Bright Shiny Morning

by James Frey

  Barry still goes to work every day, still takes great pride in Putt Putt Bonanza. He knows, however, that his dream is almost dead. He’s closing the go-kart track and the bumper-boat pond at the end of the year because they’ve become too expensive to insure, and he knows a lawsuit would ruin him. He can’t bear to go into the arcade because it’s all weapons and death, explosions and noise. His staff takes no pride in their jobs, the turnover is so high that sometimes he can’t open the clubhouse. Some of the concrete in the holes of the courses is cracking, he can’t keep up with the weeds, he finds urine in the water traps at least twice a week. His savings are gone so he can’t do renovations. He can stay open, but that is all.

  A developer came to Barry and offered to buy Putt Putt Bonanza. The developer wants to level it and build a mini-mall. The money would allow Barry to pay off his house and retire in relative comfort. Barry’s brothers tell him to do it, his accountant tells him to do it, his sense of reason and his brain tell him to do it. His heart says no. Whenever he allows himself to hear it, his heart says no, no, no. All day long, every day, his heart screams no.

  Before he goes to bed every night, Barry sits in bed and looks through an album he keeps on his nightstand. It’s a pictorial history of his life at Putt Putt Bonanza. It starts with a picture of him shaking hands with the seller of the land the moment they closed on the sale. It follows him through the planning, most of which took place at a table in his parents’ house, the building of the course, which he did with many of his old friends. There is a shot of him on opening day, sitting and smiling at his card table, there are pictures of him during each of the expansion phases, pictures of him with smiling happy customers, laughing children, satisfied parents. About halfway through the album, there is a picture of him with the stars of The Kung Fu Kid: an old Chinese man, a young Italian-American teenager, and a blond ingénue who would go on to win an Academy Award. They are standing at the entrance of the park, the Putt Putt Bonanza sign glows behind them. Barry was forty-two years old when the photo was taken, at the height of his career, his dreams had come true and he was happy. When he gets to the photo, he stops and stares at it. He smiles, even though he knows it will never be like that again, even though he knows the world no longer wants what he has, what he loves, what he has devoted his life to building and maintaining. He lies in bed and stares at the photo and smiles. His brain says let it go, sell it. His heart says no. His heart says no.

  Because of the long and difficult nature of its original name, sometime around 1830, the settlement of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula became known as Ciudad de Los Angeles.

  Amberton Parker.

  Born in Chicago the scion of a great midwestern meatpacking family.

  Educated at St. Paul’s, Harvard.

  Moves to New York lands a starring role in a Broadway drama in his first audition. The play opens to brilliant reviews and wins ten Tony Awards. Makes an independent film wins a Golden Globe.

  Makes an action/drama about American corruption in the Middle East. Film grosses $150 million, get nominated for an Oscar.

  Dates an actress the biggest!!! actress in the world. Dates a model who goes by one name. Dates a debutante, an Olympic swimmer the winner of six gold medals, a prima ballerina.

  Stars in a series of action films. Stops terrorists, mad scientists, bankers intent on ruling the world. Kills an Eastern European who possesses a nuclear weapon, an Arab with a virus, a South American temptress with the most addictive drug the world has ever seen. If they’re evil, and are threatening America, he kills them. Kills them dead.

  To prove his versatility he does a dance film, a mob film, a sports film. He wins an Oscar playing a principled explorer who falls in love with a luscious squaw and leads a ragtag mixed-race rebellion against a corrupt king.

  He marries a beautiful young woman from Iowa. She is a minor movie star who, after the marriage, becomes a major movie star.

  They have three children, they shield them from the public.

  He starts a foundation. He does the talk-show circuit. He dedicates himself to peace and education. He speaks eloquently about the meaning and need for transparency and truth in our society.

  He writes a memoir about his life, his loves, his beliefs. It sells two million copies.

  He is an American hero.

  Amberton Parker.

  Symbol of truth and justice, honesty and integrity.

  Amberton Parker.

  Public heterosexual.

  Private homosexual.

  In 1848, after two years of hostilities between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo makes California a United States territory.

  Her parents were fifty feet across the border when she was born her mother Graciella was lying in the dirt screaming her father Jorge was trying to figure out how to keep them from dying. Jorge had a pocketknife. He cut the cord, pulled the placenta away the baby started crying, Jorge started crying, Graciella started crying. They each had their reasons. Life pain fear relief opportunity hope the known the unknown. Crying.

  They had tried four other times to make it over. They had been caught twice sent back twice, Graciella had gotten sick and was unable to continue twice. They were from a small farming village in Sonora that was slowly dying, the farms disappearing, the people leaving. The future was to the north. Jobs were to the north. Money was to the north.

  Someone in their village told them if their child was born on American soil that the child would be an American citizen. If their child was an American citizen they would be allowed to stay. If they could stay there might be a future.

  They were cleaning her off when Border Patrol pulled up, one man behind the wheel of a jeep, a pistol on his hip, a cowboy hat on his head. He stepped out of the truck looked at them saw the child, saw the blood running down Graciella’s legs, saw Jorge petrified. He stood and stared at them. No one moved. The blood ran.

