This Day's Death

by John Rechy

  “I respectfully urge the court to consider the nature of this brush,” Alan says quickly. “The underside is brown and brittle; the brush is as tall as we are—it didn’t grow overnight.”

  “Officer Daniels, tell us exactly where you stood and watched what— . . .” Cory insists. As his asthmatic attack wanes, his impatience seems directed at the cop.

  Daniels walks ahead along the path. He keeps staring toward the grotto, which is still an indistinguishable part of the curtain of green.

  Alan: “May I point out to the court that the officer has moved closer than twenty feet to the situs we will identify as the grotto?”

  Still, Daniels continues through the thick brush, closer to the grotto.

  Edmondson: “I respectfully ask the court to observe that the officer has walked along the path at least five more feet in a southerly direction.”

  Alan: “And may I point out that the situs to be identified as the grotto is still completely indistinguishable?—that we have not yet come upon a circular clearing in the path that is six feet in diameter, or, in fact, any circular clearing—and that we are now moving into a totally enclosed area?”

  And then two men emerged quickly from the direction of the grotto and into the path. Daniels laughed. Viewing the obviously official group, the two separated. Strangers again after whatever intimacy.

  No discernible reaction from Cory. The chubby mask seems to have set. “Now, Officer Daniels, will you show us exactly where you stood— . . .”

  Still, the cop doesn’t answer. He stands looking at the path.

  Alan is pointing out: “Your honor, if I may—the path enters the grotto sharply, not in the wide swirl the officer indicated.”

  The grotto.

  Alan: “If the court please, this is the grotto—the only circular site along this path.”

  The judge moves ahead, peers into it.

  Edmondson: “And the court will observe an enclosed area roughly six feet in diameter—the only such area—and by no means is it a clearing in the open— . . .”

  Jones has not uttered a word. Hall glances into the grotto with curiosity.

  Finally clearly convinced of the impossibility of the cop’s allegations now that he’s actually seen that the area is exactly as Jim, the film, and their map depicted it, Edmondson said, “I strongly suggest the court observe the premises from the designated distances while both defendants stand to the eastern end within the grotto.”

  “Let’s do that,” Cory agrees.

  Steve and Jim stand within the grotto, all the way in, to the eastern end. Jim looks at Steve, then quickly away; remembering— . . .

  Alan’s voice: “Here is the point twenty feet away from the grotto. And may I remind the court that the officer claims from this point to have been able to view certain details—among them the placement of Mr. Travis’ hand, first claiming it was his left hand, then his right.”

  Moments of silence.

  Edmondson’s voice: “Here is the distance of fifteen feet, your honor.”

  Silence again.

  Edmondson’s voice confidently now: “Perhaps we should advance closer.”

  Again silence.

  Alan’s voice: “May it please the court: Both defendants are within the grotto, and even at this much closer distance neither is visible—much less any position of the hands or otherwise. If your honor please, no one could see anything within the grotto from this path— . . .”

  Then Daniels’ voice, firmly: “I stood here— . . .”

  Jim heard the cop’s voice only a few feet away.

  Alan’s voice quickly: “May I point out that the officer is now standing not twenty nor fifteen nor even ten feet from the mouth of the grotto but approximately five feet away and that even at this much closer distance, one cannot observe the defendants?”

  Daniels, continuing: “And they were here—at the mouth of the grotto—in the open. And they saw me standing there, and they just went on— . . .” He walks into the grotto. Jim’s hands became hard fists. “You were standing here, Girard!” he says, indicating the path outside the enclosed area. “And Travis was kneeling in front of you—here!” He turns fiercely to Steve. “Kneel there, Travis!” He indicates the exposed path.

  Bewildered, hesitating, obviously humiliated, Steve tries to stall assuming the position. “Where?”

  “You know where!” Daniels yelled at Steve. “You’ve had good practice—you were busted before!”

  “Your honor!” Edmondson protests with irritation. But it’s apparent that all formality has been abandoned.

