The Night Train

“All aboard!” sounds the voice of an absent rail conductor. “The night train is leaving the station.” Joseph (who prefers Big Joe) scours the platform for the elusive conductor. No lo ve. Or anyone for that matter—just endless doughy grey fog. The thunderous toot from the train expels its dire warning.

“Oh shit!” dice Big Joe. He softly leaps his heavyweight figure, as light as a helium balloon, into the railroad car. The doors slam/slide? shut behind him. The railroad car is empty inside except for the old 19th-century era green benches and decor.

“Hello? Hello?” Big Joe shyly announces to the void. It seems to him the haze has followed him inside. The train begins moving and the floor under him jerks, disturbing his equilibrium and sending him plunging onto a nearby seat by a window. Joe looks outside. Nothing but flashes of white and black and his reflection stare back at him.

The train bounces down the track, its stride true and long. The back-and-forth rocking and the clickity-clack of the rails slow. Big Joe looks around but sees nothing but silhouettes of the antique benches of the rail car smothered in a lingering haze. The train stops with a whining cry of metal. The doors behind Joe burst open with a pop, like unlatching a stuck bedroom window. Unhinged rays of white light engulf the train car.

Big Joe walks into the white but can’t look up. He can’t open his eyes because  of the pummeling rays. He uncontrollably grimaces, but little by little, through the thin flesh of his eyelids, he begins to get accustomed to the light. He rubs his eyes trying to tolerate the shock from dark to bright, to dark again.

“What the hell?” he whispers. He feels someone from behind tap his right shoulder.

“Hey dónde estabas?” the voice says. Joe turns around to see  his restless friend Gordo. La chocan.

“The homies are waiting for you to smoke.” Gordo crosses his arms and rests them on his wide, prison chest. They stand outside a detached garage still adorned with Christmas lights, opening onto a pothole-ridden alley. Big Joe looks at his right hand. He’s suddenly grasping a clear, double-chamber glass bong. He detaches his vision from the bong and looks up.

His homies are in front of him, standing under the rotten and holey rafters of the garage. They’re waiting for their much-anticipated toque.

“Stop holding it foo,” cries his pushy homie Chapo who has the attitude of someone twice his size. Travieso, his other homie, is drunk, andsitting on a folding metal chair leaning to one side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Gordo is peering at his phone, waiting for the bong to come his way. Weirdo, the youngster of the pelones and the one with the cojones to get a tattoo of the ‘hood in the back of his head, pounds the rest of his tall can, proving to the big boys he can hang. Foamy suds run down the side of his mouth and splash onto the strangely pristine Cleveland Browns jersey.

“Hurry up foo’, the girls are waiting for us,” dice Chapo. His fuse is nearing its end. Big Joe le pasa el bong. And as soon as the meticulously blown glass piece with a chamber within a chamber changes hands, a fine Chicana with flowing black hair and ass for days trips over empty Modelo beer bottles and lands in his lap. Her soft warm ass straddles his thigh like the Lone Ranger in one of those black and white films you see on TCM. “Oops, she says.

“It’s ‘aight. You can land on me anytime you want,” responds Big Joe thirstily. They exchange smiles.

Big Joe’s homeboys are loitering about Lopez Community Park--a piece of land snuggled in a small agricultural town on the Central Coast of California. Their white shirts make them look like a ballet of spirits in the darkness. Chapo rubs a Chicana in the crotch as she sucks on his neck by the restrooms. Gordo rolls around with a thick Chicana with streaked blonde hair under two palm trees that form a V. Weirdo is still spitting game to his ruca by the swings. Travieso is asleep on the benches, drunk. A black ‘48 Chevy coupe creeps, like the onset of unexpected boredom, down the empty street.

“Llano Street rifa!” a raspy voice from within the ’48 coupe yells.

Erratic pops like fireworks fill the air. Bullets whiz by the fine Chicana and Big Joe. He throws her to the floor and immediately joins her in the musty earth. The tires of the ’48 Chevy screech as it takes a quick left down a side street after the riders dump the clip on the friends. Travieso is awoken by the pops. He catches a fleeting glimpse of the streaks of red from the taillights.

“Caile lames!” he yells standing and defiantly pounding his chest. “You putos missed me.”

Big Joe helps the fine Chicana up. “Are you ‘k?” he asks her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“We’ve been beefing with those foo’s. Too bad I didn’t have my…,” begins  Big Joe, stopping mid-sentence. A Chicana with her skirt soaked in blood comes running to where Big Joe and the fine Chicana are shaking dirt off their clothes.

“They shot him! Help! They shot him!” she cries to them.

“Who?” questions Big Joe.

