The small man wanted
to kick the shit
out of the teevee above his head as
talking heads blithered on about
one chingadera
then another.
The drunk stared at the news program’s subtitles that reflected backward
in the bar’s mirror. “Breaking News... Police rout thousands in
ELA protest....shots fired...”
“
Whatever,” he muttered, “I need another beer.” He broke the
spine of the library book to mark his place then set it face down on the bar.
Gus Vigil’s fingers pulled at the skin under his right wrist where
blue inked letters spelled out EVER VIGILANT.
“
Oye, chichona, ven pa'ca,” slurred Gus, absently scratching a finger
black with grime across the blue tattoo. Sexual harrassment from drunks like
Gus no
longer irritated the woman, but she found ways to get even. For now, Guadalupe
Magdalena Lira looked over her left shoulder and shouted comically, “Ay
voy, mi'jito, no te apures, Lupe will take good care of you as usual!”
Vigil had sat under the teevee
since the bar opened three hours ago, downing one beer after another and
feeding quarters into the computer. Gus wasn't sure
if he should be insulted, but a wiseass riposte failed him, so Gus rehearsed
his order. Unaware he spoke aloud, Gus practiced the phrase, “lemme hava
shota oso negro,” naming the bar's cheapest rotgut tequila, his uña
worrying the outline of the tattoo.
“
EVER VIGILANT,” Gus read. “Yeah, that's me.” He stifled a bitter
laugh by pressing the tattoo across his grimacing lips. “Stop it!” he
told himself, biting his flesh. But once again, memories played across Vigil’s
eyes of that first night in prison. As usual, he could not arrest the images
that forced their way to the surface and he remembered vividly every sensation....
The vatos had toasted Gus's health
with pruno. “A special brew just for
you, carnal,” the giant one had told Gus. The man’s friendly tone
and open smile contrasted with the giant’s right hand that pinched Gus
Vigil’s neck, hard. Gus did not shrug nor object, thinking “Trouble
with this big vato is nothing I want.” Vigil laughed at the irony
and twisted his neck.
The kid everyone called Payaso produced a ziplock bag bulging with pruno. Payaso
had made his special pruno, adding a quart of purple cough syrup whose alcohol
and chlorpheniramine turned the world into a mind-numbing blur. Vigil recognized
the high and smiling, settled into the trip.
“
What are you smiling at, ese?” asked Cayman, passing a joint to the surprised
new guy. Gus embroidered the story of his crime, recounting his confrontation
with the putos on the draft board, the chingaos from the FBI, and the beating
he’d taken from the pinche cabrones local pigs. Gus felt triumphant. Not
just because this was the best version yet of his story, but also because, instead
of finding ugly violence in prison, Gus felt good with these guys. And it was
good weed. That was Gus Vigil’s final conscious thought as the exhausted
draft evader leaned back against the day room’s cold stucco wall and passed
out. That had been thirty-five years today. “It’s my anniversary,” he
spoke, then he laughed through his nose. “Hgh.”
The bartender looked in Gus’ direction
and laughed at something the waitress said, pointing at Gus’ end of
the bar. Gus shifted on the stool, placing his weight first on the left nalga
then the right, just as he had done thirty-five
years ago tomorrow, to stanch the pain that woke him, thirty-five
years ago tomorrow. Gus would wake up in prison for the next nineteen months,
two weeks, three days,
four hours–that would have been the duration of a tour of
duty– “But
who’s counting,” Gus spoke, “one, two, bouncy bouncy...” he
counted the steps of the approaching waitress. “‘Nuther
bironga?” she
asked. “Lemme havashota ossso...osso...” The big pinto
was called Oso. Gus’ tongue stumbled on the word because Oso's
smiling face raged out of Gus's memory, ‘...oso negro!’ Gus
shouted the name but could
not escape Oso’s taste in his mouth.
“
Oye, calmate mi'jo,” the barmaid kidded, startled at Gus' intensity. Noting
the book title, she asked solicitously, “How about I call Nena’s
to bring you some nice caldo de pollo?” The little man’s eyes wandered
from Lupe’s chest to the book then made brief eye contact. “I’m
writing a story for them,” he explained, “I’m
a writer.”
