to plant a giant WTF in his brain. I drop my ass on a plastic folding chair where employees probably sit and grovel.

But I smile.

“I came here to say thank you.”

He rolls back in his chair, eyes narrowing. He shouldn’t trust me, not after I stormed in here months ago like a crazed baboon. And not surprisingly, he asks, “You expect me to believe that?”

“Nope.”

My smile widens, and a flicker of assessment washes over his face. He is not expecting this, which is kind of the point.

After a long beat, he says, "I get it. You think you’re all that now that you’ve upgraded? Your mama must be crying. What does she think of her only son dipping into the white world?”

This is where I would normally lose it. My fingers know it too. They twitch, itching to curl into a fist. But I manage myself, for once.

“I don’t know where all your hate comes from Earl, but I feel sorry for you.” I look around his sad office empire, the home of a million dead chicken souls, and see exactly nothing, as my girl Flynn would say. “Rumor has it you’re married, but no one has ever seen your wife. Hell, you don’t even have a photo of her in here. Can’t imagine there is a lot of love. Not when you spend all your time hating.”

My new world order is calm, and Earl is not happy with the changing of the guard. He stands without saying a word, hitches his belt, and spits the toothpick onto the floor. He slides a desk drawer open and lays the cold, deadly steel of a pistol on top of the ratty old Bible he likes to quote from. A moment of silence passes.

“This is a new addition,” he says. “Courtesy of your last visit. Can never be too safe, right?”

He picks up the pistol and rounds the desk, boot heels clicking on the floor and sounding like a requiem. I could lick his pot belly when he comes to a stop in front of me.

“Get up, kid.”

I think it was Mark Twain who said a man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Flynn would know, if I get the chance to ask her. The hardest thing I have done in my life is to stand without flinching while a cold gun barrel presses into my heart. I’m surprised I can hear Earl because the roar in my ears is deafening.

“I don’t need your sympathy, kid,” he says. “I don’t need anything from you other than for you to hightail your brown ass out of here.”

Up close, his face looks like a road map to hell. Deep trenches and watery eyes sunk into their sockets. If I rapped my knuckles against his forehead, I bet he would sound hollow, because he is the emptiest man I have ever met.

“You’re going to pay Mama every cent you owe her, plus her legal bills. And you will do it with a smile on your face because you have no choice. The ruling is going in our favor. Heard it today, hot off the press.”

His jaw squares. He heard the news too. “If forcing me to pay out on a lie makes you feel like a man, that’s your burden to bear and not mine. Heck, I don’t even notice she’s gone. I had a hundred other applicants who wanted her job with even less pay. Your mama is one of the millions.” He cocks the chamber, and the smartest part of my brain screams,Run!“No one will notice one less Mexican, so you better go on and git. Comprende?”

In another lifetime, I would consider this his victory. But I am done fighting. And he admitted to keeping tabs on me because how else would he know about Flynn? Maybe Mexicans are not so unnoticeable after all.

That is how I know he will never have the guts to shoot me.

“I said I wanted to thank you, so I’m saying it. Without all your anger and shitty behavior, I might have ended up here, under your rule with a bankrupt soul. And yeah, I will admit, you have haunted me for years. I didn’t believe in myself because you gave me enough self-doubt to last a lifetime. But I found someone who does believe in me. And I would never have found her if it wasn’t for you. So thank you, Earl.”

Like all bullies, Earl has nothing when I extinguish his fuse. I push the barrel down and away, and there is no resistance because he is in shock. But he needs to save face and does so with a different weapon. The one he isn’t scared to use.

“You will never win, kid,” he says. “You want it so badly, to prove to the world that you are something. But you are nothing.”

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