  Alan is rushing: “The man has altered the locations totally—his, the defendants—not once now but several times! Clearly the mouth of the alcove is not to the eastern end, where the officer earlier located the defendants according to his sworn testimony; and if the court please, the— . . .”

  Meekly, Steve had knelt.

  “Stand before him, Girard!” the cop screamed at Jim.

  “Fuck yourself,” Jim said, moving away to end the scene.

  Daniels reaches out for Jim’s shoulder.

  Suddenly Jim whirls about. His left fist struck hard at the cop’s arm, his right waits poised to crush the despised face. “Come on, bastard!” Jim said.

  The cop raises both hands. In that moment—his hands suspended undecided before him—he might as easily have been preparing to ward off Jim’s blows as to strike back—or to embrace him.

  “You could get busted for reaching out for me like that!” Jim continues to challenge. “Some psyched-up cop could have seen you and thought you were putting the make on me!”

  Head tilted curiously, Daniels put one hand on his forehead. “I’m— . . .” That was all he said. That was all he did.

  Alan and Hall are standing between the two.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Cory said.

  Daniels walks away hurriedly.

  Cory turns to Jones: “And what did you see?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Jones said clearly.

  By the main road: “I’ll hear arguments at the stipulated time, gentlemen,” Cory said to the attorneys. He got into his black Rolls, starts it. He drives only a few feet away, stops.

  “Well, that’s that,” Hall seemed to acknowledge he had lost. But had he even tried? Jim wondered. It was as if he hadn’t cared at all, had proceeded only because he felt he had to. At least in this case—no, Hall was not the enemy.

  “Let’s have lunch, Jim,” Alan said jubilantly. “We can meet in my office. Things couldn’t have gone better.” His voice clearly proclaimed their victory. “Even with that outburst of yours,” he chastises.

  Edmondson is smiling and talking, amicably for the first time, with Steve.

  Attracted by the several cars there, sexhunters are again invading their turf. Cory still waited in his car.

  On the freeway: Unmistakably: Daniels’ car. Jones beside him. Jim accelerates his speed, passed the cops, and glanced at Daniels as he did so. In that glance he saw or thought he saw the cop in all his bewildered, terrible fear.

  And he remembers: A night, two youngmen, an alley; and he thinks at last, Good God, would I have arrested them! Because: It was at that moment that he let the fragmented memory which recurrently threatened his consciousness form completely: After the violence with Caroline, when he abandoned Emory and the others at a stop light, he walked to downtown El Paso. Soon he was aware of two youngmen—slightly older than him and very well-dressed—pursuing him. Fascinated, he knew why; and he allowed—encouraged—them to follow him into an alley. His hands in his pockets, he waited tensely under a light. The two approaching smiled. And Jim smiled too—at the same time that he heard his voice say menacingly, “What the hell do you want?” and felt his fist crash into the staring, easily frightened eyes of the youngman closer to him. In panic, the other held his wallet out to Jim—and it was green with bills—and said, “Is this what you want?—you can have it—here!—but don’t hit me!” Jim turned from the fright
ened youngman and his wallet, from the other sobbing—and he walked away quickly.

  Now, on the freeway in Los Angeles—the car Daniels is driving reflected so small and so far behind in his rearview mirror—Jim remembers that incident with regret and sorrow; facing his own terrified actions of that night. He feels free of something black in his life.

  At lunch—once more “hating like hell to do it”—Alan raised Jim’s fee again—$250.00 more. “The time I’ve spent on this case, Jim— . . . Of course, you can pay it in installments— . . .” Jim made no comment. He and his mother were now living on the $2,000.00 which the insurance company had paid in settlement of their claim—the money he’d saved was all gone.

  Answering a classified advertisement in one of the city’s newspapers, Jim got a temporary job that afternoon, loading and unloading merchandise in the shipping department of a Hollywood furniture store.

  After work that evening: “Mother seems extremely restless, Jim,” Estela told him when he went over. “She’s anxious to leave.”

  Apparently she had again tried to get their mother to make flowers—the material is on the table, the wire, scissors—but no flowers have been actually begun.

