EPILOGUE: BEYOND BULLETS
“There are times I wish I wasn’t dead.”
We walked, the two of us, steadily trudging through the moonlit night as if there were a destination waiting to welcome us at the end of the sidewalk. But this walkway had no end and there would be no distant welcome. Not for me.
I repeated the words as I had dozens of times. I didn’t know the exact count, but we were well into the second hour. “There are times–“ I began.
”I know,” Rollins said. “I know.”
The interruption set me off on a new chant. “Why?” I asked. “Why, why, why? You tell me and I'll be satisfied. You tell me that there's an answer and I’ll believe. In a universe of words, there must be one that will take away this--" I stopped, struggling for a way to express what I felt, but all that came from the cavernous emptiness inside was a moan that bounced its echo back and forth until it died with the faint whisper: "Why?"
We walked more. There were miles behind us and miles ahead and maybe miles inbetween. After a few hours on the freeway I had come back, standing far off from the bungalow but close enough to see the remains. I wasn’t going inside again, not ever. When it was over, Rollins had come out and said nothing and we began walking. Now he was letting me ramble to allow distance to do its healing work and allow time to give my mind a re-grasp of reality. A grasp was all I was getting and I was hanging on tight.
After a few more blocks, I said: "Rollins, I can't do this anymore. It's too hard. I've done death. I need life. I need to get out of here. There must be a way."
"There is," he said. "Just not yet."
"When?"
"In a time."
"A time, a time.” My voice was rising. I pushed it back down. “I don't want to hear that anymore." I took a breath, then had a flash of inspiration. “Maybe...I can go back in time. Live life all over. Make it right.”
His silence held the answer.
“Will it always be like this?"
"Not always."
"It's just so--" I stopped, struggling for words, “--unfair.”
"What is?"
"All of it. From beginning to end. Death 'til now. I want out."
"It was your decision,” he reminded.
"Then I’m re-deciding, I'm un-deciding, I'm–“
"You can't."
"What can I do?"
"Same thing you're doing."
"I can't," I said, stepping on a crack in the sidewalk. It widened under my feet and I found myself falling in a deep crevice. Darkness seeped around me as hot air rushed by. I clawed the walls of the pit and my fingernails scraped the sides as I yelled and heard the answering screams of hell below.
I blinked, and found myself on the sidewalk again, walking peacefully with Rollins while chanting another mindless mantra. "I can't. I can't. I can't."
"Now, you can't," he said. "Later you'll be able."
"Able to do what? And for why? To have it end the same way? I tried to protect Tyler and he's dead. I gave Tine my whole life and it left her a murderer. And Teresa” I shook my head. “What's the difference what I do?"
The light had turned red and we stopped at the corner for no reason. "Trace, you did what you needed to do. But there comes a time when it's done and you have to let go. You helped Teresa more than you'll ever know."
The light changed and we started across.
"Helped her how? I gave her a chance and she blew it."
Rollins halted abruptly in the middle of the road as the light changed again. Cars drove through us as he spoke, and spoke firmly. "Wrong, very wrong. First, you didn't give her anything. Anything she got, you were there to be a part of. Second, she didn't get just one chance, or two, or two-hundred."
"What do you mean?"
"She got an endless number of chances."
"When?"
"Every single day, like everybody else. What she did with it was her choice." He gave me a push and we crossed through traffic. "Don't worry, you'll have a lot more opportunities. We'll do it again tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow. It’s all the same day."
"You're so damn helpful."
"Trace, you don't know, and maybe I shouldn't tell you, but you made a difference. If it weren’t for you--”
"Yeah,” I said. “If it weren’t for me, what?" I hopped up to the curb and took a few steps before turning for the finish. But he was gone, again. And I was alone. Again.
I looked to the heavens for a sign, a direction, but there was nothing in the sky but a full moon waxing orange, its big face laughing down at some private joke not meant for the earth-bound.
I walked on.
A group of people were clustered together on the sidewalk up ahead. Hispanic, mostly. Teens, mostly. Some were kneeling, some lighting candles, some crying, all somber, not a smile on any face or joking around the fringes. The candles had been placed around a two-foot high cross pushed into the grass. Leaning against it was a large piece of cardboard with pictures of a young girl at various stages of her life. Around the pictures kids had written--and were writing--messages to the young girl, obviously deceased. It was a monument to their friend, a remembrance. An older couple stood well behind the cross, obviously the girls’ parents, letting their daughter’s friends have their time of mourning. The father had graying hair and dark crevices in his face from a life of hard work, the mother the same, and their expressions were elongated with grief. There would be no solace for them, I knew, except in thoughts of meeting on the other side. There was always hope.
