What We Are (36 page)

Very clever, these idiotic pundit T-shirt designers.

I say, “Can I get one of those shirts in tie-dye, bro?”

He doesn't smile, he's pissed. With his stubby index finger and thumb he twirls down the radio volume, leaving the other party hanging on a sentence. “Ten-four,” he whispers, assessing me as a drill sergeant would a new recruit.

“Well,” I say, “it's been nice talking to you boys, but I'm off to an immigrants' rights rally.”

“No,” he says. “You're gonna have to stay here for a bit.”

So the police are on their way.

He says to the old man, “Can you leave us alone here, Bill?”

Bill fires out, “Yes, sir! He's ours!” and then walks off.

“Let's just make sure everything's okay,” the man says. “Can I see your ID, please?”

“You a cop?”

“I'm in charge of security here.”

“I'll take that as a no, bro.”

“You made a big mistake,” he says, with a kind of seriousness reserved for people like Judge Nguyen, “by running over those cones. You'll likely be charged.”

“With what?”

“Trespassing, destruction of property. You're going to laugh yourself all the way downtown. First and Hedding. The county jail.”

“Eh, bro,” I say, barely able to control myself, “let's start over.”

He nods, awaiting my contrition. Guys like this guy make me sick. One sentence out of his mouth and you can predict his every move, articulate his peon political (dis)positions. He's like Chinaski, he has a peephole for a soul. His window to the world is like a telescope permanently connected to the very spot Neil Armstrong said, “A small step for man....” He's stuck in the heyday of the country, a time well before his birth.

If I were to inform this provincial simpleton of my real feelings about democracy, that its integrity diminishes the larger the constituency it serves, that there should be way less space between the vote and the act, which means if you're gonna vote someone's ass on the line be sure to volunteer your own ass first, he'll undoubtedly reroute his energy from apprehending the suspect to executing the suspect. And you can bet he'll be front row at the lynching, anything to catch a splash of my commie blood on his B-52-for-peace T.

Should I be a humanitarian and save his simple heart from explosion by lacing my words with acquiescence, something like:
The Athenians, after all, were marching up to the Acropolis and casting votes while visible to fellow citizenry
.

Ignore the confused countenance of my audience:
The Acropolis? Duh. Ain't that where the Lakers play?

Hell, I should just whip his ass for the sake of Tillman, the Athenians and—why not?—the Lakers too, bust him clean across the jaw, test his John Wayne true grit. Sure, he's deified Tillman's number,
but by virtue of his sloppy need for a leader this follower is actually the Anti-Tillman.

In the same serious pompous tone he's mastered, I say, “Okay. Borrowing from the rebellious spirit of the honoree of the hour, Mr. Pat Tillman”—here I lift my beanie—“allow me to say that your wannabe cop ass oughta eat a big fat dick.”

“Now that's not going to get us anywhere,” he says.

“It'll get you not to talk.”

He's quiet, thinking up a comeback. “I guess you're lucky it's not a crime to be a communist in this country.”

“That's a pretty good one,” I say, “for a security guard. Is that what your shirt means by superior firepower? Were you the speech-and-debate champ at the Esteemed Academy for Tollbooth Operators?”

“We're here today to champion democracy by celebrating a champion of democracy.”

“Wow. Pretty impressive. How long did you practice that in front of a mirror? Bet it took a whole year. She sells seashells by the seashore.”

The winner is a thin beanpole Caucasian with an
I LOVE PAT
shirt and a 42 headband. He doesn't bother putting up his arms; he just nods kindly and walks over to grab an orange at the Jamba Juice stand. I want to shake his hand for some reason, get away from this interim cop with his provisional badge, but I'm stuck until the real cops come.

The runners wind onto the track, five are finished, ten, twenty and—perfect timing—the lights of the authorities have arrived in the lot. I'm not fazed one bit. I want to test a theory today: After they've got their hands on all the evidence, which is far and away nothing, my bet is that Superior Firepower here will get stripped of his rank-smelling rank, dressed down in front of all his cronies. They'll all hide out in the shadows of the stands. I'm betting on the cops doing right by me this time. That I won't get screwed twice straight by the state's best funded lawmen.

