The Flashlight

From each obstacle encountered and conquered, Stacy sapped fresh strength with which to confront the next; and from that next conquest, his depleted drive was again restored and poised to meet the latest oncoming task. Life to him was an endless series of regularly spaced hurdles he had to leap over. This was the form of his imagination--not that he was in any big hurry to reach some particular goal in life. But life was motion and motion required a direction and Stacy was young and saw the years stretched out before him as he sprinted down the track of his days. He hated dead ends and stagnation and wanted always to see ahead ample room for maneuver. He thought of himself as having no fear, as a strong, rough cat who would become even more so, because in the world he knew, strength seemed to have the edge.

He was lord of his gang and his word was law. He was light and quick on his feet, and a fierce, turbulent spirit drove him on, like a dynamo imprisoned in the blood, flesh and bone of his body. He set the pace. It was not that his gang did only the things Stacy did best but that everything they did he seemed to do better. The others deferred to him as though he were a prince among them, with mysterious powers of a higher caliber than theirs, as if somehow he was born with a built-in gun and they with built-in knives. They did not question or resent this. To them, it was life, nature. They were glad to have Stacy as one of their own and they followed his lead.

Stacy was conscious of the role he played, but he did not prance before the grandstands. It could be said that he was humble in his way and bowed low before the others even as he bullied them about, because there was always absent from this bullying that ultimate hostility of which they all knew he was so capable when up against cats from other neighborhoods. Among them, there was knowledge of each other, the thick glue of the brotherhood of youth, of their separate selves bound into one. If Stacy made a decision, it was only the summation of their interests as a whole, because as far as they wanted anything, they all wanted the same things. He was the repository of their youthful collective sovereignty. Perhaps, then, it is incorrect to say that Stacy's word was law. Their law was that of a roving band owing allegiance to itself alone. Stacy occupied his peculiar place among them precisely because he knew the restraints and sanctions implicit in the mechanics and spirit of a functioning gang. Had he been less skillful in his choices, less willing to risk all on the curve of his instincts, it would have been their loss as much as his. Together they formed a unit, clinging to one another for support. What he had he gave to them and the others did the same. There was nothing premeditated about it. It just happened that Stacy had the power of the endearing smile, the rebuking frown, the assenting nod, the admonitory shake of the head.

• • •

Of late, however, Stacy was growing friendlily disgusted with the others, primarily because they seemed content to continue in the same rut. He was beginning to feel miserably trapped and hemmed in by the thick futility of the very things he had loved and pursued with satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. Only a few weeks ago, he could still draw delight and deep contentment from the raids they threw on El Serrano, from kicking in a window and ransacking a store, from stripping the hubcaps, wheels and accessories from cars, from stealing the clothing from clotheslines or from breaking into a restaurant or café after it had closed and eating up as much food as they could hold in their guts and taking away with them all they could carry. These things no longer filled him with a warm glow after they were all over; rather, he would feel dejected and somehow disappointed in himself and the others, as if it all had been a big waste of time. When he went on a raid now, it was only because he knew the others depended upon him and that they would be angry and confused if he refused to go with them. Besides, he did not have anything else in mind to do, and he was not the type to enjoy doing nothing.

Stacy liked the money and the extra clothes that thievery brought him, but he was burned out on the ritual of these raids. As far back as he could remember, they had been a part of his life, and he knew from neighborhood lore that the practice of the raids existed as a tradition in Crescent Heights long before he or the others came along. It seemed natural for the youth of Crescent Heights to steal whatever they could from the white people of El Serrano. At this time in Stacy's life, Crescent Heights was separated from El Serrano by two miles of unimproved vacant lots that ran up to the top of a hill, so that from Crescent Heights, El Serrano could not even be seen. The long slope of the hill was a wall between the Negroes and Mexicans who lived in Crescent Heights and the whites of El Serrano.

On a clear night, the lights of El Serrano could be seen against the sky from Crescent Heights; but from El Serrano, the sky over Crescent Heights looked black and unbroken, even by the moon and stars. Stacy was fascinated by this contrast. Many times, either when setting out on a raid or on his way back, Stacy would pause at the top of the hill and brood over it. The darkness in which Crescent Heights was wrapped seemed familiar and safe to him, warm and protecting, while the lights of El Serrano held both a fascination and a terror for him. He was principally aware of the lights because they were central to the ritual of the raids. It was a maxim to his gang that "where there is light there is wealth." They often repeated this to each other when searching through El Serrano for things to steal.

Each neighborhood had its own school. The police station and fire department servicing both areas were located in El Serrano. El Serrano was a thriving community with a frisky business section, while Crescent Heights was a residential slum devoid of any business except for a few corner grocery stores, liquor stores, gas stations and beer joints.

The only swimming pool and motion-picture theater in the region were in El Serrano, and during the summer, the kids from Crescent Heights hiked over the steep hill, paid their money and went in for a swim. On Saturday and Sunday, they'd go to the movies and, on their way home, fan out through El Serrano, looking for loot. By bedtime, the wealth of Crescent Heights was certain to have increased in proportion to a corresponding decrease in that of El Serrano's. Stacy's gang not only picked up things on the way back from the swimming pool or movies but two or three times each week, they'd wait for nightfall and then trek over the hill to throw a raid.

All this seemed so futile to Stacy now. He could feel that a change had to be made--just what, he could not tell. But he knew that something would happen and a way would open up for him. In the meantime, he continued to lead the raids and, although he would be just as systematic and cautious as ever, it was no longer a pleasure. It was a task.

• • •

Stacy loved Crescent Heights. He did not feel comfortable or secure anywhere else. When he ventured out of the neighborhood, on infrequent trips downtown or to the East Side or to Watts, he was always relieved when the trip was over and he was back among the familiar sights and sounds of Crescent Heights. Even school was still far enough away from his part of Crescent Heights that he felt alien and uncomfortable until he was away from the school and back on his own stamping grounds. He hated the teachers at Crescent Heights School for their way of talking down to the Negro and Mexican students and the superior attitude he saw reflected in them. He hated most of all the discipline they imposed upon him, the authority they tried to assert over him, to which they wanted him willingly to submit but which he resisted and rebelled against. The school seemed to him more like a prison than a school, the teachers seemed more like custodial guards than instructors and the atmosphere seemed more like that of a battlefield than of a place of learning. Stacy never got into fights with the teachers, as some of the others did, but he let it be known that if any of the teachers ever hit him--if the boys' vice-principal, for example, ever took him into his office and tried to force him to bend over and look at the rainbow colors drawn on the lower part of the wall, while the v.p. swatted him on his ass with his huge perforated paddle, as he did some of the others--there would be blood. Understanding this, the teachers would turn their heads from certain infractions when committed by Stacy, while they would pounce on other students for precisely the same transgressions. Sometimes, in the dreams of his heart, Stacy longed for one of the teachers to lay a hand on him, so that he could work him over. In his mind, he saw himself grabbing a teacher and beating him down to a bloody pulp. The teachers, sensing something of this desire in him, left him alone.

Stacy loved the freedom he found in Crescent Heights. He felt he was losing it each time he set foot on the school grounds. It was not that he found the schoolwork difficult--he found it easy and was quick to catch on--but the whole situation repelled him. He felt that books and the knowledge in them were part of a world that was against him, a world to which he did not belong and which he did not want to enter, the world of which the hateful teachers were representatives and symbols. After school each day, it took several blocks of walking before he was free of its field of force. Then he blossomed, felt himself. His pace quickened and became his own again.

