Caesar wiped the sweat from his face but it was useless. He was sweating so badly it just didn’t matter how much he wiped. There was no shade to be found and the work just kept on coming. Caesar had never worked as a roofer before and he was surprised anybody would want to do this for a living. It was brutally hot. The hot shingles felt like putty in his hands.
Caesar’s grandmother had warned him about hell and how he would burn for his sins. He didn’t really believe in hell but this was probably pretty close to the heat of hell fire. He had done a few ‘questionable’, things in Mexico and after a very close call with the law had made it into the United States.
After working for various farms and working his way up North he found himself in Chicago on one of the hottest days of the year. Hell hath no fury like Chicago in the summer. He couldn’t remember a day when he was this hot. He was pretty used to the dry heat but this humidity was just awful.
The foreman yelled something up to him but he didn’t understand. His English was pretty limited to a few phrases and words. He had a roommate that was supposed to be teaching him more English but they usually ended up getting drunk and going to the clubs where everyone spoke Spanish anyway. It was where he met Alicia.
The foreman was waving his arms at him again and yelling something. Caesar looked over at one of the other day workers and shrugged. The other day worker, a guy named Efran, explained there was someone looking for him down by the work van. Caesar looked off the roof and toward the van that had picked him up and could only see the outline of someone in the shade. He looked back at the foreman who was waving him toward the scaffolding. Caesar climbed down and the foreman said something about trouble to him but he didn’t understand the rest.
Caesar pulled his gloves off and grabbed some water from a near-by cooler and splashed it on his face. He walked toward the man in the shadows cautiously. He had been pretty lucky so far evading Rico and his thugs. He thought Chicago was far enough away from Mexico that they wouldn’t find him.
The man stepped from the shadows and Caesar recognized him immediately. It was the man from the cantina he had slashed across the face with a broken bottle. The long scar was etched plainly from his left eyebrow, across his nose and right cheek. Caesar froze in his steps. He felt an unusual chill up his spine for such a blisteringly hot day. The man reached into the back of his waistband and started to move forward.
Caesar dropped his gloves and turned. His feet gave a little on the hot grass and he slipped a bit. He wrestled himself to his feet and started to run toward the back of the house he was working on. The man started to chase him. Caesar rounded the back of the house and hopped the chain link fence and plopped into the next-door backyard. He ran toward the garage and out into the alley and then hopped the back gate of the house across the way. He heard the other man, this lunatic, chasing after him. All Caesar could think was how it was way too hot for this.
He felt something cut the hot air over his head and then the siding of the garage he was running next to burst in front of him. Then two more holes appeared in the siding over his head before he could turn into the other backyard and duck out of the way. He cut back and hopped the fence on his left and then ran back towards the alley from which he came. He figured his hunter would not be as clever as he. He’d go right through to the next street while he made another amazing getaway.
He jumped back out into the alley. But he had guessed wrong. While he may be clever, he was no match for sloth. His fat hunter had given up chasing him in the heat and hadn’t followed him after shooting. He was panting and wheezing and wiping the sweat off his marred face. Now, Caesar was standing nearly directly in front of the man that was trying to kill him.
There was a siren off in the background. Just one of many that would be heard today. Caesar put his hands up and thought about his grandmother again.
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