A Cautionary Tale
A Short Story
Souls on ICE
Henry Hitz
They weren’t the best neighbors, Jorge Rodriguez, his wife Mercedes, and their three kids. The three-year-old Jesus screamed a lot, especially at night when it was time to sleep, as if their houses were too close together. Valarie, eleven, seemed relatively together in her blue and white Catholic school uniform, but she was a serial litterer, leaving candy wrappers and empty Dorito bags strewn along the sidewalk as she walked home from school.
And then there was Alberto, sullen but mature at 15, with what looked to Mike like gang tattoos on his arms. But he did follow Valarie home from school most days, as if to keep her safe.
Mercedes was short, plump, a responsible parent whose shy demeanor bordered on the pathological, acknowledging Mike’s enthusiastic ¡Holas! with an almost imperceptible nod.
All Mike knew about them really was that they were from Honduras, and neither parent spoke much English. Mike was fairly fluent in Spanish, but the family kept to itself.
The backyard of their brown, tumble down, nineteen-thirties bungalow, was overgrown with wild blackberries which, much to Mike’s annoyance, routinely invaded his own garden of neatly kept vegetable beds.
Mike, an early-retired quasi-gentrifier, lived with Jenny, his young Japanese wife, in a cute, upgraded Victorian, sky blue with white trim. He and Jorge had words over the blackberry infestation and Jorge’s front yard, which was a depository of empty tequila and Corona bottles.
“Do you mind if I help you clean up the front of your house?” Mike asked Jorge in Spanish. Jorge shrugged. “Haz lo si como quieras.” Suit yourself.
So, he did. He took two big black garbage bags and, with rubber gloves, filled them to the brim with all manner of basura, separating out the recycling, while Jorge sat on the top step drinking a Corona with lime and a blank look.
Jorge was gordo, a long-haul trucker for many years until one too many DUIs cost him his job. Now, increasingly unshaven, he fixed cars in his driveway, often changing the oil and letting the sludge drain into the sewer, another point of contention between him and Mike, the neighborhood scold when it came to environmental issues.
Finishing Jorge’s yard, Mike continued down the street until he had picked up all the trash and used condoms, greeting a pair of familiar Black girls plying their ancient trade on his block.
He sympathized with the girls, going so far as to help organize community meetings with city officials about sex trafficking. He did want the trade off his block.
A chill seized the country, especially in the Latinx communities, when the former president was reelected, promising to deport “every last despicable illegal alien in the country.” Mass deportations became one of the rallying cries of his rabid supporters.
Mike was worried for the immigrant population in general, at least Oakland was a sanctuary city, meaning the city officials and the police wouldn’t cooperate with any attempted sweep by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement aka the dreaded and aptly named ICE. He suspected that the war on immigrants would be focused on Texas and Arizona, where the state and local officials were more than eager to help. The now and former president got less than 30% of the vote in California. He wouldn’t want to take on such a hostile population, at least not right away. There would be time for the state’s liberal political class to grow some cojones and stand up to the madness. Wouldn’t there?
And he had no idea what the immigration status of the Rodriguez family was.
On Day One of his regime as promised, the now and former president ended all asylum programs, sealed the border from everyone except those who could purchase a $5000 bond, and set up camps, “neohoovervilles,” on the Mexican side, ignoring the objections of Mexico. “Want to make something of it?” he famously told his female Mexican counterpart.
He called out the National Guard to supplement the ICE forces at most of the southern border crossings.
Texas went further, deputizing the Patriots of Texas to patrol the desert near the border, looking for tunnel outlets.
It was early March when Mike and Jenny heard on Democracy Now! one morning about the first extralegal killings. According to the news, a unit of about fifteen Patriots roaming the desert off-road in their Hummers and ATVs east of the Rio Grande crossing at Piedras Negras stumbled upon three heavily armed Mexicans on horseback. The likely cartel members seemed to be waiting for something. The Patriots hid behind a hill and watched as a person emerged seemingly out of nowhere. Acting quickly, the Patriots slaughtered the four men and the three horses with a thirty second volley from their AKs.
