6/17/15
This is a story I wrote a few years ago, and for whatever reason (that’s for you to determine) I’ve never felt like it
popped. The reason I submitted it is because it’s the only action- and dialogue-heavy piece I’ve ever attempted,
and I’d like to know if my attempt at writing something where the action isn’t entirely comprised of one man
worrying himself into a frenzy works enough to try it again. Thanks for reading, everybody, and feel free to really
dissect and scour this one. I’m not married to any of it!
Why
I was facing the wrong direction. I’ve been police for three decades, so it’s to be
expected that I got complacent with my beat and maybe a little bored, and that’s why it went
down like it did, like they said on the news. This wasn’t an abnormal day for me, though, being
aloof and slacking off. I don’t want everyone to start thinking about the ineffability of fate and,
Oh, what a tragedy, huh, took his eye off the ball for one second. No. It wasn’t a momentary
lapse of attention, but more like a long cozy fall away from the anxiety of constant vigilance. I
was a dedicated officer for more than 20 years in New York City, but down here in Florida- well,
trying not to be disrespectful to the force cuz a lot of them have hellish beats, but I effectively
retired long before my first day of retirement (which I didn’t live to see, anyway, so thank God
for this late-life bout of slothfulness, huh?) Totally forgetting I was on the job had become like a
daily routine of mine, sea-gazing when I was supposed to be keeping the peace on the marina. I
laughed when I said that, just so you know: “keeping the peace”. I know some deluded
motherfuckers who could circle ‘round a gated community all day and make it sound like some
Lethal Weapon shit. That ain’t me. Nothing ever happens down at the docks – well, OK, but
besides the thing that happened to me, the marina and environs had the type of peace that didn’t
need to be “kept”. It’s the ocean, and it’s goddamn beautiful. End of story. People seem
downright docile, like they’ve found their old La-Z-Boy waiting for them at the end of the earth.
Some kinda home.
1
Walking my beat, I’d tune out for hours sometimes, letting my eyes go unfocused so the
horizon line would bob and blur and the sun would split into twin orbs, like an amoeba does
when it’s lonely, and everything in nature is multiplied and shaky.
So it was away from the pilasters and peeling paint of the Miami boardwalk community
for which I wore a badge when a grey Corolla rolled up onto the old, weathered dock and came
to rest beside me. Its brakes sighed as if concluding a very long journey, and I let out an
immense yawn of commiseration. I was standing at the dock’s remotest edge, bored, my
patrolling duties gone derelict as I watched the undulations of a moon jellyfish. Buffeted by the
current and enveloping prey within their gelatinous bodies, these things are translucent and
almost incorporeal. One of the many perks of my waterfront beat, this proximity to aquatic flora
and fauna. I was indirectly thinking of my father, as I usually am, and of what he would have
called my “Whys”:
Maybe I could make this jellyfish my pet, as my major Why seems content and my three
little Whys are up and running, basically self-sufficient and in no real need of my expertise. I
need a mini-Why. I am no ordinary man, though, and neither will be my mini-Why. Who else on
the block could boast of a jellyfish? Then: I wonder if they can be grilled. Moon Jellyfish
Kebabs. Is that wispy skin mushroom-thin or paper-thin? Is it even called skin? My grill is my
mini-Why.
My thoughts were drifting, full of Hows and Whats and one million Whys, when I heard
a power window rolling down. I turned my face to look inside the vehicle.
The driver of the Corolla was named, maybe, Juan Carlos- or Jose Luis, possibly, or
Eusebio or ‘Nacio or Tio Muerto, or any other title they give to those who are born, wailing, into
2
the palms of the narcos. Translation, para gringos: drug dealers. They are raised on ranches and
are biking kilos into Mexico City by the age of eight, these men. They scrub cattle and human
blood alike from the floors of barns. To put down a lame horse and to execute a weak-kneed
coworker are considered equally grueling and necessary labors. Those to whom such activities
become sport will rise, cream-like, to the top of the cartels pail, at which point God have mercy
on their souls.
