Angels And Bad Men

By: David H
(© 2011 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 5
“May Flowers” 

I didn’t smoke every day; I don’t think my body could have handled it.  I did, however, feel like there were just some days when it all became too much for me to deal with.  Take for example the first time that I spoke with Detective Rob Barr.  My first encounter with him was a couple of weeks after Armando’s visit.  I was up at around ten in the morning, and just as I was grabbing a glass of juice, the phone rang.  Oddly, I answered the phone without looking at the Caller ID.  I never do things like that.  I’ve always been the kind of person that had to know who was calling.

“May I speak with Ryan Collins, please?” the guy asked.

“This is he,” I responded.

He introduced himself and then began making small talk.  He asked how I was doing; he asked about how being at home was.  I answered him as honestly as I could, hoping that he would get down to business.

“So, I got your case a few days ago, and I’ve been interviewing some people,” he started.  “I have a very promising lead that I’m following up on this afternoon, and then I should be able to let you know what’s going on with it.  Okay?” he explained.  “I just wanted to call and introduce myself to you, and to say that if you need anything, let me know.”

I thanked him for the call and then went about trying to find something to keep my mind occupied after talking to the police officer.  I went into my room and grabbed clothes for the wash.  I even braved the fragrant locker room-like aroma of Justin’s room to do some of his laundry as well.  I cleaned the living room; I cleaned the kitchen.  It was all done by twelve, and I was left with nothing but thoughts.  I thought about going to the tree house, but I’d smoked for the previous three days.  I wasn’t sure if my lungs could handle day number four.

I showered, dressed, and grabbed my keys and iPod.  Justin had taken his Jeep that afternoon, which was a little weird.  Perhaps he knew I might need my own car.  Surely it wasn’t filled with gas, though.  I took a deep breath and walked out to my car. 

The day my parents gave it to me, I was so happy.  I loved that car.  It was a black 2006, 3 Series coupe with black tinted windows, and a sound system that thumped better than some far more expensive.  The first time I put my hand around the steering wheel, I felt like that car became a part of me.  The first time I pushed the gas, I could feel the power.  It was a gift for my graduation from college, and I felt so strongly about it that I couldn’t bear to let anyone else drive it until the day of the attack.

That day, somehow, it was obvious that it was just a machine.  It was a machine that I’d put a lot of money into.  It was a machine that I now felt differently about... just a machine.

I plugged my iPod into the radio and started the car.  It still had that wonderful purr that it had always had.  I revved the engine to find all the power was still there, but it was different.  I didn’t quite know how, but it was not the same.  Slowly, almost as if I were afraid of it, I pulled the car from its space and turned around to go out the driveway.

A moment later I was pulling onto Highway 75, headed north toward Oneonta.  As I drove and listened to whatever my iPod played randomly, I thought about what I could get done that day.  I needed to go to the bank.  I needed to go the cell phone shop.  I needed to move my voting back to Blount County, since it was obvious I was going to be there for a little while.

As I passed through Allgood, I mentally mapped the route that I would take that day.  The first stop was the bank.  As I arrived, I found that it wasn’t very busy at Owens Bank.  As I walked in, a stately lady with long legs and perfect hair walked toward me.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I need to move some money from my savings account into my checking, please,” I announced.  She and I walked into an office just off the main lobby.  She asked for my account information and ID before she stopped and looked at me.

“You’re Olga’s son, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well.  Tell your Mom that Donna said hi.”

“I will,” I promised as she completed moving some money between my two accounts. She told me to let her know if I needed anything else from her; I thanked her and departed on my next task of the day: to get a new cell phone.

I walked into the HiTelCo Mobility office and began talking to a person named Xavier.  He knew what he was talking about, but while he talked I started feeling as though people were watching me.  There was an old lady working with another of the reps.  There was a guy a few years older than me complaining to another rep about his phone bill being too high.  Still another person was standing there complaining because his Blackberry had stopped working correctly.  I knew that they were all there to deal with their own problems, but something, a little voice in my mind, told me that they were all paying more attention to the tall freak rather than to their own business.  Politely, I took Xavier’s card and left the shop.  It had all gotten to be too much.  Perhaps I should have just stayed at home and gone to take a good smoke.

