This Day's Death

by John Rechy

“When you located the tripod for the camera, did you try to place it in the same relationship as a man would stand at those several locations along the path?”

  “Yes, we were very careful to do that.”

  “Mr. Girard, was the camera always on the path?”

  “Always.”

  “Thank you.”

  Now Alan began the redirect examination.

  “Mr. Girard,” he says, “I believe counsel for the people asked whether you were wearing any shorts that day; I believe your answer was no. Are you in the habit of wearing undershorts?”

  “No.”

  “Now when you were booked, were you required to strip at any time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “During that time, was Officer Daniels present?”

  “Yes, very much so—he stood very close to me while I stripped. He kept staring at me while I was naked.”

  Daniels crumples a piece of yellow paper.

  “So Officer Daniels would have seen—then, at the station—that you were not wearing underclothes?”

  “That’s correct; that’s when he saw it.”

  Hall smiles.

  “I believe you stated that these films were taken about a week ago. Had the foliage and general area changed perceptibly, in your opinion?” Alan is asking.

  “No change that I could detect.”

  “And how far were you from Mr. Travis when you were arrested?”

  “At least forty feet.”

  “Nothing further, your honor.”

  Edmondson: “Nothing further.”

  The defense rested. The film and the map were accepted in evidence.

  “I’ll call Officer Daniels,” Hall said. Once again he glances slyly at Jim, as if they were co-conspirators.

  Mechanically Daniels rose from his chair.

  Hall: “Please state your name for the record.”

  “William E. Daniels.” And this time he adds: “William Emory Daniels.”

  The impossible coincidence. The cop’s middle name the same as Emory Carter’s first. Jim feels a coldness like on that night after his release from jail.

  Hall: “Would you tell us your occupation?”

  “Police officer, City of Los Angeles, assigned to the Hollywood Vice Patrol.” His voice fades as, again, he plays nervously with the gold band on his finger as if for invisible support.

  “Calling your attention to this map: Does it accurately represent the area of the arrest in this case?”

  “No.”

  “Will you come to the map and point out the major inaccuracies?”

  “There are too many.” The cop confronts the map like an enemy. “Here’s a major one! The path to the so-called grotto doesn’t slant like this, it comes in at an angle of more than ninety degrees— . . .”

  Smiling almost indulgently as if at a child’s impossible stories, Alan shakes his head.

  Hall: “Please show us, as well as you can on this map, where the defendants were when you observed them.”

  “Here,” he says. But he hesitates before he points. Perhaps remembering his own map, the location he had already identified on the exhibit placed in evidence at the preliminary hearing, “Here, where the black X is,” he finally says. “Mr. Girard was standing, Travis was kneeling in front of him; Girard’s back was semi-turned to me, and he isn’t wearing a shirt— . . .”

  Hall: “Was not—that day?”

  Daniels corrects himself: “Was not.”

  “And you watched from where?”

  “About ten— . . . I mean, fifteen feet away— . . .”

  Hall: “On the very path leading to the grotto?”

  Daniels: “Yes, sir; but this map doesn’t give a correct presentation of it, of the path.”

  Hall: “And at that distance you observed— . . .”

  Daniels didn’t allow him to finish. He said hurriedly: “Travis is kneeling before Girard. Girard isn’t wearing a shirt, nor shorts—he isn’t wearing any shorts, his pants are down to his knees, and Travis’ right hand is on Girard’s right—I mean, left—thigh; and Travis is kneeling before Girard, and Travis’ head is moving back and forth over the erect penis of Girard. I see Girard’s erect penis inserted in the mouth of defendant Travis— . . .”

  Hall interrupts him sharply: “Please resume the stand, Officer Daniels.”

  Daniels returned to the witness chair.

  Abruptly Jim remembered: Himself, the other Emory, that distant night; remembered: A bloodied face, his fist, two youngmen fleeing— . . .

  Hall is asking “Do the films we’ve seen accurately represent your view at the time?”

  “No—they didn’t.”

  “Did they show the place where you stood and they were and did they correctly reveal the angle of sight you had at the time?”

  “No, sir, no—definitely not.”

  “No further questions for now, your honor,” Hall says.

