to cool it and take a seat for one of my out-of-this-world stories.
After telling her the complete story, she had the nerve to call me a liar. Of course, on almost any other occasion, she might have been right. I liked bending the truth or exaggerating it; it lent a certain flair to what were normally tedious events.
Thank God that at that moment, a police car pulled up in front of the house, causing my mother to look at me in horror. She told me to go out the back door and run to my nana’s house a block away and not come out till she came for me.
Chapter 3
The Police
I guess she assumed that I had escaped from police custody. When she saw me in the squad car earlier, she did call headquarters to see what I was being charged with. Of course, they didn’t know my name yet or that I was even with the police.
I ran to answer the door and asked the officer in. My mother was petrified and close to a faint, but she gained back some sense of composure as the officer started asking me questions. Listening in, my mother started believing in the tale I had spun a few minutes earlier.
The crime unit had identified the girl as one who went missing seven years prior. Her dress and other items were identified by her father. Distraught over the loss of her daughter, the mother had committed suicide two years after the disappearance. My mother seemed to be relieved, as only I could detect in her facial expressions as she did the math. I would have been four years old when the girl disappeared.
Thank God he’s not a suspect.
My mother knew deep down that I could never commit such a crime, but she would never be surprised by anything involving her son. I guess I really was a hellion, but causing pain to another soul? Never. What a mother, I swear. God bless her though.
My aunts were around all the time it seemed, and they just loved me and the antics I would provide. The neighborhood women were glad that I belonged to my mother and not to them. They only had gossip and rumor to fill their lives, no e-mail or Internet. Their children just weren’t as smart as me, so tales of Alex and what he was up to on any given day were plenty. The telephone, with a nice party line, would fill an otherwise boring evening and load ’em up for the following day’s across-the-fence bullshit among the hens.
I think many of the surveillance, black ops tactics, and disinformation techniques used by the CIA are a result of observing women in their everyday lives, all the way back to the days of the cave.
The police officer told me that I had provided all he needed and thanked me once again as he made his way out to his car.
My father came home and saw the calm in my mom’s eyes, so for now, his prepared tirade had to be put on the back burner. His comment, though, gave me a start.
“This girl was from seven years ago?” he asked.
My father had recalled an incident seven years ago that involved the disappearance of a young fourteen-year-old girl. The more he thought about it, the closer it began to hit home. There was a man he had worked with back then at the flour mill who had lost his teenaged daughter under mysterious circumstances. The man had quit within the year, and my father lost touch with him, never giving him a second thought. My dad asked me where we had discovered the body, and I told him that it was in the bank of the riverbed just past the St. Mary’s street bridge.
Now I could sense the wheels starting to turn in ole pop’s brain. He then told me that seven or so years ago, coming home late one night, driving over the St. Mary’s bridge, he saw a man carrying something draped over his shoulder jump over the side of the bridge. That would be about a thirty-foot leap onto the sand. He promptly stopped the car and got out to look over the edge. There was a small amount of moonlight, just enough to see that there was nothing there. I pressed him on as he further recanted.
“I don’t care who you are. That high jump will break something,” he stated.
The next morning, he decided to go and give a look down in the sand for obvious prints that should be there. As he walked around the approximate spot where the person would have landed, he saw no interruptions in the sand, with the exception of hoofprints, which could have been from a deer. The vision always perplexed him until eventually, he gave it no more thought.
Now I asked him for specific details about what he saw and to give his first gut-feeling response to the question of who did it.
Dad was a pretty sharp fella who came over from Mexico as an orphan. Upon his arrival in this country, he determined the most important thing upon getting here was to master the King’s English.
He told his children, “If you can erase the Spanish accent, you will be taken seriously and have a better chance of melding right into the gringo’s society.” He did just that, and all his children did as well.
“Now what was it you saw that night? Were you drinking?” I asked.
Chapter 4
The Wedding and Him
With these new occurrences and the dead little girl, my father felt able to make assumptions of his own.
“First, I have to tell you a story of something that I witnessed firsthand back in Mexico forty years ago,” Dad said. He began to tell a tale that I thought was a stretch for a sober and sensible man. According to my father, he was about my age when he and his buddies went out to the country club one Saturday night. They would peer through the windows and pretend they were part of the festivities.
“That night’s dance was a celebration for the newlywed couple who graced the dance floor,” he said. “This country club dance hall sat atop a hill off to the side of the golf course, a bit remote, but still, it lit up like a mansion on the hill every Saturday night. As we hid in the bushes, a carriage pulled up, delivering a man that was completely dressed in black, dressed in a long black coat with tails that softly brushed the ground as he proceeded up the walkway to the hall entrance.
“If I ever wanted to look like somebody when I grew up, I was watching him now. He wore a beautiful black silk fedora, and he had the most perfect mustache and Vandyke beard any man would want. He approached the entrance and walked right into the midst of the crowd. We noticed how all the ladies seemed awestruck when he walked past them. The men couldn’t help but admire him with an envy that was obvious but kept in check.”
“Who was this fine caballero?”
“Nobody knew him, or at least had not made any advances or greetings of recognition. He was at this party, and he was the main attraction. It didn’t take long for him to select someone that caught his eye. It just so happened he fancied the newlywed bride, who was the most beautiful woman in the ballroom.”
My father was getting fidgety as he told the story. I knew it was dinnertime, and we would have to continue the tale after dinner. I just hoped I could coax him into it before his favorite mini-nap time. He would dent the old recliner after a meal with his portly frame, and all bets were off till after he got his snore on.
The next morning, as I rode off with my chums, I started telling them about my dad’s experience and the tale he was telling me. I had everybody’s attention as we all pedaled off together in a squadron formation. When we got to our brick pit diggings, we stopped and discussed what kind of adventure was scheduled for the day. We caught our breaths after our race to the pits, and I finished giving them