I left the cell phone store and immediately headed downtown.  Downtown Oneonta consists of just a few blocks of old shops, some of which barely remain open because of the large chain store that was now open on the outskirts of town.  There were a few people who dared to challenge their hegemony, though, including a book shop I’d worked in when I was in high school on weekends for extra money.  In college, I’d also worked there during breaks for drinking money.

As I parked in front of it, I was both pleased and amazed that it was still in business.  With a light smile, I pulled myself out of the car and walked inside.

“Well, if it’s not the tallest person ever to work in this fine establishment,” the lady said as she walked over to me.

“Hi, Jen,” I said as I bent down to give her a hug and she stretched to wrap her arms around my neck.

“How are you?  I saw your Mom a few days ago, and she told me what happened.”

“Yeah…”

“It’s just horrible, and if you need anything, please let me know,” she said genuinely and with a great amount of concern evident in her voice.

“I will,” I said.

“So, what are you looking for today?” she asked.

“Well, I just thought I would come in and look around for a little bit.”

“Okay, but just remember that if you steal anything, I know how to find you,” she joked as the phone began to ring and she walked off to answer it.

The place was a lot bigger than I remembered; she’d obviously taken over the next shop and filled it with all kinds of books.  Jen loved old books, and she’d probably read all of them in there.  She had sections devoted to the classics; there was shelf after shelf filled with cheesy romance novels whose binding had been broken.  There was a second, smaller area, devoted to people of my persuasion, with copies of Tyler Peel’s The Road Home and The Prince by a local author named David Higginbotham.  My favorite section, though, was one devoted to Spanish and Latin authors.  There was a copy of the collected poems of Julia de Burgos, quite possibly the greatest poet from my maternal homeland.  There were works by García-Lorca and Esmerelda Santiago.  Sitting on the shelf, though, there was a copy of my favorite work of Spanish literature: La vida es sueño, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

I grabbed the book and instantly turned to the title page.  On the back, I read that it was printed in Spain in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.  I flipped through its tattered pages until I came to the end of the second act, after the protagonist, Segismundo, was placed back into the tower by his father, the King of Poland.  The last part of the stanza is the most poignant, at least for me.  “I dream that I am here / in these prisons captive / and I dreamt myself in another state / much more flattering I saw myself / What is life? A Frenzy / What is life? An illusion / a shadow, a fiction / and the best good is small: / that all life is a dream / And dreams are dreams alone,” I read in Spanish.

The words rang so very true.  Whether or not life is a dream was beyond my comprehension.  Perhaps our entire lives were just figments of the imagination of a great playwright’s mind.  I thought of my own life, and how I wished that everything going on was indeed just a bad dream from which I would awaken, but I knew that it was not to be.

The book was reasonably priced, and since my bank account had recently received an influx of cash, I decided to purchase it.  I walked up to the counter to find Jen standing there talking on the phone as she looked for a book on the internet.

“Let me call you back in just a few minutes, Ms. Jansen,” she commented before a laugh and a salutation.

“So, how much are you gonna charge me for this book?” I asked jokingly, but fully prepared to pay the price she was asking.

“Before I tell you, are you gonna be around for a while?  I mean, are you going to be in Oneonta?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“’Cause the girl that I hired to work the summer isn’t going to work out.  She’s late all the time, and lazy once she gets here…”

“Are you offering me my old job back?”

“Well,  I was talking to your Mom, and she said that all you lack on your degree is your thesis.  I figured that if I had you, you would actually work, and when we weren’t busy, you could work on your thesis,” Jen explained.

“Jen... to be honest, I don’t even like leaving the house.  The only reason I’m out today is because I needed to get away for a little while,” I explained honestly, addressing my own apprehension about things.

“Ryan, I need you,” she begged.  Being that she’s a lesbian and that I’m a queer, begging didn’t really work the way it did for most people.  I couldn’t say no, however; plus, I could always use the money to buy that nice phone Xavier had just shown me.

“I will… but on a couple of conditions,” I said as she smiled.

“Okay.”

“If I’m having a bad day, you can’t hold it against me.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“And I’ve got a few things I need to do this summer.  I had been planning on going to Florida for one of Justin’s competitions, and then we’re going to Puerto Rico for the 4^th.”

“Anything else?” she jokingly asked.

“Not right now,” I answered.

