July 2001 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
We finally figured out what to do with my wife’s father. We locked him up. “Shoulda done it years ago,” was Kermit’s opinion, expressed at a family meeting called to decide the old boy’s fate. Really, there was nothing else to do. His wife, no spring chicken herself, couldn’t deal with him anymore. Who else was going to take him in? His brothers and sisters were either dead or as crazy as he was, Kermit, the youngest, being the exception. But Kermit, a bachelor, wasn’t caretaker material. Kermit and Earl didn’t get along anyway. “Never did, never will, “Kermit said. I once asked Kermit why he didn’t like his brother. “Because He’s a jackass,” Kermit replied.
Earl’s children couldn’t take him in either. My wife Kat worked, and Billy and Dot had kids. “Keeping track of somebody with Alzheimers is a full-time job,” Kat said. Kat wouldn’t have volunteered even if she weren’t working. Her relationship with her father was only slightly more cordial than Earl and Kermit’s.
After the powwow, I asked Kat if we knew for sure that Earl had Alzheimers. “What do you call it,” Kat said, “when somebody tries to call his old school friend, who’s been dead for twenty years, to tell him He’s in Colorado, and He’s coming to see him? And he’s right here in California when he picks up the phone.”
Earl was bonkers; there was no doubt about that. And Edith, his wife, was a nervous wreck. So we put Earl in a home. “The Lodge,” Billy called it, hoping it would make Earl feel better about the move.
Earl didn’t want to go, of course, but he went peacefully enough when the big day came. At first he was pretty confused, but after a week or so he settled down. The home was nice, as such places go, not luxurious but pleasant, and the staff was cheery and seemingly competent. To his delight, Earl found that his musical talents were greatly appreciated at the evening entertainments. Earl sang in a reedy tenor and accompanied himself on the ukulele. He knew dozens of old songs. He might not know what day it was or whether he was in California or North Dakota, but he knew every word to “The Sheik of Araby” and “Oh, Susanna.”
One Sunday, several months after we parked Earl in the home, Kat popped in for a visit. When she got home, she headed straight for the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. I found her in a sling chair on the back deck, her feet propped up on a canvas foot rest.
“That place is a zoo!” Kat said. Kat said that when she got there, she found Earl wandering around the hall outside his room. He couldn’t get in, he said. The door was locked. Kat tried the door, and sure enough, it was locked. She fetched the charge nurse who unlocked the door. When they got inside, they found some other old timer in Earl’s bed. The nurse rousted him, and he wasn’t happy about it. “He don’t use it anyway,” the old boy groused as he was led away.
Kat said that Edith told her that the previous week she had spotted one of the other patients, a woman, walking down the hall with Earl’s laundry bag. Edith knew it was Earl’s because it had a pattern of flowers at the top that she had sewed on herself. Edith marched up to the woman and took the bag away from her. She surprised herself, she said, but it made her mad. “That’s my husband’s laundry bag!” she said. When she opened the bag, she found Earl’s soiled socks and shorts, but there were some of the lady’s things in there, too. “Can you believe it?” Edith asked.
Of course I doubt that Edith drew the same conclusion from the laundry bag story that we did. Edith is a nice lady, but she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. I asked Kat if Edith knew about the “Colorado Connection.” Kat said that she had to; they all grew up together. Earl had been married four times. He met his first wife, Kat’s mother, in San Francisco. Lydia and Daisy were from Colorado. Edith wasn’t from Colorado, but her husband was. Like Lydia and Daisy, he was one of Earl’s high school classmates.
The story of Earl’s Rocky Mountain brides was a family joke. Billy referred to Earl’s periodic trips home for his high school reunions as “fishing trips.”
Earl was fifty when Kat’s mother died. He hooked up with Lydia, his second wife, in 1985, ten years later. Some years after that, Lydia left him, taking the furniture with her. Earl was in Scotland at the time. Lydia was supposed to go on the trip, too, but at the last minute, she backed out. Earl returned to an empty house.
Earl moped for a while, but the following summer, he was back in action. Once again he traveled to Colorado for his class reunion, and this time he struck gold.
Earl’s courtship of Daisy was storybook material. They had been high school sweethearts. After graduating, they put their wedding plans on hold, and Earl went off to college. There wasn’t enough money for both to go, so Daisy stayed home. That’s the last she heard from Earl.
“He took the money and ran,” was Kermit’s sour comment.
I don’t know what lame story he told her fifty years later, but apparently Daisy bought it. They got married, and Earl packed up and moved to Texas where Daisy had a home. Daisy had married a Texas oilman. The oilman had died the previous year. He was struck by lightning while fishing for bass on Lake Arrowhead. Once again, Earl’s luck turned sour. Daisy got sick a year later, and the doctors found a tumor in her gall bladder. A few months later she was dead. Earl didn’t get her money this time, however. Not a nickel. She left it to her kids.
