“No, you’re not. That’s a drama-queen move. The Big Exit. Come on, Carnal. What would Raymond Chandler do?”
Big Angel looked at Perla and whispered, “This cabrón is bothering me. He doesn’t want me to die.”
“Don’t think you’re so special, boy,” she called into the phone. No te creas. “Nobody wants my Flaco to die.”
Big Angel grinned.
“Hang up,” she said.
“Carnal,” he said into the phone. “We are naked. Okay? Leave me in peace.”
“Go away,” Perla said.
“Go out in style,” Little Angel said.
“By golly,” his big brother replied. “That’s why I’m naked.”
Perla was doing her naughty laugh.
“Get up early tomorrow,” Little Angel said. “I’m not kidding. I’ll be there at eight. And get dressed. All right? Don’t be naked. I just threw up a little thinking about it.”
“Pinche idiota,” Big Angel said.
“Got shorts? Dress in shorts and sandals.”
“Shorts? I don’t wear shorts.”
“Stay naked, then. Make a spectacle of yourself.”
“Qué chingados?”
“I am taking you to the beach.”
“What?” It sounded like gwatt. Big Angel thought of a hundred protests. Then he smiled. And he laughed almost silently. He turned to Perla and nodded. Little Angel, he mouthed and shook his head, as if she didn’t know.
“Sí,” she sighed, tired of Little Angel. “Es tremendo.”
“I want to go to La Jolla,” Big Angel said. “Where the rich people go. I never went to La Jolla.”
“There’s an IHOP there,” Little Angel said. “We can get pancakes.”
“Qué?” Perla kept whispering.
“Okay,” Little Angel said.
“Okay,” Big Angel replied.
“Eight.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“No dying.”
“Not yet,” Big Angel said. “But when I’m gone and you see a hummingbird, say hello. That will be me. Don’t forget.”
“I will never forget,” Little Angel promised.
They clicked off without saying good-bye.
Big Angel hugged his woman tight. “Bueno, pues,” he said. “I will die tomorrow. But we’re going to the beach first.”
She couldn’t help but think: These men are driving me insane.
Big Angel drifted to sleep thinking of the trip in the morning. Little Angel would drive them out of the neighborhood, out past the basketball courts and the McDonald’s, down the ramp onto the 805. He would turn on the radio and smile at his big brother. Far Tijuana would recede behind them and grow invisible. They would head north and west, and when they arrived at the shore, they would watch great waves traveling forever across the open copper sea.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Dear Literary Companion,
There are no Angels in my family today, Big or Little.
When my eldest brother was in the last month of a terminal disease, he had to bury his own mother. Her funeral happened to be on the day before his birthday. He knew it was to be his last, though I believe he kept that certainty to himself. Crystal, one of his army of granddaughters, had urged the family to give “Pops” a blowout party, the kind of ruckus he would have delighted in during better days. And we did. And he did. Everyone was aware that this was a farewell, but, hey—we’re Mexican: Some curandera or angel or UFO pilot could descend during the cutting of the cake and heal him.
His name was Juan. He was whittled down in size but not in ferocity or presence. Small as he was thanks to the cancer, he burned with light and good humor. The party / living wake was astonishing. A Mexican Finnegans Wake. Around every corner, there seemed to be a remarkable scene of comedy or tragedy. Avalanches of food. Storms of music. Generations of ordinary people come to take a knee and thank this man for his seventy-four years of life. Juan sat in his wheelchair in the middle of this swirl of bodies and stories and behaviors—some of them glorious in their inappropriateness—like some king. Which, of course, he was.
Because of his illness, he got weak at various moments and took to his bed. He asked me to get in bed with him, which I did. We reviewed many of our stories there—he took great credit for my becoming a writer due to his foisting of old E. E. “Doc” Smith space opera paperbacks on me when I was a kid. Soon, la familia found out there was a bed party going on, and suddenly Juan had a shifting dog-pile of bodies in bed with him. He smiled a lot that day.
Within a month, he was gone, and we were back to bury him.
That being said, I must remind readers that this is a novel, not the story of the Urrea family.
