BY ANDREW JAICKS
Twenty-one and
about two weeks to the gate . . . Benny.
What he looked like¾innocence. Like if you looked up the word in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of Benny. Snaggle-toothed, smiling black marble eyes, constant smiling cherub-cheeked face, pear-shaped body, sloppy. Not really what you’d ever call good-looking, but what could you say? Girls--rucas--just seemed to magnetically snap on to him. Mama material. Duende, man. He had-- something.
Oh yeah, he had it. And cops hated him on sight. Cops, bus drivers, store managers, bosses, teachers, CO’s, PO’s, all the O’s you could think of, hated Benny before he opened his mouth, uttered a word. He had it, yet somehow he walked the world in a way all those O’s and such took as insult. That looking-off-light-years-into-nowhere look, all the while sloppy and slinging any old words out his mouth that the O’s then heard as wisecracks.
So . . . short to the gate, he’s sitting with a buddy, his carnale, at sunset, looking out through layers of chain-link. They’re just talking, nothing heavy, nothing over-real. Out of nowhere, there’s this tear growing out the side of one of Benny’s usually smiling eyes, thick and shining like baby oil reflecting sundown. It grows bigger, pear-shaped like his body. When it disconnects from his eye, it leaves a glittering snail-trail down his cheek.
I don’t wanna go, says Benny, not looking at his bud, still looking out at chain-linked horizon.
His carnale sees what he sees, also without looking anywhere else but outward. There’s this long pause. He really does care about Benny, but--
What the fuck, Benny? he says . . .
After the two weeks go by with no further stymieing comment or sunset baby oil tears, Benny walks out the gate. There’s a van ride to the bus stop, central Phoenix. Benny’s back. Back to what-now, where-the-fuck-do-I-go, what-the-fuck-do-I-do.
Well, Benny’s been here before. Like, since forever. His moms, before she disappeared forever, had been a prostitute. No other way to say it. And, hijo de puta, that worst phrase, people die for saying it-- Benny would say it about himself. That was Benny. No martyrdom. Idiot pear-shaped savant, ese! Just blurted shit without thinking. And all those authority types and all those folks supposedly invading his life with help, took it like he knew-- like, oh, he knows, is being disrespectful, whatever.
Benny’d spent all his life crowded by these type people. In and out of foster homes, group homes, juvey-- the story of just about everybody Benny knew; the old story, older than desert dust, so like, no problem, you know? But here’s the deal, inside the joint, time is something you kill, you’ve gone away, you’re in another dimension, time stops, the rest of the world goes on. You come out and, holy shit, what the fuck is going on here. And Benny-- man, he’d never even been as far as Mesa, that was like someplace over the horizon.
So . . . doo-dee-doo, back on earth, Benny leaves the bus stop, walks down Van Buren, and the end of his life begins.
That first day, right off, he runs into this one hooker who’d already once before been in actual love with him. Mama love. Want to take care of you love. She snaps right on to him, takes him in. Now it’s a couple of hookers and Benny in this place right off the strip on 25th Street. Benny’s checking in at Southern Parole and so-called looking for a job. The hookers love his snaggle-tooth self, love him and feed him pop-tarts and pizza-- everything. Benny’s looking for a job for two months and he’s using, smoking rock. Starts having more and more baby-oil-sundown-tears moments, which of course just makes him more loveable at home. Home. Walks around feeling like he’s lost in nowhere. Disorientado. His memories and ghosts and dream-kin get in front of him, then behind him. Back and forth. And sometimes he gets actual lost, can’t find his way back to 25th and hooker home.