Stacy's loyalty went to Crescent Heights. To him, his neighborhood was the center of the world. Isolated somewhat from the rest of Los Angeles, in the way that each part of that scattered metropolis is isolated from every other, Crescent Heights was a refuge. If Stacy had been captured by beings from another planet, who cast him into a prison filled with inhabitants from all the planets, and if he were asked by the others where he lived, he would have said:

"I'm Stacy Mims from Crescent Heights."

"Crescent Heights?" they would ask, puzzled.

"Oh," Stacy would remember, "Crescent Heights is the name of my neighborhood. I'm from Planet Earth. Crescent Heights is on Earth. It's in the United States of America, in the state of California."

• • •

The nucleus of the neighborhood was the Crescent Heights housing project, a low-rent complex of 100 units, laid out in long rows. They looked like two-story elongated boxcars painted a pale yellow or a weak pink, the colors alternating row by row. At the center of the project was the administration building and in back of it was a large playground. Behind the playground was a huge incinerator with a chimney that towered high above the buildings of Crescent Heights. Tenants from all over the project brought their trash to the incinerator to burn. The project sat down in sort of a valley formed by hills on three sides, with the fourth side wide open and leading down to Los Angeles. All traffic entered Crescent Heights through this side. As one traveled farther up into the valley, the streets ran out of pavement and asphalt and became dirt roads. The dirt roads turned into well-worn footpaths; the paths tapered into intermittent trails; the trails evaporated into the rolling hills, which the people of Crescent Heights regarded with a peculiar love. And while the county of Los Angeles had built the housing project with its drawn-to-scale playground laid out scientifically--basketball court here, volleyball court there, horseshoe pits here, swings there, slide over there, monkey bars and ladder here, tetherball there, hopscotch here--Stacy's playground and that of the members of his gang had always been the hills of Crescent Heights.

Scattered throughout the hills surrounding the project were the ramshackle houses of the old families, the houses Stacy and his gang grew up in. There was a subtle distinction between the old families, who lived in the hills, and the inhabitants of the project. It was not that the houses in the hills had been there long years before the project; there had been similar houses on the site where the project now stood. The owners of those houses had been evicted by the county and state authorities after a bitter fight, which was lost by the homeowners before it ever began. The memory of it was still fresh, and there was a lingering undercurrent of resentment at this encroachment. The project itself was a symbol of the forces that had gutted the old neighborhood against the will and desire of the people, breaking up lifelong friendships and alliances, demolishing the familiar environment and substituting a new one. Although this prejudice was not as strong as in former times, it lingered on in the lore of the people.

The major point of difference was that most of the inhabitants of the project were women with small children, women who had not grown up in Crescent Heights but who had come there from other areas of Los Angeles, whose ties were with friends and relations who were strangers to the people who had lived in Crescent Heights all their lives. The names of these women had popped up on the Housing Authority's long waiting list downtown and, eager to get the apartment for which they might have been waiting for a year or more, they accepted a vacancy in Crescent Heights, sight unseen. These were unwed mothers on state aid, divorcees, women who had been abandoned by their men and the waiting wives, living on allotment checks, of Servicemen stationed always somewhere far away. The turnover was rapid among residents of the project; someone always seemed to be moving in or out. But no one ever moved out of the surrounding hills. There, whole families lived. Most of them, like Stacy's family, owned the little plots of ground on which they lived.

• • •

After school each day, and after they had eaten their evening meals and performed whatever chores they had to do, Stacy's gang used to meet at the playground in the project, pouring down from the hills, drawn there like moths to a light. On weekends and holidays, they usually hiked deep into the hills. They would take along their slingshots to shoot at the doves, pigeons and quail, which were plentiful in those hills. Sometimes they would return home in the evening with fowl for their mothers to cook. Or they would give the birds to women in the project, who always received them gladly, sometimes giving the boys some small change in return. In season, they would collect wild walnuts from the trees, and there were wild peaches, apricots, pears, figs, loquats and quince. Wild berries grew in patches here and there. Old Mexican men plowed sections of the hills and sowed them with corn, squash and sugar cane. There was always plenty for all who took the trouble to help themselves. Stacy and the others would sometimes harvest large quantities of this corn and sell it to the women of the project.

Those hills were the soul of Crescent Heights. Old-timers spun out legends concerning them. They told how somewhere in those hills was hidden an ancient Indian burial ground and that the graves were filled with priceless treasures. There was gold, intricately worked by artisans and set with splendid jewels, goblets encrusted with precious stones. The old-timers would talk and the youngsters would listen. A curse would fall on anyone who went looking for the treasures; to reach them, one had to disturb the sleep of the dead. It was said that many people had gone into those hills and were never seen or heard from again. Under this ominous cloud, Stacy and the others would test their courage by roaming deep into the hills, their eyes peeled for signs of an Indian grave, half expecting to be pounced upon by supernatural guardians of the dead, deliciously savoring the sweet taste of fear defied. With a gentle breeze waving the tall grass, they walked barefooted under the sun, drawing strength from each kiss of the soil on the soles of their feet.

Once in a while, shepherds from out of nowhere would appear, bringing huge herds of sheep to pasture and graze there for a few months. From his house, Stacy sometimes looked out to see the dark, undulating mass of shaggy creatures sweeping in a rolling wave across the hills, the bells tinkling round the necks of the leaders and the sheep dogs running back and forth, keeping the strays in line. The shepherds would be seen with long sticks, trudging along with their flocks. It always reminded Stacy of scenes from the Bible. Only the style of clothes had changed.

During summer, when the grass on the hills dried out, sometimes it would catch on fire, by the working of the sun through the prism of a broken wine bottle. Sometimes Stacy and the others grew impatient with the sun and would, out of sight of everyone, toss a match or two and wait for the fire trucks to come racing over from El Serrano. They would hear the sirens screaming in the distance, listening tensely as they came closer and closer, until finally the huge red engines would swing into sight and the firemen would go into action. With guilty knowledge or not, Stacy and the others would watch the firemen and sometimes would even help them. Sometimes, to avoid inconvenient surprises and possible disasters, the county would send out crews and deliberately set a fire and control (continued on page 287) The Flashlight (continued from page 124) it, burning all the grass near the houses and back for about a mile into the hills as a safety measure. The whole neighborhood would turn out to watch a fire, to see the flames walk across those hills, leaving a black sheet of ash in its wake. It was always something of a shock to Stacy to see those hills transformed in an instant from tall grass to burned-out cinders. Black and barren, the hills were no good for walking barefooted, and there was no hope of finding any fowl concealed in a clump of grass. The youngsters of Crescent Heights did not enjoy the hills when the grass had burned. Fortunately for them, the fires never succeeded in burning all the grass, and they could always go deep into the hills until they found a point to which the flames had not penetrated.

One time the hills were so burned out that the gang had to hike a long way before reaching the green grass. Mitch, characteristically, set the grass on fire to spoil their day. Helplessly, Stacy and the others watched as the fowl took to the air. Turning on Mitch, they punched and kicked him until he cried. Stacy did not tell them to stop. Mitch was mean as a dog. From him, the others learned early that a human being is full of surprises and capable of evil improvisations.

Mitch was full of peevish taciturnity. He was sullen and vicious. The others watched him, waiting for each new manifestation of his scurviness. Many times, Stacy had sat mystified in Mitch's back yard and listened with astonishment as he cursed out his mother. He would hurl at her the most vile names, in English and Spanish and combinations of both languages, and his mother, who seemed not at all surprised or shocked, would never raise her voice. She would ask him, in very gentle tones, how he could talk to his own mother that way, inspiring an infuriated Mitch to a new torrent of epithets. She would stand there, at the top of the stairs, gently, calmly drying her hands on her apron, waiting for him to finish, never interrupting him. If she had started to speak and he cut her off, she would stop in midsentence, half apologetically, and let him finish; then she would start again, very slowly, cautiously, kindly.