“
The wimps are always the weird ones,” Guadalupe Magdalena thought, then
audibly, “This one's on me, OK?”
Gus passed the waitress his last
twenty. “And some change,” continued
the small man more calmly, pointing at the coin-operated computer
station. Lupe was relieved to see the screen displayed Yahoo,
instead of the
sleazy porn site
the man had drooled over earlier, shifting his weight from
side to side, typing with one hand.
Gus Vigil stared at the computer
screen and his temper flared. Yesterday he had written passionate support
for a Marine deserter in the Pendleton brig,
and someone
had replied, challenging. “The kid should have thought of that before he
enlisted,” the screen displayed. “Now he has to pay the price for
his stupidity. He shouldn’t be crying about it but accept his
personal responsibility, like a man.”
“
Personal responsibility” especially rankled Vigil. Thirty five years
ago, the one-legged Assistant Federal Attorney had limped from the jury box
to stand in front of Gus and point at the defendant. “Fucking vendido,” Gus
muttered. The chicano prosecutor looked Gus in the eye throughout a moral lecture
about personal responsibility and the rule of law. Gus relived every word,
every gesture with increasing rage.
“
This defendant needs to understand personal responsibility. Personal responsibility
is but one price of freedom that each of us must exercise in a free society.” The
chicano prosecutor pointed at Gus. “But not Mr. Vigil. Mr. Vigil protests
that his ‘compañeros’– his comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen of
the Jury– are being drafted to fight in an illegal war in Vietnam. And
Mr. Vigil feels above the law, above his personal responsibility. ‘Let
someone else go in my place,’ that is his message. ‘No one should
go,’ he testified, and maybe he’s right. But we don’t have
the luxury of deciding who goes and who doesn’t. Not I, not you, not he.
I didn’t want to lose my leg to a Vietcong bullet, but I did. One hundred
thirty-five sons of our community didn’t want to die in Vietnam. But they
did. They answered the call. As will others. Every day, until this awful war
draws to its inevitable close. And yet...” Gus Vigil’s eyes filled
with bitter tears as the Prosecutor’s conclusion echoed once again in Gus’ memory. “...this
defendant wants someone else to take his place. Mr. Gus Vigil expects you to
absolve him of his personal responsibility for defying the laws of this nation
and abnegating his sacred duty to accept the call to arms.” The jury had
been obviously moved and it was that speech, Gus thought, that had sent him to
federal prison, “Thirty-five years ago today,” Vigil muttered.
Vigil wrote the poster’s email address on a napkin and clicked the Compose
button. Gus Vigil felt a surge of ruthlessness. Thirty-five years of pent-up
insignificance exploded through his fingers into a vicious rant. “Only
a sell-out would say something like that,” he typed. “What about
the personal responsibility of Nixon, of Exxon, of Rockefeller! What about
the monied fascists whose interests are served...”
For all his own passive aggressiveness,
Gus abhorred the passive construction. He pressed the backspace key and retyped “What
about the monied fascists in whose name kids are sent...” Gus swore
and backspaced again. “...fascists” Gus
spoke the words as he typed, “like you. Personal responsibility my sore
ass. I can just see you sitting smugly in your chair, holier than thou, preaching
personal responsibility like some fucking prosecutor, like the sell out vendido
that you are!!!!!!” Vigil’s index finger pounded the Send key.
Lupe set two bottles of Coors
on the bar. “Happy hour!” she smiled. “And
dos Osos!” The little man’s eyes widened in panic. He looked desperately
around the empty bar. Lupe was saying “...so happy hour came a little
early...” when
the door leading from the toilets burst open and five sweating kids breathlessly
filled the space behind Gus’s seat. “The front door!” shouted
a voice, and the kids beat a hurried exit, one shouting “Excuse us” as
she passed. “Those sirens sound close,” Lupe said, pointing her
chin at the talking head, connecting the news to the moment’s disruption.
Gus did not respond, his attention focused on the computer screen. Already
the menu listed a reply. It was from the email address on the napkin. Triumphantly,
Gus doubleclicked the message and began reading.
