CHAPTER 9--UNCLE SAM

Fall 1991

Give me five, I'm still alive, Ain't no luck, I learned to duck.

-Grateful Dead

L

ouie pretty much changed my life, Queen. Before I hooked up with him, I'd been lost. A loner. A drifter. OK, so I was still a drifter. I wasn't a loner. There was somebody that could stand my company. So, in reflecting back on how we ended up the road companions that we were, I guess in a roundabout way I owed Uncle Sam a big thanks.

Before I met Louie, the years were a blur. Did a lot traveling on the Harley I bought with the old man's money.

Did a lot of drinking.

Took drugs.

Chased women.

Kept thinking I was going to run into the woman that made me feel the way you made me feel, Queen. Kept thinking that there are no such things as soul mates, nothing was meant to be. Everything was random, so it was just a matter of luck, or circumstance, that I would run into her, the woman that was you, the woman I remembered, not the one I mourned. And yet, she never materialized.

So, life got lonely. I grew old, alone. Running into Rooster was a lucky turn of events, I suppose. But, even with a guaranteed stream of income, what's life if it is not shared? When the chance to no longer be alone made itself known, I nervously accepted the challenge. Maybe it was a chance to be the father I never got to be.

Yeah, I didn't ever get to know Samuel Velasquez, except enough to know I'm glad I never did. Knew he beat up Louie, resented that he had to raise him, and berated him for the series of tragedies that began with niece Maria's Leukemia diagnosis and ended when his sister, Gloria Mejia, sucked carbon monoxide until she was dead.

Knew he was an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler, and divorced for the third time. When I dropped Louie off that day, I decided to sit there and wait in the old man's Impala.

Just wait it out and see. It was much later than I had first anticipated dropping him off. But even then the little I had heard about Uncle Sam made me scared for my young friend.

He disappeared inside the mobile home.

Then, a loud sound: that of a door slamming.

Shouting in Spanish.

Louie came storming back outside. I reached over and pushed the door the Impala open. He climbed in. I drove down the street.

"Man, that dude is way fucked up. Get me outta here!"

"How old are you, Louie?" I asked.

"Twenty-one," he replied.

"Don't you think it's maybe time to move out on your own?"

I mean, Queen, I really was thinking, why doesn't the kid go out and work? Because he was too busy partying in the casinos; maybe that's why. Still, as I found out, he was really sharp. Sharp kid. Read newspapers. Bibles. Napkins. Anything.

Turned right.

"Well, I worked once, at a 7-11. And, like, since I don't have a checking account or nothing, I'd have to get my uncle to cash my check. And he'd always end up keeping so much of it, I got sick of it, and so I quit."

Made another right turn.

"Louie," I said, "Why not get your own place?" He let out a loud, almost annoying laugh. Then he started crying. "That man back there, he is my family. He's all I got left in the world."

Wasn't sure how to respond. I mean, I guess I could have said, "Yeah, life's not fair." But he didn't need to hear that. He already knew that. I knew that. Like him, I had really no family. Sure, there was Rooster, but, while he was warm, he was always-how shall we say-inaccessible.

"Sometimes I feel like Job," Louie said, his tears subsiding.

"Job, as in the Bible?"

"Yeah."

"Do you believe in the Bible?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said without hesitation.

Louie's childhood wasn't all bad, he said. But they did begin as poor immigrants from a war-torn El Salvador. Louie was sneaked into the country at such an early age that, by the time they found about his status, he was pretty much in this country to stay. And over the years he grew frustrated with the fact that to most folks they didn’t really understand that because you’re from El Salvador, you’re not really Mexican. He constantly referred to himself as Mexican in kind of a self-deprecating way, like if nobody here in America knew the difference, then why even bother.

"Look, kid, I don't do much. I have a past that means all I do is travel and get by using the box. Maybe you could use some space, and well, I could use the companionship, I really could.

"Really?"

We had come full circle and were pulling up in front of the lot where sat the squalid mobile home Louie called home for almost ten years. He looked at the mobile home, the lot, strewn with trash, fast food wrappers, and beer cans.

"OK," he said. "I will come. Why not?"

Boy, it didn't take long for him to make up his mind.

"Let me go get my shit."

The shit turned out to a bag of books, some karate robes, clothes, and a sleeping bag. When Uncle Sam saw Louie get in the car with all his stuff, he came running out, wearing nothing but underwear, shouting at Louie in Spanish.

"Just drive. Just get away from here,” he urged.

We drove off.

“I spent a lot of time in this town, man" he said. "A shitload of memories."

"You sure you want to leave?"

"I didn't say that were pleasant memories, amigo," he said, as we slipped out of Henderson-Uncle Sam diminishing both in size and in meaning on the horizon-to begin our long, strange journey into the American night.