like Josefina had, and turned away. Casey and Stacey Sanchez trudged towards us from their mother’s flower shop across the street from the north side of the park, wearing cotton candy-colored sundresses—of all things. The boys from restaurant row also arrived in pairs. Frank and Freddy Fernandez wore rancho wear, Pedro Wong sported a tracksuit and little Iker Sustaita sported too-large fatigues—I suspected hand-me-downs from his grandfather. Colonel Franco trailed in at the end.
He moved like a slow shadow at sunset.
He paused next to Josefina and me. I nodded—a tight chin chop. He nodded back. He rubbed at his knee—I suspected an old war injury—just above the hem of his cargo shorts. “Do you want to sit, Colonel?” I asked. “We can move over by the park bench.”
“No thank you, Masi. I don’t know about you kids, but I’m done sitting around.”
He cleared his throat. We all gathered around him. His lips moved and the jet-black broom above his mouth brushed the air in front of his face. “Good morning, everyone. I’m here because I want to be here. I hope you want to be here too.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, Grampa, sir,” Iker said.
“Think of this as summer camp,” Colonel Franco said. “What we’re doing is important. Everyone has something to contribute. Our first task is to collect bricks and bring them to the park.”
I nodded.
“Let’s take it from the American Lard Company, tear the place down brick by brick and use it for the pyramid,” Marcos said.
“That would be stealing,” Colonel Franco said.
The company’s four massive buildings sat forgotten at our neighborhood’s borders. I doubted anyone would even notice. “But, isn’t building on Pig Park stealing too?” I asked. If Colonel Franco was going to be a stickler for the law, I figured we didn’t own the park either.
“The park was established by the American Lard Company for its employees. They turned it over to the neighborhood when they left. The Chamber of Commerce administers a land trust.”
My mouth dropped open. Colonel Franco may as well have been talking military code. Everyone stared at him, not just me.
“The park belongs to the people who still live here. Technically, we’re not doing anything illegal,” he explained.
The idea that we owned the park translated to chaos. Marcos pantomimed marking his territory like a dog. The Fernandez brothers cackled in that way that I sometimes heard all the way down the street when they worked the line at their family’s tamale shop. The two paced the lawn like a couple of roosters in cowboy boots and staked out their own sections.
Colonel Franco put his fingers to his mustache and whistled loud enough to blow a lung. He raised his left hand and counted down from five using his fingers. Everyone stopped. “Go grab anything you can find with wheels so we can start.”
“We don’t have driver’s licenses,” Josefina said.
“Grab anything that doesn’t require a driver’s license. Meet me in my back yard,” he barked.
I elbowed Josefina. “Quit it. He’s already annoyed. He’ll send us all back home.”
“I wish,” Josefina said. “He won’t send us away. He wants our help.”
I didn’t want to take that chance. “Let’s just do what he says anyway. This isn’t so bad,” I said.
“It isn’t so great.” Josefina rolled her eyes. “It’s just more work on top of our chores at home.”
“At least we get to be out here together.”
Her mouth formed a small o as if she hadn’t thought of it herself. “I guess you’re right,” she said.
We borrowed a cart from the Nowak Grocery Store and pushed it to Colonel Franco’s backyard. Colonel Franco’s entire fence was lined with rows of brick like the back lot of one of those home improvement stores. I looked twice just to take it all in. “I wonder where all this stuff came from.”
“I bet he was building a bomb shelter.” Josefina stepped closer.
Iker walked up next to us with a wheelbarrow. “It’s old Army surplus. Grampa doesn’t like to see anyone throw anything away,” he said
“Okay,” Colonel Franco called from the back stoop where he sat smoking a cigar, knee propped up on a well-worn phonebook. “Now, load the brick and run it over to the park.”
“You heard the boss,” Pedro Wong said. He appointed himself second-in-command. He wasn’t even second-in-command at Wong’s Taco Shop, but having grown a paltry mustache over the last year, turning eighteen and being the oldest in our group gave him delusions of authority. He picked up a stack of bricks and started an assembly line of sorts. “Iker and the Sanchez sisters, you guys man the carts. Push the bricks to the park, and bring the carts back. The Fernandez brothers and I will come along and stay at the park to unload. The rest of you stay here and continue loading for the next pick up.”
“I don’t want to get dirty,” Casey, the older and plumper Sanchez sister, said.
“Don’t worry. I got this,” Iker said. He puffed up his posture to make himself seem bigger and grabbed the wheelbarrow once it was full. He pushed the wheelbarrow away. The Sanchez sisters followed— their two thick silhouettes sashayed close behind him.
Marcos bent down and picked up some bricks. He handed first Josefina and then me a stack. We loaded them onto the grocery store cart. We repeated the process. I lifted heavy trays onto the racks at the bakery. Josefina and Marcos were used to lifting product crates and kitchen stock. Our new task should’ve been easy, but the sun was relentless. It shone brighter and hotter with each brick. Even an Olympic weightlifter couldn’t have muscled away the hot sticky air. I blotted the sweat off my brow with my shoulder. At least I wasn’t feeling self-conscious on top of it all. There was too much other discomfort for that, right? We’d all seen each other sweat before anyway.
“You’d think the sun was trying to burst out of the sky,” I said.
Josefina huffed. “Ugh, this is terrible,” she said.
“We all smell like Marcos’ gym socks.”
“Like flowers.” Marcos grinned and handed me another stack of bricks. “Dumb sun.”
“No. I don’t mind the sun. I mean, we need the sun, especially if we’re going to pass for Aztecs,” Josefina said. She held up a sun-ripened arm. Her face contorted into a smile. Marcos and I broke into laughter. Josefina had the complexion of a dinner roll. Even under all the layers of sun, sweat and dirt, she was several shades lighter than Marcos and me.
I smiled at Marcos and Josefina. The sun softened us up like butter on a frying pan. There was more laughter and less complaining as the day wore on.
Chapter 5
I squinted at the two large flowers in full bloom