A short time later, Earl left Texas and headed back to California. On the way, he stopped to see his old friends Al and Edith in Arizona. He called us from Sun City. Al wasn’t doing too well, Earl said. He had cancer, and the docs had given him only a few months to live. Earl said he was going to stay a few days longer than he had planned.
Kat hung up the phone and reported the conversation. “You don’t suppose …?” I said. Kat said she didn’t want to talk about it.
This year it was our turn to host the family get-together on Father’s Day. Kat cooked dinner, and Dot picked up Earl at the home on her way over from the coast. When the doorbell rang, I went to the door, and there was Earl, looking fit as a fiddle. Earl is a big, pear-shaped man, bald as a teapot. He is moonfaced and rosy, a cherub with wattles. Earl had dressed up for the occasion. He was sporting a bow tie to go with his fresh white shirt and crisp flannels.
“Come in, come in!” I said.
Earl shook my hand. “Happy birthday,” he said.
Without much difficulty, Kat and Dot persuaded Earl to lead a sing-along after dinner. Earl had his trusty ukulele with him, of course.
I joined Kermit and Billy on the landing between our living room and the family room where the entertainment was taking place.
“What’s the matter?” I said to Kermit. “Aren’t you a music lover?
We watched and listened for a while, and finally Kermit said to me, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too hard on the old boy. All he ever wanted was somebody to wash his clothes and darn his socks.”
Earl picked away at his uke and sang tune after tune for his appreciative audience in a voice that was once, I’m told, a rich tenor, now grown rusty with age. He was having a wonderful time.
April 2001 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
I met my first wife in an art gallery in Paris. She was an American girl who had carefully saved her pennies for a trip to Europe after graduating from college. That was my story, too. We spent a month together in the City of Lights. All we did was argue.
When we returned to the States, we went our separate ways, but we hooked up again later in San Francisco. We got married in 1962. We were often at odds, but our contentiousness took on a different pattern after we were married. Periods of peace and calm were followed by stormy disputes. We let disagreements fester, then released our feelings in a torrent of angry words.
Our marriage wasn’t all feud. We had some good times. Our wedding was a hoot. My wife’s family lived in Las Vegas. My bride’s sister was a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed reporter for a local newspaper. Her two brothers were blackjack dealers. They lived at the fringes of Las Vegas society, one foot in the middle class milieu of apple pie and church on Sunday, and the other in the glitz and sleaze of casino life.
We got married in my sister-in-law’s house. The mayor and the governor of the state were there. I got drunk the morning of the ceremony, and I didn’t sober up until the second day of our honeymoon.
I remember my brother-in-laws showing me some of the tricks of the trade in the gambling business the night before the wedding. They taught me how to play blackjack the way it should be played. Only players cheated, they said, but they showed me what a dealer could do with a deck of cards in his hands, and the demonstration cured me of the gambling bug.
One Thanksgiving, the whole troop drove up from Las Vegas to our house in northern California. When Joe and Raymond, my wife’s brothers, walked through the door, they were each carrying a bottle of booze as big as a cattle car. The bottle of scotch–good stuff, too, as I recall–had a cradle that you set it in. It operated like an oil rig. You tilted it to pour.
My wife’s sister and her husband were there, too, and my wife’s mother, a frail and terrified elderly woman. Her husband, a famous band leader in days gone by, had not been invited. He wasn’t at the wedding, either. He was persona-non-grata with the family. He ran a pawnshop in Palm Springs.
It was a memorable turkey day. We had two turkeys in the oven, and midmorning the oven blew a fuse. I couldn’t find a spare fuse. I went outside and lit a fire in the barbecue in the back yard, and we loaded one of the turkeys onto that. Joe and Raymond set off to see if they could find a fuse. They called a short while later and reported that everything was closed.
The problem with the barbecue was that I couldn’t regulate the temperature. It was one of those barrel kinds, and when I closed the top, the temperature climbed to well over what my wife said was the proper cooking temperature. I had to keep opening and closing the lid to keep the reading within a reasonable range.
Then it started to rain. I got an umbrella and held it over the barrel of the barbecue and watched the temperature climb to five hundred degrees. I took away the umbrella. The rain pelted the hissing metal, and the temperature dropped like a stone.
An hour later the brothers returned. Joe, a big grin on his face, held two fuses in the palm of his hand. They were the size and shape of shotgun shells.
Raymond told the story. They had walked into a Laundromat, told the customers that they were from the utility company, and said that the power would be out for a few minutes while they made some needed repairs. They filched the fuses and escaped through the back door.
Guess which turkey turned out the best? They were both good, but the one I cooked in the back yard was the best. It was as moist and tender as any bird I’ve eaten before or since.
My wife and I were divorced in 1971. She has remarried, happily, I hope. I have remarried, too; twice, as a matter of fact.