Then they systematically shot the immigrants as they emerged from the tunnel one-by-one, until the bodies numbered twenty, half of them women and children.
One of the Patriots videoed the massacre and posted it on YouTube. Four of them were arrested, charged with manslaughter, and jailed in San Antonio for a week before the governor and president hailed them as heroes and convinced prosecutors to drop the charges.
Horrified and furious, Mike joined in the huge demonstrations at the Federal Building in downtown Oakland.
Congress quickly passed a law making it a Level 2 felony to harbor and/or fail to report illegal aliens.
Finishing his duty of pulling weeds around the traffic diverters he had advocated for to slow the johns as they sped past looking for girls, Mike stopped in front of Jorge, who was sitting on his front step nursing a Corona with lime. Mike shook his head, and Jorge shook his head back, both understanding that they were expressing disbelief at the news.
“What’s this fucking country coming to?” Mike said in Spanish.
“Si, es muy pelagroso. Como Honduras,” Jorge said. It’s very dangerous. Like Honduras.
“You guys have your papers though, right?” Mike ventured.
Jorge just stared back wordlessly, telling Mike everything he needed to know.
“It won’t happen here,” Mike said. “We’re a sanctuary city.”
Jorge emitted a huge “Ha!”
That night in bed, Mike recounted the interaction to Jenny. “I’m scared, Jenny,” he said. They held each other tight while Mike shook.
“I get it.” Jenny said. “It’s terrifying. Though not exactly surprising.” She paused. “Can you imagine what it would be like if we weren’t legal?”
“I want to buy a gun.” Mike said.
“What? Come on, Mike. We’re pacifists, remember? You said nothing good ever comes from having a gun.”
“Just for self-defense.”
“They’re not coming for you. Or me. You want to defend our neighbors? You don’t even like them! What could go wrong?”
It was unusual of Mike to defy her, but the next day he drove to El Cerrito in his old but well-cared-for Corolla and started the arduous process of buying and registering a small Glock.
The dropping of charges against the Patriots for their massacre pronounced open season on immigrants in Texas, Arizona, and Florida. Hardly a day went by that an immigrant wasn’t shot dead by a vigilant citizen.
The Justice Department looked the other way. The President declared, “Whatever it takes to keep the cartel murderers, drug dealers, rapists, and sex traffickers out of our country. It’s about time we stood up for our freedom.”
Jenny, a school librarian by trade with a lithe body and long black hair, invited Valarie to come by after school. She had Mike clear it with Mercedes, who nodded agreement.
Mike listened while Jenny served Val almond milk and vegan cookies and asked pointed questions. “Where were you born, Val?”
“I was born on the fishing boat that brought my family into Brownsville on the Gulf.”
“That makes you a citizen!” Mike proclaimed. “Birthright citizenship. It’s in the Fourteenth Amendment.”
“That’s what Mama says. But Papa? He says we were still on the boat. Quien sabe? Who knows?”
At the on-line neighborhood coalition meeting, Mike raised the question of the threat of ICE ignoring the city’s sanctuary status and making mass arrests of the undocumented. “These are our neighbors,” Mike said.
One of the leaders, a former school board member, said, “They wouldn’t dare. It would cause riots.”
An older Latina said, “My family came here legally. Why can’t they?”
The lone Black man said, “This country doesn’t even support its citizens. Honestly, I feel sorry for the undocumented, but they should be deported and then go through channels.”
His anger rising, Mike said, “What about the killings?”
“Terrible!” said one.
“Unforgivable,” said another.
“Really unfortunate,” said the leader.
“You know that old saw,” Mike said. “First they came for the Communists, then the Socialists, then the Trade Unionists, then the Jews, and so on.” He was met with stony silence.
He let it go. He didn’t expect people to be so short-sighted about it in this most liberal of cities.