I stopped at the crowd, leaning in to see the photos. They were arranged chronologically around a larger one in the middle, the most recent. She had been a beautiful girl all her life, from infancy to pre-school to pre-teen to teen. Dark eyes, flawless skin, an inviting, friendly smile with the touch of flirtation growing with the years. I stopped and stared and blinked and looked closer. Recognition pulled at my heart.
It was the girl I had seen when I found Teresa, the one Rollins had said would die that very day. Rosalinda Ochoa. There was no mention of how she died. The date of birth set her forever in time at fourteen.
I marveled at how that could possibly be a lifetime. I had clothes older than her. Yet here was the proof displayed in a few photos, her life in its entirety.
But at least, I thought with a trace of bitterness, at least she has a monument. However temporary, it was here now. Most got nothing. Or, if fortune so shined, maybe a smashed metal fence, soon to be reshaped, or a chalk outline on the asphalt, soon to be re-paved, or a slight impression on a carpet in a bungalow, soon to be ripped out and burned. For this girl, long after the monument blew away in disrepair, people would remember.
I gave her picture one last long look and summoned my best high school Spanish. “Dormir bien, un poco.” Sleep well. Then, to her huddled parents: “Hasta que encontremos otra vez.” Maybe one day we’d all see her again.
I continued on, drifting.
There was a noisy cafe ahead which overflowed its tables onto the sidewalk, full of people, conversation, life. As I got closer I scanned faces out of a growing habit, but none were familiar. I squeezed through the throng clogging the door. Inside was just as congested but I found an empty table in the middle of the room and took a seat.
There was a guy on the small stage in the corner doing a comedy routine while trying his best to hide behind the mike stand he held with both hands. Amidst all the peripheral activity in the place, he was getting little attention and no laughs. I knew the feeling. He seemed to be lost in the awkward silence between jokes, unsure whether to go on or get off. It was an experience that would serve him well later in life with all the awkward silences to come.
Mercifully, after stop-starting another story, he mumbled a few words of thanks and slinked off to a delayed smattering of applause, followed by louder applause as a guy with long blonde hair and beard walked on stage carrying a stool in one hand and guitar in the other. He sat down and adjusted the mike height as he smiled and asked
how we were all doing tonight.
I told him to go to hell.
He began tuning the instrument while explaining that his first song was inspired when he awoke one morning to “a beautiful sunrise reflected in the face of my lady.” With a few nods of his head he began singing with equal sincerity and big teeth.
I stared at him oddly for a moment, as I would have anyway, then cupped my left ear, listening, repeating the action with my right. The music I heard was out of synch with his voice or guitar. He was swaying to a fast rhythm, as were a few others in the cafe, with accompanied hand taps and swaying heads, bopping to the beat as his fingers moved quickly over the strings.
I heard something else.
I heard an anguished moan; the endlessly slow pull of a bow over the thick strings of an upright bass. Then high-pitched screams; chords being beaten on a piano in the upper octaves. The instruments threw their notes back and forth as if attempting to silence the other with the sheer confusion of formless noise.
A drum came in, hard and off-beat, heavy on the toms and flat on the crash, like jazz in the jungle. It brought a new anxiety as the music meandered up and down the scales with ever increasing volume, seeking direction.
I scanned the room, looking for the origin of the sound. Maybe a jukebox or radio in a separate part of the café, or a neighboring venue. But there was nothing to give explanation. I sat back, confused, watching and listening to the desynchronized display, wondering why no one else could hear.
Then I remembered.
Rollins had told me that everyone received a song at the end of their lives. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Eventually, he had said, I would as well.
That's what this was. Eventually.
The trio faded to background as a tenor sax rose to prominence, drawing out each note without thought to meter. It echoed lonely images; of hope deferred and love unknown and the loss of more than life. It was the death of youth, the death of dreams, the pain of expectations unrealized and opportunities lost.
Blues of a lifetime.
They were playing my song.
I listened with eyes closed, hoping my life wouldn’t pass before them. But it did anyway. I wondered, as I watched the parade of memories, if the song were truly written for me after my life was over, or if I had lived according to a song written long before I was born. Had it set the tempo of my days? Were the sharps and flats part of the ups and downs, highs and lows that could never have been avoided, or were they a melodious reminder of a song that should have had more substance and depth but simply ran short of measure?
After a time the music stopped and I opened my eyes cautiously. People around me were still drinking, flirting, laughing, lying; living as they always had and always would. All was normal again.
I caught the eye of a passing waitress and ordered a coffee that never came.
Trace the Dead Eye Page 29