The Point of the Story
A dispatch from Roswell, New Mexico.
We are standing outside the Salvation Army after the Sunday breakfast, and the sun was already getting hot. A lizard slithered across the broken sidewalk where a pair of men's boots sit, waiting to be remembered or to be claimed.
Gabe is telling me about the time he got in a fight with two Samoan brothers in LA. They were big guys, much taller than Gabe who isn’t much taller than me. One of the Samoans was named Leonard, and the other had a cool name, but I’m forgetting it right now. Something like Akamu.
Anyway, Gabe tells me he was 15 when this all went down and his dad had given him money to go buy something, and he and Leonard and the cool-named guy got into a fight and they stole Gabe’s money. The next day Gabe's dad gave him money again, but Gabe left it at the house on the kitchen counter and went to find Leonard and said, “Go get your brother,” and he beat up Leonard and the cool-named guy again.
We are both squinting in the New Mexico sun; our shadows are getting shorter as it rises above our heads. I can tell the story has a point, but Gabe isn’t going to reveal it. He’s more careful than that. He’s not bragging to me about the fight like many men would, but instead seems to want me to get it; to see him at 15, to see the Samoans; to understand him today.
He tells me more stories; one about a joy ride, one about getting arrested, one about confronting the kid who talked bad to his mother. He tells these stories straight, no-nonsense, no frills. He tells them clearly and chronologically, like he’s laying out a pattern or playing sheet music, one bar after the next. Each time he leads me right up to the point he wants to make, and then looks me dead in the eye, blinks three times like an ellipsis, and goes quiet, waiting for me to connect with him on the other side.
Gabe’s wearing a Chicago Bulls cap on his shaved head and has tattoos all over his face and neck, blue lines fading from the desert glare. He’s in his thirties, handsome, his eyes starting to wrinkle, one eye looking a little glassy, the other far away. He’s telling me now about having to pull a gun on someone just four nights ago; about his time in the army, about how he once moved away from Roswell, but when his mom and dad started having things stolen from their yard, he came back to put an end to it.
“See?” he says, looking at me. “Do you get it?”
It’s like there is a pattern, a sequence, a code. Something under the stories that is known, shared, and he needs to know if I’m there with him, humming in the same frequency, baking in the same sun.
“Yeah, I think so,” I say.
A car pulls up; a Buick missing its front bumper and grill. Two women get out and walk past us, trying the Salvation Army’s big glass door. “Dammit! We fucking missed it!” one woman says to the other. “Fuck! I’m so hungry.” She gets agitated, trying the door again.
“They stop serving at nine,” says Gabe.
The woman, noticing us for the first time, turns. Her face is bruised, a knot above her eye. “My jaw is split,” she says, pointing with her finger into her mouth and opening it so we can see inside. I can see her teeth are sort of crushed to one side and that there’s a gash like a dark purple canyon across the red of her jaw. “I haven’t been able to eat in days and I think I can eat today.”
“Have you been to a doctor?” I ask.
“No, but I’m putting peroxide on it.”
“You need more than that,” says Gabe. “Antibiotics. It could get infected.”
She frowns at us and flips her hair. “Look, I just came here to eat.”
“Hey, don’t give up,” says Gabe, almost in a whisper. He puts his hand briefly on her forearm. I notice how light his touch is; almost like a moth wing brushing her; so light I wonder if he has left a little dust. The woman, who until this moment has been shifting from one foot to the other is suddenly still. “If you go in through the sanctuary doors, they aren’t locked, you can ask for food,” he says.
“But there’s a service going on,” the woman says, getting upset. “I can’t walk in on a Sunday service.”
“You can if it's because you need to eat,” says Gabe, moving her toward the sanctuary doors. “They’ll give you something to go.”
The woman looks at me. “They beat me up real bad, but I didn’t cry.”
All I can think of to say is, “I know.”
Gabe walks her to the sanctuary door. “Go in,” he says, pushing her forward. She disappears into the sanctuary. Gabe watches the doors close behind her and nods, satisfied.
Anyway, I’m going to end the story here, out in the baking sun, the lizards darting under the yucca, the men’s boots on the sidewalk, and me and Gabe standing in silence, the woman inside, before I get to the point.
You can take it from here.