“Chapo! They got Chapo!” Big Joe and the fine Chicana materialize where Chapo lays in a pool of dark, red blood. There’s a hole in his chest that could fit a ping pong ball. The terrifying gurgling sound of agonal breathing is only shattered by the shock of seeing him struggle for life-giving air. Travieso, Gordo, and Weirdo arrive and surround him.

“Fuck. He’s a goner,” one of them says. The battle for air stops. Big Joe gets down on his knees and places his right ear to his mouth.

“Nada,” he says, shaking his head at his homies. Out of nowhere, Chapo grabs Big Joe's head and pulls it nearer to him. Joe resists. The blood spewing out from Chapo’s nose and mouth and eyes smear on Big Joe’s cheek.

“It’s coming for you too,” whispers Chapo.

Big Joe is awakened by a train whistle blaring from his cell phone. A notification. He sits up in bed. Beads of sweat from his forehead land on his glistening bare chest. He rubs his cheek, looks at his palm for traces of blood.

“It was only a nightmare,” he mumbles. He reaches for his phone on his nightstand. “Who the hell is blowing me up so early?” he yelps attempting to focus on the bright screen.

It’s a text message from his good homie, Gordo. It reads: “Hey foo. Got some jainas for tonight. Bring some bud. We’ll meet at Travieso’s.” Later that night Big Joe is walking down an unlit alley towards Travieso's garage. He looks at his phone.

“Shit. I’m late.” His concentration on the screen is shattered by something poking his back.

“Break yo’ self, lame,” a vexed voice reverberates. Big Joe turns around frightened, with his hands to the inky sky.

“No te escames foo. Don’t be a pussy. Come on and help me con los pistos,” his homie Gordo asks him, holstering his hand pistol. Gordo stands next to two cases of Modelo beer, two twelve packs of bottles. They walk under dead, green and red Christmas lights on the gutter and enter through the side door of the garage, integrating themselves into the kickback.

Oldies and underground homie jams play on a tagged-up Bluetooth JBL speaker.

“Órale,” says Gordo, scolding the homies. “Couldn't even wait for us.” He picks up a half-full bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila. It looks like original Listerine and probably burns just as bad.

“Calm down dawg. It’s my jefes. Or was,” responds Travieso, ripping the bottle from Gordo's grasp. He takes a chug from it, and you would have thought his teardrop tattoo was real the way he grimaced in pain. The alcohol and liquor flow for hours. Chapo, reeking of a wino, comes up to Big Joe.

“Hey pack it. I wanna  get twisted." Chapo hands Big Joe a glass bong. Big Joe rubs the smooth shaft of the bong with his thumb for a moment and pulls out a skunky eighth of an ounce of buds from his pocket. He packs a fat bowl of Chronic, takes greens, and passes it to the left. Chapo takes a toke. Then le toca a Travieso. He sucks on the bong so hard he can’t take the hot smoke searing his lungs to a cinder. He explodes in saliva droplets, coughs, and ringlets of smoke.

“Here, takes this shit,” he tells Gordo handling the warm bong over. He takes a toke and passes it to Weirdo. They had a pretty good session. Big Joe re-packed the bowl five times.

“Damn. I’m messed up,” a slurring Travieso announces. He puts his head down on his dad’s 1948 black Chevy coupe.

“Damn lightweight,” Chapo clowns. Travieso is not messed up enough though to not give him the finger. The group shares a hardy laugh.

“The jinas/jainas? just text,” announces Gordo. “They said they’ll meet us at the park.”

“What? They’re too scared to come to the 'hood or what?” slurs Weirdo.

“No sé, homie. That’s all they said.”

Soon enough the horde of street warriors has the park in their crosshairs.

“Ahí están,” says Gordo with a nod of the head. A group of five Chicanas, vulnerable looking but as vicious as their male counterparts, stand by two palm trees that form a V in the middle of the park. Like good cohorts helping an injured teammate, Big Joe and Weirdo carry Travieso on their shoulders to a grassy area near concrete benches. They try not to let his feet drag on the grass, considering he just came up on some new kicks, pero estaba tall and lanky, and it was damn near impossible not to drag his feet on the dewy grass. Gordo and Sochi, his jaina, greet each other with a hug and a beso.

“These are the homies Chapo, Weirdo, Big Joe, and that drunk foo’ over there is Travieso,” says Gordo.

Later on, everyone partners up. Except for Travieso and a lonely chick sitting on the concrete bench scrolling through her Instagram. Alcohol and libido mix in the air in a chemical dance of lust and ganas. A fine Chicana with flowing black hair gets up from Big Joe's lap. He wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand.

“Ahorita vengo. I have to go pee,” she tells him.

“Trucha with the beer bottles,” he warns, pointing to empty beer bottles on the grass. She stops right before she bangs her big toe into one.

“Thanks. I didn’t see them.” She steps over them with a wide girth, so her chanclas don't sink in the grass.