"I'm your own mother," she would say to him in Spanish, or: "Come inside and talk to me, son; you can bring Stacy with you, too, if you like."

Mitch would only curse her more.

After a while, Stacy, unable to stand it longer, would make Mitch come away with him. Stacy liked Mitch's mother. He saw her as a sweet old woman who always gave the neighborhood kids little Mexican goodies to eat, which she made up and kept on hand for when they came around. Big and fat, she went to Mass every Sunday morning, rain or shine, with a black shawl over her head and shoulders, her small children trailing behind her. These small children were one of the mysteries of Crescent Heights and the subject of endless rumors. Mrs. Chapultapec had children who were over 40 years old, while Mitch was 14. There were always new children being added to the household. Around the yard, they followed her like tiny shadows. Nobody seemed to know just which of the children were her own or, in fact, if any of them were actually hers. If asked, she would only smile and say that all the children in the world were her own, and refuse to discuss it further. The older people understood that she had had, all her life, a great love and tenderness for children, and she would take in anybody's unwanted child and raise him as her own. Nobody knew how many children she had actually raised. Some she would keep for a few years, then their parents would come and take them back. At the bottom of Mitch's rage lay the fact that he did not know who his parents were, because he did not believe anything Mrs. Chapultapec told him.

Once, a new little face showed up in the house, and it so happened that Mitch knew that the little boy belonged to one of the women who lived in the project. Overhearing Mrs. Chapultapec telling someone, in her way, that the little boy was her own, Mitch was suddenly blasted by a vision that Mrs. Chapultapec was not really his own mother and that he did not know who his real mother was. When he asked Mrs. Chapultapec about it, she just told him that he was her very own. He accused her of being a notorious liar.

Mitch used to threaten to kill his father, or, rather, Mr. Chapultapec, whom Mitch always had believed to be his father but whom he later "disowned." A small, stooped, white-haired old man with quick, birdlike movements, he would never scold or correct the children. He was terrified of them. He would go straight to work and come straight home in the evening, except on Friday evening, when he would stop off at the Cozy Corner Café, down a few beers with the old-timers and listen to a few Spanish records on the jukebox. Tipsy from the beers, his spirits charged from the music and the few moments spent in the company of the gents he had known all his life, he would walk crisply home, speaking to all he met.

"Buenas noches, Señor Chapultapec," Stacy and the others would say to him on Friday evenings.

"Salud, muchachos," he'd answer with extreme good feeling.

If Mitch was there, he would hurl a curse at the old man, who would cast a frightened look Mitch's way and continue on without a pause.

On Sunday evenings, Mr. Chapultapec could be found down at the Catholic church across the street from the project, sitting in the little area set aside for fiestas, sanctioned by the Church, which were held several times each year. There were booths set up where bingo was played; where darts three for a dime were tossed at balloons to win a Kewpie doll or a piggy bank; where washing machines and sets of silverware were raffled off; where kids, their eyes blindfolded, took turns trying to burst the piñata with a stick, then scrambled over the ground to retrieve the prizes that had been inside. At fiesta time, the whole neighborhood would turn out, drop by the church to look, to be seen, to participate. And although the church belonged more to the people of the hills than to those of the project--most of whom seemed to be Protestants or atheists or people who did not belong to anything--they, too, came round.

But on these Sunday evenings, the churchyard would be quiet; and while Mr. Chapultapec sat outside with one or two old men, watching the cars going up and down Mercury Avenue, watching the people passing by, Mrs. Chapultapec would be in the little kitchen in the back of the church with four or five other old women. They would make tacos, tamales, burritos and chili with fried beans, which they sold over a counter through a slitted window, like tellers in banks. The customers would mostly take their purchases with them to eat from paper napkins like hot dogs; but if they chose, as often happened if a fellow had a girl with him, they spread their orders on a table in the yard and enjoyed the serene atmosphere. Stacy could recall that when he was very little, he and the others would go to the window and the old women would give them a taco or a tamale free, with a kind word and a smile. After he was older and had the money, Stacy would still drop by Sunday evenings to purchase these warm goodies. He loved these old women and their quiet Mexican dignity. They asked no questions and condemned no one and seemed always to have their inner eyes fixed on a distant star.

It was from these old ladies that Stacy first heard the legend of the Llorona. He had been younger and the story fascinated him. In the long, long ago, the old women had said, in a small village deep in old Mexico, a wicked woman murdered her three children in a jealous rage, to get revenge on her unfaithful husband, who had run off with a beautiful señorita. She hid their tiny bodies so well that even she could not find where she had hidden them. Sometime later, an angel from God visited her to deliver a divine sentence. Until she found the bodies of her children and took them to the priest for a proper burial, she would know no peace. The wicked woman searched all over but could never find her little ones. Her doom was to wander the world over--in vain!--searching for her lost niños. When the wind, blowing down from the hills, whistled through the trees, or when a coyote or a dog howled mournfully, or when there was any other strange noise in the night, it was said to be the Llorona crying for her lost niños and for mercy from God. The mothers of Crescent Heights kept their kids in line by saying that if they were bad, the Llorona would come carry them away. That was why, when Mitch cursed Mrs. Chapultapec, sometimes he would put in, "Fuck the Llorona up her ass!" At this, Stacy would feel a chill down his back. One day, Mitch screamed at Mrs. Chapultapec:

"You're the Llorona!"

• • •

Stacy's would be the last generation to grow up in the old Crescent Heights, the Crescent Heights of the hills. They sort of felt that. They felt themselves to be part of something that was passing away. The world of the housing project would conquer in the end. Along with the houses, which were succumbing to decay, Crescent Heights was dying. An image of its death was reflected in the decaying bodies of the old men and women. The younger people were moving deeper into the central city, drawn from the outskirts of town to the inner core by the same forces that attracted other generations of Americans into the new cities from off the farms and out of the countryside. Like all those other great neighborhoods of Los Angeles of the first half of the 20th Century, Crescent Heights had commanded a fierce tribal loyalty from its inhabitants and, along with Maravilla, Flats, Temple, Clanton, The Avenues, Hazard, Happy Valley, Alpine and Rose Hill, it had achieved a greatness and a notoriety in the folklore of Los Angeles. But the glory of these neighborhoods was of a genre alien to that inscribed in the official histories of the city. These were outlaw neighborhoods inhabited by Negroes and Mexicans, viewed by the whites in the core of the city as a ring of barbarians around their Rome, a plague of sunburned devils raging against the city gates. But the people of these neighborhoods had their lives to live. They were born and they died, they loved and they hated, they danced and mated with each other and fought against each other and won their reputations by day and by night.

A clue to the unimportance with which the city fathers regarded Crescent Heights is the fact that during election campaigns, the candidates never bothered to visit there in search of votes. They neither needed nor wanted those tainted votes. In turn, the people of areas such as this viewed the metropolis with distrust and hostility, if not hatred and scorn. Their sons were inducted into its Army and were locked into its jails and were channeled, along with their daughters, into its factories. But it could not claim, nor did it seem to want, their loyalty and respect. The metropolis asked no such tender sentiments of the peripheral neighborhoods: It asked only for their sons and daughters.

After the heart had been cut out of Crescent Heights and the housing project built in its place, the inhabitants of the old neighborhood, or what was left of it, lived on in an uncertain wind, under the threat that at any moment, county and state authorities would take over their land, invoking eminent domain. There were all kinds of rumors, inspired by uncertainty and the memory of how suddenly and without warning the other homes had been condemned. One would hear of secret plans to build a country club and golf course in the hills, that the hills would be the site of a huge new campus of the University of California, that the Brooklyn Dodgers were coming to L. A. to build a stadium in the hills or that the Housing Authority would extend the project, covering vast areas of the hills with concrete, with the pink and yellow rows of apartments designed to official specifications. The only sure thing about these rumors was their effect on the people. No one bothered to lay plans, because they might be forced to move at any moment. No one bothered to improve or repair their houses and land, because they did not want to go to the trouble and expense, only to see their work rolled down the hills by bulldozers--just as they had seen the other houses and dreams demolished to make way for the project. All that was left of the old Crescent Heights were the old people and the last of their children. And in the new, the Crescent Heights of the project, there were only the women with their fatherless children--and the Marijuanos.