One regular day, he’s out smoking rock. Van Buren motel rooms, alleys, stoplights, behind dumpsters, wherever. Pinball Benny. Bouncing over-bright Benny. He’s got that luvin’ feelin’ juicing him. He’s a goddam nova. He’s all that, vato-- how you like me now. But then, balance veers. Hard blue sky and Van Buren sidewalk tilt. He’s bounced into foul territory, away from a tilt-world he keeps trying to luvin’ pinball through. A stray gone astray. That lost-in-every-way thing really overtakes him. Maybe how he’s acting¾his disorientado-ness-- comes off extreme. Maybe. Whatever’s true, he gets noticed by some good Samaritan who of course does the Samaritan thing, calls the cops. A PPD prowler responds, pulls up even with Benny. What else would Benny do? He takes off, doesn’t he. Zigzag-zoom. Really running, man. Running like the devil’s a bunch of cans tacked to his ass. Chased by his own tail. Chased by the thing he can never escape, with cops adding on to more cops now smelling a good rundown. Loving a good rundown of a bad guy. That’s why they became cops in the first place. Some absolute good versus absolute evil. Every target of scrutiny and chase a bad guy. Good guys, bad guys. Right? And with adrenaline rush too? Dude-- does it get any better?
Bad guy Benny corners himself inside a downtown three-story concrete and columns parking garage. He’s surrounded. There’s a lot of yelling, cop-style. All of a sudden, lost-Benny just feels goofy. Like, what the fuck, man, this is funny . . . stupid. He slop-walks toward the cops, smiling face, smiling eyes. A lot more yelling as he reaches and pulls out-- Blam, a dozen times blam. Benny goes down like a sack of dirt. Benny’s dead. The smile empties out of his eyes, the shining black marbles go flat. Flat black. Flat . . . nothing. Going in or coming out. If you could believe in a spirit, Benny’s rises away, out of that fucking concrete and columns tower for commuter cars, off to wherever, lost like Benny always was. Even the cops, after all that blasting, approach as though something wrong has happened here. But they go ahead and kick the weapon away, like after taking a dozen bullets Benny’s going to pick up the glass crack-pipe lying by his hand . . . and . . . well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? And what? Add up Benny’s andwhats and what’s the sum? Concrete echoes dwindle to silence, bunch of strangers standing around him, and that’s it. Benny. Twenty-one, short to the gate, and gone, man. Gone before he ever got going.
What he looked like¾innocence. Like if you looked up the word in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of Benny. Snaggle-toothed, smiling black marble eyes, constant smiling cherub-cheeked face, pear-shaped body, sloppy. Not really what you’d ever call good-looking, but what could you say? Girls--rucas--just seemed to magnetically snap on to him. Mama material. Duende, man. He had-- something.
Oh yeah, he had it. And cops hated him on sight. Cops, bus drivers, store managers, bosses, teachers, CO’s, PO’s, all the O’s you could think of, hated Benny before he opened his mouth, uttered a word. He had it, yet somehow he walked the world in a way all those O’s and such took as insult. That looking-off-light-years-into-nowhere look, all the while sloppy and slinging any old words out his mouth that the O’s then heard as wisecracks.
So . . . short to the gate, he’s sitting with a buddy, his carnale, at sunset, looking out through layers of chain-link. They’re just talking, nothing heavy, nothing over-real. Out of nowhere, there’s this tear growing out the side of one of Benny’s usually smiling eyes, thick and shining like baby oil reflecting sundown. It grows bigger, pear-shaped like his body. When it disconnects from his eye, it leaves a glittering snail-trail down his cheek.
I don’t wanna go, says Benny, not looking at his bud, still looking out at chain-linked horizon.
His carnale sees what he sees, also without looking anywhere else but outward. There’s this long pause. He really does care about Benny, but--
What the fuck, Benny? he says . . .
After the two weeks go by with no further stymieing comment or sunset baby oil tears, Benny walks out the gate. There’s a van ride to the bus stop, central Phoenix. Benny’s back. Back to what-now, where-the-fuck-do-I-go, what-the-fuck-do-I-do.
Well, Benny’s been here before. Like, since forever. His moms, before she disappeared forever, had been a prostitute. No other way to say it. And, hijo de puta, that worst phrase, people die for saying it-- Benny would say it about himself. That was Benny. No martyrdom. Idiot pear-shaped savant, ese! Just blurted shit without thinking. And all those authority types and all those folks supposedly invading his life with help, took it like he knew-- like, oh, he knows, is being disrespectful, whatever.