An overwhelming feeling of deja vu stops Big Joe mid-thought. He turns around to look at the void at the end of the dark street. All is quiet and still. Too quiet. Then the glow of headlights slices the still of the night. Tires screech.

“Hey! Hey! Get on the ground now!” howls Big Joe at the Chicana already halfway to the restrooms. She turns around to look at him.

“What?” she mouths with a cupped hand to her ear. Big Joe gets up, sprints to her, and tackles her to the soft, dewy ground like a linebacker.

“Stay down! Stay down!” he instructs her, covering her head with his body.

“What the hell, loco!” she complains. “You are ruining my…,” and at that moment, gunshots echo in the cool night air. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Bullets whiz by their heads. Some bullets hit the palm trees in the form of a V, some hit the concrete benches, scattering shrapnel indiscriminately, and others ricochet off the cement and the tagged-up restroom casita. The lonely chick scrolling through her Insta throws herself on the grass. The '48 Chevy disappears as quickly as it appeared.

“How did you know they were coming?” the Chicana asks Big Joe.

“No sé. It’s weird,” he responds. "I dreamt about this awhile ago.”

Chapo and his ruca come running up to where Big Joe and his jaina are composing themselves on the ground.

“Get up foo! Hurry up! They got Gordo!” Chapo offers his hand to Big Joe. He gets up and is joined by a rocking back and forth Travieso and the lonely chick. Without hesitation, all six run to where Gordo’s ruca is kneeling.. Her man's bleeding head, Gordo's bleeding head, lays on her thick thighs.

“He’s not breathing,” she manages to blurt out amongst a flood of tears and the compressions of her hyperventilating lungs. Weirdo and his jaina run up to the bloody scene.

“Shit!” says Weirdo.

“I think it was those lames from Llano Street,” says Big Joe, never taking his eyes off the soul vacating the body of his buddy Gordo.

“Call the cops!” Gordo’s ruca pleads, looking up at them, tears flowing down her chubby cheeks. “Someone call the cops!” Big Joe and his homies exchange glances.

“Chales. We’re not going to call the cops. You call them!” Weirdo snaps back.

“We have to bounce,” Big Joe informs the fine Chicana with the black, flowing hair. As he's leaving the vicinity of the park with the pack of wolves, Big Joe turns around and spots Gordo’s green flannel. He imagines his buddy Gordo lying on the floor, his deformed head on Sochi's lap. He turns the corner at the end of the block.

"Attention, attention!” a voice echos. “The night train is approaching Valley View Station.” Big Joe looks out the window of the railroad car. He's met by his eyes staring back at him. With a gently rocking motion, the train comes to a halt. The doors behind Big Joe burst open. This time, he bravely faces the blinding light and steps into it. His thighs bump into something. His eyes are getting accustomed to his surroundings, and bit by bit, a bed comes into view. A hospital bed. A hospital bed with his mom lying on it. She looks frail, like her muscles have been wasting away from so much time in bed. She's skeleton-skinny. She has an oxygen sensor on her index finger and IV tubes sticking out of her arm linked to a machine.

“Mom! Mom! What happened to her?” a panicked Big Joe asks his father standing next to the bed.

“Covid. Covid got her mijo,” he laments, blowing his nose with a red pañuelo and sniffing in runny mocos.

Then the cold lifeless cry of medical equipment. A group of nurses with flowing black hair and blue scrubs decked out in PPE rush into the small, sterile, white room. They push with them a ventilator machine. Big Joe’s dad moves out of the way. He does the  of the cross as his momma in Mexico taught him. Like clockwork, the nurses get to prepping the body to receive the ventilator tube. Big Joe can’t believe what he’s seeing.

Sure, his mom is up in age, a few canas run the length of her long brown hair, but she's healthy, he thinks. Healthier than me. He zones out staring into the bifocals of a pair of cheap reading glasses left by one of the nurses at his mom's feet. He watches the glasses shimmy to the edge of the bed; the ventilator tube is going deep into Big Joe's mom's esophagus. The glasses arrive at the edge of the bed and begin to slide off. They crash onto the floor in a tiny explosion of glass, plastic, and tiny silver screws. The crashing noise awakens Big Joe from his trance. A doctor with a yellow biohazard plastic suit and surgical mask finishes talking to his dad and exits the room.

“Me dijo it was community spread. But I don’t know where she could have gotten that damn virus? We haven’t been anywhere,” Joe's dad explains clearing his throat and wiping the tears from his cheeks.

“Ama!” Big Joe yells, sitting up in bed and awaking from his deep slumber. In tighty-whities, he runs to his parents' room and busts open the door. Snores and the smell of rancid pedos creeps out. Reassured his mom isn't hooked up to a ventilator, he quietly shuts the door.