I lost track of Raymond but got bits and pieces of information about the rest of the family as time went on. The sister and her husband both died of cancer. Joe ended up in jail. Joe hated dealing; he was always hatching a get-rich-quick scheme, but his plans always failed. I’m not sure what he did to end up in prison; possibly robbery.
I’ll never forget what Joe said to me after his mother died. Carrie and I were still married at the time, and we had gone to Las Vegas for the old lady’s funeral. I was having a drink with Joe at the Flamingo. He was working that day, and I had moseyed around the casino, playing the nickel slot machines, until it was time for his break.
We were gabbing about this and that: marriage, work, life in general. I remember saying something about the funeral and Joe nodding his head. He didn’t like funerals, Joe said, but he wasn’t afraid of dying. “What’s so bad?” he asked. “You die, your troubles are over.” He wouldn’t mind going to sleep some night and not waking up, he said.
March 2001 | back-issues, Jack Swenson, nonfiction
When my cousin decided to marry a Catholic, my family was horrified. Her parents tried to talk her out of it, to no avail. The wedding was in a Catholic church, of course, and on the appointed day, family and friends made the trek from my hometown to Fargo for the ceremony.
We gathered in small, uncomfortable groups in front of the wood framed building. Most of us had never been in a Catholic church before. We didn’t know what to expect. We conversed gloomily, making small talk, boring each other to death as Lutherans will.
I recalled the stories I heard when I was a child about the arsenal of weapons that the Catholics had hidden away in the basement of their churches, preparing against an attack, perhaps, or possibly a coup d’etat. Even then I doubted that there was any truth to the rumor, but growing up, I was as wary of Catholics as the rest of my Scandinavian brethren.
Catholics prayed to the Virgin Mary, for goodness sakes! How could they put a mortal woman on an equal footing with Jesus and God?
We filed into the church, escorted by ushers resplendent in their tuxedos and took our seats in the pews on the left hand side of the center aisle. The audience proved to be about equally divided between Catholics and Protestants, the former on the right, the latter on the left. The bride’s entourage gawked at the candles and statuary and eyed the Catholics suspiciously.
It was cold in the room, I noted, and I recalled hearing that the Catholics didn’t heat their churches.
We were all right until the service began, but when the group on the groom’s side began to stand and sit again and sometimes kneel at unexpected and unpredictable moments, the huddled masses on the left side of the aisle were thrown into confusion. We stood when we should be sitting and sat when we were apparently supposed to stand. Up, down, up, down. For a time, the service became a comic opera.
There was one couple sitting up front on the bride’s side that seemed to know the routine. Catholics obviously. It occurred to me that if I watched those two, I would know what to do and when to do it. The stratagem worked like a charm.
The ceremony was mercifully brief. After the vows, the organ rose in its throaty chorus of joy, the bride and groom promenaded down the aisle, and a bevy of witnesses, some grinning, some tearful, escaped into the meager sunshine of a midwestern spring day.
We milled about on the lawn for a time before the happy couple got into their car and drove off to a chorus of shouts and catcalls from the well-wishers. The newly wedded were spending their honeymoon at Big Pine Lake.
Before they left, I kissed my cousin on the cheek and shook hands with her husband. The bridegroom was a big, red-faced young man. His head was the size and shape of a bowling ball. He had a hand like a ham. I wished them both good luck.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and wandered back to the church. My father and my uncle, the bride’s father, were standing by the steps. My uncle looked spiffy in his new Hart, Schafner, and Marx suit, but he had a stricken look on his face.
“Where did I go wrong?” he asked me. What could I say? That he should have given his approval? Knowing my cousin, she would have called off the wedding if he’d done that. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make the poor man feel any better, so I didn’t say anything.
Food was served in the church basement a little later, and the company dug into the spareribs and chicken with gusto. There was jello, of course, and a bewildering assortment of home baked cookies, cakes, and pies.
On the way out, after the meal, my father’s friend Leland buttonholed me. Leland Foss was a real estate and insurance agent in my hometown. He was a fat, jovial fellow with a somewhat mixed standing in the community. He was a good Christian on Sunday, a pillar of the Lutheran church, but the rest of the week he was a businessman of the kind that gave widows and orphans nightmares. “Larceny Leland” was his nickname, although I never heard him called that in my father’s hearing.
Leland had just come out of the men’s room, and he bumped up against me and whispered into my ear. “Smells as bad in their can as it does in the one in our church,” he said. Leland clapped his hand on my shoulder and headed for the door, presumably to get some fresh air.
I don’t know if Leland thought of what he said as anything more than a joke, but to this day I consider it a profound observation.
January 2001 | back-issues, nonfiction
by Melinda Fries
[i]”What is explained can be denied but what is felt cannot be forgotten.”
– Charles Bowden[/i]
[b]October[/b]
(This is definitely not an explanation.)