  He turned and opened the back door of the jeep.

  Get in.

  No hablamos inglés.

  Usted aprende mejor sí usted desea hacer algo de se en este país.

  Sí.

  Get in.

  He motioned towards the backseat, helped them inside, made sure they were safe, closed the door, drove as quickly as he safely could across the desert. Jorge shook with fear he did not want to get sent back. Graciella shook with fear she couldn’t believe she held a child in her arms. The baby screamed.

  It took an hour to get to the nearest hospital. The jeep pulled up to the emergency entrance the man helped the new family out he led them to the door. He stopped before they entered looked at the father spoke.

  Welcome to America.

  Gracias.

  I hope you find what you’re looking for.

  Gracias.

  They named her Esperanza. She was small, like both of her parents, and she had a full head of curly black hair, like both of her parents. She had light skin, almost white, and dark eyes, almost black, and she had exceptionally large thighs, almost cartoonishly large, as if her upper legs had somehow been inflated. She was an easy baby. She constantly smiled and giggled, rarely cried, slept well, ate well. Because of complications related to her birth in the desert, which had partly been caused by her giant thighs, Jorge and Graciella knew they would never have another child, and it made them hold her more closely, carry her more gently, love her more, more than they thought they would or could, more than they imagined was possible.

  The family drifted through Arizona for three years, Jorge worked as a picker at citrus farms tangelos, oranges and nectarines, Graciella, who always had the smiling, giggling Esperanza with her, cleaned the houses of the wealthy white upper class. They lived simply, usually in single-room hovels, with only the bare necessities: a bed they shared, a table, a hotplate, a sink and a bathroom. They saved whatever they could, every penny nickel and dime was coveted, every dollar counted and kept, they wanted to own their own house, make
their own home. That was the dream, an American daughter, an American home.

  They drifted north into California. There were always citrus farms, there were always houses that needed cleaning. There were always communities of Mexicans in the same position, with the same dreams, the same willingness to work, the same desire for a better life. Two more years and they went to East Los Angeles, which is the largest Hispanic community in the United States. They lived in the garage of a man whose cousin was from their village. They slept on a mattress on the floor, went to the bathroom in buckets that they poured down the sewer. It would be temporary, they hoped, they were ready to find their house. They didn’t know what they could afford, if they could afford anything, how to buy, where to begin looking, all they knew was that they wanted, they wanted a home, they wanted.

  They didn’t have a car, so they took the bus all over East LA, looked through Echo Park, Highland Park, Mt. Washington, Bell Garden, Pico Rivera. There was nothing they could afford, they went to Boyle Heights, which at the time, in 1979, was the most dangerous area of East LA, and they found a small dilapidated house with a ramshackle garage, the previous owners had tried to light it on fire because they thought it was possessed by a demon. It didn’t burn, they tried three times and it wouldn’t burn, so they changed their mind and thought it might be protected by God. Either way, they were scared to live there and wanted to get rid of it. When they saw Esperanza, they marveled at her thighs, which were almost adult-sized, and they were charmed by her smile and her giggle, and they proclaimed her to be a child of the Lord and Savior, and sold the house to Jorge and Graciella for $8,000, which was every cent they had to their name. As they walked out of the house, after agreeing on final terms, Jorge fell to his knees and started crying. American daughter. American home. American dream.

  They moved in a month later. They had their clothes and a couple of worn blankets, Esperanza had a doll she called Lovie. They didn’t have any furniture, no beds, no plates knives, cups, pots or pans, no means of transportation, no radio, no TV. On their first night in the house, Jorge bought a can of grape soda and some paper cups, Graciella picked up a Hostess fruit pie. They had soda and pieces of the pie. Esperanza ran around the house asking what they were going to do with all of the rooms, she wanted to know if it was a house or castle. Jorge and Graciella sat and smiled and held hands. They slept on the floor of the living room, the three of them under one blanket, father mother and daughter, together under one blanket.

  On February 18, 1850, Los Angeles County is formed as one of the original twenty-seven counties of the Territory of California. On April 4, 1850, the City of Los Angeles is incorporated. On September 9, 1850, California becomes the thirty-first state of the Union.

  Dawn fades with the rising sun. No answers for Old Man Joe. There never are, never have been, he wonders if there ever will be, he’ll keep coming every morning until either the answers arrive or he’s gone. He gets up brushes the sand from his legs and arms walks back to his bathroom, which he will vacate, except for the facilitation of necessary bodily functions, for most of the day.

  After he’s organized and hidden his belongings, he eats breakfast, which is usually leftover Mexican from the night before, though he often trades food with other homeless men who live near dumpsters belonging to a pizza parlor, a Chinese restaurant, a burger joint, and every now and then a hot dog stand (sometimes the dogs just aren’t edible after twelve hours in the open air). After his breakfast, he gets a cup of coffee, which a man who runs a coffee stand gives him for free in exchange for advice on women. Even though Old Man Joe is single and has never been married, he considers himself an expert on women. Most of his advice to the man revolves around the idea that if you ignore a woman, she will like you more. Occasionally, of course, this tactic backfires, but it works often enough to have provided Old Man Joe with free beverages for several years.

