The King Is Always Above the People. Daniel Alarcon

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СКАЧАТЬ called Vicky’s Town, or VST, and it isn’t long before they’re tagging in the neighborhood.

      “Kick on back,” you say. You let it be known. This is how wars begin.

      Your house is sprayed with bullets one night when you aren’t home. Your mother tells you, and then immediately regrets it. You know what to do. She begs you not to. Let’s say you do it anyway.

      This is it. It’s two in the morning when you drive to your victim’s house. Let’s say you shoot him at close range with a sawed-off pump shotgun. Let’s say his mother and his little sister are in the house.

      You don’t let your mother come to the trial. Let’s say you tell your brothers not to let her near the courthouse, not under any circumstances. But she’s your mother, and she comes. Years later, she’ll tell you, “You were always a good boy, mijo …” And you’ll find it astonishing she could say that, much less believe it.

      But she does.

      Let’s say the day she comes to the courthouse is the day the coroner testifies about your victim’s wounds. You’ll remember this for a long time. He’s on the stand, giving a detailed medical account of what happened, and your mother is sitting behind you, hiding her face with both hands. And on the other side of the courtroom, your victim’s mother is doing the same.

      It’s the first time you feel ashamed of what you’ve done. If someone had intervened, right then, let’s say you could’ve been saved.

      You’re sentenced to twenty-seven years to life.

      You’re inside a year and a half when your little sister and a friend of hers disappear. It’s 1982, and this is the third terrible crime. Your sister’s name is Renee and her friend is named Nancy, and they’re both thirteen years old. Let’s say they were last seen on the avenue, getting into a car with two men. The two girls are found a week later, facedown in a ditch on the outskirts of town.

      Let’s say you wonder if your sister paid for what you did. Now you’re sending out messages, lists of people you want executed. You don’t know who did it, so you want them all dead. You want to see bodies stacked up high, a monument to the pain you’re feeling.

      Let’s say you want to murder the world.

      And then one of the men is caught and tried, and sentenced to death. And one day you see him, across the yard, separated by two fences, and you get him a message. One day, you tell him, after the system kills you, I’ll get out. And I’m going to kill your family. You mean it. He knows you mean it, and that’s the only satisfaction you have.

      Let’s say every time you come across someone inside, someone who hurt a child, you think of him. And you make them pay.

      But the other man who killed Renee and Nancy gets away. Let’s say his name is Reyes. He gets away and stays away. Let’s say he vanishes somewhere in Mexico.

      One decade, two decades, three. Reyes has a life. He gets married. He has children. He’s divorced. He marries again.

      And all that time, while the man who raped and murdered your sister is walking the streets, you’re in prison, and your hatred is something sharp in your chest. Something darker, more toxic than rage. You don’t let your family call you. You don’t let them reach you. This is something you have to do alone.

       3

      Let’s say sometime during your second decade in prison you begin to think about the true meanings of simple words. Words like compassion. Understanding. Consideration. Forgiveness. Simple words.

      No one you grew up with could have defined any of them.

      Let’s say one night, on the block, you wake up wondering who you are. What right you have to hurt anyone. Is this an eye for an eye? Didn’t you take a life?

      You ask yourself why you turned out the way you did, but you know you’ll never arrive at a satisfying answer. But let’s say you resolve to stumble on.

      Let’s say in 2012 you’re released. All told, you’ve spent thirty-two years inside.

      Let’s say you emerge into a world that’s disappointingly familiar. Your town is the same, only more so. The violence you loosed has become routine, and the kids have learned from you. Perfected what you taught them. Your mother’s dead. Your homies are dead. Some of your brothers have died too.

      You go around town and tell everyone you’ve hurt that they don’t need to be afraid of you anymore. It’s a long list. You visit the mother of the boy you killed.

      The last time you saw her was in the courtroom, when you were on trial for the murder of her son. Now she has salt-and-pepper hair, and sits in an armchair, both her hands resting atop a cane, her head bent down toward the floor. She’s still afraid of you. You get on one knee, and with all your might you give her an explanation of why you did what you did.

      You don’t ask for forgiveness. You accept responsibility. When you’re done, she clears her throat, and says that no one in her family had anything to do with Renee’s death.

      She’s afraid of you.

      She says she’s seen you in the neighborhood talking to the youngsters. She knows you’re trying to make amends. Then she says she forgives you. It takes your breath away.

      Then she changes the subject: “What else have you been doing?” she asks.

      “Construction,” you say.

      “So do you know how to fix cabinets?”

      “Yeah, señora.”

      “That’s good, mijo. Do you know how to fix fences?”

      “Yeah, señora.”

      “That’s good, mijo,” she says. “So now you’re gonna fix my cabinet and my fence.”

       4

      And then you get a call. Alfredo Reyes has been caught. Before you know it, they’ve brought him back from Mexico, and the trial has begun.

      Let’s say you weren’t prepared to see the paunchy, middle-aged man before you, his slouch, his thinning hair. He tells the court that no, he never spent much time thinking of Renee or Nancy. Very rarely did he remember what he’d done.

      You spent decades inside remembering what he did.

      “It was consensual anyway,” Reyes tells the court, and your heart rate quickens.

      “It was the other guy who killed those girls,” he says, and you clench your fists.

      But you aren’t the person you were. And still. Let’s say you spent years dreaming of killing this man. And now you’ve sat through weeks of СКАЧАТЬ