And I'll help them out a little bit this time: I take off my beanie and tuck it into my waistline, brush my hair out. Flex my jaw so as to enunciate the ten-dollar Latinate words I'm ready to throw into the conversation to convince the cop that I'm just an innocent passerby, which I'm not. But I can't pass up this chance to play diplomat.

Hey, the rent-a-cop wants to say, Put your beanie back on your head and be the scumbag you were acting like seconds ago, but I smile and beat him to the punch. “I'm glad I was able to get all the expletives out of my system before I inform the authorities of my illegal detainment. Holding someone hostage against his will, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Don't let him get you down,” I hear, a familiar voice.

Superior Firepower jumps to attention. “Hello, sir.”

I nod at Uncle Rich, roll my eyes as in,
But of course I find you here at the Pat Tillman benefit, Uncle. And of course you've barely broken a sweat in your jogging shorts. Of course
.

“Oh,” I say, “I haven't heard anything but flak out of Officer Superior Firepower. Blanks, dud rounds.”

My uncle says, “How are you, Lyle?”

“We thank you, sir, for joining us this morning.”

“My pleasure. My honor to honor the kid.”

I roll my eyes yet again as in,
But of course Lyle loves his war heroes: Tillman of today, my uncle of yesteryear
. Almaden is just filled to the brim with real men. The memory of Tillman, my barely winded uncle and Sergeant Superior Firepower are holding down the fort.

“Make the force yet?” my uncle asks.

“I can answer that,” I say.

“Not yet, sir. I'm a reserve at the De Anza Junior College Police Department and a weekend volunteer at the police range in Sacramento. I clean the rounds and dispose of the targets.”

“That's a two-hour drive, Lyle.”

Lyle smiles and nods, as if it's a sacrifice of the Tillman caliber. I can't help but break this clown down. “That's a long ways to go,” I say, “to pick up peanut shells at a ballpark.”

“Well, good for you, Lyle. Don't mind this guy.” My uncle grips my shoulder a little too hard, and I buck it a little too easily. “He has a tendency to get ahead of himself. Wherever he finds himself.”

“Oh yes, sir,” says Lyle.

“Why don't you teach me how to slow down, sir?”

“Let's go,” says my uncle, and what the hell, I go, right past Sergeant Superior Firepower, who's confused as a walrus on skates, down to the track and around it, past the rows of booths, nod politely at the approaching cop who—
fantastic!
—nods back, slow-pedal through the safe and silly suburbs to be instructed on whatever's important about life in this place.

THE BATTLE FOR TILLMAN
continues on the rickety dock of my uncle's man-made lake, a four-hundred-dollar imported fishing pole each between our knees, naked feet in the water with no straw to dumbly chew on, no raft with any river to conquer, no runaway slave to nobly go to Hell for. Our lines look like crazy string ending at the red and white bobbers ten yards in front of us, and the water's so shallow we can see the fluorescent gobs of Powerbait on the hooks. Not that it matters, but we haven't had even the slightest bite, though my uncle insists he stocked the lake with black bass and trout.

I recite:

“Not that it matters, not that my heart's cry
is potent to deflect our common doom—”

“No poetry, nephew.”

“Even sexy Millay?”

“Even her. Whoever the hell she is.”

“Excepting the artificial lake and synthetic fish,” I say, “this hour is like an authentic Norman Rockwell painting.”

My uncle says, “You know, he grew up right down the street from me.”

“Tillman?”

“What a beautiful kid. An idealist.”

“Yeah,” I say. “They took the poor guy's idealism and ran with it like a football.”

“I watched him score six touchdowns in one game back in 'ninety-four. That was the bravest effort I've ever seen on the high school gridiron. Didn't come off the field for four quarters. We named the stadium after him.”

“Yeah. Probably rename the town of Almaden Tillman before the decade's done.”