Although, you know what, that “cream rising” idea carries a whiff of the superlative, so
I’ll retract it due to purely personal grievances with the object of the metaphor.
A sturdier one would be that these men are hollow point bullets in the guns of their
superiors. First they are kissed for good luck and loaded into secret chambers built into humdrum
looking Camrys, Civics, Corollas. They are fired at the bullseye of some American city, where
prosperity and depression have spiraled into a target. And then these guys ricochet wildly off the
steel and concrete of Detroit St. Louis New Orleans, passing through the hearts of men.
Which is, come to think of it, actually not very apt, or at least not logically sound
metaphor-wise, as these men are themselves carrying guns of every caliber and RPM, magazines
bottomless, packing in every waking hour and grasping their weaponry harder still while they
sleep, and they will end your life while adjusting the volume on their rental car’s stereo’s EQ.
So far I’ve spoken a little sloppily, speaking of the slow degradations that come with age,
so I will try to sharpen my wit and get my grammar straight because I have something to say to
the man in the Corolla who shot me and then drove away. The crack of the pistola and the
squeal of the tires, the synthesized cello and the beating of angel’s wings drowned out my
question, so I will say to you now and I hope you tell your friends and one of those friends works
3
at the New Yorker and decides to take a risk and appeal to the Hispanic market and Eusebio or
‘Nacio gets locked up and discovers his inner literati and he hears me say to him, finally: “You
never gave me a Why.”
*
My father gave me a Why. We lived in New York City. He was working as a security
guard for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and would come home lilting the technical
terminology of the Italian Masters.
He would say, “Those guinea gringos can really roll an R and a meatball, I’ll give them
two things”.
I remember him as sweetly racist, my father, as he seemed to capitulate to other cultures
when it counted: he would routinely choose to walk home from his job so that he could privately
weep over a skinny Byzantine Christ who had been “making eye contact” with him, or a
Renaissance nativity scene (“Little sucker don’t even know, man”) that seemed to urge him to go
and hover over the bed of his sleeping son. “Chiaroscuro nino”, he would mutter, as the room
was cast a dark purple by the streetlights and the neon twining in my black bedroom.
He got the security job as a way to avoid working with his hands. He preferred to work
on his feet, lifting with his stumpy legs the weight of a child and a wife’s tombstone (that was
bound to come up).
My mother was simply and thoroughly gone one morning, and I, apparently having slept
through the sirens and the lamentations, didn’t get so much as my cheek brushed or my forehead
kissed in the way of valedictions. To be entirely forthcoming, I don’t remember any such
4
maternal spirit-soothing taking place at any point. I remember a locked bedroom door and when
I dream of my mother she has a doorknob on her neck with one cyclopean keyhole/eye. Yet I
wept when told of her death. Kind of hard not to, despite the loins of which you are the fruit
being something less than tender and making you, in turn, a bitter sort of fruit. I was never
informed of the cause of her death, my Father opting to tell me instead that, “She loved you so so
much her stupida little heart essploded.” I silently agreed with half of his statement: she loved
me so-so. But God bless her. For her sudden death provided my Father with the occasion to
give me my very first Why:
“Nino mio”, he whispered, followed by a protracted pause. “Iss hard to loose a
mother. Gone like you blink you eye and she gone. But if you think... it make you and my life
easy, a lil bit. Iss no like I’m happy, but... You have become my why. No more sick amorcita
linda, climbing out the window to see the-” here he made scare quotes, “doct- errr, juno, my
affection, jusee, is now all for you. And you have no madre to worry about, 'is she OK, why she
no at breakfast, who in the fu-”, at which point he drew a deep breath that signified composure
and restraint. “No, most important, you have love that use to be pour into one cup and that cup
has been mis-place. But what cup? Cuz juno I’m no talking real cups. The cup is the Why and
the Why is me, now that you madre left. This world, I mean, she left. The why, jusee, is the
veryvery deep thing of life, vida. You supposed to learn that on you own, but I spill the frijoles.