Benny’d spent all his life crowded by these type people. In and out of foster homes, group homes, juvey-- the story of just about everybody Benny knew; the old story, older than desert dust, so like, no problem, you know? But here’s the deal, inside the joint, time is something you kill, you’ve gone away, you’re in another dimension, time stops, the rest of the world goes on. You come out and, holy shit, what the fuck is going on here. And Benny-- man, he’d never even been as far as Mesa, that was like someplace over the horizon.
So . . . doo-dee-doo, back on earth, Benny leaves the bus stop, walks down Van Buren, and the end of his life begins.
That first day, right off, he runs into this one hooker who’d already once before been in actual love with him. Mama love. Want to take care of you love. She snaps right on to him, takes him in. Now it’s a couple of hookers and Benny in this place right off the strip on 25th Street. Benny’s checking in at Southern Parole and so-called looking for a job. The hookers love his snaggle-tooth self, love him and feed him pop-tarts and pizza-- everything. Benny’s looking for a job for two months and he’s using, smoking rock. Starts having more and more baby-oil-sundown-tears moments, which of course just makes him more loveable at home. Home. Walks around feeling like he’s lost in nowhere. Disorientado. His memories and ghosts and dream-kin get in front of him, then behind him. Back and forth. And sometimes he gets actual lost, can’t find his way back to 25th and hooker home.
One regular day, he’s out smoking rock. Van Buren motel rooms, alleys, stoplights, behind dumpsters, wherever. Pinball Benny. Bouncing over-bright Benny. He’s got that luvin’ feelin’ juicing him. He’s a goddam nova. He’s all that, vato-- how you like me now. But then, balance veers. Hard blue sky and Van Buren sidewalk tilt. He’s bounced into foul territory, away from a tilt-world he keeps trying to luvin’ pinball through. A stray gone astray. That lost-in-every-way thing really overtakes him. Maybe how he’s acting¾his disorientado-ness-- comes off extreme. Maybe. Whatever’s true, he gets noticed by some good Samaritan who of course does the Samaritan thing, calls the cops. A PPD prowler responds, pulls up even with Benny. What else would Benny do? He takes off, doesn’t he. Zigzag-zoom. Really running, man. Running like the devil’s a bunch of cans tacked to his ass. Chased by his own tail. Chased by the thing he can never escape, with cops adding on to more cops now smelling a good rundown. Loving a good rundown of a bad guy. That’s why they became cops in the first place. Some absolute good versus absolute evil. Every target of scrutiny and chase a bad guy. Good guys, bad guys. Right? And with adrenaline rush too? Dude-- does it get any better?
Bad guy Benny corners himself inside a downtown three-story concrete and columns parking garage. He’s surrounded. There’s a lot of yelling, cop-style. All of a sudden, lost-Benny just feels goofy. Like, what the fuck, man, this is funny . . . stupid. He slop-walks toward the cops, smiling face, smiling eyes. A lot more yelling as he reaches and pulls out-- Blam, a dozen times blam. Benny goes down like a sack of dirt. Benny’s dead. The smile empties out of his eyes, the shining black marbles go flat. Flat black. Flat . . . nothing. Going in or coming out. If you could believe in a spirit, Benny’s rises away, out of that fucking concrete and columns tower for commuter cars, off to wherever, lost like Benny always was. Even the cops, after all that blasting, approach as though something wrong has happened here. But they go ahead and kick the weapon away, like after taking a dozen bullets Benny’s going to pick up the glass crack-pipe lying by his hand . . . and . . . well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? And what? Add up Benny’s andwhats and what’s the sum? Concrete echoes dwindle to silence, bunch of strangers standing around him, and that’s it. Benny. Twenty-one, short to the gate, and gone, man. Gone before he ever got going.
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