Later in the morning, Big Joe is eating a bowl of cereal when his dad joins him in the kitchen.

“Apa, you look like crap,” remarks Big Joe with a mouth full of soggy rainbow-colored marshmallows.

“I feel like crap,” responds his dad. He plops himself onto a wooden kitchen chair. He places the day's newspaper on the table. Big Joe looks at the headline from the paper: Another Youth Gunned Down in Increasing Gang Violence. A graduation picture of Gordo from high school accompanies the article. A sub-headline reads: Covid-19 Community Spread Increasing Among Black and Latino Populations.

“He couldn't sleep last night,” Big Joe’s mother remarks walking up behind her sick husband and massaging his shoulders.

“Como que I couldn't breathe last night. Not even when I sat up.”

Big Joe’s dad’s breathing problems progress quickly. Quick, like an emptying hourglass. Big Joe's mom places the back of her hand on her husband's forehead.

“He’s burning up! Jose! Jose! Help me carry your father to the van. I’m taking him to the hospital.” The van flies into the parking lot of Valley View Hospital, almost taking out traffic cones marking where Covid-19 testing is held. Big Joe rushes in and rushes out with a wheelchair and two nurses wearing green N95 masks, vinyl gloves, and light-blue scrubs.

Once inside a hospital room, a doctor encased in a yellow plastic biohazard suit and PPE goes to talk to the stunned family.

“The infection is really aggressive with him. We need to intubate,” the doctor tells the wide-eyed family of brown Latinos.

“But how could have this happened?” Big Joe’s mom questions the doctor. “Everyone’s been home. No one's gone out for anything!? Not even tortillas!” Big Joe can’t help but think of the fine Chicana with the black hair he was locking lips with a few days ago. When he had called her earlier in the day, she sounded like she had her nose plugged. Sounded like a mouse. And she kept sniffing, like unlatching a rock of coke from her nostrils the whole time she was on the phone with him. Big Joe’s mom does the sign of the cross.

The nurses rush in and surround Big Joe's dad’s hospital bed. One nurse works on pricking his veins and establishing an IV line. Another ensures that each yellowish, syrupy bags of liquids are correctly connected to the IV machine. Otra nurse turns dials and presses buttons on the coming-to-life ventilator machine, and two other nurses stand on either side of the bed preparing the mouth for the insertion of the long plastic tube that'll travel down Big Joe’s dad’s throat to his lungs. The breathing machine comes to life in a pumping, suction action whose oppressive noise quickly overpowers the room. Reading glasses left on the edge of the bed by a one of the preoccupied nurses begin to slip closer to the edge of the bed. They begin to go over the edge, but in a swoop that surprised even himself, Big Joe snatches them mid-flight and stops them from crashing onto the floor.

A vampire lady (the nurse fixing the IV) looks up at Big Joe and sweetly says, “Thank you.. She reaches for her glasses and puts them on. “You have impeccable timing,” she adds.

“Approaching the end of the line,” a dreamy voice announces. Big Joe gets up from the worn-out green corduroy bench seat and stands by the sliding door. He feels the train come to a jerky stop. He hears the expulsion of steam erupting from the belly of the old steam locomotive. The doors bust open. But he's prepared this time to conquer the light. Or so he thought. Making sure not to trip across the exit, side, [A1] he steps awkwardly out into his new environment.

He still can’t see shit at first. The light is always undefeated. He opens his eyes, one eyelid at a time. The left one, then the right. He feels like he’s floating in the air. He looks around and recognizes the Lowrider posters of big-breasted black-haired Latina beauties in skimpy bikinis standing next to a ranfla on the wall. He looks down and sees himself lying on his bed. His pale, sweaty body is cut up by jagged shadows that creep in from the windows and tall furniture. He receives a notification on his phone. Cho-Cho. He reaches for it. The light from the screen cuts through the dense blackness and brings out his sunken eyes. He reads the text message.

“No! No, it can't be!” He talks into his phone “Siri, text Chapo. It can’t be. I just talked to her yesterday. First Gordo and Sochi. Then my dad, Travieso, and Weirdo. And now Bella,” he mumbles shakily. Choo-choo. Big Joe stands the phone on his scarcely rising chest.

Homie. No me siento bien either. It feels like I'm getting shanked in the chest, reads the text message from Chapo. Big Joe begins to cough uncontrollably, begins to swallow oxygen desperately like a mud-skipper. He leans to one side of the bed with his elbow and spits out a wicked wad of mucus with dark red, almost black, blood veins. His arm goes limp. Big Joe crashes onto his sweat-wet pillow. The phone slips off his chest and hits the ground in an eternal pyrrhic thud.

Commute trains tend to have sliding doors, so flat surfaces rather than rails or ledges.