You why is in you chest when you feel, ‘I am HOMBRE and... alive only once and I’m going to
conguer and make love and musica and ninos.’ Maybe you too young, but wait. I swear you feel
it right in you chest. You Father is muy intelligente, jusee” he said, tapping his temple and
smiling with a tear in his eye. “Any-way, this feeling need a cup to be pour into. I am a big
enough cup for now, but juno I cannot always be the cup. So you have to choose right, so then
5
when you go off with the Reaper, juno, to the grave, you can look at you life and see everything
was rosy. And this, I mean looking ahead and seeing youself looking back and happy? This will
lead you to the right cup. Look ahead and look back.”
“Juno,” he continued, “Caravaggio? The man who paint the boy looking at himself,
si. He was a loco man, borracho and so full of junowhat that he cannot barely keep from
essploding. Everybody hate him. Juno what he even did? He kill someone. That’s how
bad. Maybe someone no recognize the famous painter and so he kill them. Narcissus de
mierda. But when he paint? The money, the women, maybe you too young but wait, fall on his
feet. When you look at the eyes, or the way the people are holding they head in the painting, you
feel like you head is they head and like you feel why they are sad. And to know that other
people can be sad too, ESPECIALLY when you young and still a bit stupido like you, lo siento,
is worth all of Caravaggio being marano and who knows, maybe even”, stopping to cross
himself, “the poor soul he kill. Meaning, nino, Senor Caravaggio had a Why that let us
forgive. He felt in his chest that he should paint sad people and he did and now when I am sad
tomorrow I will look at... Abraham, or Judith, and see how long my pain has been going
around. This is what he did with his Why. And now that I am your Why, I say to you to make
me proud. What are you going to do with your Why now?”
*
Well. I graduated from the Academy at twenty years old and began my stint in the
NYPD. I was neither drunk on the romance of the job nor callously seeking a paycheck for
handing out jaywalking citations. I merely saw being a police as a way to occupy a middleground between junkies and judges. I could attempt to mediate, viciously naïve young man that I
6
was, what was becoming a cacophonous argument between the kids that grew up with me, who
were angry and full of flame with not a clue why or since when or how to deal with it besides
caving other kid’s faces in, and the judges and lawyers (some of whom I’d also grown up with),
most of them extremely clever and ambitious and also full of an admittedly more contained
flame, who maybe grew up with the idea that they’d like to help the disenfranchised but who
now have seething hordes of them spraying spittle and rattling handcuffs and attacking witnesses
in their courtrooms and who don’t understand why the disenfranchised keep signing themselves
up for the same cycle of incarceration and release and repeat offense AD NAUSEUM. So I
donned a badge and a blue uniform and ground my teeth as both sides proselytized to me. Days
flew by like speeding cars. The rigmarole and multiple-choice questions of the Academy did not
prepare me for the roaring high I felt as I raced through the city with my lights flashing and my
mouth dry with dread. Walking the streets, I would be suddenly spun around and laid flat by the
sheer power, the forceful presence of this filthy den of projects and pitbulls. Mariachis and
sizzling grills, the sounds I hope to hear on high. Wildly screaming, hydrant-wet children
showing utter disrespect for the badge and for me, and meanwhile I’m laughing, imagining them
memorizing their big brother’s NWA or Public Enemy CDs. I was optimistic. I envisioned each
man that I cuffed being happily rehabilitated by a Mr. Rogers-esque prison English teacher. So
when the call came that would change my life, I buckled myself into the cruiser with gusto.
