1" NEOPRENE / George Collazo ALLEN RAMOS CAME UP FROM CALIFORNIA wearing harauche JL\. sandals and a peacoat with a tear in the lining. The coat he took off when the weather grew too warm, which in Seattle is not uncommon during the summer, notwithstanding the big storms that come in from the west every few weeks. In the Pacific Northwest two air masses collide, a polar and a temperate. When the former is a tadbit cooler than usual the result is a swirling mass of cloud and storm, one sector of which is warm, the rest cold, and the whole spelling trouble for people in general and navigation in particular. A couple of these storms were enough to leave Allen Ramos' harauches sodden masses of leather. He eluded the next storm by hiding in the shell of an abandoned building down on Western Avenue, across the street from Pier 70, keeping away from the blasts of rain which shot through the glassless windows, tightly bundled in an ancient sleeping bag; only to soak his harauches the next morning in puddles of rainwater and mud scintillating with broken glasses and pull-tabs. The weather always warmed after these storms, and Allen Ramos was not to be defeated. He was tall, thinnish except for his shoulders and arms which were used to heavy lifting. His skin, dark by nature, was further blackened by two weeks of life out in the open. Wearing the same clothes had taken its toll on them also; his blue shirt was bleached by sweat and sun, the hems of his jeans tattered by the incessant abrasion of his sandals against them. All this Ramos, young and stolid, took in stride, and measured against the gain it would net him: a berth on a fishing boat. This is what had brought him to Seattle, some fifteen hundred miles by thumb and boxcar, from Los Angeles. In the tenements of Boyle Heights he had come across a magazine "Anglos" read; there were articles on redwood hottubs, pages of recipes for avocado dishes, and maps showing where in the desert you could collect special nuts. It was unfathomable. One article, however, caught his eye. Allen disliked reading but he pieced things together from the pictures and their captions. The article was on fish (salmon they called it). Accompanying it was an article on how this salmon was caught. There was a picture of a boat hauling in its net; grim-faced men stood amidst the catch in rubber boots and baseball caps. Another picture showed where these boats tied up, a place in Seattle. The Missouri Review · 229 Allen Ramos was a seaman of sorts; his uncle had owned a watertaxi until his death and Allen worked on it during summer vacations. Just out of high school, he got a job as a deckhand on a tug in San Pedro. But the market for ship assists dropped, the little guys were squeezed out, and the tugs were sold to a company back East. Allen lived on welfare for a month at his parent's house. He sickened of the life; something turned brown and septic within him. He looked at the clotheslines and broken glass and was dissatisfied. The thing within him grew more ulcerous and he began to fight with his father; his father would take a job in McDonald's if he needed the work. He always worked, he wasn't afraid to work (his father said). Allen said he wasn't afraid to work, he always worked, but he wasn't going to work at any goddamn McDonald's, wearing a funny hat, flipping burgers with fourteen year olds. Once after one of these sessions with his father Allen was "jumped" in front of Ruby's. The boys that loitered out front thought he was a member of another gang. Allen flattened two of them in his nameless anger before the police arrived and began to flatten everyone within reach. It was while nursing the pigeon-egg on the back of his head that he came across the slick magazine, and for once in his life decided to expand his horizons. Life so far had centered on...