I talked on the phone to my father recently – something that doesn’t happen very often – and he asked me what exactly it is that I do, although he still doesn’t really want to know. I remember specifically the day I stopped telling him. I had just shown him a little super8 film which I thought was goofy, not a big deal. And he says, ‘Oh, Melinda, are you still angry?’ Jesus fucking God. Yes, you idiot. Why didn’t you teach me how to fight anyway. You know, all that Samurai shit. Sometimes daddy, a lady has the right to be angry. I laugh as I say goodbye.
Today a man with no fingers told me that I’m a beautiful thing. It’s the nicest moment I can remember. Memory, well that’s another story these days. You see, I feel like just before dawn when the lights are going out across the city and I have no idea if I can wait for full daylight. I’ve stopped checking my horoscope. I haven’t stopped checking the clock. It’s exactly 3:33. I take this as a sign. Of what, it hardly matters. Good and bad are no longer appropriate measures. My perceptions are so skewed that minutes are incomprehensible and I tick events off secretly on my fingers. There are certain things however that I can’t forget.
I had a stroke in April. I’m 37, it’s now the middle of October.
___________________
[b]April[/b]
[i]Dizzy. Tired, I’m so fucking tired. I have never been so tired. House-sitting, lots of records here, the plan was to make some tapes but I’m too tired. It takes me 15 minutes to decide if I should run my errand or take a nap. I can’t remember the last time I had a decent sleep. Everything is interrupted. Usually by my own mental chaos. I make phone calls about nothing. I cancel as many things as I can. I’m too tired.[/i]
[i]Dizzier. I notice it now. Enough to sit down. It’s not something I can push aside and keep going anyway. Should I put my head between my knees? Shit. No. Lay down. Stumbling. Feet are dragging. I start to sweat. No focus, have to focus. Something is wrong here. I decide that if I can just get upstairs and lay down it will go away. Right. I have an idea that I should maybe get to a doctor but I sure hate those sterile places and have always had an amazing overestimation of my own strength. So much sweat, this is gross. I lurch up the stairs and collapse on the bed. I ignore the collapsing part and let myself float. I go many beautiful places.[/i]
[i]The phone rings. Someone is coming over later, maybe that’s him. I stand and fall forward right onto the floor. Needless to say this was quite a surprise. No more walking for you bitch. Get on your knees and crawl. I actually think this you know. Amazing ability for ignoring the obvious. I don’t make it to the phone before it stops ringing as I’m a bit slower than usual. There’s a division right down the center of my body. This is getting serious. (I remember a long night in Germany which ended with the beautiful girl on acid realizing she had to be at work in an hour but she was still tripping her brains out. She puts her hand on my shoulder and looks deep into my eyes and says, ‘Melinda, now it gets serious’. And then she collapses into giggles.)[/i]
[i]I finally make it to the phone. I think I should call someone just in case this is not going away by itself. I call my friend B. He’s supposed to come over later anyway, wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone. OK, that’s not really true. I call B because he’s the one I want next to me during a crisis. But I’m terrible at asking for help and even though I’m all fucked up at the moment I think of the most plausible reason to call him…well, he’s coming over anyway… I leave a message, ‘Hey I don’t feel good. I’m gonna unlock the door can you come over early and check on me?’ Now all I have to do is unlock the door. The one downstairs.[/i]
[i]I have to stop every few seconds and shut my eyes. I don’t know where I go but its hard to come back. I have a black t-shirt on which is now covered in cat hair. Stop, lay on the floor. Rest. Just let go. No – unlock the door – the door – the door – the door. The stairs are a crazy sensation of steps and movement. Each one seems to take incredible amounts of time. Sometimes I’m sliding sometimes I’m falling. I’m riding the stairs on my ass but I still have to hold on to the banister. Time has stopped. Once I actually get to the door I lean against it. It takes me a while to remember why I’m there. And believe me, when you are laying on the floor the lock is really far away. I notice that my depth perception is failing. OK, I hear it click. I look back across the room. I realize that now I have to get to the phone. I realize the message I left earlier is shit. I realize that the distance back across the room is somehow further than it was before. I realize that I am slipping in and out and I have to move or this is it. Darling, this really is serious and if you don’t call someone soon you won’t be able to.[/i]
[i]Movement is even slower now. I try to stand again. The cats scatter as I hit the floor and I have a vague memory of the bookshelf flying past my face. Obviously that’s not going to work. I’m not really crawling as half my body has turned to rubber and tingles/burns in an extremely distracting way, dragging dead weight is more like it. I try not to think about how the sweat pouring off me is making the cat hair and dust collection on my clothes even more abundant. I try not to think about what’s going on with my body which isn’t that hard because staying in focus is taking all I’ve got. I make it to the kitchen and want to sit in the chair to call. Something about salvaging dignity. It’s extremely important for at least five minutes. Until I understand that I just can’t do it. Vertigo has taken over. (It lasts more than six months.) I pull the phone off the table and bring it very close to my face and lean back onto the floor. Numbers are very hard now. B answers. I say, ‘Something is wrong with me, I think I have to go to the hospital’. He says he’s on his way. I can relax now. I have a small but persistent feeling that I could let go completely and be gone.[/i]