  Looking at—scrutinizing Daniels—Alan approached him very closely, stands staring at him, then says: “Officer Daniels, you have testified that Mr. Girard and Mr. Travis were forty feet apart when the arrests occurred—have you not?”

  Silence.

  “Officer Daniels, shall I read your statement to refresh your mind?”

  “Yes, forty feet apart,” Daniels said.

  “All right. Now you testified you watched the alleged act—. . . How long?”

  “I can’t remember now; it was long ago.”

  “I’ll refresh your memory—you said you watched four minutes.”

  “Yes,” the cop says. “It was four minutes.”

  “Four . . . minutes,” Alan draws out the words, to emphasize how infinitely long an interval of four minutes can stretch. He glances at his watch, measuring four minutes. The silence drags on. On. On. . . . Finally, Alan says: “Four minutes—and you testified you stood twenty or fifteen—I believe you used both distances—twenty or fifteen feet away—which distance was it?”

  “Fifteen,” Daniels says.

  “Of course.” Pause. “Officer Daniels,” Alan says now, “again at the preliminary hearing—the transcript of which as you know is here entered in evidence—you described the area where the defendants allegedly were as— . . . Here, I’ll read your words: You said: ‘The defendants were on the trail, in a clearing.’ And I asked you, ‘Now are there trees behind which you were hiding?’ And your answer: ‘I wasn’t hiding.’ I’m trying to refresh your memory, Officer Daniels. Then I asked you, ‘What you described occurred right out in the open, did it?’ And you said—I’m still quoting, to refresh your memory—you said, ‘Yes, sir.’ On your little map, which is also a part of these proceedings, you rather reluctantly drew a circle which you identified as being six feet in diameter—as Mr. Girard has done on his map. You located the defendants within that circle; and when I insisted you pinpoint more exactly where you claimed they stood within that circle, you placed an X and designated their location as—quote—‘off to the eastern end’—unquote. You described the circle as—I’ll quote your words again—‘a clearing in the path, a circular clearing.’ Mr. Girard, today, described it as being like a large nest on its side—an enclosed grotto; the films further revealed it to be so. You contended the circle is—quote—‘in the open.’ When— . . .”

  “Your honor,” Hall says good-humoredly, “may we expect counsel’s question within the next five minutes or so?”

  Cory: “Please phrase your question, Mr. Bryant.”

  Alan: “All right. Officer Daniels, are you as sure the grotto is in the open as you are about whether you stood twenty, fifteen, ten feet away?”

  Hall cursorily: “Objection, your honor; I’ve been most indulgent of counsel, but this is— . . .”

  Cory unexpectedly: “Will counsel approach the bench?”

  Jim had a surrealistic feeling. It was his and Steve’s fates the attorneys and the judge were discussing in whispers; yet neither he nor Steve could listen. The whispering continues.

  Then Alan
faces the court recorder: “I withdraw the pending question, your honor.” Then, clearly for the written record: “We’ve discussed among counsel a stipulation that the court observe the area for itself. That seems to be one of the primary issues—the angle of the path, the visibility of the area marked X on both maps in evidence—whether it’s enclosed or in the open; and whether— . . .”

  They would be going to the park! Jim feels as if their victory, and Daniels’ defeat, has already been announced.

  Edmondson is saying, “I would further stipulate that counsel be present but no court attachés will be required.”

  Edmondson is still not sure the place is the way they depicted it—that’s why he doesn’t want the court recorder there, Jim realizes.

  Cory: “All right—I want both defendants and both officers. As I recall, one hasn’t testified at all. We’ll convene here on Friday, at 11:30. We might have our calendar disposed of by then.”

  Daniels left the courtroom instantly.

  Outside, Alan was exultant. Steve still seemed frightened. “Jim,” he said, after Alan and Edmondson left separately, “let’s have something to eat—will you?”

  Jim would prefer to avoid the feeling of embarrassment pressing in when they’re alone; but again Steve’s intensity sways him.

  They went to one of those orange-and-brown coffee-houses nestling under a huddle of palmtrees all over Southern California: with lights like inverted mushrooms hanging from stems, low-slanted threatening windows, green, slick plants. They sat in a glossy booth.

