El Camino

Take it nice and fast, my father says.

I pull the El Camino out of the driveway. This is the first and last time I will ever do this. The tío who is bad with money will leave it outside his repair shop and it will never be seen again.

But this isn’t about the things we lost, but the things we had.

My father is in the passenger seat, drinking a tallboy of Tecate. It is always cold and half-full. It will never run out. He hands me a sip and I like it more than I want to admit.

I’m ten years old, doing twenty on the back roads near the airport. Too young to drink, too young to drive, I guess. My father tells me this is the day I become a man. This is something he decides.

Go faster, he says.

I wonder if this has to do with Abuelo dying.

I fear I will lose control. My father says I can’t, he won’t let me.

The police take notice. They pursue the ten-year-old suspect, white,
and the adult, brown, drinking in the passenger seat. I feel the cool air
through the vents. I feel my skin stick to the Naugahyde interior.

He turns on the radio and sings along. He is laughing, even though
nothing is funny.

The faster we go, the lighter we feel. I hear the crack of bullets over the
sounds of the Doobie Brothers, freight train running. They bounce off
the windows and frame. Not a scratch.

These fools, my father says, we are invincible here. We will never die.

Shit is getting serious. More blue. Helicopters. The evening news. All
talking about the El Camino that can’t be stopped.

Stay the course, mijo, my father says. You will know things others don’t.
You will be better. They will never take us alive.

They never did.

Vincent Antonio Rendoni is a Seattle-based writer. His work has previously appeared in Fiction Southwest, Sky Island Journal, Warm Milk, Burrow Press, and Atticus Review.