Billie Mosiman - Wireman

His mother slapped his hand and yanked the ribbon from his hair herself. The face that had been dreamy and soft only moments before was now twisted with anger.

“You’re so goddamn ugly,” she said, pushing him back onto the bench when he tried to get away. She fiddled absently with the ribbon, untying it. “It wouldn’t have mattered, boy or girl, you would’ve been ugly as a stick. I didn’t want you. I didn’t want Daley neither, but I got knocked up because I was stupid. I didn’t know no better.”

Tears ran down Nick’s cheeks. He was hot and sick and alone.

His mother had the ribbon undone and she was snapping it between her hands, tight, then loose, tight, then loose. Nick would never know if it was pure hatred, or frustration over her own lost chances, or an unfortunate impulse. But suddenly his mother whipped the thin red ribbon around his neck as he sat beside her, looking into the mirror. She jerked him around until his head hit her pelvis, then she kneed him to push his body forward again, letting the ribbon loosen around his throat. She kept talking to him, her voice rising to a shriek. “Why’d I have to have kids, can you tell me that? What’d I ever do so wrong I got saddled with two brats to support all by myself in this goddamn rinky-dink town?” The ribbon snapped tight once again.

Nick’s head hit her pelvis, her knee in his back, then the ribbon mercifully loosened.

Nick was choking, his lungs gasping at the air, his face in the mirror looking bug-eyed and horror-stricken.

He could not see his mama and the nightmare went on and on, the awful words his mama spoke, the red ribbon tightening, jerking, loosening just enough for him to take a half breath, then tightening again, jerking…

“Mama! Mama!” It was Daley clutching at his arm, then beating at Mama with flailing fists.

And it went on and on. She was strangling him because he— because he was not a girl, because he was not pretty, because she hated him.

Finally Mary Ringer dropped the ribbon to the floor and stepped away from the mirror where she saw what she had done. Nick slumped to the floor gagging and crying. His nose was running and he struggled for air.

Daley knelt beside him and dabbed at his brother’s face with his favorite blanket.

Mary Ringer turned her back on her young sons and left the house to wait outdoors for her date. She did not come back to the house all night. It was the first time Nick did not miss her. It was the first time he felt safe being all alone in the big, shadowy house with his little brother curled up next to him. He would never feel safe around a woman again because they did not like little boys. They did not like them at all.

In three days he got over the cold and fever, but he would never get over what his mother had done.

Never.

Nick sat up on the hospital bed in Tacoma, Washington, his eyes wide open and frightened. He felt his throat, massaging the place where the ribbon had choked him. Was Shakey right? Was he insane?

Finally his pulse slowed, and he could swallow. He lay back on the bed. What was the difference? He had done nothing wrong, nothing immoral, nothing to be punished for. Didn’t anybody understand? If he was insane, then the whole world was insane. All he needed was Daley to help him. He needed to be free. Free to be where he belonged, free to roam Houston where no one would notice him.

Houston, Texas

Summer 1976

John Marcus Deshane, known to everyone as Jack, awoke before the alarm sounded and lay staring at the ceiling. He could hear his ten-year-old son, Willie, snoring from the other bedroom, but that was not what woke him. He had gone to bed the night before upset. He still believed he and the other policemen could have taken the butcher knife from the Chicano youth without killing him. Why did the boy have to die in a rain of bullets as if he were a mad dog foaming at the mouth?

Jack was one of four patrolmen who had arrived at the scene. There were three others from the precinct and a total of eleven men altogether fanning out around the sixteen-year-old. He had escaped from the psychiatric facilities of Ben Tabb Hospital, and he still wore a starched white hospital gown over a pair of ragged jeans. He was barefoot and dancing in small circles around the grass. His dark hair was plastered across his smooth forehead, and his eyes gleamed craftily as he looked from one man to another. They knew he was on a hallucinogen. Every few seconds he screamed a high piercing scream that made Jack’s hair stand on end. Chills crawled down his back like spiders down a bean pole. They tried to talk the boy into giving up his knife.

“Come on, kid. This isn’t going to get you anywhere. Hand over the knife and we’ll talk about it,” Jack urged.

The boy screamed again, but it was cut off sharply when Jack’s partner tried to close in from the circle. Bill Lorenza, a four-year veteran, kept speaking in soft Spanish.

Jack had not drawn his gun from the holster. He did not believe for a minute that weapons would have to be used. The kid was having a psychotic episode, and no one could predict his actions from one second to the next, but what could he do with a single butcher knife against eleven armed men?

Bill and a detective from homicide took turns talking Spanish to the boy, but Jack did not think they were getting anywhere. The boy’s reality lay elsewhere and he continued to scream.

Jack would never be able to say who was responsible for the first shot. Bill Lorenza had edged in toward the boy and stood ten feet from the brandished knife. Bill had holstered his gun to come toward the boy with both hands out in a gesture of help.

Suddenly the youth gave a shattering cry that rooted Lorenza to the spot, and as he lunged forward with the knife, the shots rang out in a thundering hail, bringing the boy to his knees. He was sent sprawling, bleeding on the dry summer grass. The knife lay at Lorenza’s feet.

It would not be the last time Jack would see things that were unjust. He knew that. It was simply the first time he had witnessed it.

Jack rolled from bed and shut off the radio an instant after it started to blare. Six A.M. Usually his best time of day, but now sullied with leftover images of vague nightmares he could not recall and a pervading feeling of defeat he could not shake.

The young man’s death triggered a refrain in Jack’s mind as he showered. It might be Willie some day, he thought.

He knew that was farfetched but enough of a threat to frighten a father. Right now Willie was a good boy, bright, obedient, and loving. But after a year as a patrolman on the Houston Police force, Jack had seen plenty of good kids influenced by their peers who got into trouble with the law. Every thinking parent in the country feared for their children’s future. Drugs were in the grade schools. Juvenile offenses were on the rise. Violence was becoming an accepted part of everyone’s life.

Jack dried himself roughly with a towel as if to rub off all memory of the day before. He glanced at the clock radio to see he had spent twenty minutes in the shower. Jesus, the kid’s death was getting to him. He knew he was going to have to forget it. Maybe if he talked to Sam about it. After work tonight, maybe Sam could tell him how to erase the guilt he felt for the eleven men who were only doing their jobs.

On Jack’s return from duty in Vietnam, Willie had asked him why he wanted to be a cop, but Jack had no pat answers. It was a combination of things, and to say one ideal or one ambition made a man want to be a policeman was too simplistic. He had not been able to answer Willie then, so he had said something silly, trying to bring a smile to his son’s face. “To keep you in line, jock, what do you think?” And Jack had to admit part of the reason he had joined the force was to set an example for Willie. They had been alone since the divorce when Willie was two. Being a single parent was not easy, and his responsibility sometimes weighed heavily on Jack.