  “When we go to Griffith Park Friday,” Steve verbalizes a part of his fear, “what if there are a lot of guys making out everywhere?”

  “I’ll get there before anyone else and tell whoever is there to split—like I did when we took the movies. Wow, man, don’t be down—we’ve almost won. Diggit: The cop tried to change his distance again—that gassed everybody! He lied about the angle of the path. He said this time it was your right hand, not your left— . . . And he’s stuck with the X he put in the circle, the grotto is the only six-foot-diameter circle along that path, and he drew the rest of the area the way it is—and the grotto isn’t in the open— . . .”

  “Do you think maybe he did see me kneel and really thought it had happened— . . .”

  “He didn’t see a mothering thing!” Jim says angrily. “What about all those lies about my penis and your mouth— . . .! He didn’t see a goddamn thing. He couldn’t have, you saw that yourself when we took the movies. And he placed us at the eastern end of the grotto—that’s the farthest point within it. And if he was that close and he had seen or even thought he had seen what he claims— for four minutes—why the hell would he have waited for us to split forty feet?”

  Steve rushes as if afraid he’ll stop: “Remember when I asked you over that night and I wanted to tell you something but I couldn’t? I want you to know now: The reason I didn’t want to testify is— . . . Jim, I was arrested before— . . .”

  Jim only looked at him.

  “I was arrested, about three years ago—also in the park, but in another section.”

  “What was the charge?” Jim heard his voice. Pity, frustration, anger, weariness, apprehension.

  “Soliciting for immoral purposes, they called it. It wasn’t a felony charge like this one, though; it was a misdemeanor, I was fined—I pleaded guilty to a reduced charge—disorderly conduct—so I wouldn’t have to register with—. . .”

  “Register?” Jim asks incredulously.

  “On sex convictions you have to register with the chief of police every time you move to a new address. They keep your photograph and fingerprints. You can even be ordered committed to a state mental institution. . . . And under the registration laws whenever a real sex crime happens—like mangling a little girl—they can bring you to the station even if what you were charged with has nothing to do with the crime they’re investigating.”

  “They’re the ones who are sick,” Jim said with bitter outrage. “The cops and the district attorneys and the fucking judges and their crazy laws!” He saw it so clearly: Constantly some machine had to be fed a sacrificial offering to quell the latent fears. “Jesus—sex, a crime! Sex between people who are grown up and want to make it. A crime! A felony!”

  “And we could get fifteen years,” Steve said. “That’s harder to believe. And it didn’t even happen.”

  The threatening absurdity of it made Jim laugh defensively.

  “It’s against the law even to try to make contact when you’re lonely,” Steve continues. “Just asking someone if you’re interested is considered a crime—they call it solicitation. They pay cops to hang around where they’ll be solicited; or they do the soliciting themselves—and if you accept, that’s a crime. It doesn’t make sense, does it?—they actually pay men to create what they consider a crime. . . . That afternoon, when I finally caught up with you in the grotto, I was hesitant at first because you looked— . . . You might have been a cop— . . .”

  Jim winced. He remembered: An alley.

  “You don’t have to be doing anything,” Steve was going on. “Even making yourself available to be approached—you can get arrested for that. . . . What happened when I was arrested the first time—I want to tell you, Jim—this guy, he kept playing with himself in the park, and I approached him, like I did you, except that he— . . . I went down on him. And afterwards he arrested me. Later he claimed I just approached him, that I offered to go— . . . I was trapped; if I told the truth, they’d have a more serious charge against me. So I kept quiet. And he was a cop! Crazy, isn’t it?”

  As Steve talked, fragments of memories lashed persistently at Jim: A fist, blood, sobs.

  “Maybe Jones’ll even claim he saw it too,” Steve is saying. “They stick together. They killed a guy in a gay bar they raided in Westlake one New Year’s. Nothing was going on; they just stormed in, picking people up and handcuffing them. This one guy—I knew him, he was nice, quiet—he was there with his sister, the cops thought she was a queen in drag, they started pulling at her hair, her brother protested, they threw him against the bar, ruptured his spleen, he died. And it’s not the only time. Just a few weeks ago, the cops shot a man in San Francisco, and kicked a handcuffed man to death on Main Street here. Both arrested on homosexual charges. And there’s others. More you never hear of. Each time it was murder—but the cops stuck together, lying, saying it was self-defense—and nothing was done about it. Think of the suicides— . . .”