The next day he was picking up the litter in the street and saw Jorge sitting on his stoop. He sucked in his breath, shook off his annoyance with , (drunks) and mess-makers, and approached his nemesis. “¿Como estas, Jorge?”
Jorge starred back, sullen. “¿Cerveza?”
What the hell, Mike thought. “Okay.” He climbed up the steps and sat one step below Jorge.
Jorge popped open a Corona from his cooler and handed it to Mike. “¿Limon?”
“Si,” Mike said. He clicked his bottle against Jorge’s, squeezed the lime and took a long swig.
Jorge wore a dirty pair of mechanic’s coveralls and smelled of axle grease mixed with BO. They sat in silence for a while.
“I had a muffler shop in La Cieba on the Gulf,” Jorge said in Spanish. “Welded together a man made of muffler parts and stuck it on the roof.”
“I love those sculptures,” Mike responded, also in Spanish. “I’ve seen them in Mexico too. You’re an artist.”
Jorge guffawed.
“What should we do, Jorge?” Mike said after a while.
“Organizar.”
“Who?” Mike asked.
“You and me,” answered Jorge, misunderstanding the question.
That night in bed, where they discussed everything serious, Mike related this exchange to Jenny.
“I guess you have to do it,” Jenny said, clearly not happy about it. “Like it or not, you’re seen as a leader in this neighborhood.”
“Fuck. I’m no leader. I’m just the guy who picks up the trash.”
Jenny laughed with her twinkly giggle he loved so much.
Nevertheless, he swallowed his reluctance and searched the internet for the local immigrant rights organizations, the Unity Council, La Raza Legal Defense, Immigrant Empowerment Center, the Brown Berets, and compiled their phone numbers.
Jenny suggested that maybe Mike, as an old white guy, shouldn’t be the organizer of whatever actions might be called for. “Who else will do it?” Mike asked.
She just looked at him and cocked her head.
“Jorge?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
The next afternoon, Mike joined Jorge on his steps and shared another Corona. He handed Jorge the list of phone numbers. “Organizar, remember?” He added, “I got your back on this.”
“Soy un borracho, no soy organizador.” I’m a drunk, not an organizer.
Mike shrugged and turned up his hands..
After a moment of silence, Jorge said, “I suppose I’d have to clean up a little.”
Mike smiled encouragingly and shrugged again.
“¡A la chingada!” Jorge spat. Fuck. He lowered his voice. “I was run out of my shop by the gangs who were protecting the oligarchs. I was with the socialists.” He practically whispered the last word. “They tore up my sculptures, as you called them.”
“So, really Jorge, you know what you’re doing.”
“I’ve seen what happens to people who step out as leaders. I drink so much to numb myself from all the death.”
Mike granted Jorge a moment of appreciative silence.
“I have a family,” Jorge added unnecessarily.
Several days passed without Jorge appearing on his front steps. Mike got the feeling Jorge had simply withdrawn, and that nothing was going to happen with the organizing.
Then at 10 PM one night when Mike and Jenny were getting ready for bed, there was a knock at the door. Jorge. He hadn’t exactly cleaned up, he was still in his funky coveralls, but he had shaved.
He handed Mike a paper upon which was scrawled: Reunión Urgente. Sin deportaciones. Viernes 15 julio. 6-8 PM. Alcoholicos Anonimos, 1265 E. 12th St.
Urgent meeting. No deportations.
“Can you make un folleto, Mike?” Leaflet.
Mike beamed and made an awkward high-five with Jorge. “Of course, Jorge. AA?”
“No, not me. Un amigo. It was not easy getting them to agree for us to use the place. No politics, you know. The leader said we could use it if I started coming to meetings. So I did. I hate that mierda, though.”
Mike laughed. “Of course you do. How many copies?”
“A thousand.”
“For real? Okay.”
Mike fussed over the leaflet most of the night on his old Mac. In the morning, he emailed it to the local copy place that the neighborhood groups use. Without hesitating, he paid the $120 with his credit card and picked up the box that afternoon.
