Steve Martini - Double Tap

There are ways in which Emiliano and Evo demonstrate stark differences that could not mark them more distinctly. From all appearances Ruiz was able to deal and cope in a world of violence that destroyed my uncle. Whether they experienced the same things in combat, I will never know.

But it is the similarities between the two men that drew me to the case initially and that keep me burning the oil late into the night, searching for ways to keep Ruiz out of prison and away from the clutches of the executioner.

For such a large and seemingly fearsome specimen of the species, my uncle suffered a near-total inability to defend himself verbally or to explain at times what was happening in the dark convolutions of his brain. In this regard, Ruiz is his brother.

Emiliano may be able to face down live fire from incoming incendiary rounds and shrug off lacerating shards from an exploding grenade, but the verbal arrows flung by Templeton in his opening statement have wounded him deeply. The unanswered charges have left him confounded, in a state of mental stammering, suffering from a seemingly fatal bout of frustration that I have in all my life only witnessed in Evo.

Standing hip deep in a marsh of unrequited accusations, Emiliano is all but immobilized-and the knowledge that he has finally confronted a field of conflict in which he is powerless to defend himself is eating at his insides like acid etching steel. Each day on this battlefield he seems more the mirror image of the scarred soul that was my uncle.

To my knowledge, even in his darkest days of depression, Evo never became violent. Though there were times when he was so troubled that, because of his size and brooding appearance, he could seem menacing, in those years when I was old enough to realize what was happening, I have no recollection of him ever laying a hand on another living soul.

Repeatedly he would fall into the pit of silent despair. When this happened, my grandmother was unable to bring herself to make the tough decisions that at the time seemed right. Inevitably my father would have to swallow the pain of consigning his younger brother to the VA hospital, to the untold horrors of what in those days passed for treatment of mental disorders associated with “battle fatigue.” Strapped to a metal table, Evo would be subjected to repeated sessions of massive electroshock therapy and given doses of early psychotropic drugs that, at best, as even the doctors admitted, were experimental.

When Evo was discharged from the VA, the only thing he could remember was the pain, the repeated sessions of agony that he lacked the words to describe. To the fertile imagination of a child, even these limited accounts conjured hair-raising visions on the order of the Inquisition. He pleaded with my father never to be sent back. I remember the expression of horror that welled up in his eyes as he begged that he never again have to go back for treatment. I was seven years old. The expression of fright on Evo’s face and the cloying pleas, the tears running down the cheeks of a man the size of a mountain, scared the bejesus out of me.

Within months, sometimes weeks, my uncle would slide once more beyond the horizon of human contact to that cosmos in the mind where he could not be reached. My father would be compelled to return him to the VA. It was a cycle that would repeat itself over the years and from which we all sought refuge in our own way, to put it from our minds, to escape its painful reality: that Evo had become a dead man in the shell of living body.

Decades later I came to realize that these acts of mental commitment took years from my father’s life. There were times when I looked into his eyes that I knew he would rather have committed himself to this agony than to have sent his younger brother.

Even with all of this, in moments of despair when Evo lingered at the edge at oblivion, often it was my father who was the only one who could perform the magic of communication. A man who dropped out of high school to go to work during the Depression could do what doctors and psychiatrists could not. For some reason, in the depths of his psychosis, Evo’s brain seemed to cycle back to the days of his childhood, when the protective hand of his older brother held sway. Over all the anger and angst, the raging storms of paranoia and fear, he could still hear the soothing tones of my father’s voice.

My uncle spent much of his adult life in and out of mental institutions, on and off Thorazine and its progeny of mind-numbing drugs.

During this period there is one event that stands out in my mind. I will remember it until the day I die. It was late, a winter afternoon. My mother was making dinner and my father had just gotten home from work. It was nearing dusk when we heard a noise downstairs in the basement, a voice, then what sounded like pounding on the wall. We heard the screen door’s squeaky hinge down below, and the slam as the coil spring pulled it closed. Someone had just left the basement. We looked out the window. I saw the unmistakable silhouette of Evo standing there in the middle of our yard. He had been rooting around in our basement, looking for something. My father went down to see what he wanted.

We listened at the window, my mother, my sister, and I. When we heard the word guns come out of Evo’s mouth, it put a shudder through us all. Evo wanted his firearms, a hunting rifle and shotgun that my father had taken from his mother’s house and locked away in a cabinet in our basement for safekeeping. Everybody had forgotten about them. Everyone but Evo.

I remember the two of them, my father and my uncle, standing in the yard talking for a long time as my mother paced the floor nervously, picking up the receiver on the phone and putting it down again, wondering aloud whether she should call the cops. Her brother was on the force.

I heard my uncle talk about hunting. My father told him the gaming seasons were closed, pheasant was over and deer wouldn’t start until summer. There was plenty of time. They could talk about it then. And the silent hope that I knew was in my father’s mind: that by then Evo might forget.

Even in the gathering darkness you could almost see the furrowing eyebrows as my uncle struggled to do a mental check on the calendar, but he couldn’t figure out what month it was. He gave up on hunting. Maybe he could just go shooting like they used to when he was a kid, some clay pigeons or tin cans.

“Where you gonna go?” asked my father.

Evo thought about this for a moment, his last memory. “How about up at the ranch. Remember? We used to go shooting up there all the time.”

My father smiled and shook his head. “No. They don’t allow it anymore.”

“No?”

“No.”

The “they” my father spoke of was himself, and Evo knew it. My father ran the ranch. Still, Evo never questioned him. Instead they both stood there, their bodies motionless, shaking their heads as if this, the banning of shooting on the ranch, was one more of the great tragedies of the changing times.

Then, watching from the window, I saw my father reach up and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. I remember how Evo, that hulking and scary guy, an immense shadow six inches taller than my father, suddenly sagged, his shoulders slumping. Whatever enthusiasm he had left for life at that moment seemed to escape from his body like a vapor into the fading light.

I listened as my father turned the conversation to happier thoughts, recollections of their youth. Maybe they could go fishing again, he said, though even I knew it would never happen. I watched as the two of them walked toward the old stone fishpond in the center of our yard, and I listened to the bass hum of their voices as darkness devoured their shapes. A few minutes later I heard them both laughing. It was the first time I recall hearing my uncle laugh out loud. It was musical. It tore my heart out.