Of course, Big Angel could not exist without the example of my brother, or of his beloved wife, Blanca. I often felt as if he were dictating ideas and scenes from beyond the grave. In fact, when I shared passages with my niece, we were a little spooked that what I had invented was a reflection of actual scenes from real life that I had no way of knowing about. But, no—there is no Bent family, no Ookie or Paz or Braulio. Nor are we from La Paz. There was no deadly fire that I know of. And, sadly, no Pato or MaryLú.
I stole the Lego image from my son-in-law, Kevin.
Readers in San Diego will know there is no such neighborhood as Lomas Doradas.
We have no Gloriosa, though I wish we did. We have no Hungry Man, though I could only write that character thanks to the sense of humor and general goodwill of my nephew Juan. No blind “French” girl or trailer park girls. (I met those in New Hampshire.) No Leo. Dave the Jesuit knows who he is. I wish we had an Yndio—though someone did run away with the Cycle Sluts from Hell back in the day. But that’s another book entirely.
On a historical note: The scene with the pistolero and Big Angel was remembered from my own father facing off against a gangster at a quinceañera party. And the parrot scene—ah, the parrot scene. That was inspired by my grandmother’s very short tenure as a parrot smuggler. I didn’t know at the time that I was lucky to see such an event.
We do, however, love pancakes.
Not long after Juan’s funeral, I was invited to have supper with another of my heroes, Jim Harrison. He was near his own death at the time. When he sat beside me, I asked, “Are you all right?” His reply became a line in the book: “I will never be all right again.”
As we ate, and Jim enjoyed a lineup of liquors that covered the color spectrum from clear to amber to deep red, he suddenly said, “Tell me about your brother’s death.” So I did. At length. Jim just stared at the ceiling and listened. When I was finished, he turned to me and said, “Sometimes, God hands you a novel. You’d better write it.”
My wife, Cinderella, lived these things and read a thousand drafts of this book. There were moments too close to home that she typed for me as I blurted them. She lay in the bed with us.
Thanks to the team; editor, Ben George: We engaged in hand-to-hand combat over this book, and his vision of it was grander than mine—thank you; Reagan Arthur, forever. Maggie Southard and her publicity team at Little, Brown steer me with a cool and cheery hand. My best agent and taskmaster (wrestled through several drafts with me before poor George had to), Julie Barer of The Book Group. Love and praise. Mike Cendejas at the Pleshette Agency navigates the turbid waters of Hollywood with me. Michael Taeckens believes in me. That is appreciated more than you know. And Trinity Ray and Kevin Mills keep me on the road, talking year round. Keep putting my kids through college, brothers!
If you write, steal well: I owe the Urrea family, the Hubbard family, the Glenzer family, the Somers family, and the long-ago García family; thanks for quips, anecdotes, and laughter that blended into my narrative.
Finally, thank you to the many friends who read chunks of the many versions of this book to offer advice and critiques. You know who you are. I must thank tireless Jamie Ford for good superpowers. Thank you, Erin Coughlin Hollowell. Thank you, Jonna and Steve. Thank you, Dave Eg
gers—we each auctioned off characters in our new books for an 826 benefit, then Dave offered good take-no-crap advice later. And Richard Russo, who read it and, in conversation, noted that I had told him something I had not put in the book. His response will always stick with me: “Are you nuts?” I added it.
Finally, Cinderella knew it was a book before Jim Harrison did.
About the Author
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonfiction The Devil’s Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea is also the bestselling author of the novels The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, as well as the story collection The Water Museum, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. He has won the Lannan Literary Award, an Edgar Award, and an American Academy of the Arts and Letters Award, among many other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, he lives outside Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois–Chicago.
Also by Luis Alberto Urrea
Fiction
The Water Museum
Queen of America
Into the Beautiful North
The Hummingbird’s Daughter
In Search of Snow
Six Kinds of Sky
Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush (graphic novel; artwork by Christopher Cardinale)
Nonfiction
The Devil’s Highway: A True Story
Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border
By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the
Mexican Border
Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life
Wandering Time: Western Notebooks
Poetry
The Tijuana Book of the Dead
The Fever of Being
Ghost Sickness: A Book of Poems
Vatos
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Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels
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