When he brought the leaflets to him that evening, Jorge was dressed in a blue dress shirt and clean jeans. “!Vamos! he said, grabbing a handful and bidding Mike to follow him. They spent the rest of the evening and the next and the next going door to door with the flyers.
The night before the meeting, Valarie knocked on the door of Mike’s and Jenny’s house at 11.30 at night. Since they both slept naked, they popped awake and donned some sweats.
“Papa’s gone!” she blurted breathlessly.
“Shit,” Mike said, deaf to appropriateness. He knew as she knew as Jenny knew that he was drunk some place.
“Do you know where he goes?” Jenny asked.
She flung her hair back. “I know some places,” Valarie said, older than her years.
Mike and Jenny threw on some clothes and hopped in the Corrola with Valarie, who started to cry. “It’s okay. We’ll find him,” Jenny said.
Mike wondered if they should bring Valarie with them. Were he and Jenny protecting her, or would she be protecting them? They anticipated their trek would take them to some unseemly venues.
They found him at the third dive they went to, El Gato Negro, near 30th Ave on International. It was dark, old school, with a urinal along the edge of the bar, hopefully no longer in use. He was in the back passed out in a burgundy vinyl booth, an empty bottle of Jose Cuervo on the table.
Pablo, the enormous owner, growled at them. “Good you’re here, He’s been out two hours. We close at 2. I would’ve had to call the cops if he didn’t wake up.”
“Can you bring us some black coffee and a bowl of ice water?” ever-thinking Jenny asked.
“Sure. Jorge’s a good customer, I even like him a little when he’s sober, which isn’t so often.”
They splashed ice water all over him and poured coffee down his throat as if waterboarding him. Jenny had the wherewithal to slap his face. Mike just demanded, “Jorge! Wake the fuck up!”
He finally did wake up and leaned on Mike and Jenny as they steered him toward the car where Valarie waited. They poured him onto the front seat, his pants wet with piss to Mike’s fastidious horror. Jorge started sobbing. “¡No quiero morir!” I don’t want to die.
Mike wanted to say, “No one’s going to die” but the way things were going, he wasn’t sure that this was true.
Fourteen hours after his rescue team deposited Jorge in his bed, 6 PM, there were only five people at the meeting, including Jorge, Mercedes, Mike, Jenny, and the AA leader, sitting on the folding chairs in the no-frills storefront with the gurgle of the large coffee percolator in the background. All wore worried looks on their faces. But Jorge had been to the barber and was donning a green suit, too small and only a little threadbare.
By 6:05, there were seven people. By 6:15, twelve. By 6:30, twenty-eight.
Displaying miraculous recovery from his hangover, Jorge adeptly chaired the meeting. It was Mercedes who proposed a march down International Boulevard to the Federal Building, all the way from 98th Avenue. Mike had never heard her say so many words.
Knowing his role, Mike made the flyers for the march, scheduled for Saturday, July 26. He also wrote and sent out the press release.
The next evening, Mercedes came out of her shell and with a smirk at him, grabbed a handful of flyers and began going door to door with them. She took Valarie with her.
Alberto slouched in the doorway of the house. Mike took a chance, his stomach warbling. “Alberto, want to come with me?”
Without moving a face muscle, Alberto assented by shuffling down the stairs toward Mike. They were silent much of the way as they knocked on doors. After a half block, they met a family that spoke no English. Mike decided to play dumb. “Alberto, can you translate?”
“Okay,” still impassive but with just a hint that he was glad to be useful.
When they were finished for the evening, Mike invited Alberto to come to his house. He served him hot chocolate and vegan cookies.
“You have a piece?” Alberto asked in his monotone.
“A gun? I do in fact,” he said without thinking, kneejerk honesty.
“Can I see it?” Alberto asked.
Mike laughed. “What? No way Jose.” He blushed. “I mean Alberto.”