“Okay.  So here’s your first perk… a free book,” Jen said as she handed me the tattered version of Calderón’s opus.  “And one condition of your employment is that you must use any free time your have to get that thesis done!  I’ll help where I can, though.”

“Thanks, Jen,” I said, getting emotional.  I don’t know why I became emotional; I just did.  Perhaps it was simply being there; perhaps it was dealing with a friend; perhaps it was that things in that moment actually seemed to be going okay for once.

“Don’t worry, Kid,” Jen said, in the same tone she’d used for years.  “Everything will be just fine!”  She wrapped her arms around my slim waist, and I put my hands on her back.

I left shortly thereafter, with the book firmly in my hand.  As I got into the car, I thought about the fact that I’d be starting my job on Monday morning, working in a place that was both familiar and comfortable, a place that I could enjoy more than any other job I could imagine at that moment.  As I drove down First Avenue, I realized that I wasn’t ready to go home.  Despite what had happened in the cell phone store and the bank, I didn’t want to go home.  Home was a place that would make me think about things, and I didn’t want to think right then.

I drove down Highway 75 toward the house, and my car almost pulled itself into the parking lot of Oneonta High School.  It’s where my brother and I had graduated.  It was where Justin was still a student and where my mother made her living teaching ungrateful children the art of cooking.  I arrived between periods, obviously, since there were no students hanging around the front door, or standing outside in the awesomeness of the mid-day. 

I walked into the lobby.  The place was different.  Where the high school office had once been, there was now an office dedicated to the business of the school system.  Where lockers had once stood was an office dedicated to the administration of the high school.  I knew that I would need to stop there first, since I was little more than a man coming to the place to visit a particular teacher.

As I walked in, I heard the voice of Dr. Loretta Young yelling at someone.  The secretary asked what she could help me with.  I introduced myself and asked for a pass to visit my mother.  The lady obliged as Dr. Young came back into the office.

“Ryan!” she exclaimed as she noticed I was there.  She walked over, as was her way, and hugged me tightly.  “How are you feeling?  Are you okay?” she asked, as concerned for me as if I were her own child.  “Your Mom will be so happy to see you out of the house.  You want me to walk you down to her room?”

“If you don’t mind,” I said as she took my arm and guided me out of the office toward my mother’s classroom.

“I am so glad to be out of that place.  People are driving me crazy today,” she confessed.  “So, how have you been, baby?”

“I’ve been okay,” I lied.

“That’s good.  When your Mom told me what happened, I was just sick.”

“Yeah…” I said as we walked to the back hall.  After two turns, we were standing just outside my Mom’s classroom. 

“I’ll leave you here, Ryan.  If there’s anything you need, please let me know,” she offered honestly.

“I will.  Thanks Ms. Loretta,” I called her.  Being that she and my Mom had been best friends for years, we’d always addressed her differently than if she were just the principal.  Of course, when we were there, she was Dr. Young.  Any other time, she was Ms. Loretta.

I turned the knob to my mother’s door as she was instructing groups of students on how to make their dishes.  The sound of the door creaking open caught her attention.

“Okay, guys.  Continue working; I’ll be right back!” she said as she noticed that it was me that was entering.

I’ve never seen a look on my mother’s face like the one that I saw that afternoon.  It wasn’t one of hurt or of something upsetting, but it was surprise.  It was all about the pleasure.

“Who’s that?” one of the girls in the class asked my Mom as she walked over to me.

“It’s my son,” she answered as she wrapped her arms around my waist.

“Ms. C!  He’s kinda hot,” one of the girls said.  Mom looked up at me and giggled a little bit. 

“I’m so glad that you are here,” she said, looking as though she were about to cry.  I certainly hadn’t intended for that to be her reaction, but it was ending up that way.  I didn’t realize that just seeing me outside the house, leaving of my own volition, did as much for her psyche as it did for mine.

“So, guys,” she said as she pulled me to the sets of stoves and fridges in her classroom.  “This is Ryan.  He’s going to be tasting your dishes today,” she informed them.  It was almost as if some of them turned and began working a little more diligently than they had before.  “So, what brings my baby from the shadows this afternoon?” she asked.

“A little black BMW,” I joked as we sat at one of the tables and she continued to watch them work away.

Mom smiled.  “You got that mouth from your father’s side of the family.”