The NYPD’s 42nd precinct had received an anonymous tip that a fairly high-ranking
member of the Traviesos gang had been up for three days on a wild cocaine bender, and was at
the moment slinging his own product on a rival gang’s corner. This was, essentially, an insane
stunt designed to show the precise width and diameter of the guy’s balls, the effect of which was
not lost on me. I was called upon to cuff this rabid Chicano, who would surely be packing heat
7
and would also surely have some choice words for me and my brown-and-blue color scheme. I
was sent with backup, of course, but my superiors made it Saran Wrap clear that an officer of
Hispanic descent was to make the arrest. This was, after all, police work in the dawn of racial
profiling and the cancer of litigiousness. Plus, it had gotten in the ear of the top brass that this
particular perp had an extra-fine lawyer on retainer. This was enough to make any rookie quake
in his boots. Luckily, I had a father who spoke in "Why"s and not "Shut Up and Do It"s. The
Why, in this case: how many more days awake and how many more lines snorted before this
mad banger felt it necessary, as an even bolder display of public testicle measurement, to walk
up to a police officer, a random civilian, or why the hell not for rhetoric’s sake a little NINO, put
a .45 to his face and pull the trigger? Emboldened, I ripped through the boulevards with my
nerves and my sirens wailing.
Fulfilling my duty as a butter-fingered rookie, I kissed the offender-in-question’s knee
with my bumper. Madalano Mendez, age 27, was stunned for a period of ten seconds, after
which he realized 1) that it was a Crown Vic that had hit him, and 2) that he was probably
headed to prison, at which point he fell to the pavement while clutching his knee and letting out
an Oscar-worthy howl. Looking back, I’m surprised a nearby attorney didn’t smell his bullshit
and come screeching onto the scene. His voluntary prostration, however, made things easier for
me, as I was not born a burly man. As an added bonus, I thought, maybe he wouldn’t notice the
similarity in our skin tones with his face buried in the sidewalk. Again and alas, I was in the
hands of the God of Rookies, a clumsy and apathetic sort of God. The offender must have
smelled my breakfast of tamales.
“Puto. Traitor. You couldn’t hold you liquor with you hermanos Chicanos and you
become a fucking puto ass PIG.”
8
I lifted the man to cuff him and, swatting down a burning desire to do so, I did not leave
an impression of his sneering face on the hood of my cruiser.
“You let the gringos pass you wetback ASS around down the station? They asking you
for secrets? You telling them which houses have illegals so they can send us back to Mexico in a
fucking Mac truck, guey? Puto. You never gonna sleep knowing you sold you people out to the
fucking HURA GRINGO PIGS.”
“It looks like you’re the one who’s been having lack-of-sleep issues, compadre.”
While he spoke, I rooted through the labyrinthine system of pockets snaking through his
clothing and found fifty or so individual twenty-bags of blow, and soon after discovered one
separate mother-rock the size of a tennis ball.
“Oh, this is what’s all over your face”, I said. “I thought maybe a powdered donut.”
“You wanna make a donut joke to me, pig?”
“What is it with this Traviesos shit, man?” I asked, changing the subject. “The ‘trouble
makers’. That’s what ninos get called when they steal from the cookie jar. Not the most badass
name. What do you think, cabron?”
“The cookies, puto, in the grown-up world, are the millions and millions flying every
which way fucking direction but mine and that you only supposed to get crumb by crumb
working abso-lute shit hours at shit fucking job. Comprende? We fucking trouble makers, for
real.”
“Well, do you remember where trouble makers used to go?” I asked. “Time-out. And
9
time-out, amigo, in the grown-up world? Jail.”
I forgot to tell him to watch his head getting into the cruiser.
“OW! MARANO!”
*
I was standing on the corner with the lights still flashing. The sun and the added cityswelter felt like a blow-dryer pointed directly at my face. Branchley, a ten year veteran of the
force and a thickly-accented Australian, was the first to congratulate me on the arrest. If the
offender smelled my breakfast, then I smelled Branchley’s: cigarettes and Jameson, although I
prayed the latter was lingering from the night before.