[i]B walks in and I hear him say ‘shit’ and I understand that I’m still sprawled on the kitchen floor. We talk. Sort of. He’s very calm and so am I. We silently agree that no one can freak out until later. No, I have not been drinking (ok I had a screwdriver earlier, one only, no big thing). No, I am not high. He calls his doctor brother in Maryland. This is very funny in retrospect, but think about it, do you have health insurance? Well if you didn’t, would you think twice about calling an ambulance? Of course you would. So the brother says, ‘She’s gotta go, NOW’. And so we call. He calls. And I know I’m slipping in and out and that I need to talk so I tell him how I feel and what has happened in case I slip out completely he can tell whoever needs to know. My eyes begin to twitch. I can’t see for shit. B is more freaked by my eyes that anything else.[/i]
___________________
I think I’ve made this my own personal myth. Bigger than life. This way I no longer have to take responsibility. Inseparable from my every thought, inseparable from my every movement. I refuse to wash my feet in supplication. They are thick and cracked with heavy black dirt. My house is a pigsty. I walk barefoot anyway. Look at me I’m walking! I’m the only one amazed. There’s no way out and I’ll keep banging my head on this wall as long as necessary. If it feels weird repeat the movement 100 times. Self taught physical therapy. Reroute those neurons somehow. I’ve learned more about how the brain possibly works than I ever wanted to know. Anger as the great motivator.
I think well, if I could just get a piece. Of ass. I like to watch the ladies also. Men’s asses do not offer the same hope of salvation. The same promise of fulfillment. And I so badly feel that I need to be saved, not from some unknown outside force but from myself. I like high heels as much as anyone, I just can’t walk in them any longer. Or climb a fence. Or get away. And really will I ever again want to touch another? Touching, well it just freaks me out at the moment.
I read trashy novels. My eyes still get weird but I watch movies anyway covering my bad eye with my right hand. I hide myself as much as possible. I begin to lie to certain people about how I feel. Or I bluntly say what I need. Social niceties are not an option.
I tried to run last week and fell flat on my ass. The bruises were beautiful. No one around me understands why I did it. ‘What the fuck are you trying to do?’ Two people screamed at me. What should I do stay at home in self pity? Fuck I have headaches everyday. Fuck my back hurts. Fuck I just want to be able to walk the way I used to. I would like to walk alone without thinking that I could be knocked over at any second. I would like to quit thinking about the movement of my body. I would like to ride a bicycle. I’ve never been afraid of walking alone at night, it’s always been my time. All the fucked up things that have happened to me have happened in my own house. Or baby, in your house.
___________________
[i]OK, want to hear the rest? It gets even better. The Chicago fire dept. guys make fun of the house I’m in. And then the ambulance arrives. They’re ok but they put me in one of those gurneys where you have to sit up. The problem is they don’t strap me in and I almost fall off as I’m leaning heavily to the right. He implies that this is my fault, ‘Don’t lean, honey sit still’. I get a glimmer of what the next days will be like. In the ambulance they joke and ask me what it’s like to be on heroin (I made no pretense about my past) and I say, ‘It feels better than anything you’ll come close to.’ All this time they’re trying to show the new guy how to find a vein. Problem is where they’re looking I don’t have too many. He tries six times I think. They all get serious real sudden when they read my blood pressure (super low), shoot me full of something and decide to take me to the hospital around the corner. Never baby, never, go to the ghetto catholic hospital. They won’t touch you until all the drug test results are back, they hate you if you have no insurance and if the tests are inconclusive well… ‘Take an aspirin every day, don’t drink ever again, and never come back here.'[/i]
[i]B had wrapped me in his hooded sweatshirt when we left the house. I wear it the first few days in the hospital. When they make me take it off I use it as a pillow. It smells human. It feels familiar. It’s an amazing place. I have a nun come and ask if I need anything and a neurologist tell me I’m an alcoholic. (They can find no evidence in my brain of a stroke.) He diagnoses me with ataxia which is not a diagnosis only a symptom of something. Something like, well a stroke for instance. Yes, you asshole, I have ataxia because I’ve had a minor stroke.[/i]
___________________
I asked my friend who picked me up off the floor to record what he remembers. Its funny what’s different in our memories and although his is full of fear and love we do not reach the same conclusion. Mine is simple really, I’ve had no balance since April. And I can’t see much more than this. It’s getting better, however, I fell flat on my ass again the other night in front of some people who as far as I’m concerned didn’t need to see that.