Over the next week, Jenny blasted the event all over social media, in English and Spanish. “REUNIRSE AL MEDIODÍA DE LA MARCHA 98 E INTERNACIONAL BLVD. DEL 26 DE JULIO AL EDIFICIO FEDERAL. NO DEPORTACIONES.”
“GATHER AT NOON 98TH AND INTERNATIONAL BLVD JULY 26 MARCH TO THE FEDERAL BUILDING. NO DEPORTATIONS.”
It was coincidence that the date corresponded to the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Mike thought, but he wasn’t certain.
The day of the March was global warming hot, 92 degrees Fahrenheit by eleven. Mike went to Costco and, against to his environmental conscience, bought ten cases of bottled water. “There’s goes the planet,” he said to Jenny who rode with him and helped pile the bottles into their Corolla.
At high noon, about 300 people had gathered at the intersection of 98th and International according to Mike’s estimate, flash counting the crowd by tens. At 12:15 the numbers doubled, and by 12:30, Mike lost count. More than a thousand.
As the automobile traffic jammed on both of the intersecting major arteries, the march monitors in their yellow vests redirected the disgruntled drivers to alternate routes.
The leaders, Jorge and his buddies, stood by a vintage 1965 cherry red Cadillac Eldorado convertible. Jorge in his green suit and dress shirt, sweating, sober, and excited, grabbed the fancy bull horn Mike had bought and shouted into it: “Vamos, compadres. Formen filas de veinte y sigan al Caddie”. Form ranks of twenty and follow the Caddie.
Mike noted that the swelling crowd wasn’t just immigrants, certainly not all Latinx. There were Haitians, Dominicans, Filipinos, Palestinians, Yemeni, each with signs identifying the various constituencies. A colorfully dressed Haitian contingent played conga drums. Many-feathered Mexica (Aztec) danced down the street. And dozens of white allies, mostly young. Mike had managed to get an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists.
The elation swept through the crowd as the endless strand of people poured down the middle of the main drag in the city from east to west, passing through poor neighborhoods – taco trucks, papusa restaurants, sexy boutiques, pawn shops, bars, corner bodegas. massage parlors, check cashing services, wedding and car repair shops. Onlookers on the sidewalks exchanged fist salutes with the marchers. The sense of power was intoxicating.
Excitedly, Mike grabbed Jenny’s hand and urged Mercedes pushing Jesus in his stroller, Valarie, and Alberto to follow him so they were marching right behind Jorge in the Caddie. Jorge flashed them a huge smile. Mercedes sweated in her housedress. Alberto was dressed all in black. Valarie wore white hotpants with a man’s shirt, tails tied around her waist – an outfit Mercedes surely objected to [“Chica, pareces una puta.” –”Pero mamá, hace mucho calor.”]
It was too hot to keep up much chanting, but every now and then an enterprising monitor would call out “Si se puede, no deportaciones.
When the front of the crowd reached Hegenberger, the main route to the airport, the first helicopter buzzed overhead. From then on there would be at least one Oakland cop car with its lights flashing but no siren at each major intersection, every five blocks or so. Havenscourt, Seminary, 55th Avenue, High Street, Fruitvale. The marchers had decided not to apply for a permit, but Oakland was used to its permit process being ignored more often than not. The vibe from the police was not friendly, but it wasn’t hostile either for a change. It was, dare Mike say, professional, más o menos.
The march dragged in the sweltering heat. Many men removed their shirts. Women fanned themselves. Most of the water Mike had brought was gone, and the local bodegas did a lively business in bottled water, sodas, and beer. Enterprising entrepreneurs sold ice cream, limonada, and icies from their makeshift carts.
One teen wearing a bikini sprayed people with water from a recycled 409 bottle for a buck.
At Eleventh Ave, Mike saw on the sidewalk one of the Black girls he recognized from her cruising in front of his house, hardly dressed in a pink lace bra and thong. She smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up.
