A Place to Stand

As Chapter Two opens, thirteen-year-old Baca finds himself imprisoned for the first time. He has repeatedly run away from the orphanage, and finally the police are contacted. Baca’s aunt, Charlotte, his mother’s sister, signs away custody rights, and Baca says that he “…felt her relief at getting rid of me when she hurriedly put pen to paper and signed. Perhaps she was ashamed to do what in heart she knew wasn’t right, because she walked away without even saying goodbye” (20).

Baca is not confined to the boys’ detention center for his misbehavior, he learns, but because he is homeless. Baca is housed with six other boys, all Chicanos who appeared closed-off, emotionally. Baca realizes these boys use pride as a defense against further hurt. He witnesses violence in the center, and believes that, like the residents of the orphanage, his detention center cellmates have lost hope.

At the detention center, Baca meets Low-Blow, who offers advice on surviving life in lockup. Low-Blow urges Baca to appear fearless and to avoid talking to the guards.

After a fruitless attempt to locate Baca’s father to remove the boy from detention and provide him a home, the prison director enrolls Baca at Harrison Junior High. There, Baca feels inferior to the students until Coach Tracy takes an interest him and encourages him to play football. Tracy provides the kind of positive reinforcement that Baca has longed for all his life.

Baca continues to live at the detention center, where every night he dreams of his mother. One weekend Coach Tracy invites Baca to come home with him for the weekend. Although Baca doesn’t realize it, the coach’s family is evaluating him for adoption. Baca feels uncomfortable and anxious during the visit. When Baca accidently burns Coach Tracy’s son’s cheek while lighting a cigarette, the child’s screams seem to validate all Baca’s feelings of guilt and shame. After the incident, Baca asks Coach Tracy to take him back to the detention center, but he is unable to explain his reasons for wanting to return. Baca quits school the next day.

A few months later, as Jimmy Baca is approaching his fifteenth birthday, his brother Mieyo appears on a motorcycle. Baca receives permission to leave the detention center with his brother. Though he is supposed to return to the center, Baca leaves with his brother and never goes back. The brothers move into a shack in Albuquerque with their father, who is still drinking, fighting, and searching for his wife. Jimmy and Mieyo Baca spend their days committing petty crimes and getting high. Jimmy often wakes in jail.

Mieyo says that after he was released from the orphanage, he met two older white men. As his father was not providing for him, the men were easily able to convince Mieyo to come home with them. They raped him and threatened him into silence.

Mieyo eventually gets a job at a hotel, and Jimmy works various jobs. When Jimmy is seventeen, he is arrested for a crime he did not commit. After his release on the false charge, Baca finds work and a room in a boarding house. Baca buys a car and drives through northern New Mexico servicing vending machines. With his new possessions, he begins to feel that he could improve his life. He also begins to spend time with a girl named Theresa. Theresa is in high school and lives in a middle-class home. Again, Jimmy feels left out. Theresa’s Hispanic family does not even speak Spanish, and she has grown up without the constant financial pressures he has faced.

Jimmy soon realizes that his fighting merely provides entertainment for Theresa and her friends, and he feels used. Alone, the young couple find they have little to say to each other. Jimmy realizes that Theresa wants sex without an intimate relationship.

Mieyo decides to enlist in the army, so the two brothers enjoy a few days together before Mieyo leaves for a year in the armed forces.

Despite Baca’s continuing obsession with Theresa, he leaves Albuquerque. He leaves, in part, because he realizes he will continue his futile pursuit of Theresa if he stays. Also, before he leaves Albuquerque, Baca’s long-lost mother moves back. Baca’s sister convinces him to visit their mother, who now has two children with Richard. Baca realizes that she is a social climber, and she is not really interested in him. His mother’s rejection is just one more reason to leave Albuquerque, Baca thinks.

Baca settles in San Diego, where he befriends a man named Marcos. Soon, the two find jobs and an apartment. At night, the men go to the beach or to a bar. Baca still thinks of the pain of his past, but the women, drugs, and alcohol help dull the ache.

While working at his plumbing job, Baca encounters a woman who tries to seduce him. He is so anxious to leave her home that he accidentally sets a stud on fire while soldering fittings. After the woman calls his employer to claim that he attempted to seduce her, Baca is fired. He is unable to find other plumbing jobs because he does not have a California plumbing license.

Looking for a way to make money, Baca and Marcos decide to ship a pound of marijuana on a bus to sell to Marcos’ friends in Michigan. As they hand the box to the shipping agent, a Narcotics Agent seizes the box. Baca and Marcos are arrested and sentenced to thirty days. While they are in jail, they meet a drug dealer named Tecolote. Baca and Marcos leave jail with a voucher to stay in a flophouse.

Baca decides to call Tecolote, and Baca and Marcos begin to sell drugs while they perform court-ordered community service. The income from the drug sales allows the two men to rent a nicer place, and soon the two are back to bar-hopping.

Baca meets a girl named Lonnie at one of the bars, and he thinks he could fall in love again. Still, Baca worries that he won’t be able to live up to her expectations. After Baca convinces Marcos that they should stop selling marijuana, the two men and Lonnie leave for Arizona, in search of a new life.

They rent a clapboard house in the Mexican section of Yuma, and Baca feels content at last. It starts to look as if Baca and Marcos are headed for success when they begin a profitable handyman business, but they are quickly shut down because they don’t have proper permits for the work. Baca and Marcos decide to go to San Luis, Mexico to pick up tile to have available once the license issue is sorted out.

Once in Mexico, they look for a place to have a beer. As they approach a cantina, Marcos remembers their cellmate Tecolote mentioning a drug dealer named Galvan, who lives in San Luis. Inside the bar, Marcos trades insults with the bartender, though Baca has warned Marcos to be careful about what he says. When the bartender calls him a “country bumpkin” (67), Marcos mentions Galvan.

Before Baca and Marcos can finish their beers, some men arrive at the bar and ask why they want to see Galvan. Baca tells them that their acquaintance has said Galvan can get them some marijuana. When Baca says they want to buy a hundred pounds but don’t have any money, Galvan’s henchman laughs. Once Baca mentions Tecolote by name, however, the man agrees to front them fifty pounds with a week to pay. “Seven days…or you’re buzzard shit,” the man warns (70).