  “I can’t leave before two more weeks,” Jim tells her. “I’m going to be busier than before.” He won’t tell them about the temporary job.

  “She even mentioned going back to El Paso by bus, with Miss Lucía—she told me your business keeps dragging on.”

  Sitting writing—scribbling illegible symbols—another letter to anyone, no one?—Miss Lucía says softly: “The artificial life doctors provide is very powerful, like an addictive drug.” She crumples the letter, staring out the window. She wrore three brooches today. “A day can be like a year.”

  Jim goes into the bedroom where his mother is lying. The shades are drawn.

  “My Son?” She leans on her elbow.

  “Mother— . . .” He announces bluntly: “I can’t leave for two more weeks.”

  “Two weeks,” she sighs. “Then I want to go back now, with Miss Lucía— . . .”

  This is her way of demanding we go back! Jim knows. To call her bluff—to check her abrupt move—he says: “All right, Mother, you and Miss Lucía can go—by plane. Tonight.”

  “Tonight!” Estela entered the room.

  “If we can make reservations for them,” Jim says. It’s still a desperate move to force her to retreat.

  But she doesn’t—as if she’s determined to countercheck his move.

  Understanding Jim’s attempted bluff, Estela goes to the telephone in the bedroom, calls the airline, asks for reservations. She pronounces precisely the key words their mother will understand in English.

  Still, Mrs. Girard doesn’t relent—though she looks at her son and daughter with obvious hurt.

  Jim nods to Estela. Estela makes the reservations.

  It happened so unreally. She doesn’t really want to go, Jim knows; and he and Estela don’t want her to. Yet the suddenly flaring war has led them to an impasse.

  “I wish— . . .” Their mother seems about to relent. “I wish I could stay with you, Salvador—I mean you, my Son—and with you, Estela; but what if I should get sick here?”

  Clearly she’s offering a compromise—she will accept an acknowledgment of impending illness in return for her staying. But it is too open—too threatening—a compromise.

  “You’re not going to get sick!” Jim rejects it, echoed by Estela.

  An hour later, Miss Lucía and Mrs. Girard were actually packed.

  It still seemed impossible. Each camp had cornered the other. And still the arrangements are being made—Jim and Estela will split the fare, Estela will drive them to the airport—Jim unable to accept the fact yet.

  “You’re sure— . . .” He begins to ask his mother whether she’s sure she wants to leave, but finishes instead: “You’re sure you’ve got everything?”

  “Yes, my Son.”

  Jim carried their bags to the car, puts them in the trunk of Estela’s car. “Mother— . . . So long,” he says, confused—and hurt, too.

  “Goodbye, for now, my Son. I’m already missing you. With all my heart.” His mother embraces him tightly. He feels a moist spot on his chest from her tears.

  She’s really going! he realizes.

  He sees them get into the car and drive away.

  Alone. Inside his sister’s house. A heavy emptiness. Suddenly he rushed into his car. He’s driving it urgently in and out of lanes on the freeway. He’s at the airport. He parks, hurries to the airline where they’ll be checking their luggage. They’re not there—probably they stopped to buy something she needed. He waits impatiently outside the terminal. What if they rushed through?—are now upstairs ready to enter the plane. Then he saw his sister’s car stopping across the street to let Miss Lucía and their mother out before parking.

  Jim crosses the street swiftly, cars honking at him. “Goddamnit, Mother,” he shouts at her, “get back in the damn car!—you’re not leaving until I’m ready to go!” And to obviate whatever victory she might feel, he says: “I can’t afford to send you by plane—your damn medicine bills are enough!”

  “I’m glad I’m not leaving!” their mother says, wiping the steady tears.

  Estela begins to laugh.

  Miss Lucía joins her.

  Suddenly they were all laughing, and they felt a beautiful closeness, which lingered warmly as they had dinner at a nearby restaurant.

  Mrs. Girard was happy and smiling. But, Jim noticed, she didn’t remove the dark glasses.