I see the hospital from every window of my apartment. This was greatly motivating as I was stuck here for the past months. One recent evening B wanted to climb the fence and deface the sign. Well really he wanted to take it down. He kept asking for a Sawzall. We almost got into a fight about it. In retrospect I think that I was mad because I couldn’t climb the fence too.
There is no explanation for why I had a stroke. After several thousands dollars worth of tests I’m told it’s just one of those things. ‘The brain is very mysterious,’ said one neurologist. No shit. Maybe if I could afford to live alone. Maybe if I could only replay this scene one less time in my mind. Yeah, according to statistics my recovery is fast but maybe that’s because I’m dying to be able to walk alone. I find strength in movement but I really don’t want to end up as anybody’s poster child. I make my own way however sloppy it is. No apologies, but oh yeah a few regrets. I see no way out these days. This, as I have learned, is a bad attitude.
Unfortunately B and I aren’t very good at talking anymore. This is hard as he’s a part of my heart. I wish I could say that it’s just that we were so close and the moment was too raw. But sadly its more about the fact that I fight so desperately in places where its not even necessary. As I said I wish I had learned how. Recovery is such a weird fucked and selfish place. And a very lonely one. Unless you are an angel you make a lot of chaos along the way. I spend so much of my time now fighting/struggling to do the simplest things. It affects every aspect of my life. You might say well, of course, but that’s not true. There is no, ‘of course’. There are only unknowns every single minute. One day I walk fine. The next day I fall down. And there is no guarantee that it will get any better. I get up again anyway and wonder if this is strength? No I think it’s simply desperation.
(First published in the [i]ausgang, winter 2000, version XI[/i] — www.ausgang.com)
January 2001 | back-issues, nonfiction
a short story
by Nicolas J. Aguina
More than anything I had never intended shooting someone, but I did. He was lying on the floor. Open hands covered his face completely, but did not stop blood from seeping through every crevice of his closed fingers. He was on his back. Knees in the air. Rolling left to right. He moaned loudly, in too much pain to form words. He coughed, then his body cringed. His head and feet lifted off the floor. He removed his hands from his face only to spew saliva, deep red with blood. It was stringing from his mouth to his cupped hands, slinking down his chest like red melted cheese. I looked down at the writhing man and considered what next.
A friend gave me the gun about a year ago when I was 20. He’s still very close to me, so I do consider him a friend. He called it a “peashooter.” The metal was stained brown, and the chipped pearl handle suggested it had a history. I knew about guns. I was in the service. A lot of gun-talk goes on in the Marine Corps. My new toy was a .22-caliber. I don’t remember who made it, but I knew an important fact: It was double action. When the trigger is pulled, the hammer cocks back and the cylinder rotates the round to be fired into position beneath the hammer – that’s the first action. The second action is when the hammer falls and fires the bullet.
He didn’t give me bullets, so I had this pistol around for a while. I would think about ways to cheat at Russian Roulette and practice my quick draw from my waste band, or click off all six rounds as fast as possible. Sometimes I would just break it down, clean it, then reassemble it. In the Marines, the drill instructors trained us to remember your weapon is your best friend, and you should know everything about it. Finally, I went to the K-Mart near my house to buy a box of rounds. It was that easy. But there were two things I had not done: test the sights and my proficiency with the weapon.
This is where Troy comes in. Now, I hung out with this person, but it was more like a business thing. I sold him weed and ‘caine. He was a customer. I called him up and asked, “What’s up dude? Whatcha doing?”
“Not much, just slamming a few brews,” Troy responded. He probably would have given the same answer any other time.
“Hey, I got this gun from this guy. Want to go shoot at the quarry behind Wing Park? No one will hear the gun shots from way out there.”
“Cool, Why don’t you just come by? I still gotta take a shower.”
I remember the walk to Troy’s house so clearly. I was praying, “Please God help me. I need you. I don’t know how I got so far from home.” A tear trailed its way down my cheek; visions of the past began flowing through my head. I see my spiritual father bending over whispering in my ear. I was envisioning myself in church.
“Diostado,” Brother Joe whispered his breath caressing my ear and neck. “God is keeping you alive for a reason. That reason I do not know.” The words provoked me to think that it is God’s will, and his will alone, that preserved my life – that without him I would have been so helpless as to not have lived this long.
In the same instant, I saw another vision. Doctor Read was examining x-rays of my neck and lower leg. While showing me with his pen the small lines that represented the fractures in my fibula and sixth vertebrae he said with great concern, “You’d walked into this hospital? You better thank God. I can’t believe that your vertebrae didn’t shift. If it did, you would have been paralyzed.” And while I saw these visions, my mind continued in prayer.
“Lord, I’m out of control. My soul is hurting. Please, help me.” The prayer was over and so was my walk.