"Nice driving”, he said. “I should probably let you know, though, that this is a police
cruiser. Not a bumper car".
"Think he'll be able to turn that into some sort of battery charge?", I asked.
"I didn't see anything."
"What a guy."
“Hear he was on a bit of a bender. Hate to say it, but I’ve been in his shoes. Can’t say
I haven’t felt like doing something equally as stupid when I’m on a tear. Know what I mean?”
“I guess so.”
“Yeah. So. Anyway. I’ll take that garbage to evidence for you. Unless…"
10
"Unless what?"
He shrugged nervously, arched his eyebrows and waited for me to finish his sentence. I
came up with my own.
"You’re kidding”, I said, with all the intonation and desperation of a prayer.
“Relax. Tell me something. How do you feel right now? Perfectly at ease? Like you
could go take a nap in the back of your cruiser? Or do you feel like you could go out and spray
the entire Traviesos crew with tear gas and buckshots? I been here a long time, guy. You ain't a
superhero just because you graduated from the Academy. You're a man and men get fired up,
pissed off. What's dangerous is trying to bat that feeling away. Repressing shit. It's not good for
you."
“First of all, that wasn’t exactly a Starsky and Hutch-worthy arrest, there. And
secondly... um… you're suggesting I do”, looking over both shoulders and dropping my voice a
few decibels, “coke? That we seized from a psychotic drug dealer and that came from God
knows where with God knows what in it?"
“Look. If he was doing it you know it doesn't have rat poison in it. And I'm not
suggesting we go on a bender. Not ’til we get to know each other better, at least. Ha. But do a
line. Jesus, the aggression has already got you. I can smell it. Feed it some of that and let it
burn itself out, rather than, like I said, repressing it and having it come out when you're at home
getting into it with your woman, or when you have some kids and one of 'em drops a glass and
you go fucking berserk on 'em."
11
He was right, in a way, about what I was feeling, but I'm not sure how to describe this
irrational post-cuffing boredom. The adrenaline spike of "Will the offender go apeshit and bite
my ear off?" was subsiding and leaving a fierce ennui in its wake. Surely I hadn't wanted this
raging Mexicano shanking me or holding a Columbia student hostage inside of a Rite
Aid. However, when you prepare yourself for the worst and the best possible scenario ends up
going down, you're left with something like… well, like a comedown. On the drive to the scene
of the arrest, barreling through the avenues and nearly sideswiping a few postmen, my body was
saying, “Right, so if this is it, let’s do your padre a solid and make him proud, just like he
asked. Go out in style. More importantly, let’s have a blast doing it.” So the euphoria, like a
parting gift from my brain, came flooding in for one last hurrah. And then, before I knew it, the
perp is cuffed and riding into the sunset with his little chica crying (the criminals always get their
movie finish) and I haven’t even broken a sweat. Now your body says, "You get me this worked
up, you send me news of my imminent demise, I swell up like a puffer fish, and now it's all
'FALSE ALARM, AS YOU WERE!’ Give me some carnage. Give me a foot chase, at
least. Give me a New York Post headline.” From what Branchley was telling me, which made
me feel a whole lot better and thus a whole lot more susceptible to his absurd suggestions, this is
a commonly felt emotion among officers. Obviously, I couldn't go back into the offender's cell
an hour after the arrest and pummel him. So, what to do?