• • •

In that underground world, psychologically as far beneath the consciousness of a city's solid citizens as a city's sewerage system is beneath its streets, in the subterranean realm of narcotics peddlers and users, marijuana peddlers, gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, the thugs and the cutthroats, the burglars and the robbers, and the police--Crescent Heights had long been known as the marijuana capital of Los Angeles. If the old Crescent Heights was dying, the marijuana traffic did not feel the sting of its death, and it was not the odor of decay that the marijuana pushers smelled but the aroma of folding greenbacks. Even before the project, there was marijuana in Crescent Heights, grown in the hills in modest quantities. But the demand so vastly exceeded the supply that could be cultivated with safety in the hills that of the tons of marijuana flowing into Los Angeles from Mexico, hundreds of pounds of the weed found their way to Crescent Heights. The project became the base of operation, and the weed was controlled by the outlaws of old Crescent Heights, known by the local people as the Marijuanos. They were the alienated sons, in their 20s, of the people of the hills, those sons whom the metropolis had found indigestible. They had criminal records or had dropped out of school without acquiring any skills to fit into the economy. And they were either unfit or disinclined to enter the Armed Forces. They had fallen back on the skill of the hills, the knack of eluding the police while trafficking in contraband.

While he was very young, Stacy had the exciting experience of knowing a neighborhood hero who happened also to be one of Mitch's older "brothers." Known as Flamingo, his heroism consisted of the fact that he was the first guy from Crescent Heights to go to San Quentin. Surprised in the act of robbing a liquor store in El Serrano, he was wounded in a blazing gun fight with police. His crime partner was shot dead. When, years later, he got out of prison, Flamingo joined the Marijuanos and started dealing in weed. Soon, however, he disappeared from the scene. No one seemed to know where he had gone, but it was said, with knowing winks, that he had gone to Mexico and bought a fabulous hacienda from which he directed the flow of marijuana into Crescent Heights.

In Stacy and his gang, the Marijuanos inspired a romantic apprehension just short of fear. Not that they had anything to fear from the Marijuanos, whom they had known all their lives and to whom they were connected by memories and, in some cases, by blood. But the presence of the Marijuanos infused Crescent Heights with an aura of danger and mystery. At night, while Stacy and the others would be down at the playground, loafing, they would see the strangers who came to Crescent Heights furtively, after dark, and who would sometimes ask them:

"Are any of the guys around?"

Stacy had directed many an inquirer to the spot where the Marijuanos might be. But if, when out at night, Stacy's gang was always aware of the whereabouts of the Marijuanos, it was more for the purpose of keeping out of their way than anything else. If the Marijuanos came too near, Stacy and his gang, with the excited feeling of being brushed by danger, would run away to another part of the project. But the Marijuanos kept generally to the darker sections of the project and Stacy and the others had the playground and other lighted areas to themselves. It was commonly known that the Marijuanos sometimes knocked out street lights to make it darker in certain favored spots; it would be a couple of months before the county sent someone around to fix them.

If Stacy or the others ever saw a policeman, they'd run tell the Marijuanos. "The narcs are over there," they'd say, and the Marijuanos would melt away into the shadows. But every so often, Stacy would hear that one of them had gotten caught by the narcs and was put in jail.

• • •

Stacy wanted something to happen. The gang was beginning to seem like a prison and, although he continued to play his role, he went through the steps mechanically, his mind drifting, looking for somewhere to lodge. He had toyed with the idea of quitting school to look for a job somewhere, but it did not occur to him that he would really do this; it was more or less his way of threatening himself. He did want profoundly for his life to change. He felt that he could no longer endure school, the gang and the endless round of throwing raids on El Serrano. Now, when he burglarized a building, he would come away feeling disappointed, no matter what the haul. He no longer had the patience to search out all the hiding places, and so if things were not left out in plain sight, he would miss them. And this had been Stacy's main function in the gang. He was known to have a nose for sniffing out the valuables hidden by the owners in some secret cranny. Now he could feel a growing dissatisfaction among the others and, although no one criticized him, he knew they were watching him, wondering. How could he explain to them what was going on inside himself, when he himself didn't know? How could he explain that his pride was offended by what they were doing? How could he make them understand that if they carried off everything in El Serrano, it would not be enough to satisfy what he was beginning to feel inside?

He did not voice these questions; they were the ghosts behind his changed attitude toward the others. It began to bother him that when they burglarized a place, he was always the first one to go in, to look around and make sure it was safe before the others entered. If he didn't go in first, they'd just stand there and scare each other, and the fear would travel round the circle until panic set in. But even after he had crawled through the window, searched the whole place for hidden danger--a night watchman, a dog--they were still afraid, it seemed to him, of the dark, of what they could not see in the dark if something were there. It was easy for them to imagine anything being there: a squad of policemen crouching in the corner, waiting until they were all inside, before switching on the lights to mow them down with shotguns or to capture them and take them to Juvenile Hall; or a pack of menacing Doberman pinschers or German shepherds too cool to bark that would leap on them from behind and rip their flesh to shreds. This fear had always been with them and, in the past, they all used to laugh at it. But now it seemed totally unacceptable to Stacy.

Mitch, though, was never afraid. The danger with him was that, spurred on by his total contempt for everything, he would crawl through a window as if he owned the place and, once inside, while shaking it down to see if it was safe, would growl viciously to attract any dogs, kick over packing crates, upset tables and chairs, in an effort to smoke out something. He'd open closets and storerooms. Unable to see in the dark, he would not hesitate to yell into the void:

"Hey, you in there, I see you! Get the fuck out of there!"

The first time he did that, pandemonium broke loose among the others and they took off, running. Stacy had to run after them, overtake them, shake some sense into them before they could understand that it was only Mitch who had shouted. It had been a hard job persuading them to go back with him and impossible to get them to crawl through the window into the dark room, because Mitch, when Stacy called to him to prove to the others that it was safe, refused to answer. Stacy pictured him, leering at them through the dark, that sullen, scornful scowl on his face. In that moment, Stacy wanted to kick that face. He knew that Mitch was probably looking right at them, at the window that was a patch of light silhouetted against the night sky, but would not answer.

"You lousy bastard. Mitch!" Stacy said into the dark window. But in another sense, Stacy thought it was beautiful of Mitch not to answer, especially at a time like this, when he himself was absolutely serious and the others were afraid and they all were a long way from home and in danger of being shot or taken to jail. It took real dedication for Mitch to remain perverse in such circumstances. The others refused to precede Stacy through the window.

"Well, fuck all of you, then," he said, exasperated, and went swiftly through the window.

The others hesitated at first, decided all at the same time that they'd rather be inside than out, and they all tried to squeeze through the window at once, making a ton of racket, cursing and scratching each other as they fought to get through.

Then Mitch, somewhere in the darkness, hissed at them, "Shut the fuck up!"

Guided by his voice, Stacy caught Mitch in the dark and, bringing up his knee with just slightly less than hostile force, he shook Mitch up and shoved him to the floor. "Next time, you better answer me, you stupid shit!" he said. And, extending his foot in the dark, he made contact with Mitch, jarring him with a stiff thrust. It felt like he got him in the side.

