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Death Becomes You
The Death of a Stranger
I was seven years old the day Bugsy Matthias, the worst of the local gangsters, shot his last victim. The birds stopped singing. Acrid smells of sweat and car exhaust mixed with gun smoke on the breeze. Screams ricocheted through crowd stinging my ears. I wanted to cover my ears, to protect them, but my brother and his friend wouldn’t let go of my trembling hands. Maybe their hands were trembling, not mine? The sun beat down on us raising the temperature to a million degrees in my mind. My eyes locked on the horrific, senselessness of the crime.
A woman in her late fifties was bleeding on the sidewalk at the corner Bennett and Fifth Street. My older brother, Chandler, and I always got off our school bus there so he could walk this girl, Annie—he loved her for as long as I can remember—home; she lived a block from the bus stop and two blocks from our apartment. I still remember the look of horror on Annie's long, pale features, and the curiosity in Chandler's deep green eyes.
Blood pooled in the cracks of the sidewalk closest to the graying woman's body. There was a girl, a little older than Annie and Chandler, crumpled to her knees. Tears stained her sun kissed cheeks. Sometimes her screams still echoed through my nightmares, but they're not the most memorable thing about that day.
The thing I remember the most, the clearest, is the man no one else seemed to notice, the man no one else bothered to turn their eyes toward. He was so tall, or maybe I was too short. Somehow, he floated toward the woman. Walking never, in my mind, could explain the graceful, beautiful, perfect way he glided across the pavement through all the people surrounding her. There was lightning in his eyes, but his coat moved gently between the bodies crowding it. I wanted to scream, to tell someone another man came for the woman. Her body eased the moment he stopped and offered his hand to something close to her. A slow peaceful look covered her pale face when her chest rose for the last time. I asked Chandler about the strange man, but he wrapped his arms around me and forced my face into his shoulder, hurrying to Annie's house.
Chandler told me later there was no man. He said my mind made him up to help me deal with the scene. To help me understand the violence and tragedy we saw. My brother tried to make me understand that the older woman was protecting her daughter because the girl was going to testify against Bugsy’s gang; she’d seen him dealing on the streets by the gas station where she worked. None of that made any sense to my seven year old mind. What were drugs? Why would people do drugs? How could a man named after the cartooned rabbit that made me giggle until I cried every day be a bad guy?
I was two weeks from turning eight the day my world turned upside down. I saw someone die, but I didn't really understand it. I knew absolutely nothing about death. How could I understand it yet? I couldn’t then. Most days, I still don't.
A woman in her late fifties was bleeding on the sidewalk at the corner Bennett and Fifth Street. My older brother, Chandler, and I always got off our school bus there so he could walk this girl, Annie—he loved her for as long as I can remember—home; she lived a block from the bus stop and two blocks from our apartment. I still remember the look of horror on Annie's long, pale features, and the curiosity in Chandler's deep green eyes.
Blood pooled in the cracks of the sidewalk closest to the graying woman's body. There was a girl, a little older than Annie and Chandler, crumpled to her knees. Tears stained her sun kissed cheeks. Sometimes her screams still echoed through my nightmares, but they're not the most memorable thing about that day.
The thing I remember the most, the clearest, is the man no one else seemed to notice, the man no one else bothered to turn their eyes toward. He was so tall, or maybe I was too short. Somehow, he floated toward the woman. Walking never, in my mind, could explain the graceful, beautiful, perfect way he glided across the pavement through all the people surrounding her. There was lightning in his eyes, but his coat moved gently between the bodies crowding it. I wanted to scream, to tell someone another man came for the woman. Her body eased the moment he stopped and offered his hand to something close to her. A slow peaceful look covered her pale face when her chest rose for the last time. I asked Chandler about the strange man, but he wrapped his arms around me and forced my face into his shoulder, hurrying to Annie's house.
Chandler told me later there was no man. He said my mind made him up to help me deal with the scene. To help me understand the violence and tragedy we saw. My brother tried to make me understand that the older woman was protecting her daughter because the girl was going to testify against Bugsy’s gang; she’d seen him dealing on the streets by the gas station where she worked. None of that made any sense to my seven year old mind. What were drugs? Why would people do drugs? How could a man named after the cartooned rabbit that made me giggle until I cried every day be a bad guy?
I was two weeks from turning eight the day my world turned upside down. I saw someone die, but I didn't really understand it. I knew absolutely nothing about death. How could I understand it yet? I couldn’t then. Most days, I still don't.
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