I stood at the door of the apartment complex. It was a well-kept building. I climbed three small flights of stairs. Each covered with cheap red carpeting. At the top was the door. I rang the doorbell that was high in the center of the door with the peephole. It chimed high as it was depressed, and low as it was released. I heard faint rustling behind the door and saw a shadow pass the peephole, then it went black. Knowing I was being watched, I lifted my arm and displayed my middle finger prominently in front of the peephole.
Troy opened the door and stood in the doorway, his eyes wide with expectation.
“You got anything?” he asked, without even inviting me through the door.
“Could I come in?” I asked with obvious irritation. Once inside, I complained. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? You think I’m gonna talk about shit all in the hallway?”
Then I slid my hand into my pocket, catching the tale of the plastic sandwich bag that was tightly knotted. In one movement, I withdrew my hand tossing the bag and its contents onto the table. Troy’s eyes grew even wider when he saw the size of the crystal white nugget in the bag. With no hesitation, I asked, “You got money?” Troy handed me a wad of cash and proceeded to untie the bag. I quickly organized and counted the bills. “You’re fifty dollars short!” I complained.
“Let me owe you?” Troy asked, punctuated by sniffles. I quickly agreed. I knew even without the fifty, there was still a 300 percent profit. Aside from that, a little credit keeps customers on a leash.
So I was at his house and we were hanging out, drinking, smoking herb, and doing some bumps. A couple of people stopped by and left. Then Troy started getting bold with his racial comments. I guess it was the beers he had. When I got there, there were only two beers left in a six-pack of tall boys.
“You want a brew?” Troy asked. “There in the fridge.”
I walked through the living room area, past the table and into the kitchen. It was like one giant “L” shaped room that was separated by the furnishings. The living room had a TV, couch and a baby diarrhea colored recliner, the dining room had a table and chairs, and the kitchen had appliances and cabinets. I grabbed a tall boy and asked, “You want one?”
“Yeah!” Troy said before tilting his head completely back with the beer can to his mouth. When he was finished, he swung his arm down and crushed the aluminum can as if it was actually a feat of strength. Then he stepped to meet me half way to the garbage can’ tossed the spent can and grabbed the replacement I carried on my way back to the recliner that bordered the living room and dining room areas. I pulled out the gun for the first time and started playing with it, which must have intimidated him because remarks really started flying.
“I thought Mexicans carried knives and drove Chevy’s” Troy joked.
“I just want to hurry up to the quarry before it gets dark” I said, ignoring the remark.
“Man, if anyone shot me with that little thing, I’d kick his ass!” Troy said, becoming more cynical.
After inspecting the chamber, I put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger, then pretended I was dead, mocking depression from the conversation we were having.
“Spics ain’t shit. They always got to use guns.” he said, clearly instigating. If he really believed that, he wouldn’t be talking shit. What he said was nothing major; but I was irritated; low class whites who don’t even count take a lot of pride in believing they are the superior race. I always knew he was an undercover racist because he let his tongue slip a lot, but I let it slide.
That is, until now. It was strange. He stood mockingly in his drug-induced state actually waiting for me to respond. I leaned forward from the recliner and grabbed the box of rounds. I took one out with my thumb and forefinger and displayed it prominently as I inserted it at the top of the cylinder, just beneath the hammer. Anger ran through my mind at it’s own pace.
“You don’t even have the balls to use it” Troy said, as if he was reading my mind.
I held my hands up as if in surrender. The gun hung from my forefinger; the handle rested appropriately in my palm. I grasped the handle and brought both hands down. When they came together, the heal of one hand was against the cylinder. I rolled the cylinder across the heel of my hand. In my mind I counted the clicks as the cylinder turned. Three. I counted three. The look on Troy’s face seemed serious. I stood up and raised the weapon to my temple. Click. That’s one. Then I put it to my chest. Click. That’s two. Then I looked him in the eye and placed the end of the barrel just beneath his nose. He said nothing. He just stared fearless into my eyes, knowing in his mind that I was a dumb spic that doesn’t have the balls to use the weapon. Bang! Click. I pulled the trigger twice.
I started to think of my parents. I thought about prison–live or die, I was probably going. I believe my decision to stay was because I started thinking of the idea of taking two lives. If I pissed my life away, that was my business, but now I was dragging this sorry son of a bitch down with me. I remember cleaning his face with a rag I found on the floor. I talked to him to prevent him from going into shock. He was choking on his own blood, so I turned his head to the side allowing the blood to drain onto the carpet.
“Whyyyyy?” Troy moaned while still rolling left to right.
I bent down on both knees. Laying one hand on Troy’s shoulder the other on his knee, I pushed firmly to bring both his feet and head flush to the floor.
“Troy, I’m getting help. You’re gonna be all right. Can you hear me?”
“Yeahhhh.”
