From Violence To Peace

Twenty-eight shotgun pellets crater my thighs, belly and groin. I gently thumb each burnt bead, fingering scabbed stubs with ointment. Could have neutered me, made extinct the volatile, romantic man I am. “He’s dead,” doctor at emergency room could’ve easily told my wife that night. Instead, “Soak him in a bath twice a day. Apply this ointment to the sores. Here’s a month’s supply of pain killers.” I remember the deep guttural groan I gave, when the doctor pressed my groin. Assured I could still make love, morphine drowsed me and in a dull stupor I don’t remember police visiting my bed, or laughing so hard, they scowled for a serious answer. I howled a U.F.O. shot me along the Río Grande, and they cursed and left. In the summer of ’88 I’d traded alfalfa for a bull calf. Still smelling of milk udders, I tied it to the truck rack and drove off. Its hooves teethed at pink roots ’til the whole lush field went bare dirt. A magnificent bull. Glowing wheel of heart breathed brimming stream of white flame at dawn. He wrangled his black brawn like a battleshield to challenge the sun, reared thick neck down and sideways, lunged at me with dart and snort, hoof-stamped and nostrilled dirt, ’til I growled him back whipping air with a limber willow branch, poured grain in trough and spread alfalfa. I respected his horns and he the whistling menace of willow. One afternoon my cousin Patricio helped me band the bull’s scrotum, usurp swollen sap in his testicle sack. It withered to a pink wattle and seeded the garden to drive cornstalks to bear hardy, golden horns. Thereafter, he grazed the fenceline, with the tempered lust and peaceful grace of a celibate priest. His bearing now arranged itself elegant as a wild flower sprung over night. ______________ Perfecto shot it. Rasping on a black rope of blood round its neck, it staggered, bouldering convulsions. Blood exploding in bright lash of earthquaked air, it stumble-butted stock trailer fender— second and third shots glowed its death. A quivering shadow of life-flame darkened the air and it sputtered a last drop of blood. I drank long swigs of whiskey and, thinking it was dead, turned to walk away, then it gave a tremendous groan, tremendous groan, a birth-letting groan . . . a moon groan . . . blood spurted out, thick, thick, thick alleys of dead star blood and I turned and said aloud to myself, “That’s the moon’s voice! That’s the moon’s voice!” And the white moon was in the sky, and I looked at the moon for a long time. ______________ I sat on the ground and gulped whiskey, drank the steer’s death still warm in my throat. A beautiful animal! I allowed to be butchered. When it trounced and galloped in the field, its body was a dark, windy cliff edge, and its eyes were doorways of a dream— now it bled a charred scroll of ancient chant in gravel, I would never know, and its blackened logs of blood smoldered dying vowels, I would never hear. My heart’s creak-n-tremble rage milled the steer’s death to red grist, I grieved, I wept drunkenly that no one cared, that humankind betrayed him, that we were all cowards. ______________ Perfecto, Valasquez and the butcher tried to stop me from driving, but now was the time to settle a bad feud with another friend. Redeem the bull’s blood with ours. I drove to Felipe’s house, anger knotted in me tight as the rope tied to the stock trailer steer strained against. I pulled, but could not free myself. (I had a dream night before— I crossed black-iron footbridge, partially collapsed by sea storm. Left-hand railing swept out to sea, I gripped bolt-studded right-hand railing, finger-clutched wire netting sides, carefully descended waist-high water. Waded through slowly and ascended other side— but had lost my sunglasses and wallet, went back, groped bottom, found them and ascended again.) Had to cross that bridge again. Full of significance . . . tonight, deepest part of flooded bridge was danger . . . drowning . . . represented years of my life collapsed and destroyed, water the cleansing element, my ascent from had healed, onto firm ground, but I went back, to re-live destruction… “Felipe!” I yelled, porch light flicked on, illuminating the yard. “Came to fight,” I said, “take off your glasses.” Bug-eyes glazed bewildered, then gray slits of lips snarled, “You motherless dog!” He withdrew in darkness a moment, reappeared on porch, serrated saw of his voice cut the chill dark, “¡Hijo de su pinche madre! ¡Mátalo! ¡¡Mátalo!!” First shot framed darkness round me with a spillway of bright light, eruption of sound, and second shot roared a spray of brilliance and the third gave an expanded halo-flash. My legs woozed, and then I buckled to the ground. (I thought, holy shit, what ever happened to the old yard-style fight between estranged friends!) I groaned with the steer, and crawled my dead legs to the truck, lunged on elbows into the cab, hand lifting the dead stone beneath my waist to clutch and brake. Following morning calls came, “Tell us who did it Gato!” “Our rifles are loaded!” I said, “Leave it alone. What would you do if a drunk man came into your yard, threatened to beat you?” I wanted peace, wanted to diffuse the immovable core of vengeance in my heart, I had carried since a child, dismantle the bloody wheel of violence I had ridden since a child. During my week in bed, pellets pollinated me with a forgotten peace, and between waking thoughts of anger and vengeance, sleep was a small meadow of light, a clearing I walked into and rested. Fragrance of peace filled me as fragrance of flowers and dirt permeate hands that work in the garden all day. Curandero came to visit, and said, “The bull in ancient times was the symbol of females. Did you know that? Killing the bull, is killing the intuitive part of yourself, the feminine part. Did you realize, when Jesus was raising Lazarus, he groaned in his spirit and that bull groaned, and when you killed the bull, it was raising you. The dying bull gave birth to you and now you are either blessed or cursed. The flood of that bull’s blood, is either going to drown you or liberate you, but it will not be wasted.”