Now that they were inside, Stacy could hear the others as they scuffled about in the dark, searching for objects of value with which to fill their gunny sacks. Stacy did not even unroll his sack. He leaned against a wall and let his mind drift as he waited for the others to finish. He was thinking of what had happened the previous week, when he had first made up his mind that this could not go on, that something had to change, that he had to find himself a new life.

• • •

The thought had come to him during a raid on a school cafeteria a week before. After eating all they could hold and filling their sacks, they had thrown all the other food on the floor, gutted the refrigerator, smashed all the cups, salt and pepper shakers and glasses, scattered the silverware, bent the trays out of shape and overturned the tables.

"Stacy, make Mitch stop!" Turtle said.

Mitch had turned all the jets of the gas range up full blast. Flames leaped at the ceiling. Shoving Mitch aside, Stacy began spinning the knobs to shut off the flow of gas. Screaming, Mitch came at him with a fork. Stacy feinted at him and, when Mitch slashed at him with the fork, Stacy stepped back and caught his arm, twisting it behind his back.

"Drop it!" Stacy demanded, applying pressure.

"You cocksucker!" hissed Mitch, defeated, holding the fork just long enough to register his defiance.

Stacy turned all the burners down.

"Let's burn this motherfucker down!" Mitch pleaded. "Then the gavachos won't have a school to go to!"

"That's going too far," the others protested in a chorus.

That did it. That nauseated Stacy. That's going too far. The words burned into his mind. What did they mean by that? That's when Stacy really knew that he was finished, that he had to cut all this loose. Like a sailor locking the hatches on a submarine, he twirled the knobs, opening all the jets all the way, and the range burst into flames again.

"Let's go!" he shouted. He helped the others out the window. Looking around, he saw Mitch in front of the range, jumping up and down, laughing hysterically and cursing the flames in Spanish. Stacy rushed back and dragged him away by his belt.

"Leave go! Leave go!" Mitch yelled, as he struggled to free himself, straining toward the flames.

The building was mostly of wood and in a minute it would be one raging inferno. Stacy, seeing that Mitch would not relent in his efforts to return to the fire, hit him in his gut and shoved him up and out through the window. As Stacy came through the window, just as he expected, Mitch tried to kick him in the face to knock him back into the burning room. Catching Mitch's foot in the air, Stacy hurled him backward into the dark night air, landing him on his ass; and as Stacy ran past Mitch, he was very careful not to miss stepping on him. He heard curses behind him in the night as he ran to catch up with the others.

The idea, voiced by the others, that Mitch had been "going too far," bothered Stacy. It sounded like the belief that if one sailed far enough over the open seas, one would eventually sail off the edge of the world. He found solace in repeating to himself: The world is round; you can sail on and on and end up where you started. It was as if the others were saying to him that the world is flat. His mind seized upon this incident to justify breaking with his gang. He was only waiting for the right moment.

• • •

The next time the others asked him to go on a raid, Stacy said no. After the others resigned themselves to inactivity for the night, Mitch and he stole away from them, leaving them sitting around the playground looking dejected, and the two of them headed for El Serrano by themselves. They prowled around for hours, without spotting anything worth while. It was Saturday night and every house seemed occupied; every business establishment, though they saw some that were obviously deserted and closed down for the weekend, seemed strangely forbidding and whispering of threat, crawling with hidden danger. They both felt this, without speaking about it, tacitly deciding there was no chance for action that night. Walking through alleys, down dark streets, always in the shadows, cutting back, zigzagging, to avoid the glow of street lights, they trekked to the heart of El Serrano. They knew they could not afford to be seen by anyone, because only whites lived there and one look at them and it would be all over. If a car headed their way, they scrambled for cover, crouching behind parked cars, lying flat behind trees, kneeling down in the shrubbery near houses. The police would know, upon seeing them, that their only business there was to steal. El Serrano was their happy hunting ground. They had been hunting there for years, and for as long as he had been doing it, not one of his gang had got caught. The cops would lie in wait for them, leaving a bait of valuables out in clear sight, but they always passed it up. "That's a fishhook," they'd whisper to each other in the dark, gliding through the shadows. Sometimes they'd sneak noiselessly right past the cops sitting in their patrol car parked in the shadows. Once, Mitch had crawled up to their car on his belly, like a commando, and removed the valve from a rear tire. By the time the cops detected the flat, Mitch was well away.

"Let's hit a few cars, if nothing else," Stacy said to Mitch, as they crept silently down an alley.

"OK," Mitch said.

With their screwdrivers, they jimmied the vent windows on the passenger side of a few cars, sticking in an arm to roll down the window, then shoving their heads through the window to look around inside the car. It was their habit to take anything of value. They'd take coats, binoculars, guns, tools, radios, groceries, anything they could use or sell. Most of their loot they sold to the people of the project at cheap prices. They didn't care; all they wanted was a little something to keep them going from day to day. Goods in hand, they'd go from door to door and show what they had. The people would jokingly call them bad boys, but they were always glad to see them. They'd let them in, pull the curtains and examine the display. Clothes for their children, for themselves, cooking utensils, lamps, clocks, radios--everything went. If they could not sell something, the gang would give it away. If nobody wanted it, they'd throw it away. But most of the time, if they had something that wouldn't sell, they'd let Mitch keep it. His cellar contained a wealth of worthless loot.

Their pockets and sacks filled, Stacy and Mitch had almost called it quits when Stacy saw another car that seemed to beckon to him. That car, he was to think later, communicated with him. He had already got himself a nice leather jacket that, because he was big for his age, was not a bad fit. He got to the car and opened the window. On the front seat was the long, snaky body of a five-battery flashlight and a fifth of whiskey in a bag. Good for a few bucks, Stacy thought. He fell in with Mitch and they headed for home.

As soon as they were a safe distance away, Stacy tested the flashlight, playing it down a pitch-black alley, fascinated by its powerful beam.

"Put out that fucking light, man!" Mitch growled curtly. "You trying to signal to the cops where we are, or something?"

Stacy shined the light in Mitch's face. Mitch tried to stare the beam down, but it wounded his eyes, forcing him to turn his head.

"You crazy fucker," he said in disgust.

Stacy felt giddy about the flashlight, his new possession. Its properties he seemed to appropriate and incorporate into his own being. The light, he felt, was a powerful extension of himself.

• • •

The next night, when they all met at the playground, Stacy took his flashlight with him. It was an instrument that had to be used, a charge that by its potency refused to lie idle. As he left his room, it all but leaped into his hand, guiding itself into his palm. He had taken it completely apart several times, feeling a flush of triumph each time he reassembled it, flicked the button and saw the bulb glow. It seemed to him that when he assembled the parts, he was creating the light. And he had the strange feeling that this light would be the instrument by which great change would come into his life.

He loved his light. When he broke it down, he would caress the five batteries with his fingers, and the bulb, the gaskets, the spring in the cap. So closely did he examine each part that he had no doubt that out of a mountain of similar parts, he could easily select his own.

He would use the power of the batteries sparingly. As they all lay on the grass of the playground, the others kept urging him to turn it on, to show them how powerful was its beam. Stacy stood up and cast the beam into the hills, and a patch of light could be seen dimly sweeping the surface of the hills at a great distance. The others were impressed. Stacy lay on the lawn, fondling the metallic tube that held the mysteries of his future.

"Where did you score it?" asked one of the others.

"El Serrano," Stacy answered.

"When?"

"Last night."

"Last night?" Turtle perked up. "I thought you said last night you weren't going?"

Stacy made no reply. A heavy silence ensued. The others, not looking directly at Stacy, were nevertheless watching him closely, waiting for an answer to clarify what looked now like a betrayal.

Stacy said nothing.

A few minutes passed in this silence.

