A Day in the Park
I took a deep breath and heaved myself up on my elbows, Well, here we are. I heard the sirens coming and knew I didn’t have much time. I didn’t need much time. Awkwardly, leaning on one elbow, I fumbled in my right-hand pocket and pulled out my old Boy Scout knife. The brown package lay in front of me, its strings taut the way only professional wrappers can make them. I figured one swipe with my trusty blade and they’d pop like a too-full tire. Sure enough. I hardly touched them and they zinged apart with a crudely musical whine. The ends of the wrapping paper, freed, moved up slowly, like wings unfolding. The sirens were getting closer, so I hopped up and squatted in the standard third-world position, feet flat on the ground, hips resting on the back of my ankles. I'm sure a smile played across my face as I undid the paper: it had to, all things considered. Prolonging the pleasure, I took the paper off the box and carefully folded it six times, which made it small enough for me to stick in my back pocket, tight though it was in this squatting position. A shoebox now perched revealed in the mottled shade on the grass. I had somehow expected better. I thought of Joseph Smith, that poor misguided soul whose sins were still being visited on entirely too many people. I probably also thought of Moses; I hope I quickly chastised myself for such hubris. But still, I doubted either of them had to contend with a shoe box. No matter. The lid came off and I saw white tissue paper, hardly crumpled, resting lightly on the contents. The sirens were at the curb, and, mingling with the sounds of children at the swings and on the see-saws, police voices, male and brooking no nonsense, moved toward me."I could leave it as it is, wrapped." That thought was very clear. I wish I could tell you just how clear: as clear as the time somebody said, "You are beautiful," in innocence and meant it, because they were right. It was that clear. "Hmmmm," I thought next, and reached into the box. Then in quick order I felt a bullet rip my left leg and heard the shot. They, you see, not unreasonably, thought I was reaching for a weapon like theirs. I kept reaching and they kept thinking that. The next bullet was higher, and ignominious, in a buttock and hitting, I knew right away, a bone. "Is it worth it?" I thought, and in considerable pain withdrew my hand.No more bullets came and in seconds they had me, roughly pinned. My chin jammed into the turf, and my nose almost touched the box. Inches, inches, inches. It was there, inches away, but might as well have been on Alpha Centauri. They were muttering their Neanderthal communications. "Please," I mouthed into the grass, "please don't touch it." Which of course was precisely the wrong thing to say. One of them kicked the box hard. It spun into the air and out of my field of view. I heard an incredulous "Shit!" from somewhere behind my back. A hush fell over the group and I watched a lot of out-of-focus, very shiny black shoes become motionless. Although it is difficult to accurately judge clock time in a situation like this, I’m quite sure several minutes passed with everybody motionless and silent. I found myself wondering how the tableau looked to In others in the park, especially the children, since they were most likely to understand.It finally dawned on me that there was no need for me to have said anything. It had its own protection, quite beyond guns, or my rhetorical behest. Their voices returned before movement. Off to my left I heard one say, "Why the fuck would he reach into an empty shoe box?" This elicited mutterings of sympathetic confusion toward the speaker who, most likely, was also the one who had shot me. Rapidly the world ordered itself for them, and, in the way of police, now that I was down, they treated me less as victim and more as wounded person. I heard one of them calling an ambulance on the radio while another pulled my pants down to examine and cursorily treat my wounds. He informed the others that they were not severe, though I was, I could tell, bleeding, it seemed, profusely. The ambulance came, though not soon enough either for me or for them, judging by their profane impatience. It came and took me away. After hospital, a matter of a few days, in jail the ACLU assured me I had a case against the police. Liberal that I fancy myself, I was surprised to hear me decline the offer of assistance. The legal system spat me out fairly easily, with only my two scars forming to show for my trouble. When I went back to the park, directly upon my release, there was, as the policeman had so readily perceived, nothing to see except children and swings and seesaws and grass and one persimmon tree now surrounded by the half-rotten flesh of its unwanted fruit.
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Persimmons hung from the tree like green-capped
fools’ heads. I looked up and touched one. It swayed heavily, slowly. With the
movement, its shade shifted, letting the sun momentarily blind me. I turned over and
inspected the pale St. Augustine grass through a dancing field of tiny diamonds which my
retinas now imposed on reality for a few fading seconds. It is not easy being human, I
thought, and longed for a quick return. When had I last rested? I could hardly remember.
Then it came: in Vietnam, in the hospital. I had learned that the great attraction of
narcotics is not escape, but rest. Rest. Not sleep, just rest, To rest, perchance to
sleep.