  With his coffee in hand, Joe walks south for fifteen blocks to the Venice Pier, which sits at the end of Washington Blvd., and denotes the border between Venice and Marina Del Rey. He walks to the end of the pier, which juts two hundred yards out into the Pacific, walks in a circle, and walks back to the boardwalk. Occasionally, he stops at the end of the pier and watches surfers, who use the wave breaks on both sides of the pier, which crash against its pylons. When he walks, he tries to empty his mind, find some peace, think one step, one step, one step until he’s thinking about nothing. It doesn’t, however, usually work, and he finds himself thinking about the same old shit: what will I eat today, how much money will I get from the tourists, when will I start drinking?

  After his walk, Joe heads out to a bench along the main section of the boardwalk and sits down. Once he is comfortably seated on the bench, Joe begs money from tourists so he can afford to get drunk.

  In 1856, Mexican nationalist Juan Flores attempts to start a revolution intended to liberate Los Angeles and return southern California to the control of the Mexican government. He was caught and hanged in what was then downtown in front of 3,000 spectators.

  The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads as follows—A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

  It’s an ugly building. Nondescript and drab in Culver City. It’s surrounded by deserted factories, warehouses, empty parking lots, auto-body shops. There’s razor wire along its perimeter. There are two doors at the lone entrance and exit, one is made of steel bars, the other is made of solid steel. There are security cameras along the roof that record everything that happens along the boulevard, everyone that comes in and out of the doors. The exterior walls are made of aluminum siding, and behind the siding there is a two-foot layer of concrete to prevent a vehicle, almost any type of vehicle except a tank, from driving through them. Parking is on the street.

  Larry’s a hater. A mean-ass motherfucking hater. He hates everybody. He hates blacks, Latinos, Asians, he hates women and gays, he hates Jews and he hates Arabs, he really fucking hates those Arabs. Larry is white. Unlike most white racists, Larry is not a white supremacist. He hates whites too, hates them as much as he hates anyone, sometimes more because he’s one of them. When asked about hating whites, Larry says—If I was given the choice between shooting a white motherfucker and some motherfucker with pigment in his skin, I’d line ’em up back-to-back so I could shoot ’em both with one bullet. The first time his mother heard him make the remark, she commented on how intelligent she thought he was. He told her to shut the fuck up, that he hated her too.

  Larry is a gun freak. An avid believer in and defender of an individual’s right to bear arms. Larry owns more than 400 of his own guns. He owns handguns, hunting rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper’s rifles. He keeps his guns in a fortified room in the basement of his house, which is a few blocks from his shop. The armory, which is what he calls the room, is also stocked with more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and booby-trapped with plastic explosives.

  Larry owns the building, rebuilt it to his own design after he acquired it in the early ’80s. He also owns and is the proprietor of the gun shop housed within it. Officially, on the papers he filed with the state for both his business and gun dealer’s licenses, the shop is called Larry’s Firearms. Unofficially, Larry calls the shop—the place where I sell shit to kill people.

  There is no doubt, in Larry’s mind, as to the motivations of his customers. Whether the killing is done in self-defense, or as the result of some form of aggressive action, is irrelevant to him, the result is always the same, a sad dead motherfucker going to the morgue. Though he hates almost all of them for one reason or another, Larry makes no distinctions between his customers. As long as they are not convicted felons, and as long as he is legally allowed to sell them a firearm of some kind, be it a pistol, a rifle or a shotgun, be it revolver, single shot, or semi-auto easily converted to full auto, Larry will take their money and give them what they
want.

  Once they leave his shop, what they do with the weapons is none of his business. He knows, however, and takes a certain joy in the fact, that if used properly, the weapons will do their job, they will kill human beings, kill motherfuckers that he hates, rid the fucking world of them. He doesn’t care about their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. He hates them all equally. He sells things that kill them.

  She is twenty-six years old. She is originally from Indianapolis. She has lived in LA for nine months, she moved here to become a publicist, her family did not approve. Three weeks ago she was walking through a parking garage, it was late at night, she had been on a first date, she had had two glasses of wine with dinner. Her date had wanted to walk to her car, but she liked him, really liked him, he was a year older, an entertainment attorney, someone who wanted, like her, a career and later a family, and she knew if he walked to her car he would try to kiss her. She wanted to take it slowly, try to engage in as old-fashioned a dating process as possible. She said she’d be fine. He said he would call her. She smiled and said she looked forward to it. She walked away.

  She had been in the garage many times, her office was down the street, it was in Santa Monica, which is a safe, wealthy, stable community. The garage was fairly empty. She took an elevator to the fourth floor. She got out and started walking towards her car, which was on the opposite side of the garage.

  She immediately felt uneasy. She started walking more quickly something was wrong wrong she was suddenly terrified absolutely fucking terrified something was wrong. She was twenty feet from her car, fifteen, ten she reached for her keys ten feet away as she reached for her keys she was terrified. He stepped out from between two cars, came at her from behind, she was five feet away, her keys in her hand.