  An alley, eyes, blood. Jim almost allows himself to remember.

  “Right after I was arrested, Jim,” Steve is saying, “that’s when I got married—when that nightmare was over; I married, and I had a kid because I thought that would stop the— . . . And I love my wife, so much, and my son, and I’d do anything for them—but that hasn’t changed anything. My wife doesn’t know, of course—but what if she finds out now?”

  “She won’t have to,” Jim assures him.

  “And the cops know that I was arrested before; Daniels asked me that day when they filled out those interrogation forms, and I told him. You suppose the judge knows somehow— . . . Maybe just because I won’t testify?”

  “Does Edmondson know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jim tells him, and he feels suddenly very tired. “It can’t have any effect on this.”

  STAY AWAY— . . .

  The telephone conversation with his mother earlier decreases this day’s bright triumph in court. The conversation with Steve . . . that too.

  In his car, driving, listening to heavy rock sounds; and the news: The cops again marching savagely against dissenters. One youngman dead, another blinded, others hospitalized. America is on fire.

  Downtown Los Angeles, ugly and decaying; gray buildings mantled with soot like tombstones already proclaiming the death of the city. Now along Wilshire Boulevard—and sections of this dying city of lost angels that make it still beautiful: old arched houses on distant green hill
s, futuristic white buildings with wings, palmtrees and flowers ignoring winter.

  A telephone. Stay away, don’t call. To the movies. No, the beach. No. He calls Roy instead. He’s not home. He doesn’t want to be alone, he feels “summoned” to his sister’s house. Already he’s on the freeway.

  “Is she still in bed?” he asks Estela.

  “Yes—since we got back from the doctor. She hasn’t even eaten.”

  Apparently having heard Jim, Mrs. Girard comes into the living room. Jim notices she’s leaning heavily on her cane.

  “Mother, how is your ankle?”

  “My Son! It’s not my ankle. I’m just not— . . .”

  “You’re just tired from the traveling,” he insists. “Estela says you haven’t eaten, and I haven’t either—let’s eat something now, Mother,” he says anxiously.

  Miss Lucía—more heavily made up than usual—had already begun to heat the food hopefully. Jim sits across from his mother, Estela is drinking coffee between them. Jim watches his mother. Are her hands trembling? Her voice, is it going to quiver? She touches her hair. The flaring signals? No, Jim keeps insisting. Not that now!

  He had to flee the oppressive reminders of the long, long day. She’s just tired from the trip. He drove along the coast. Vagrant thoughts jabbed his consciousness. What Steve told him—what effect? His mother sick in Los Angeles. The additional examinations the doctor proposed. What if— . . . No, she’s just tired from the trip! The park—Friday . . . the shadows hunting. Steve’s wife, his kid. . . . Barbara. . . . Now fog cloaks the ocean.

  He called Roy’s office. “It’s over?” Roy asks eagerly. “Not yet—but almost,” Jim says in relief to have reached him. “I’ll be home in a few minutes,” Roy tells him. “I’ll see you then,” Jim says.

  The night mist had not yet conquered the city, only the beach had surrendered.

  Roy’s house is all wood and brown leather upholstery.

  Quickly Jim told Roy about the trial; about going to the park Friday—merely interjecting the fact of Steve’s prior arrest so Roy won’t comment; about Daniels’ further contradictions. “And when I told about how he stared at me when I stripped at the station—and that’s how he knew I wasn’t wearing shorts and not because he saw anything in the park—I thought the son of a bitch was going to shout—. . . something. I was sure then it was him who approached me earlier that afternoon. If I had only noticed the car he drove us in to the station! It was old, that’s all I remember—yet I can remember things like that on the freeway some guys and girls made a V sign with their fingers and I couldn’t answer with my own because of the handcuffs. . . . But if it was Daniels, did he really want to make it, and when I put him down— . . .? Yeah, that was it. Yet he tried to give me an out at the station, to get me to testify against Steve.”