The Vocabulary of Guns

67.

Houston, of course, is all sprawl. It begins with a trickle of trailer homes burning in the darkness and then it becomes the darkness itself, so bright that you cannot look into it. Shortly after the trailer parks and strip clubs, all night liquor stores and junior marts are the miles of car dealerships and chain restaurants, the former advertising themselves with giant inflatable creatures, the latter with streaming flags. A twenty foot pink gorilla squats in the night air, a possible hallucination but who cares, it’s Houston baby boy and I am here, moving among her citizens, plowing through the night passing her breweries pumping acres of steam into the air, past her Astrodome, puny and dingy in the gloom of an empty parking lot. I am caught on your tentacles, Houston Texas, your roads that lead to nowhere, your toll roads and service roads and Farm to Market Roads and State Highways and Interstates. All your far-flung arteries gather and coalesce and the driver must know his shit because in Texas you drive fast and hard and aggressive at any hour, it’s the Texas way. And if you’re a stooge like moi you drive and glance at the map, imperiling yourself and others until at last the Junkman, appearing like a dear friend thought to be dead takes the map from my hand and steers me through Houston and into one of her many golden suburbs, a ring of homes on a cul de sac, lit by the ubiquitous orange sodium streetlamps, sycamores rising, the smell of fireplaces in the night air. And so at 4:39 on Sunday morning October 14, 1984 I found myself parked at an address that I won’t reveal, the site of last summer’s misfortune, the shack where it all went south. A white two story with blue shutters. A tidy front lawn with dark bushes. The scent of gardenias in the cool air. An automatic sprinkler system steams to life, then another, then a third. It is a well manicured world of Houston prosperity. It is a quiet nice neighborhood, a good place to raise your kids. The schools are this and it’s close to that and it’s like every other place in America that people aspire to, not too little, not too much. A chunk of suburban cake. And behind those doors and up those stairs and in those rooms under those sheets, what monsters sleep? What do they dream about, these black mustachioed villains? Are they like the rest of us, those of us whose heart is free of terrible deeds? Or are we all in the same stew, the brew of denial? And yet I’d like to think that the guilt I feel for a slighting remark or an ill-timed breakup pales in comparison to murder or sexual assault. I’d like to think that my night sweats don’t compare to yours, Mr. You Know Who You Are. I’d like to believe that there is neither heaven nor hell except what we choose for ourselves on this third stone from the sun. I’d like to think that when I sleep I dream of Arabian chariots and walks on the Sea of Japan. I’d like to think that in my dreams I am able to fly like Daedelus, free at last on wings of my own doing. I’d like to think that in your dreams, Mr. You Know Who You Are, that you are lashed to the mast of your ship of fools. That each night like Prometheus the great Roc comes for you and tears out your liver and consumes it. And that each day while you recover and pray for death, said liver regrows. I’d like to think that yours is the sleep of the ones who choose to live by their own rules and therefore must be emasculated, dethroned, deracinated, and finally, forgiven. Yes, I said it. I said it. I said it. I could forgive you. I could do that. I could finish this long last look at the house where you did what you did. I could stop the train right now. Get off. Turn on the Honda. Drive home. Put away the gun. Explain nothing to Father or Mother. Never mention it to JW. Pretend it didn’t happen, that it was the work of fiction pounded out of the brain of a madman twenty-five years later. That it was the fevered work of a hashish eating fool, not a driven and focused assassin. That none of it went down the way I said it did. That we were all free and clear of bad thoughts and evil confessions. That she never said a word about what happened because NOTHING happened. Nobody pushed over the first domino waaaaaaaaay back when. Miguel Champ wasn’t late for the NOA game. He didn’t stop by JW’s house. Her stepfather didn’t catch them almost in the act. She wasn’t punished, grounded for the summer. She made no bunk beds. He didn’t rape her in said bed. She didn’t flee the next summer to this very house on this very street in this very city. There was a party that night in late July but JW wasn’t here. She was home with me. With me. We got to have that last good summer, the one before your senior year when you could give a rat’s ass about anything except looking good and feeling good and there’s plenty of both on the wind and in the air and if you can keep from getting knocked up or knocking somebody else up or killing yourself or killing somebody else you can have a helluva good time, the best time of your life, replete with indelible ink emblazoned into the heart like a tattoo from the gods. That’s what should have happened and that’s what I should be writing about. But I can’t. You know that, right? I have to write what I’m writing now. To heal. To forgive. To come to some state of grace. And so with the calmness of the ninja who knows that death is only feared by those fated to die in great pain and confusion, I allow my lids to droop, the mind to follow, the seat to fall back, the morning chirp of birds dropping me into the doze of a righteous youth.