ARR 1988 - Flipbook - Page 31
Ojos
Was it a mosquito or a fly that hovered as a wraith over my eye? The
whine of wings stopped. I fancied the legs on my forehead, the tickle of its
sting. Take my blood. You are more welcome to it than those who await me
outside. I would, by habit, have squashed it, and looked indifferently on the
red remains. My hands, however, were no longer variables of my situation.
Bound with wire, they were no concern of mine. I was robbed of their feeling.
The mosquito, having had its fill, took flight without thanks. I smiled. I had
to concede that yes, indeed, some things are predictable. Some things are
like being.. .left alone with the night.
I thought about Chris. Her hair like waves. The way she walked, as
if she were the first ever to move that way. I had to remind myself that
somewhere, where she was, you could-you would-get into a car and go to
a restaurant and buy whatever you wanted. You could go to a movie and sit
in the dark without listening to what was moving behind you. The things
coming at you were just lights, lights you could walk away from and return
to the light of the sun. And you could walk into a park with mowed grass
without looking for wires, without seeing your point man dangle in mid-air
for a moment while his legs flew off somewhere without him. And you damn
sure wouldn't find a burnt-crisp dead body just lying in the gutters. No, the
big normal yellow street sweepers would take care of that. Like my hands,
these were not concerns of mine. My concern was the absolutely warm
feeling that right then I was capable of sleeping.
How does it go? A rude awakening? I suppose being dragged out of the
wood and twine pen, dropped in the dirt, and kicked in the face qualifies as
a rude awakening. Kicked in the face. Some of the dirt from the heel made
it into my mouth. I spat it out, saying, "So much for the Geneva Convention."
Saying it more to the worms that I was facing than to the men who stood,
rooted as if diabolical trees, about the compound. The worms were more
attentive anyway, at least to my words.
I got up to my knees. Every sequence of this seemingly simple action
was a re-establishment of the effects ofmy last-what?-two days of hospitality here. The ribs ... were they broken? I'd had them bruised before (My
previous experience in the world of street-sweepers was football.), but this
was persistent. Yet I am alive. My back, stiff like a fine grained plank of pine,
was the result of the pounding that my captors had been applying there. Yet
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