beacon light

The day my dad picked me from daycare, I knew something was different.  

Mainly it was because my mom had forbid him to do so. Never again would he drive with me in the passenger seat of the Nissan diesel, the one missing a floorboard; the pavement racing just inches from my dangling delighted toes. Not after the accident; not after the replacement windshield.

                 And most definitely not after my head injury.

                “Get in,” he said nonetheless and I did with no protest. We road silently inside the truck - me not speaking; him relishing the precision of the manual shift. In and out of green-lit tunnels hollowed through brown hills of the California mid-lands. All landscapes dinged with a suffocating coat of dusty earth so thick it seemed to choke any chance of life.  This is year-round Contra Costa we’re talking.

                We reached a road-side park among the many jagged hills that scar the county. Even from the entrance, I could sense activity just over the dash. It looked like some sort of fair or carnival with cars lined up tight against the railing. And some were double and triple parked. We only double parked.

                He quickly exited with one thing in his possession; the one thing which never left his side: a pair of military issue binoculars, glossy black and giant in my hands. I saw families complete with children and wives. Picnics littered the area as we marched toward a fenced ledge lookout where most amassed in a large crowd. They were pointing and talking silently, making less sound then the amount of people would suggest.

                They pointed across the valley to another hill.

                Something was there. After looking in silent excitement, my dad broke concentration and handed me the binoculars. Looking through the glasses, I felt a bemused wonder that mutated into an alien dread. I was looking at the only giant condor my eyes would ever see.  As cartoonish as my memory makes it seem, the creature flinching and awkward, the reality never escaped me that it was dying, and we were its witnesses. I knew it then, as I remember it now. “Son, this is something you’re never gonna forget.” After that day, there were 15 left in the wild, and now I only assume they’re all extinct.

                Now I see different creatures with similar fates. Now I see a man, pale and collapsed on Broadway x 13^th street outside FORBIDDEN PLANET. A crowd of fifteen mill about as I pass, slowly weighing the reality of action versus comfort. There is even a young man in nurse’s scrubs. But no action, not one.

                “Is he breathing?” I ask, though he certainly looks not be.

                “We called 911 already,” some girls on cells assure.

                “Shouldn’t we roll him over in case he vomits?” Their eyes widen behind glasses.

                “Don’t touch him. You don’t want trouble.”

She is more than correct. Still, he looks dead, splayed out on the bubble gum black sidewalk. He is not gasping, heaving, or twitching. I decide against a cell pic, a decision in good taste. I can keep my humanity card one more day. All the people in the world, and not one will touch or check for pulse.  You just gotta pay for that sort of attention in this town. All my wonder sapped and gone for the human challenge on the ground.

                I’m on my lunch after all.