Despite the heat, the Parade/Fiesta was mostly jubilant until the second and third helicopter shattered the air. The first one was a toy like the police and TV news use. The second and third were Apache attack helicopters as Mike knew from idle research on the internet. They should change the name, he thought.
Fear pulsed through the length of the queue in waves. Facebook was estimating 4-5000 folk, but now many were breaking away from the march and disappearing among the stationary observers who lined the sidewalks.
It was eerily quiet once they reached Oscar Grant Plaza in front of City Hall, where they paused a block from their destination to tighten ranks. The helicopters had retreated. A mariachi band and a hip hop artist lightened the mood.
After a while as the bulk of the march arrived at the plaza, Jorge announced with his bullhorn from the back seat of the Caddie, “¡Ahora vamos al Edificio Federal y hacemos algo de ruido!” Now we go on to the Federal Building and make some noise!
Mike herded Jenny and Jorge’s family to follow close to give some support for Jorge for whatever would happen next.
Yellow vested monitors directed people back toward 14th Street, the name International Boulevard had resumed as it passed Lake Merritt, lining the people up behind the Eldorado. The march passed the abandoned and graffitied parking garage behind City Hall.
The Caddie hung a left on Clay. At midblock, it jumped the curb, and parked in the landscaped plaza in front of the doors of the Ronald V, Dellums Federal Building, locked since it was Saturday. The marchers spread themselves throughout the plaza.
The beige, twin highrise building with a glassed-in atrium was a fitting tribute to the great Congressman and Mayor, Mike thought. And a great venue for a sit-in, perhaps for their next action, on a work day.
Jorge stood up on the back seat with his bullhorn and animated the crowd with his chants, “¡No deportaciones! ¡No deportaciones! ¡No deportaciones!”
As the crowd massed in a sweaty collective, the exuberance of movement power blew away the fear like a breeze clearing the fog. Mike smiled. It was love that people felt, and he blushed at the sentimental thought. He embraced the old optimism: the people, united, will never be defeated.
Jorge stopped the chanting, apparently aware of a disturbance in the field. The crowd turned as one body toward the noise emanating from the abandoned garage. Soon they spotted a camo-dressed soldier, presumably National Guard, emerging from the ramp. He carried across his chest an M-16 or some such and assumed a marching gait.
He was followed by another, and another, and another. A disciplined line of soldiers stretched like ants from their staging area to the crowd of demonstrators. They wore mirrored helmets so you couldn’t see their faces.
A tsunami of new fear swamped the crowd washing away the exuberance. The marchers watched in frozen awe at this totally unexpected force. They held their collective breath as the soldiers methodically surrounded the crowd, pushing people out of the way as necessary. Not violently. Just relentlessly, as if they didn’t see the demonstrators.
Jorge tried to break the shock: “You see how scared they are of us. That means we have the power.”
The crowd responded with stony silence, traumatized by this display of naked force.
In ten minutes, the soldiers had fully encircled the protesting crowd.
An unmarked armored vehicle with a gigantic Bose speaker on its roof emerged from the garage at relatively high speed, given the number of pedestrians in the street. It skirted the crowd and then forced people out of its way as it planted itself at the edge of the plaza.
The robotic voice, was loud enough to hurt the ear drums of those standing near it, including Mike´s. “THIS IS AN UNLAWAFUL ASSEMBLY. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO DISPERSE OR YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST. BE PREPARED TO SHOW IDENTIFICATION. ALL OF YOU WILL NEED TO BE CLEARED BY ICE.”
In Google translate: “ESTA ES UNA ASAMBLEA ILEGAL. TIENEN DIEZ MINUTOS PARA DISPERSARSE O SERÁ SUJETO A ARRESTAMIENTO. ESTAR PREPARADO PARA MOSTRAR IDENTIFICACIÓN. TODOS USTEDES NECESITARÁN SER AUTORIZADOS POR ICE.”
The message repeated itself over and over.