Then again, you might ask, WHAT?! How mental does one have to be to even think of
doing a line right before, I don’t know, responding to a robbery at a bodega, settling a domestic
dispute, trying to corral thousands of fleeing civilians out of harm’s way after a terrorist bomb
explodes outside of Radio City Music Hall? Imagine if the responding officers had done a little
bump at around, say, 8:45am on 9/11? Rubble and ash and smoke making the air look like bona
12
fide doomsday and there you are, grinding your teeth, jabbering to the survivors about your
dog’s vet appointment, have they got a cigarette, look at the calculator on your watch, and
somewhere, in the very back of your mind, amidst all the screaming and the crying and the sheer
insanity of it all, you’re thinking, “Gotta find some more”. This is the gravity-like pull of the
drug. Once you’ve had some, the choice could be between your grandmother living or another
bump, and you’d say, “She’s had a long and fruitful life”. However, I had yet to experience such
madness at this point, being a baby-faced and peach-fuzzy rookie. I had not, as of yet, ingested a
single flake of the stuff. Also, coincidentally, I was in the sway of a force with a similarly
magnetic pull: acceptance. You’d be amazed at the kind of nonsense one believes when
absolutely desperate to be accepted, to be successful and to feel naturally good at something.
Was this common practice in the NYPD, I asked myself? Probably, I answered. So, this kind of
explains how I actually managed to convince myself that this one rogue police officer who
smelled of Whiskey at 11am was convincing in his horribly backward roadside-psychoanalysis,
and that I should “take a load off and relax” with some high-grade Peruvian white. This wasn’t
after my shift, it wasn’t at the funeral or the bacchanalian bachelor party of a coworker. On. The. Job.
I joined him in his cruiser and huffed two enormous gorilla fingers of cocaine into my
face.
Things are starting to seem more interesting than usual cuz I could talk for hours about
the door handle and who do you think invented ‘em? I mean, who designed and then who
actually put this particular handle on this particular cruiser? Someone in Detroit? I don’t even
know where Crown Vics are made, do you? We should really find out. I’d love to know more
about cars, you know, in general. Such complicated things. I don’t even know how to change a
13
tire. Can you believe that? I realize I’ve been playing with a hangnail for a while, so all of a
sudden I look up and WHOOSH I am smacked across the face with such euphoria that I can’t
breathe the riot of colors the flaming red and orange and yellow of a bodega’s flower display, the
deep, incredibly sorrowful blue of a baby stroller and the miracle gurgling inside of it, the
beaming and sultry and eminently sexy mother pushing it, I’d like to have a kid someday, I’d like
to have a kid with her, Branchley do you have kids and what are their names? the street noises
swelling upwards into a sonic mushroom cloud, car horns caterwauling voices blaring the
reverberation of classic rock stations pigeons purring change jingling in a blind man’s cup OH
MY GOD to be him, to sleep on this street itching a rash and picking at suppurating sores all
day, how can I live my life when HE is out there, that’s it, I’m going to spend my days helping
homeless men find- what’s that? yes, she’s beautiful too, and still the crashing symphony of the
street rising into a crescendo and then the tap tap tapping on the window and the radio crackling
and beeping but not drowning out the mandarin spanish italian ancient greek latin aramaic rising
rising I’m up to my chin in the wild strains of the city Branchley pull me out before I drown it’s
so fucking beautiful in here, jesus CHRIST look at that woman over there, over there in the
awnings shade with a slant of light bisecting her it’s like a Caravaggio painting, who is he?