With that I quickly rose to my feet and dialed 911, and was soon speaking to an operator. “I shot someone in the face. I need an ambulance.”
“Is the person still alive?” the operator asked routinely.
“Yeah. He’s in a lot of pain.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“I’m at Silver Street Apartments. I’m not sure what building; all I can tell you is it’s the last building on Silver that’s still a part of the complex.”
“I’m dispatching a unit right now.”
“I think it’s best if I leave now,” I said quickly, hanging up the phone, and I went back to my knees to attend to Troy.
I lost focus of all that was happening and uttered a quick prayer. “Dear God, don’t take this man’s life. Please God. Don’t take a man’s life for my mistake.”
After the quick prayer, I regained focus on the situation and began to ask Troy questions, again to prevent him from going into shock.
“What’s your name? Come on dude. What’s your name?”
“Troy.”
“Troy what?”
“Troy Adams.”
“Stay calm and just keep answering my questions.” I instructed just as Troy’s body coiled up in agony and he groaned heavily. I heard the rustle of equipment and the staggering static of the paramedic’s radios in the hall. I stood up and walked to greet them at the door.
“He’s over there, just around the corner in the kitchen” I directed.
“How many times was he shot?” the first medic asked.
“Just once. In the face, at point blank range.”
The medics rushed to their patient. My mind became clear. No longer thinking of Troy’s life, my own life came into perspective. I looked directly at the police officer.
“I’m the one that shot him,” I said, passing an officer the twenty-two-caliber weapon that was used. Just behind the officers, I could see a crowd gathering in the hall. Troy was silent now. I told the police the story. While I talked, the paramedics were putting Troy on a stretcher. He no longer moved. I was convinced he was dead.
“Has this guy been searched,” asked one of the undercovers.
“No,” one of the uniforms responded. He patted me down and found a quarter-ounce of weed in my pocket. He let the sandwich bag roll out to reveal its contents.
“This looks like some good stuff. What do you sell it for–50-60 dollars?” he asked trying to be clever.
“I don’t sell weed,” I responded.
Then one of the uniforms came from the back saying, “Look what I got.” He threw a handful of empty cocaine seals on the table.
“This too.” It was about a quarter gram of cocaine wrapped in plastic.
“What, did he owe you money?” the detective at the door asked. They kept suggesting I shot him for drugs. Then the uniform started to search me again and found another bag of weed. He announced his discovery to the room. The detective told him to put it with the other bag, but now, that one was missing. I know for a fact that I had two bags, but I wasn’t going to say a thing. I got quiet for a moment, then they moved about, letting the whole missing weed thing drop.
I was handcuffed and escorted to the car. There were about six squad cars outside. People were everywhere, trying to get a glimpse of the action. I made sure to look everyone in the eye. I wanted them to know that this is what happens when you mess with me.
The detectives questioned me all night, trying to piece together a phony drug story. When the hospital sent word that a shard of lead was lodged in the victim’s brain and he was not expected to live through the night, the detectives tried to use that to intimidate me into cooperating with their story. I was released on bond the following morning.
As it turned out, Troy made a remarkable recovery. He was out of the hospital in about a week. He even stopped by my house. We didn’t talk much about the shooting. The doctor informed Troy that he would recover 100%. My prayer had been answered.
I still had to go to court in thirty days. I’m pretty sure that gave everyone time to think about what happened. Troy showed no malice toward me, but a mutual friend heard him voice his anger. I was sure I would have to go to jail, maybe prison. As long as Troy was alive, I wasn’t going to be charged with murder, but they still had the weed and Troy’s testimony. The truth could mean I wouldn’t see sunshine for a long time. When my day in court finally came, Troy and I drove together in silence. In the distance of my mind, I heard him complain that he couldn’t snort cocaine anymore; he’d tried the previous night.
The State’s Attorney was waiting.. Immediately, he greeted Troy and escorted him to a room outside the courtroom. I was left alone to wait for my name to be called. I listened carefully to each case to try to detect leniency in the judge’s rulings. Finally, Troy, the State’s Attorney and two men I recognized as the detectives filed into the courtroom. They all sat in the front row. I felt as though they had gathered to coordinate their stories.
My name was called. I had decided I could live with three years, maybe four–one year on the drugs, three years on the aggravated assault with a firearm. I waived my right to a jury trial, and the judge droned off the proceedings. My lawyer asked for a moment to speak to the State’s Attorney. When court resumed, my layer advised me to plead guilty to all charges. He promised me no jail time. Everything went that quickly. In the end, I received time served, a fine and probation. The interesting thing about it is on our way home Troy told me with a disgusted look on his face that the State’s Attorney had insisted he testify that the shooting was drug related. He couldn’t believe he was asked to lie. “You didn’t shoot me for drugs.”
(First published in the [i]South Loop Review, Vol. 4, Columbia College Chicago, 2000[/i])
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