My uncle pours a shot of unidentified liquor he's pulled out of his makeshift tackle box. Not that it matters, but I sometimes wonder why my uncle didn't throw down for a roving barkeep on his property to satiate his palate and a leopard-spot liver. I don't wonder, however, where all the hired help went or why I haven't been inside his house since moving here: we have a symbiotic relationship on that basis: he hasn't been inside mine—which is really his—either.

He hands me a shot. I watch a dust cloud twirl lazily across the north entrance and then a car cutting through it. Glittering silver, long and thin like a shark, the four-door sedan accelerates down the winding path. I look over at my uncle, who can't miss the car, the only other sign of life on his property. When it slows to a stop at the southern porch of the estate, my uncle tenses up and says, “To Pat.”

My Aunt Lanell climbs out of the driver's seat, walks around the car, up the porch, into the house.

When my parents split back in the late eighties, my uncle used to pick me up from school and take me to the San José Bees games. I can't remember a single player because he'd talk for seven innings straight about his life: how he couldn't connect with his daughter, how the deathless pressure of business seemed regressive after the
theater of war, how it was the wife of a CEO who held everything together. The drag on those conversations was so heavy at that age that afterward, in bed, I'd have attacks of melancholy akin to hearing a eulogy that hits more than a nerve, that's so accurate and hard on the heart you can't breath. That gets beyond the corpse and reaches the people in the room who aren't yet dead.

I'd get dressed and walk to the park, the yellow-lined path glowing in the midnight moon, sit on the littered rim of the polluted creek bed and, alone, softly cry for my uncle, or myself, or whoever—for the dead fish and crawdads; it didn't matter—wondering what would hold the world together for another hour.

Aunt Lanell emerges with an athletic bag, shades over her eyes, hops in the car, speeds off.

Today I won't ask my uncle about his family.

“Here's to you, Uncle,” I toast, knocking back the shot.

My uncle looks torn, the frown pushing down on his nose. “Well,” he says, “I guess you're not on board with the Tillman thing, are you?”

She's up over the crest, the dust pushing toward us and then gone. “I guess not.”

“Why'd you call him
poor guy
earlier?”

“Because,” I say, “there's nothing worse than losing your life for a country that doesn't deserve it.”

“I may regret this, but I want to hear your thoughts, nephew.”

“Way before Tillman died, America had made up its mind that he was a hero. They praised him for bypassing six million bucks to go join the Army Rangers. They were shouting,
Look! There's someone who doesn't measure everything by money. Who actually puts his ass on the line for his beliefs, volunteers so that we don't have to
. He was the perfect symbol for all those corporate and political big shots who never send their own sons to the wars they sign onto.”

“He was a hero.”

“A hero? He died from friendly fire. How can he be a hero?”

My uncle says nothing, sipping his shot. “I know what you mean.”

“There's no side of the issue that's right. His family was on C-Span with the fucking pink grandmas against the war. Tillman himself wrote a letter to his brother, warning him against joining up.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“It was common in 'Nam,” he says, “to hear stories about fighter pilots. One I'd admired had to do with how pilots with families would sign off before a mission. That if they got shot down, the lieutenant would make 'em KIA no matter what.”

“Not following you.”

“Well, their wife and children back home would be taken care of. Full benies under that classification.”

“'Cause if they're MIA it means they're still alive?”

“Yep. There's a lot that goes on in war that can't be translated back to this place. I sympathize with what you're saying, nephew, I really do.”

This surprises me.

“Yeah?” “Yeah. So here's what you're saying: We've got a hero who wasn't a hero get a medal he didn't deserve. Great kid, but that's an aside right now. We've got a family refuting the way they're told about his death, which nullifies the heroism, but not refuting the medal, which is awarded for heroism. We've got the pink grandmas on one side and flag-wavers on the other.”

“That's right. With enough information, who in their right mind would pick one side or the other of his story? Tillman just added to the things you can't believe in anymore.”

“As in this country?”

“I've felt this way for a long time.”