Photo by X.A. Medina (http://lepoet.tumblr.com/)

El Poet rolled another cigarillo as one hung between his lips. It was April but their shirts were off revealing a smattering of tattoos that checkered their bodies as they lay atop Wells’ loft in Bushwick, the tar roof warming their bodies from below. 

Why you rolling two? Wells asked. 

Mano, today is your birthday, everyone must smoke a little tobacco on their birthday, it’s a Puerto Rican tradition.

Really?

El Poet licked the rolling papers and rolled the paper together inclosing the tobacco. Nah, I’m just fucking with you, but it’s my tradition, with that El Poet handed Wells the cigarette.

They lit their cigarettes and pulled the tobacco into their waiting lungs. El Poet blew his softly out of his nose, while Wells choked and coughed the smoke back out of his mouth.

El Poet laughed. Cabron, you smoke cigarettes like this guy I knew back in Puerto Rico, his name was Cinco.

Cinco? Like the number?

Si, si. El poet ashed his cigarette onto the tar roof. Mano, he was this shrimpy kid, his whole childhood he got picked on. Kids would make fun of his name, “Cinco Cinco! Cuanto te costaron esos tenis? Cinco pesos?” Cabron, our classmates would make fun of him after school and everyday Cinco would fight whoever teased him. But Cinco was tiny, like I said, and everyday he would get his ass beat. Cinco lived down the street from my house, so I would sit on the steps of the school and watch Cinco fight. Then when it was over I would pick up his books and hand them to him, and we would walk home, in silence.

Wells took a drag of his cigarette and peered up at the warm April sun, he tried to envision Cinco walking under the same sun on his way home with El Poet.

Cinco was like a Pitbull and you know that Pittbulls are illegal in Puerto Rico right? Well he was like a Pitbull, and I never asked him why he fought, not because I was afraid of him, I could have killed him mano, but because I respected him. Every time he fought he knew he was going to lose, but still he fought. When he would go home with bloody noses and black eyes his father would take a whip to him. What he lacked in strength he more than made up for in heart, cabron. 

Well one day, Cinco didn’t come to school, so after school I knocked on his door, and his mom told me he went to go live here, in New York City, in Harlem with his aunt. I never heard from him in a long time.

Then one day, my girlfriend at the time, this crazy Cuban negrita, she comes home from work, I will always remember this, and she sits down in front of me and she says “You remember that kid Cinco? That moved away when we were kids?” And I say of course. She says, “Well, he went crazy.” 

El Poet stubbed out his cigarette and finished the story. Turns out he was in this shitty chinchorro in Harlem, and he orders two beers, one for him and one for his girl, and the bartender says, “Five Dollars.” He gives the man five dollars and to his right he hears a man laugh. He ignores it, because since he moved to New York he had gone by his middle name, Juan. But the laughing gets louder and louder, and the man starts saying “Cinco, Cinco, Cinco” as he’s laughing. Cinco turns, and he sees the man, and he realizes it’s one of the kids he used to fight after school in Puerto Rico, this big fat motherfucker we used to call “Gallo Grande”, or Big Rooster. So Cinco smiles at him and orders another cerveza and slides it down to Gallo Grande. He raises his beer as a toast, and Gallo Grande lifts his in return.

They end up sitting in a booth together, Cinco, his girl and Gallo Grande, and the whole night Cinco is buying Gallo Grande round after round until Gallo Grande is too drunk to walk. So Cinco, lifts the big fat motherfucker under his arm, leaving his girl in the bar and drags him outside to try and flag a cab. As he stands out in the street waiting for a cab, he drops Gallo Grande on the curb, and there the fat man swayed in the wind, and apparently started muttering, “Cinco, Cinco, Cinco…” until it became louder and louder and he was screaming it at the top of his lungs. Cinco told him to stop it, told him his name was Juan now, but Gallo Grande wouldn’t listen, he slurred and slobbered as he yelled “Cinco” into the empty New York streets. Cinco lost it, he kicked the man with the heel of his boot, a straight kick to the nose that plunged Gallo Grande’s nose back into his brain, they say he died instantly. But Cinco wasn’t done, a Chinese delivery boy stopped on his bike, to see what was going on but Cinco grabbed his bike and chased the Chino off. While the Chino ran down the street to call the police, Cinco took the bike and smashed it on top of Gallo Grande over and over again. Apparently by the time the cops showed up, Gallo Grande was mutilated so badly, he was unrecognizable. His wife was only able to identify his body by the big rooster tattoo on his right calf. The Chino’s bike had blood and guts all over it, pieces of flesh were caught in the spokes and the chain of the bike.

Wells no longer looked at the sun, but at the black tar of the roof the buzz of the tobacco rushing his head, his cigarette in his hand, the last few waves of smoke rising into the air. So what happened to Cinco? Wells asked as he stared vacantly at the roof.

He’s in jail, probably never getting out. But you see Mano, never make fun of a man’s name, because in the end that’s all he’s got… himself and the name that goes with it.

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