Sunil Yapa - Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

That is, until the day his father (he never once, not until this day, thought of him as his stepfather, or his adopted father) descended the stairs and found him with the boxes open and a bong smoking in his lap. He lifted his head, and smiled, red-eyed and raw.

His father, great leader that he was, had smashed the bong against the concrete floor. Shards of purple glass everywhere. He had nearly broken Victor’s arm, so forcefully had he twisted it behind his back and marched him up the stairs. And later that night, Victor in his room had watched through the window as his father — his sweet dear daddy — had dragged the boxes of books into the backyard, made a pyramid as tall as a man, doused them in gasoline, sloshing and cursing, and had his dad been crying as he cursed and stumbled, Victor didn’t know. His father lit a match and threw it toward the pile, and the books went up in flame, the light playing orange and yellow against the house, against his father’s swaying body, against Victor’s thin face as it hung in the window like some strange reflection of the moon in a mud puddle, his father seeing his face there, saying, shouting up to the window, “This, this, this. This is what happens when you care too much.”

“The blindness of the heart which capitalism demands,” John Henry was saying.

“Alienation,” Edie said. “This is our enemy.”

Victor nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Me, too.”

Then he looked at King. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ll do what?”

“Lockdown,” he said. “I’ll be the one.”

Bishop gathered his troops behind the PeaceKeeper. Massed them on the south side of Sixth and Union. On the north side, on the east and the west, thousands of protesters were bunched and surging. He needed to get the delegates north through that mess.

From the back of the ’Keeper they were putting on the riot gear, the hats and bats. An officer was handing out the tear gas guns — military-style weapons that reminded Bishop of Apache attack helicopters.

“Let’s go over it again. I don’t want any screwups.”

He surveyed the assembled troops, saw one about to speak and raised his hand, palm forward. “Wait until I’m done.”

This tanned widower in spectacles who had summited Mount Rainier this summer, one year before his sixtieth birthday. Chief Bishop. Who believed in community policing, who despite the Mayor’s weak protests led the efforts to rid the department of the racism in their rank and file, who, six months ago, on a warm summer’s day marched in solidarity in Seattle’s Gay Pride Parade, who had a heart full of loss and a head full of doom.

This man, the Chief, he said, “We are going to clear this intersection.”

He paused, collected the stray scraps of attention with his strongest look.

“But ladies and gentlemen, I want restraint and I want strength. We are the law and we are proud and we are peaceful. Any questions?”

A voice from the back. “Yeah. We going to have to pay for parking?”

The assembled fell into laughter. Bishop frowned. “Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir, I’m just curious if we’re going to have to pay for parking while we’re being proud and peaceable.”

“Yeah. Cuz I had to put my Caddy in a garage and that’s like twenty-five for the day.”

The cops putting on their gear and chuckling — the helmet and mask, the belt and spray.

Bishop adjusted his glasses.

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry about the parking. That’s a question for the Mayor when all this is over. For now let’s focus. Anything else?”

“What’d I hear about some city buses?”

Bishop’s eyes went bright. The buses had been his idea.

“There will be ten to twelve metro buses parked at the corner of Eighth and Seneca,” he said. “The buses will be both a barrier and a temporary detention facility. You need to make an arrest? You cuff them; you put them on the bus.”

“And do the buses have to pay for parking?”

They erupted into laughter. Bishop waited patiently for it to die down. They were just blowing off some steam and he understood it and he let them, because he felt some element in the air. Something that wasn’t there before they saw the crowds. Something that wasn’t there in the days and weeks and months they had been preparing. He was confident, but there was something in the street, some rogue undercurrent in the way they muttered and shifted and adjusted their gear, the bitterness of their joking that wasn’t exactly joking. He thought his boys and girls might be afraid.

Bishop cleared his throat and collected them in his gaze.

He had about one hundred and fifty delegates stashed in the lobby of the Sheraton. The Mayor himself was with them, had left his sheltered spot in the MACC and was waiting for the signal. The all-clear that would mean Bishop had done his job.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get something straight. We are police in the greatest nation in the world. We are professional and we are prepared. There are five thousand protesters just across that intersection. But we are going to clear this intersection, and then we are going to clear the next, and then the third one after that, and we are going to get those delegates to the convention center. Is that understood?”

A chorus all around. “Yes, sir!”

They were in their gear now, smacking the armor and feeling good.

Then another hand raised.

Bishop sighed. “Yes, Sergeant?”

“Sir, some of these protesters. I don’t think they want to go.”

A few chuckles.

“Sir.”

“Sergeant?”

“If they don’t want to go…?”

Behind his troops he saw a caramel-colored kid weaving his way through the crowd on a unicycle. He had to shake his head. No, that is not your son, you fool. Three years his son had been missing. His beautiful, brilliant, mixed-up son. But missing wasn’t exactly the word, was it, because his son who had run away three years ago, who had disappeared into the gaping maw of the world at the age of sixteen — he wrote his dad postcards. Nothing periodic, mind you, six months could pass easily before his son deemed him worthy of a missive, and nothing indicating his whereabouts besides a postmark, or his safety, as if that were even possible to indicate. And yet, how could he, the Chief of Police, notify anybody, let alone file a missing person report? Hadn’t his sixteen-year-old son left with a dislocated shoulder and an arm black and blue with fingermarks? That would have required filing an altogether different report. And so, Bishop had let him go without a word.

Postcards. For three fucking years. The last one had featured a black man without a shirt sitting cross-legged in an intersection. A black man skinnier than any man Bishop had ever seen. A postcard of a black man on a hunger strike, his ribs protruding, his chest so narrow it was nearly concave. His skin dusty from the street, his face gaunt. Straw somehow caught up in his hair. He was a portrait of cheekbone and eye socket and dirty beard, his eyes two brilliantly bright watch dials marking the time. On the back Vic had written: Dad, does this man love the world?

And he had wanted to say, Son, stop caring about people you don’t know and have never met. Just stop caring. It hurts too much. For three years his son had been gone and nothing more than postcards. It made Bishop, frankly, want to strangle the kid. Where had he gotten a postcard of a hunger strike anyway? Who made something like that?

“Sergeant,” Bishop said, “these are our streets. Don’t ever forget that.”

“But what if they don’t clear the street when we tell them to?”

“Sergeant.” Bishop grimaced. “You are holding a tear gas dispenser. If those protesters don’t want to move…”