People moved toward the edge of the crowd, but the soldiers closed ranks, preventing them from dispersing as ordered.
A surge of panic and anger spasmed through the crowd. They were trapped.
A fleet of six white school busses drove out of the abandoned garage and lined up on Clay Street.
Mike, Jenny, Mercedes holding Jesus, Valarie, and Alberto huddled near the Caddie, while Jorge reignited the chanting through the bullhorn. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. The response was subdued given the situation, but it hummed as a powerful resonance, a spiritual shield against the enemies of the people, who, both sides knew, were vastly outnumbered.
Near where Mike and his comrades were holding each other for support, the line of Guardsmen broke to admit another line of men and women, a couple dozen in all, in blue short-sleeved shirts with POLICE ICE written in bold letters on the back.
Mike could hear them asking for ID.
Jorge looked at Mike with a look that said We set this up.
How quickly things change, Mike thought, especially for the worse.
The chanting stopped, replaced by a buzz of anger at the agents setting up their iPads on the smattering of park benches that riddled the plaza, smiling with forced compassion. They had a job to do.
It was minutes before their turn came up. Jenny and Mike did have the foresight to bring their passports. The officials didn’t look at them. A mustachioed Latinx man zeroed in on Mercedes, then skipped over her for Valarie.
Sparks flew between the family as the man forcefully seated her on his bench right next to us and asked for her ID. Mike watched as she showed the man her doubtlessly fake birth certificate and school ID. The agent’s eyes radiated cruelty.
“Where we’re you born?” he spat at her.
“Texas.”
“Where in Texas?”
“Brownsville.”
“Shrimp country. You a shrimp?” He cackled. “You will come with us.” The agent moved to grab her right arm. A woman with permed hair grabbed her left arm. They lifted her from the bench and dragged her toward the gap in the soldier’s ranks that led to the busses.
Suddenly, Alberto screamed. “No!”
Then, for Mike, time stopped. He watched Alberto’s hand ever so slowly move toward the waistband in the back of his jeans.
Mike took several breaths before he saw his very own Glock appear in Alberto’s hand.
How did he get my gun? Mike thought. He watched himself as he slowly flung his body through the air to knock Alberto down.
The gun went off.
The agent interrogating Valarie dropped his pen and rolled onto the ground, blood pooling from his head.
Another shot.
Alberto froze then gasped breathlessly and collapsed on his back, still.
There was a long moment, while Mike tried to collect himself.
Mercedes screamed at top volume, “Alberto!”
A cosmic fury raged through the crowd. They overwhelmed the soldier who had fired the fatal shot at Alberto.
In a matter of minutes, the plaza filled with shrieks, tear gas, chaos, flash grenades, all the cacophony of a riot.
Screaming “No puedes matarnos a todos,” the crowd surged toward the soldiers. You can’t kill us all. The people broke through the line of soldiers and ran willy-nilly through the town, vanishing into their natural environment.
With Jorge trying to hold her back, Mercedes sobbed, “¡Mi niño!” as she tried to wrap her arms around his body as blood spurted out from the hole in his head. She clutched Alberto wishing life back into him until the EMTs finally made their way to them and threw the corpse roughly into an ambulance. Along with the equally dead body of the agent, Juan, it said on his nametag.
Valarie leapt out of official clutches and rejoined Jorge’s family, including Jenny and Mike, in their circle surrounded by march monitors, security to avoid arrest or worse. They held each other and wailed in unbearable grief.
Later, the news said less than twenty demonstrators were killed as panicked recruits fired randomly at the dispersing people, a victory, Mike thought, not without irony. Six soldiers also died, and many were wounded from being pummeled with fists through their Kevlar.
Few were arrested. Every attempted detention was interrupted by demonstrators overwhelming the police.
Burning police cars, tear gas, rubber bullets flew, following the riotous script.
People learn fast in a war, Mike thought, as he trudged numbly with Jenny, Valarie, Mercedes, Jesus, and Jorge back to their block, which would never be the same.
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