Then Mitch said, "Don't you punks know when you're not wanted along? Can't you take a hint?" Mitch spoke in a harsh, contemptuous tone, which was not directed to Turtle alone but to all the others. "Me and Stacy ducked you suckers last night and we scored heavy by ourselves. I got myself a flashlight, too, just like that one." After a significant pause, he added, "Who needs you guys with them? All you ever do is make noise."

Stacy was embarrassed, for he could feel himself how Mitch's words were hurting the others. He smothered an impulse to smash Mitch's face, to make him shut up, to make him retract that he about his own flashlight--but he held back. Inside, he was glad that Mitch had spoken these things, for now something was done that could never be undone, and he had the intimation that Mitch was setting him free. Then he said, "You've got a big, dumb mouth, Mitch."

"It's my mouth," Mitch snapped back, "big or not."

Suddenly, Stacy felt a deep loathing for the position he was in. He hated the necessity of giving them an explanation. If he acknowledged that he owed them an explanation, he would be sucked back in and lose this chance. Jumping up. he kicked Mitch in his side, and as he ran off into the night, he could hear Mitch's laughter following him.

He ran until he was exhausted, then walked until he found himself at the other end of the project. Around him, it was quiet and dark. The apartment windows were yellow squares where the shades stopped the light. He sat down on the lawn, propped himself up against a tree and closed his eyes. His heart still raced in his chest from running. He clung to his flashlight, glad to be alone.

Sometime later, he became aware of the sound of movement near him; he heard the muffled rustling of paper. Opening his eyes, at first he could make out nothing, then just below him, where the lawn on which he sat sloped down to meet the sidewalk, he saw a shadowy form kneeling and reaching into the hedge next to Mrs. Chapman's front door. Stacy realized it was a Marijuano, but he couldn't make out which one. As he sat there, watching, it seemed to him that he was becoming aware of the Marijuanos for the first time. Then he wondered, what would the Marijuano do if he shined the flashlight on him? This thought, this possibility of making something happen, already had fastened upon his imagination: and even as he hesitated, he knew that he would end by doing it. He perceived, in a flash, that such a step would set in motion forces of which he was not even aware. What will happen? he wondered. Am I afraid to do it? By putting the question to himself in terms of his courage, he knew that he had to do it.

Silently, he got to his feet and squatted on his haunches. Aiming his flashlight at the phantom, he savored the keen edge of the moment before the action, anticipating it with sharp exhilaration. Then he pressed the button. It was Chango! Chango froze, all lit up, his face contorted, eyes wide with panic. For the briefest moment, Chango remained motionless, his arm buried in the hedge up to his shoulder. Then he exploded, scooting backward on his knees, stumbling to his feet, tripping, falling down, crawling, looking over his shoulder to see if he was being chased, his face hysterical. Stacy kept the light on him till he turned the corner on the hump, then he flicked off the light and ran toward the playground. When he came to another dark spot, he fell onto the lawn and laughed till he could hardly breathe, rolling on the ground. The way Chango had looked when the beam first split his face, how he had flown! For long after, just the thought of it would send him chuckling.

That night, he dreamed that the world was inside a box with steep sides and no top, like the walls of a frontier fort, and the sun was a huge flashlight of a billion batteries with a tube so long it never ended; and some kid in the sky watching the people groping in darkness below pressed the button and the people said "Day" and he released the button and the people said "Night." Stacy woke up in a sweat, clutching his flashlight, keenly appreciative of the powers of light.

• • •

The next day, time seemed to slow down on purpose to torture him. It was with a keen foretaste of pleasure that he awaited the setting of the sun. All during school, he could think of nothing but his flashlight, the Marijuanos and how he would terrorize them again tonight. He saw himself chasing them all over the project. They would be there tonight, he had not the slightest doubt. They were always there. When it rained, they donned heavy coats and plastic slickers and did business as usual. The only time the Marijuanos would leave was when the cops came; and when the cops went away, the Marijuanos reappeared, like air drawn into a vacuum. That evening, Stacy hid in the bushes around the square at the end of the row of apartments in which Mrs. Chapman lived, not far from the spot where he had surprised Chango. The square was one of several located at strategic intervals throughout the project, placed there by the architects to add beauty to public housing. It was a concrete-covered clearing 30 feet by 40 feet, surrounded with hedges and flowers and shaded by a tall tree. The tree's rich foliage hung over the square like a giant umbrella. It could actually stop rain. On each side of the square were four cement benches of the type often seen in public parks: a flat slab resting on two upright stays. During the daylight hours, the little kids scampered and romped in the square, riding in their wagons and on tricycles, catching and bouncing big rubber balls, jumping rope, playing jacks and hopscotch. At night, the Marijuanos took it over, using it to contact customers who came to Crescent Heights from all over Los Angeles to score their weed.

Stacy waited for the right moment. Hidden in the shadows of the square, the Marijuanos were smoking weed and making transactions. The acrid aroma tantalized Stacy's nostrils. He had smelled burning marijuana before, but never from so close. He knew that what he was doing was very dangerous and this knowledge, coupled with the intrigue of the night, the smell of the burning marijuana and the sight of men moving back and forth, talking in low voices and laughing now and then, gave it all a touch of adventure. Stacy felt keenly alive. He was doing something not often done, something he had never done before, something none of the others had ever dreamed of doing. He knew also that if a bush moved, the Marijuanos noticed it. Like him, they were all neighborhood boys who had spent their entire lives in the immediate area. They knew every tree, every hole in the ground, every rock, every bush and everybody. They could feel a cop coming. No cop could have snuck up on them as Stacy had done. It would not have been natural. But Stacy, who knew and loved every inch of the earth of Crescent Heights, had crept right up on the Marijuanos. With a little effort, he could have reached out and touched them. When he could bear it no longer, Stacy aimed his flashlight into the square. Before pressing the button, he gave the bushes a violent shake, drawing the Marijuanos' attention to him, then let go with the light. The Marijuanos gave up the square in a mad stampede, crashing through the bushes and running over each other. Stacy then dashed off in the direction the Marijuanos were least likely to take: He sprinted to the well-lit playground.

Three days later, at school, Mitch said, "The Marijuanos are after you."

"After me for what?" Stacy asked, a look of surprise on his face.

"You know for what," Mitch said curtly. "You and that flashlight, that's what."

"What about my flashlight?" Stacy asked, hungrily wanting to hear any details.

"You won't be playing dumb when they catch you," said Mitch. "Cutie, Chico and Chango said they're going to catch you and fuck you up. You know better than to fool around with those guys."

Stacy had not expected the Marijuanos to send him congratulations, but he did not really feel in danger; just as when he went on raids to El Serrano, he had not regarded the dangers as real. They were part of a game, like a penalty in football. If one made no mistakes, it was as if the penalties did not even exist.

"Fuck the Marijuanos," Stacy said.

"That's easy to say," said Mitch, "but wait till they get their hands on you. The Marijuanos don't play around when they mean business."

Stacy had assumed that each time he turned on his light, the Marijuanos would automatically react the same way--run. But now that they knew it was he and not the cops, he knew their reaction would change. Whereas their main purpose had been to flee from a cop, it was now an angry desire to extinguish Stacy's light.

"The Marijuanos said you're putting the heat on them," Mitch had said.

