Buried Onions

Eddie explains that after the confrontation both he and Angel were smart enough to get away from the hospital, where police might be arriving. The two go in different directions, and Jose eventually pulls up beside Eddie in a car. Jose is crying, thinking of what still might be ahead. Eddie, however, wants to be alone, and walks back to his apartment, pausing to rest in alleys. Once home, he takes a soaking bath to soothe himself.

Lupe, the older brother to Samuel, comes to scream at Eddie about how he has smashed Samuel against the wall at Angel’s. Fortunately, in the dark and with Lupe at first just peering through a window he has broken, he can’t spot Eddie laying in the corner, by the roaches. Before Lupe can enter Eddie’s place, Eddie’s neighbor, Mrs. Rios, hearing the commotion, comes out and sends Lupe on his way. She then shouts out to Eddie to ask if he is ok, but he is too weak to answer with more than, “Si, I’m sleepy” (142).

Eddie struggles with whether he’s been right about Angel killing Jesus.

He finally falls asleep on the floor, imagining himself being kicked not by Angel, but by a “dude in yellow shoes” (142).

Two days later, he takes a cardboard box full of his belongings and heads to his godmother’s house, leaving his apartment behind. She feeds him soup and gives him the usual soda, talking a lot about her dog.

The novel flashes forward, to two weeks later. Eddie is back at the naval recruiting office, enlisting and hoping the Navy can teach him to “swim like a dolphin and fight like a crocodile” (144). In a dirty van roaring towards Riverdale with other recruits, farms and farm animals come into view. The van engine is groaning. In the novel’s penultimate moments, the vehicle rolls to a lethargic and broken stop, mere miles outside of Fresno.

We see Eddie leaving the broken-down van and walking out into a field, where rabbits are kicking up dirt and blackbirds are squawking. Venturing farther into the field, Eddie encounters two black men searching for what’s left after harvest.

“[W]hat were these men but miracles?” (145) poses Eddie. He hurries to meet the two sweating men who are “making a living from leftovers” (146). Eddie is crying, and realizes he has been walking over an onion field. These field workers are the same men who sold Jose onions several days before.

Eddie’s tears lead him back to thoughts of Angel and Jesus, his palms “blood red from all the city wars—those in the past, those now, and those to come when every homie would raise a fist to his brother” (146). One of the black men in the field hands him onions for each hand. His eyes fill once more with tears, but this time from the wind or sun. Soto writes that these are “the last of childhood tears” (146) for Eddie.