Phoenix Noir

Big Boy’s real name was Edward Ornelas, but nobody ever called him Edward, because by the time he was ten he weighed in at over 150 pounds. He lived east of Nineteenth Avenue, in the Central Projects, close to the neighborhood where the girl disappeared last October. Big Boy lost twenty pounds once he was put in juvie at age eleven, for shoplifting at Woolworth’s, taking things you could buy for nickels and dimes, Batman and Robin plastic figures and a Batman car. The reason he got a term at juvie was because one of the clerks said he had seen him several times lifting things, but couldn’t prove it, so due to suspicious behavior, and to teach him a lesson, he was given six months at Boys Town.

His mother Luz, who subscribed to the Catholic Monitor and attended meetings of the Sodality of Mary at St. Anthony’s, was so ashamed of him, she wouldn’t visit him. She had the entire church pray rosaries for the salvation of his soul, and kept a photo of her son on her dresser with a candle burning in front of pictures of saints including one of St. Michael the Archangel with his foot planted on the Devil’s neck. Luz’s sister, Nena, who didn’t subscribe to the Catholic Monitor, and could have cared less about sodalities or saints, went to see him with her daughter Atalia, who was a sophomore at Phoenix Central High. Atalia insisted that Big Boy was innocent of stealing the Batman and Robin figures and had been mistaken for another boy, a huge Indian kid nicknamed Squirt.

“He didn’t steal anything!” Atalia told her mother as they drove to see Big Boy. “All he had in his pockets were toothpicks and bubble gum. That guy at the store had it in for him … he’s always watching the Mexican and black kids. I tell you, this time it was an Indian kid … I saw him. Big Boy’s nothing but a cry baby. He’s probably crying every night in juvie. We should talk to the judge.”

“Never mind,” Nena said. “Nobody will believe you, just leave it alone, he’ll be out soon.”

Big Boy was freed from the detention center exactly six months later; thinner, sullen, and reinvested in his life, as his PO, Howard Franco, described it. “Done his time,” Franco said at the court hearing. “Now he’s ready to take his place in the community, finish eighth grade and move on to high school. Right, Ornelas?” Franco never called him Big Boy, as he didn’t think the kids should be identified by anything except a number or their last names.

Luz was there, sitting next to Franco, watching her son one chair away from her. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of how thin Big Boy had gotten. Maybe she had been too hard on him. After all, he had always been close to her, maybe too close. She worried he didn’t like girls, and now she worried maybe he had a boyfriend in juvie. She worried that other boys his age wouldn’t be stealing Batman and Robin plastic figures, and maybe his cousin Atalia had been right in the first place—the store clerk had it in for him. She cursed the day Big Boy’s father, Edward Sr., had walked out on her to get together with an older woman, a barmaid from the American Legion Hall, the place that boasted a dark, musty bar where Edward Sr. drank himself into a stupor every Friday night. Her boy needed a male figure in his life, she reasoned, and decided to call up Father Leo at St. Anthony’s, the most saintly man she knew, to stand guard over her son’s life.

Father Leo had a huge bald head, and a smile that went from ear to ear when he was in a good mood. When he was in a bad mood, he shook his fist at whoever happened to stand in his way, assuring them they were all headed for Hell if they didn’t take their religion seriously. He could be seen at night walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the church, reciting litanies to honor saints and supplicating for the souls of his disobedient parishioners. It was rumored he had a crucifix in his room with a Jesus hanging on it with real glass eyes that shone in the dark and kept Father Leo company as he lay on his bed weeping over the sins of the world.

When Luz approached Father Leo about taking Big Boy under his wing, he told her he would hear his confession, then asked her to pay the two-dollar fee so he could join the St. Anthony’s Boys Club. Most of the club members were altar boys, and were also part of Father Leo’s baseball team. Big Boy wasn’t athletic, so he told the priest he’d rather just be an altar boy and not play ball, and the priest told him that confession was the first requirement for becoming an altar boy, as boys with ruined souls were unacceptable.

In the dark box that represented the confessional, Father Leo prepared to hear Big Boy’s confession one Saturday afternoon, with two skinny girls and their grandmother waiting in line outside the thick curtain that covered the doorway of the chamber. Big Boy’s legs felt like two iron rods glued to the vinyl-covered kneeler with its seam ripped open on one end.