Italian asshole but he knew his why and God love him, yes I’m OK, why won’t the radio shut up,
who’s tapping on the FUCKING door, I need to focus on this, all the steam pouring from the
manhole, yes, shut the radio off, who is that, what is it? they said what? are you rolling the
window down? no no no no no we can’t respond to them, I can’t, drop me off in the park, I need
to be alone, where are we going, to rescue a baby, jesus God, who is the baby and what’s wrong
with it? NONONONONONONONO I'm the baby Branchley that woman knocking on the glass is
my fucking mother but no there’s absolutely no way but yes I'm the baby and I can't breathe she
14
died when I was young so what the fuck is she doing knocking on the glass don't make me go out
there and WHOOSH again, out into the street with my Mother (can’t be) shocked and gaping at
me with tears running down her face as Branchley asks us to take her to her dying baby and I
said madre madre madre and she said “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT” the
anesthetic taste of the cocaine and its accompanying numbness making my rolled r’s sound
American and weak and she fumbles with her keys as she glances back at me and shivers, the
jangling keys giving me the shivers like a ball python was crawling up my spine and as we step
into the dankness of her hallway and sweep aside dirty pacifiers and Huggies packages I hear her
whimper, are you crying for me or your baby, I am your baby, which baby are you crying for and
we are at her door and where the fuck is Branchley who is supposed to be spearheading this I
don’t have the goddamn wherewithal right now to do this dios mio lift me out of this and then
behind the door a wailing ricocheting around and a pain in my chest and a harrowing howling
hurls itself at us and we are in and the howl is being thrust upon me, “Run stupido!!!” she says,
“Ambulance is 50 blocks away and stuck I mean stuck!!!” so I closed the door and was shackled
to my spot by the image of that giant, impenetrable wooden door with its expanding keyhole shut
in our faces, the two babies, with her sobbing behind it, us sobbing in front of the sobbing door,
I’ve been here before and I know it’s you so why don’t you run with me you callous fucking puta
bitch, screaming as I burst through the front door onto the street with a wailing bundle and me a
wailing bundle of nerves and long tamped down memories springing up like a Whack-a-Mole
game, the vaguest sense of where I was or what I was doing and GOD where is the fucking
hospital? Branchley is suddenly just beside me, ashen, forcing a pale and quivering sort of
bravado into the air as he says “WHAT A RUSH, WHY YOU CRYIN’, ROOKIE?” and then he
stops, doubles over and falls to the pavement as I run with my head swiveled back at him and he
15
recedes and shrinks to a pinprick like a junkie’s pupil so I look in the face of the howl except the
howl is gone and it’s just bubbling spit and mucus and my God this baby is turning the color of
the concrete and the overpass and the whole city and it seems like my skin is, too, and Branchley
has already melted into the asphalt so I kiss the baby NINO MIO I will save you and bring you
home with me, tu madre es Rasputina, she will seem dead but will rise from the icy river of
memory and try to make you care about her again and then we rounded the corner to the hospital
and as I shouted to the mingled personnel NINO ENFERMO and they started running a shot rang
out.
I remember this in real time. I was sucked out of that mad gibbering vortex of spiraling
logic and branching thoughts by this single gunshot. I had the baby in my arms, and I turned my
eyes from the hospital workers rushing to our aid so I could identify the source of the gunshot. I
had stopped in front of the doorway of a Burger King, where a man in a mask had a gun pointed
in the air and a cloud of plaster was settling down on him. He had fired a warning shot. The
perfectly coiffed hair of the cashier was now sprinkled with the white dust of broken plaster and
she was saying “Michael, you don’t have to do this, it didn’t mean anything between us. Baby,
think about the baby, baby”. He stepped forward, lowered his pistol ‘til it was inches from her
jugular and began to whimper. I was awash in memories and was leveled by the apparent
unviability of most of them because of my revenant madre (“Can’t be” I thought, “CANNOT
BE!”). Every thought of her lead me straight back to my father, that impossibly kind man who
spun webs of deceit to save his son from the cold fact of human evil and error. I am you Why.
What is you Why now? Why do people have Whys? Why is my Why kind of a little bit you Why
too? What does the Why have to do with loving you family? Why do I make you my Why? So if
what I did next is an illustration of my particular Why, I’ll let you be the judge. All I remember
16
is that my father was blabbering half-sense in my ear when I grabbed the baby by its ankle and
thrust it as far from my body and from the Burger King door as I could. Then I grabbed my gun
with my right hand, my hands miraculously no longer shaking from the demon cocaine that had
been rattling my bones like an encaged ape, and I shot the whimpering, jilted lover in the head.
The Burger King clientele began to scream, the baby was wrenched away from me and a pitch
black sheet was pulled over my eyes and my knees buckled and I fell away.
I saved two lives at once, that day, one with each hand. Tio Muerto, give me the cock
sucking Why.
17