"Later for them," Stacy said. But he was jolted by that charge. In Crescent Heights, only a rat would knowingly put the heat on someone. And a known rat couldn't last five minutes in Crescent Heights. It was unheard of. Stacy had not expected such a charge. He threw it from his mind as too absurd and unpleasant to think about. He continued to creep up on the Marijuanos and flash his light on them. And when he did, it was he who had to take off, running, because the Marijuanos would be right on his heels. It was easy for Stacy to outdistance them. They laid traps for him. Some of them hid in the bushes while the others tried to sucker him in. They laid up a store of bricks, bottles and beer cans. Once, they hid near Stacy's home to ambush him on his way home. Stacy laughed at them and outflanked their every maneuver. Their battle, the Marijuanos' efforts to catch Stacy and his efforts to escape, became notorious in Crescent Heights. Everybody knew they were after him. Everyone waited for news that Stacy had at last been caught. Eluding the Marijuanos became his full-time occupation. He defied them with pride.

But underneath it all, Stacy had some regrets that the feud had ever gotten started. He would have liked nothing better than to be out of the spot he was in, which was becoming more difficult to occupy. He wished that he could just leave them alone and drop the whole thing, to be done with the whole affair, to be free from worrying about how to get away from the Marijuanos in a given situation. But he continued to force the issue, convinced that he would somehow come through it all unscathed. The Marijuanos became marksmen with bricks and bottles and it took some prize footwork by Stacy to keep from getting his brains knocked out. Even so, they hit him in the side once with a heavy rock that took the wind out of him, and the only thing that kept him from collapsing on the spot was the sure knowledge of what they would do to him if they caught him.

The Marijuanos sent people to talk to Stacy, but he refused to listen. They repeated that he was ruining their business.

Stacy's mother said to him: "Son, you better mind your Ps and Qs. I know what you been doing and you'd better stop it."

"I know what I'm doing," Stacy said.

Now the other members of the gang shied away from Stacy. They said he had gone crazy and they saw nothing positive in his keen thrill of excitement in outwitting the Marijuanos. They didn't know how it felt to be hunted by them, to elude their traps, to spring out of the bushes unannounced with a blazing torch and scare the pants off of the Marijuanos. The Marijuanos were all in their 20s and Stacy, who felt neither old nor young, enjoyed this relationship with individuals already grown. He was a factor in their existence, whether they liked it or not. He had chosen them, like some gadfly in a dangerous game. They were stuck with Stacy and it was up to them to solve the problem. For his part, Stacy's course was clear. He would continue to bug them with his light.

One night, he climbed up a tree and from his perch saw Polio, a fat, phlegmatic Mexican, hide a little bag behind a bush. Several times, Polio returned to the bush, extracted from the bag, replaced it and went away. Stacy shinnied down the tree and chose a spot ten feet away from Polio's stash. The next time Polio came back, Stacy waited until he had gotten the bag and stuck his hand into it, then he hit him in the face with the blinding beam of the light. Dropping the bag, Polio uttered a cry and was in full flight before he realized it was Stacy, himself already running through the night in the opposite direction. He had scored again. It was coups like that that egged him on.

The Marijuanos tried a new trick. As Stacy walked home from school with the others one evening, two cars, one in front of him and one behind, pulled sharply into the curb and out poured the Marijuanos. They had not, however, counted on the speed of Stacy's legs. Stacy leaped over a fence into someone's yard and. before the startled dog in the yard realized what was happening, ran out the back way, was over the back fence and cutting out up the hill. Looking back, he saw the Marijuanos pile into their cars, burning rubber getting out of there. The stakes were going up. Such desperation!

When Stacy was in his classrooms, he was careful to sit near a window, in case the Marijuanos burst in to trap him. He suffered through his third-period class, because it was on the second floor and there was no ledge outside the windows. He felt trapped in that room. He fully expected the Marijuanos to know all about this particular room, and he would not have been surprised to look up one day and find them there. He watched for them in the halls, on the stairways, in the schoolyard, behind lockers in the gymnasium. During lunch hour, he often saw the Marijuanos drive by the school, their faces sweeping the crowd with Stacy-seeking eyes.

• • •

One day, the Marijuanos stopped chasing him and they stopped throwing things at him. When he crept up on them and flashed his light, they'd just look at him, in his direction. Stacy couldn't figure it out, but he didn't hang around waiting for answers. He ran away, as usual. One evening, Stacy was down at the playground, loafing, with his flashlight stuck in his belt like a knife or a gun. Turtle walked up to him.

"Chico wants to talk to you," Turtle said, pointing to another part of the playground, where, dressed in blue denims and wearing dark glasses, Chico stood waiting on the other side of the Cyclone fence. Warily. Stacy walked over, staying on his side of the fence, continually looking over his shoulder to see if the other Marijuanos were sneaking up on him while Chico held his attention.

"What do you want?" Stacy asked, mistrustfully.

"Say, Stacy," Chico began, "this shit has got to stop, man."

Stacy could see that Chico was burning with anger but trying also to conceal it. It shone like flaming coals in his black eyes. His mouth was set in a fixed, down-thrusting scowl. Through the fence, Stacy got the same feeling he had had when, at the Griffith Park Zoo, he had stood outside the cage of a lion and stared into its huge cat eyes. He was thankful for the fence between them. He said nothing, only stared into Chico's dark glasses, at the fire in those eyes, and he saw something there besides anger and hatred, something that surprised him: He saw the embryo of a smile.

"I want to make a deal with you," Chico said.

"What kind of a deal?" Stacy asked, regarding Chico narrowly. His anxiety was that the other Marijuanos were sure to try something.

"Here," Chico said, and he shoved a ten-dollar bill into a square of the fence. Stacy let it lie there, wedged in the wire.

"What's that for?" asked Stacy.

"For your flashlight." Chico said.

"For ten dollars, you can buy three or four like this one," Stacy said, patting his flashlight on his side.

"I want yours," said Chico.

The flashlight weighed heavily on Stacy's side. The full realization of what a burden it had become flowed in upon him. He wanted with all his heart to be rid of it.

"Listen to me, Stacy," Chico said. "You're a young cat and you don't realize what's going on. But you'd better think fast, because you don't have much time left. You know what the other guys want to do? Look." He lifted the corner of his shirt and showed Stacy the handle of a pistol stuck in his belt. "They want to just kill you. Because you're ranking our play. You're messing with our bread and butter, man."

Strangely, Stacy was not afraid. But he felt a knot in his chest, to think that the Marijuanos had been discussing his death.

"Listen, man," Chico went on. "We could kill you and bury you up on Walnut Hill and nobody would ever find your body. It would be no trouble at all. The cops wouldn't even look for you. You're just another nigger to them and they don't give a fuck about you. You know why we haven't done you up?"

Stacy stared at him impassively, not trusting himself to ask why, for not wanting to sound too urgent.

"Because you're one of us. You're from Crescent Heights." Chico paused. "So we decided to give you the respect of letting you make a choice. But maybe you're too fucking wild to see what's happening. We never like to fight with each other in Crescent Heights, Stacy, you know that. Because by sticking together, we can all make it, maybe. At least better than by fighting ourselves. At least we'll have a better chance. I'm a married man and I have my family to look out for. I don't have time to fuck around with you or anybody else. This is strictly business with me. If I get caught, I'm going to the can, and I don't look forward to that. I'm going to do everything in my power to see to it that I never get caught. Right now"--Chico paused, then went on--"right now, you are more of a problem than the narcs. So we've got to settle this right now. Right now. You know what, Stacy?" Chico looked at him and seemed to be measuring him. "You're getting to be about that age.... Do you get high? Do you blow weed?"

"No," Stacy said.

"Well, pretty soon...." he paused. "It won't be long before you're going to get tired of running around in a pair of dirty Levis, fucking off your time with those other young cats. I've dug you and I know that you've got something on the ball. Pretty soon, you're going to want some nice clothes and some money in your pocket, some of that folding money, and you're going to want a little car of your own to ride around in with the bitches. But then you're going to find out the world is not a"--he broke off, looking around him, and swept the area with his arm--"a playground. You're going to find out the world is not a merry-go-round. It's hard, hard, Stacy. But we've got a good thing going for us here in Crescent Heights, and we intend to keep it working for us. You guys call us Marijuanos.... Yeah, we're Marijuanos, all right. But there are lots more Marijuanos in L.A., and lots of them come to us to score their jive. And you, with your flashlight, are fucking with all of that. I used to think like you and act like you. You know my brother Black Jack, don't you?"