  The magic of that night, marred only by the presence of the dark glasses she didn’t remove even in the dim restaurant, faded swiftly. There began this: a presence again, pills; sleepless nights she reported to Jim; soon, a constant blinking of her eyes—about which she complained progressively. Estela took her to an eye doctor. Her cataracts were not serious enough to be removed, he said. He changed her glasses, clear ones and dark ones. She wore only the dark ones.

  Leaving their mother with Lucía, Estela went out more often now—something she had very seldom done the earlier visits; always with the man she worked for: a good-looking, fashionably dressed man to whom their mother was noticeably cool.

  Jim felt recurrently tense with his sister. He understood her springing nerves. Yet he resented her growing impatience toward their mother, even while it mirrored his. After all, she had been able to leave, flee, Escape. It was him and his mother—alone—he thought unexpectedly. Even in the war.

  And the thought of the neurological examinations which the doctor had recommended and which he had canceled came to obsess him: examinations which might yet finally reveal some very real and terrible physical illness.

  Those days of waiting for the end of the legalistic nightmare, Jim welcomed the heavy physical labor at the shipping department of the furniture store. At night he was a wanderer again on the streets. Alone.

  He had written Barbara—and he thought of her often and missed her—that he would have to remain in Los Angeles a while longer. He would have telephoned Lloyd and Ellen, but at the last he decided to write them too instead; a call would subject him to questions he preferred not to answer.

  Already he had this of victory: the certain knowledge of Daniels slaughtered in the park. But more and more his feelings toward the cop inched toward the barest edge of pity.

  Once he called Steve—but a woman answered, and he asked for a made-up name.

  Usually at a restaurant, or in the gym Roy was a member of, Jim saw Roy again several times. Jim was recurrently captured by the awareness of others helplessly trapped in the legalistic web he would escape. "Fifteen years!” he would say to Roy. “You can get fifteen years in prison for something that hurts no one! All it takes is a sick cop—a sick judge.” And an equally strong obsession: “And no one seems to give a damn!” It provided a powerful determination for him to go into criminal law.

  The days moved slowly. Five days. Six. . . . A week. One more week
before they would return to court. Six more days, five more; four . . . three. Two. . . . Thursday.

  Friday.

  Friday. Jim stands again in the hall outside of Cory’s courtroom. Today even Steve seems relaxed and confident. Jaunty in a yellow-and-black checkered vest, Alan went into the courtroom minutes earlier with a smiling Edmondson—after discussing their formal argument—“and it’s a mere formality now”—with Jim.

  “It’s really ending,” Steve says.

  Suddenly Alan was standing beside them. “I don’t believe it—he’s finding you guilty!”

  STEVE SAID, “OH, GOD, NO!”

  Jim didn’t react.

  “It’s hard to believe,” Edmondson said. “Even the district attorney is surprised.”

  Guilty! The word glided on the surface of Jim’s mind.

  He challenged the surreal absurdity of what he’s hearing: “How the hell can he find us guilty? You haven’t even presented our argument yet!”

  “He just told us in chambers,” Alan said. “He’s made up his mind, he doesn’t want to spend any more time on it.”

  “Doesn’t want to spend more time! What the hell is he here for? We’ve still got to present our arguments,” Jim insists. Guilty. Without even a formal culmination to the legal ceremony?—as if the machine had become impatient and decided to spew them out prematurely in preparation for the grinding of other lives.

  “We’ll just antagonize him,” Alan says. “He’s made up his mind—we’ve got to think of the sentence now. We can’t irritate him,” he seemed to imply that much at blackmail. “Look, Jim, at this point he’s like God. He can do anything he wants. And although you were tried for a felony and found guilty, he can even now reduce it to a misdemeanor. It will be entirely up to him when he pronounces sentence—. . .”

  A new flickering hope. The insistent ghost of a miracle. Not a felony. But Jim won’t seize it now.

  “We’ve got to think of that,” Alan is saying.

  And so Cory had made it difficult even to argue the case, Jim understood.