“
I am sorry you cannot be civil in a dispute,” came the response. “I
find your vitriol doubly deeply disappointing. First, because I thought you
a rational person, and second, because you chose not to address my four concerns.
One, do you admit the kid enlisted or was he somehow duped? Two, do you admit
the kid made a personal decision and went AWOL, or was he again somehow duped
into it? Three, according to Yahoo news, the kid admits he enlisted for the
education
benefits not to fight the idiot president’s pre-emptive war. Four, what
about those pigs Nixon, Exxon, Rocky, and all the rest? Asking ‘what
about’ is
not an argument. Make your point. I look forward to an intelligent and well-mannered
reply this time.”
Gus stared hard at himself in
the mirror, consumed in rage. He did not see the two police officers who
had stepped into the bar from the door behind him.
Gus
Vigil shouted, ‘You fucking asshole!”
Thirty-five years ago tomorrow,
Gus Vigil had woken up with a blue tattoo and a broken spirit. It had all
started with a hand on his neck that pinched,
hard.
Every day for nineteen months, two weeks, three days, four hours, Gus had been
the butt of a pinto joke. “Hey, ese, are you Ever Vigil-ant today? No pun
intended.” Always the same smirk, always the same stupid irritating joke. “Oso
says I can have sloppy seconds.” And it would begin again.
Gus Vigil vowed he would be ever
vigilant, on the lookout for Payaso, Cayman, Ernie, Rosie, and especially
Oso. The day Gus left prison he spent some of
his walking away cash on a folding Buck knife at Sears. Gus Vigil practiced
in the
solitude of his mother’s garage until he could pull his navaja smoothly
and slash in one motion. “Let me see Oso one more time,” Gus
would chant, “let me see Oso one last time. I’ll show him who’s
Ever Vigilant when I stick him.” Slash, jab, slash.
“
What the fuck did you call me, asshole?” asked the cop, who pinched Gus’s
neck, hard. Gus reached into his pocket. “Ever vigilant!” he screamed.
The Coroner pushed the thermometer
deep into the corpse’s back, and
let it rest. The cute female cop had recorded the time accurately, but taking
the
liver temperature was standard operating procedure on dead meat.
Officer Emiliano Muñoz silently
laughed at how clumsily the little pinto had moved. Training had refined
Muñoz ’ reflexes to lightning speed. The instant
the little man had reached for his pocket, Muñoz slammed Gus Vigil’s
face into the keyboard. Then Muñoz was amazed that the little vato spun
off the barstool,
screaming something about a bear. When light glinted off the blade, Muñoz ’ partner,
Felicia Diaz, discharged nine rounds point blank at the drunk, hitting him
in once in the side, twice in the chest. One round grazed the bartender’s
shoulder. Lupe was badly cut by glass shards that exploded from the three rounds
that hit the mirror. One round found the passenger door of a passing car, the
driver speeding away, vowing never to pass this way again. The ninth round
was never identified, not even when a homeless man checked himself into County
Hospital
with a bleeding right bicep.
Gus Vigil’s body slammed backward into the coin-operated PC, where messages
supporting Vigil had already popped up on the menu. Vigil’s tattooed
arm wedged itself between the stool and the bartop and slowly, slowly the body
sank
under its own weight into the wet sawdust.
“
Hey Emiliano, check out this dude’s tattoo. ‘EVER VIGILANT.’ I
guess he shoulda, no pun intended.” Muñoz and Diaz laughed at the bad
joke. Diaz’ eye looked past the rubber-gloved Coroner. She bent and picked
up a bloodied library book. “Hey, ‘Chicken Soup for the Hispanic
Soul.’ Too
bad this asshole wasn’t better nourished, que no?”
Guadalupe Magdalena suppressed a smile. She wholeheartedly agreed as she slipped
twenty dollars worth of quarters into her pocket.
Miguel De Las Costillas is a US Army veteran of the Vietnam
era. He lives out of his pickup truck, working as a fruit-picker and tree
pruner from Washington
State to California.