#424 Young Man Blues- Luis Alberto Urrea
The sins of the father fall on the son’s shoulders. Joey
takes care of his drunken mother while his father is in prison. I laughed at
the first line of this one:
“It sounded like a vacation spot: Pelican Bay.”
Of course it isn’t really funny at all. It’s tragic. His
father was in the most notorious, maximum-security prison this country has. He
was a gangbanger. His motorcycle gang, The Visigoths, were trying to take
territory that wasn’t theirs. There were shootings, now Joey is left in its
wake. He looks through his father’s gear including Nazi paraphernalia and club
jackets.
“He knew that if he stepped outside wearing the vest, he’d
be dead in an hour. It gave the colors a weird sense of power.”
He didn’t want any of that, but he held onto it because it
was his fathers. Butchie, a member of his dad’s club wants Joey to hand over a
gun, but he won’t. Now he’s in trouble.
He can get out of trouble if he helps Butchie rob Joey’s employer. He won’t do
that either. Now he’s really in trouble. Salvation might have come too late.
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