I stopped short of the end of the block, to give the stout Hispanic man who had appeared in front of me adequate room to pull up his pants. I figured this was wise, as he seemed intent on performing the operation without missing a step, even if that meant he would collide with me. A scant few seconds earlier, he had emerged like a bullet from the front door of a nearby house. Only a pair of ragged underwear kept him from complete humiliation.
Resembling a charging crocodile, he had run over forty feet from the front door to the sidewalk with his pants around his ankles. If he had a shirt or shoes, they were nowhere to be found. His eyes were glued to the door of the house as he clumsily trotted while pulling his pants back up. His fingers fumbled with the front by touch only.
Crossing the street, I was grateful I had given myself extra time on my walk to high school that morning. I had a full twenty minutes to watch circumstances as they developed. Before his sudden and unfortunate death my fourth grade teacher had once advised me that there was no need to go to the theater in Aberdeen, when you could simply park your car across from the 7/11 for a couple of hours.
“Mi hermano? Con mi hermano!” Shouted a bigger man, coming out the front door of the same house. He had a knife in his hand and he was stabbing the air with it in wild slices. A fat woman with a sheet wrapped around her pulled at his arm, sobbing too intensely to make intelligible words in either English or Spanish. The bigger man brushed her off with a savage extension of his arm. She fell back into the house, as her husband marched down the steps.
“Oh,” I remarked, as I watched my shirtless friend finish zipping up his pants. His brother had not yet sighted him. “This makes much more sense.” I pointed at a car lot across the street and whispered “Vamos! Vamos!” Still running, my adulterous friend spared enough time to give me a nod of gratitude, before diving into the car lot like Br’er Rabbit seeking refuge. Once I knew no one was going to die, I could spend more time appreciating the event.
His brother looked up and down the street, paused on me until I shrugged, then cursed at the sky in Spanish. I felt sorry for him, but decided I did not regret helping his brother find a place to hide. He didn’t deserve to go to prison for twenty years just because he’d walked in on his brother diddling his wife.
With smoking nostrils, the jilted husband jumped into a broken down truck. By the end of the street, he was going fifty with his head hanging out the driver’s side window scanning the sidewalks. He was too angry to look other places. The fun was over. Shrugging, I continued my walk to school.
I never found out what happened to my friends. Nothing was in the paper, so no one died. But, Aberdeen is a sickly magical town. Bad things happen there all the time and people don’t notice. It’s like a penal colony for people who have appeared on the Jerry Springer show. When I got to the school, I noted that there were six monster trucks in the parking lot. Six monster trucks… and only one Jew in the entire student and faculty body. Aberdeen isn’t all bad of course. At least I know how things work there.
Far be it from me to offer correction, but I feel this has to be said.
“Vamos” actually means “we go” or “we are going” — inclusive plural present tense. He probably took that to mean “let’s go” (or “vayamos” — inclusive plural imperative tense).
Did he pause a second waiting for you to join him?
What you probably meant was “vaya” (or “go” — third person personal imperative tense).
In the end it seems the proper message was conveyed (since he ran off to hide)… I just thought I’d offer my counsel in case a similar situation came up.
I think he understood what I meant from my gestures more than what I was saying. I only speak a little bit of Spanish so I have to approximate sometimes. In real life I was kind of able to make out the woman saying “don’t kill him” because I heard some form of “morir” or something close enough to it that that’s what I puzzled out.
When I walked by there a couple of months later the house had one of those yellow stickers on it that said “this house is under investigation for distribution of narcotics.” The area right around the high school is pretty slummy.
In my senior year a crack house burned down right across from the parking lot and the owners and their neighbors didn’t call anyone until it was too far gone to save. They didn’t want the fire men seeing any kind of evidence. Fun times.
Maybe a sanctuary for those whose stories have been rejected by the Jerry Springer show producers. . .