“Seriously, though, I talked to the detective today,” I answered.  “After that, I just couldn’t be there by myself, so I decided to come to town and get some stuff done.”

“What did he say?” she asked.

“Nothing, really.  He just said that he’s working on a very promising lead.”

“Good!” she said.  “I hope that they catch whoever did this to you, and

they bury him alive!”

“We’re ready, Ms. C!” one of the groups said.  Mom stood and walked over to them.  She inspected their dish critically.  One thing about my mother was that she expected perfection when it came to food.  Only the best ingredients could be used; only the best preparation would be accepted.

“Okay.  Plate it and get it ready for judging,” she instructed.  “All right.  The group with the best dish will get 10 bonus points on the next quiz!” she announced, having come up with the contest in just that moment.  The other groups worked harder to make sure that things were perfect. 

I remember being in my mother’s class.  Hers was one of the most difficult classes I took during high school, yet I took it for three years.  If anything, no one wanted to work in a group with me because they knew that she’d be harder on me than anyone else.  The only person that would work with me was a girl that I still considered a friend: Joanna Nicholas.  As I sat there, I thought that I needed to call her, as she often crossed my mind.

The first group presented me with a simple Puerto Rican candy called turrón.  They’d cut it into little pieces, each bite-sized.  It was so good.  It was quite obvious that my mother had imparted, at least to this group, the art that was preparation of Puerto Rican cuisine.  For a second, I savored the flavor of the candy.  The students watched as I enjoyed myself, as I let myself get lost in a flavor of my childhood, of a simpler time.

When I gave them a thumbs up, they were all excited.  The second group gave me a sampling of tostones that were cooked perfectly.  The third gave me a little dish of black beans and rice.  But none of the dishes worked for me like the turrón.  The candy almost brought me to tears as I thought about sitting in my Uela’s kitchen as she and my Titi Lourdes prepared the dulce for the children running around the house.

The next period was Mom’s prep time.  After the bell rang and her classroom emptied of students, Mom pulled a couple of pots from the cabinet and started working on something.  Mom always preferred to prepare something in her room rather than eating in the lunchroom. That day, the lunch was a light pasta in an herb sauce. 

As the water boiled, she pulled two sodas from one of the refrigerators.  “I’m so glad that you came, Ryan,” she commented.  “You know I worry about you just sitting at home, smoking all the time.”

“Huh?” I tried to act as if she were mistaken, but I underestimated her ability to see things for what they were.

“I know you’ve been smoking weed.  And I know where you got it from, too,” she joked.  “You are sober now, aren’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” I answered.

As she placed the sodas on the table where we were sitting, she put her hand atop mine.  “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through, Ryan, but I want you to know that you never have to hide anything from me.”

“I love you, Mom,” I said as she stood there.  I looked up at her to see nothing but pure love in her gaze.  In that moment, I wanted to just blow open all the closet doors, but I couldn’t.  I couldn’t bring myself to explain that, for some reason, what was happening to me was because I was gay. 

“And Ryan...  When the police do find out who did this to you,” she started, “I want you to be on them like stink on shit.  I want you to find this… idiot… and I want you to nail his balls to a stump and set the shit on fire!”  My mom’s English was almost perfect, but sometimes, it was still funny to hear the way she used Southern idiomatic expressions.  I smiled.  “And I want you to pursue this, as best you can, as a hate crime.”

“Huh?”

She looked at me and smiled.  “You and your brothers think I don’t know things.  I mean, I knew that you were smoking.  I know that Parker used to smoke.  I knew that he would take girls out to the tree house and have sex like rabbits.  I know that Justin is dating that Carter kid who was just in my class.  I know, Ryan.  I’ve known for a long time.”
I didn’t know what to say.  I was at a loss to explain my feelings right then.  Was she telling me that she knew that I was gay?

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said as I opened the bottles of soda and took a sip from the one she’d placed in front of me.

“For what?  You can’t help who you are, or who you’re attracted to.”
This was, quite possibly, one of the best days I’d had in years.  I knew that my Mom knew about everything.  It was emotional; so emotional, in fact, that I started crying.  Mom walked over to where I sat, wrapped her arms around my shoulders from behind, and placed her chin on the crown of my head.

“It will all be okay,” she whispered as she held me.  It was all going to be okay... I knew it, because she was there with me, for me.

To be continued...

Posted: 12/16/11