"Yeah," Stacy said. "Everybody knows Black Jack."

"He used to control the action in Crescent Heights," Chico went on. "And he used to try getting me interested, but my mind was locked somewhere else. I was about your age and I used to call him Marijuano. Now I've got the bag and you're calling me Marijuano. It goes around and comes around; you take it a little way and then pass it on. Pretty soon, the little kids will be calling you Marijuano and, someday, kids that are not even born yet will be calling them Marijuanos. It will never end. But it's going to end for you unless you straighten up your hand.

"Take the money," Chico said, "and we'll forget the whole thing. We'll forget it all happened."

Stacy hesitated for a long moment, then said, "What about the others?"

"Same with them," Chico said. "Nobody will bother you. I give you my word. But you have to give me your word that you won't fool around anymore. I'm not giving you the money to buy you off. I'm giving it to you to wake you up."

"What good is your word?" Stacy asked. "How do I know you're not just setting me up?"

Chico looked at Stacy fiercely. "I never break my word when I give it like this. If I say I won't bother you, I won't. If I say I'm going to kill you, you're as good as dead."

Stacy walked down to the end of the fence, where it was lower. As he jumped over, he saw Mitch and the others watching. He walked up to Chico and handed him the flashlight. Chico pulled the ten-dollar bill from the fence and placed it in Stacy's hand.

"Play it cool," Chico said and walked away.

Stacy did not turn around to look after Chico. It felt good. It was a relief not to have to look over his shoulder anymore. The others walked over to Stacy. They all understood what had happened. They were all glad it was over. They all laughed and punched each other lightly to the body.

"You punks are crazy," said Mitch, off to the side.

"Let's throw a raid on El Serrano tonight," Turtle suggested.

"Count me out," Stacy said with mock astonishment, "I might find another flashlight!"

• • •

That night, Stacy walked into the square. When they saw who it was, the Marijuanos quickly surrounded him. There was murder in the intense way they crowded him.

"What the fuck you want?" Cutie snapped, fuming, his voice menacing, with overtones of blood.

"Nothing," Stacy said. He felt crushed, confused.

"Leave him alone," Chico spoke up. "Forget about it. I gave him my word that it was all over."

"You gave him your word," said Cutie, "but I didn't give him mine."

Stacy heard the click of Cutie's knife as it sprang open, although he couldn't see it in the darkness. He was afraid. Cutie was breathing in his face. The others stepped back. Stacy calculated his chances of running. All Cutie had to do was thrust upward with the blade to do damage.

"When I gave him my word, I gave him yours," Chico said. "And nobody's going to make me out a liar. Leave him alone. Cutie." Chico spoke with force and authority and he added, lowering his voice ominously: "Or are you going to make me out a liar?"

Cutie stepped back from Stacy and put his knife up. Tension evaporated from the square. The Marijuanos lit up joints of the weed.

Chico offered Stacy a joint.

"Never mind," Stacy said halfheartedly.

Chico fumbled with the joint and then lit it from the one being smoked by Gato. After he had taken a couple of drags, he passed it to Stacy.

"Here," he said.

Stacy took the joint between his fingers and raised it to his mouth, puffing in and immediately coughing out the acrid smoke. It felt like breathing over a burning rag. He was amazed at how the others could be smoking it if it tasted so bad.

"Do it like this," Chico said, taking the joint from Stacy. Chico took a long, powerful drag. Stacy watched the coal of fire travel up the joint as Chico consumed about half of it in that one drag. "Take it down into your lungs and hold it," he said. "You'll get used to it. The main thing is to hold it in your lungs as long as you can."

Stacy struggled over the remainder of the joint, coughing and choking occasionally, his throat getting raw, his eyes running, his heart racing. He was confused and a little apprehensive but continued to inhale the weed and hold in the smoke until his lungs expelled it. Then it was as if he ceased to exist. He was confronting a stranger in a body he recognized as his own but with which he was out of touch. His former state was now a memory; his new state was a soft, jet-smooth present fact. He had the sensation of being two disembodied beings fighting to inhabit one yielding body. His body, offering no resistance, became a battlefield on which two rival armies contended. The pitch of the war escalated as he took in more marijuana from the joints being passed around the circle of Marijuanos. Stacy accepted every one offered to him, and once he ended up with a lit reefer in each hand, puffing first one and then the other. He no longer cared or tried to keep track of how the war inside him was progressing. No matter which way it went, he thought, he'd still be the winner. He lost track of time. Everything seemed to occur without sequence, as if it was all happening simultaneously and spontaneously, separated rather by space than by time. He was dimly aware of people furtively entering the square, engaging one or another of the Marijuanos in short, snappy conversation. He watched as the Marijuanos collected money and disappeared from the square for a few moments, to return and hand something to the customer. These furtive shadows would brace up and, in a moment, fade from the square into the vast Los Angeles night.

Stacy was so high off the weed that the center of his vision was blotted out, although he could see perfectly well around the edges; and through these clear edges, he was trying to see into the center, around the dark spot. He had the impression that someone had taken a bottle of liquid shoe polish and, using the dauber, painted his eyeballs down the center. He did not notice that everyone was leaving, had drifted out of the square and gone for the night--except Chico, who was talking. At first, Stacy could make no sense of what he was saying.

"What? What?" Stacy kept asking him, over and over again.

"Go home, Stacy."

"What?"

"Go to your pad, man. I'm going to split."

"What?"

"It's one o'clock, man. You got too high."

Chico was laughing in Stacy's face. He was really having a big laugh. Stacy laughed, too. His face felt like rubber and he couldn't control his expression, though it was very dark in the square and Chico could not tell. Stacy's face seemed to be sagging and he was flexing his facial muscles to hold it in place, but it kept sliding down again. "I'm not high." he said.

"No, you're not high," Chico said, laughing. "You're wasted!"

Stacy was laughing, too.

"Do you think you can find your way to your pad?" Chico asked.

"Sure," Stacy said. "Who could forget that?" Even as he spoke, he experienced the panic of having no idea where he lived. "Where are we right now?" he asked Chico.

Chico knew that, although it was funny, it was also a serious phase Stacy was going through; and if he had not been there, Stacy might have wandered around Crescent Heights all night, looking for his house.

"We're in the square by Mrs. Chapman's house," Chico said.

"Where is Mrs. Chapman's house?" Stacy asked.

Chico turned Stacy to his right and he recognized Mrs. Chapman's apartment at the end of the row. From there, traveling like a beam of light, his mind raced off into infinity, reconstructing that portion of the universe of which he was aware.... There is Mrs. Chapman's pad, this is the square, the playground is down there, that's Boundary Avenue up there, Florizel Street over there, Mercury Avenue over there, downtown L.A. is that way, Pasadena is that way, Lincoln Heights is over there, El Serrano and Alhambra are over there--I live down that way. Stacy felt serene, lucid, triumphant, peculiarly masterful and at peace.

"I'm going home," he said to Chico.

"Think you can make it?"

"Sure," he said. "Ain't nothing to it."

"I'll see you around," Chico said.

Stacy had started to walk in the direction of home when he missed something. He stopped, wondering what it was he was forgetting. Then he remembered the flashlight and laughed to himself. He did not know yet whether a Marijuano had any use for a flashlight. As he walked dreamily home, he had no doubt that he would soon find out.