...and omega...

Benjamín wore his pants pegged and his shoes curved upward to a point. If he had lived in the 40s, he would have worn a suit jacket, preferably striped, with padded shoulders—and a watch on a chain, and a feather in his wide-brimmed hat. In 1961, with his duck-tail and sideburns, he was a fading remnant of the pachúco style, not the subculture that it’s widely considered, but the part of the chicáno mainstream youth that refused to relinquish their persóna to the blanket of peonage and its attendant debasement under Mexican rule that even immigration to America had not helped their parents to escape.

   He was the worst (according to some sources) of the bad enough culture that was mainly tolerated because of their fruit picking abilities. The vátos that wore jeans and polo shirts to school like the Anglos and sometimes even made it past the ninth grade, considered them trash. The difference between a kid that couldn’t read enough English to fill out an employment application and one that could, only to have it wadded up and pitched as soon as he turned his back, was just barely moot. But there was a sense of embarrassment rising through Mexican-American society about someone of the same race as them who displayed his ethnic fixation too blatantly, like the pachucos.

   Benjamin was tried and convicted in a court of law of being no more than himself; his honor, more sacred than his life, had no one to defend it.

   The trial lawyer, Guzmán, asked Póncho, the next to the last witness, if he knew Benjamin before the incident that forced these proceedings.

   Poncho said, “I’d seen him around.”

   “Had he seen you?”

   “I guess.”

   “Was there any show of hostility between you?”

   “We didn’t talk to each other.”

   “Did you try?”

   “No.”

   “Why?”

   “Because he was from the bárrio from the other side of town, and they didn’t like anybody who wasn’t from there.”

   “Did he belong to a gang?”

   “They said he was one of the Zorros.”

   “What were you doing in his neighborhood?”

   “Just passing through.”

   “A witness says you circled the block twice.”

   “He called me a bad name. I asked him why he called me that name.”

   “Is that when you threw the empty beer bottle at him?”

   “I didn’t throw nothing at nobody.”

   Poncho and his buddy, B.J., told identical stories. The prosecutor asked B.J. who it was that threw the bottle. B.J. was the last witness for the defense.

   B.J. said, “I was driving. I didn’t see nobody throw nothing.”

   “Were you drinking beer?”

   “No.”

   “Who threw the bottle then?”

   “It could’ve been anybody. Maybe it was them.”

   “By them, you mean Benjamin and Raúl?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Is that what started the fight?”

   “There wasn’t no fight. We drove away.”

   “How did you wind up in a fight later, out in the country in the middle of nowhere, five miles from the barrio?”

   “They followed us. We stopped to see what they wanted and they started a fight. Raul cut Poncho with a knife.”

   “Is that when you shot Benjamin?”

   “I don’t know. We were fighting and before I knew it there was a gun in my hand. It wasn’t my gun.”

   “How did it get in your hand?”

   “I must have took it off of him.”

   “You never got out of the car! Poncho got back in after Raul cut him, but you shot Benjamin while you were sitting in the driver’s seat. You never even got out of the car when you dropped Poncho off at the hospital. You were hiding in your brother’s house when you were arrested two days later.”

   “I don’t know what happened, man! All I know is that those guys were going to kill us. I don’t remember carrying no gun, but if I was the one that killed that bastard, it was self-defense.”

   There was a name—lost in memory now—in those days for baiting and luring Zorros out to beat them up. Nobody was ever punished for killing one. It doesn’t help to remember. Benjamin wasn’t the one being tried for murder back then, but he was the one found guilty. The only truth that came out of that courtroom was that he was dead.

Noe.

  

You

"This above all: to thine own self be true…

You wonder why people make the choices that they do, why they choose something—a career, a relationship, an art—to immerse themselves in to the point of obsession. Circumstances often make you trim your aspirations; otherwise, the world would be short of reliable plumbers and electricians. It’s a strange cultural tableau where singers and comedians can find jobs quicker than welders. When, along this hard road, does anyone find room for self-indulgence?

The party was subdued this year. Three of us had quit drinking altogether, and the rest just weren‘t in the mood for revelry. Fred is moving to Florida, and he’s sold or given away every stick of furniture that he owns including the chairs four of us sat on, and the table where we have stared at each other over cards or a less than brilliant personal theory more than once, but this time with “farewell” bursting at the seams.

Phield was there. He had not been expected to attend because he’d gone to New York to talk to a publisher, but he made it back to town earlier than he had anticipated because he walked out on the bargaining table. It seems that his techno-thriller evolved into a very literary work about a Mohican’s search for love in a digital age. The publisher wanted to have company hacks rework it into a story about a Native American cyborg who goes serial with a mechanical dick. When you tell Phield that the Mohican tribe was a literary invention of James Fenimore Cooper, he said, “That was the whole point.” He fired his agent, too. He said he was going to let his novel age and then he’d look at it when he was older, and maybe give it a last “hurrah!” Phield was only twenty-eight. He owned a Barney Rubble lunch box full of options.

Fred said to me, “You used to write good. Whatever became of that?”

I met Fred in college where we attended a few of the same classes, including one English course which turned out to be the campus paper. It was a surprise to me, but Fred wanted to get next to one of the female editors. It didn’t work out for Fred, but it was a sea cruise for me. I enjoyed writing then. I said, “Nothing. I’m just one of millions who can make a sentence with words. I don’t have Phield’s creativity.”

Fred said, “They always read your work in all the classes as an example of how it’s done. Everybody said you were going to make something of yourself one day.”

I said, “’One day’ was a short time for me even then. In school you’re always considered a work in progress. But I was forty when I went to college: too late a spring for blooming. Windows of opportunity get painted shut as the years pass.”

Phield said, “You wouldn’t have liked kissing ass any more than I did.”

Colby said, “A lot of us don’t know what it’s like to have those kinds of choices. It would be nice to be able to say, ‘Once, I had some talent.’”

Phield said, “You might have a greater gift than any of us. Wanting to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a talent for it, just as never having thought of doing it doesn’t mean you don’t. There are janitors walking around with Faulknerian irony trying to dig its way out of their skulls.”

Nobody has yet suggested that this group continue under different auspices. Fred’s ability to attract divergent personalities is a trait none of the rest of us possesses. Phield said that Freddie put us all under a microscope in the search to find himself. Maybe Fred did. He’ll spend his thirtieth birthday with his daughter who lives with his ex-wife and whose sixth birthday is on the same day as his. We keep losing the best of us.

Jap got up from the floor where he was sitting with Jefferson and Ray and Uri with his back against the wall. He said, “We can all encumber, with some wisteria, the double entendre of your epilogue, Dr. Phield. I studied musical notarization for years in my youth.”

Phield said, “Why’d you give it up, Jap?”

Jap said, “Greater exogenesis arose. Childish things tend to fall into disabuse.”

One of the rewards of group friendships like this is learning how to keep falsehood in subjunctive mood. It is a study of self. An added benefit to us all was learning a new language. Jap raised all our I.Q.s at least three points. He is the most real of us all.

He said, “Uri extemporized on the paucity of future symbiosis at his habituation. Your servant warms to this prognosis.” He bows.

Phield looked around to the others and then to me. I shrug, approvingly. Phield nods at Jap. Jap smiles at Fred.

Fred says, “It gets hotter than hell in Florida. I’ll probably spend my summer vacation here.”

Some things should never end. But they do: childhood, first love, marriage, faith. Friendships will endure—as long as they are tendered with the truth.

…and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” William Shakespeare.

Noe.