The Ones We Leave Behind by JCVD
my clothes are going to smell like smoke for the rest of the day, but in the company of these weathered faces and the laughter of the growing children weaving through the backyard where we had grown up, and our parents had grown up, the hot smoke billowing from the grill was far from a worry. i looked at my younger cousins, who had, too, stumbled into the early awkward stages of adulthood, and in spite of my disconnect, my heart began to sink. i can hear my brother yelling incoherent thoughts at the other children; he is the smallest, and his youth is already wearing thin. these family gatherings always seemed larger, and so much more intimate, but maybe that was a consequence of childhood as well; the world always seemed so much bigger. some of the older faces are new, and all the younger faces are older, but we all think about the holes made by the empty seats around us. the ones we had lost, the ones who had moved away, and the ones that we forced out, all lingering here like ghosts, dancing through the smoke. my god-father with his permanent place at the grill, beer in one hand, camcorder in the other, all the while still managing to flip the bleeding meat on the grill. we are all hungry, but i wonder if it is for the same things.
we eat in silence. paper plates rest on laps, and plastic cups stand next to the legs of the same wrought iron chairs that have been on this porch since before my mother was born. soon, our cousins are all inside, and it is just my immediate family that remains on the porch. even around blood, we are all still so alone. my mother points it out as a joke, enthusiastically as though she believes that it is a pleasant accident, but as we all give half hearted smiles, she slumps back into her chair, searching through similar outcasted memories of her youth. my grandpa stares at the ground and says strongly, “Well, we just have to stick together, then.” my love for this man will always exceed my ability to express it. soon, the family begins to pour back onto the porch, and the old faces begin to fill the chairs. one face is attached to a round, portly body. he has always been poor, his children have always suffered, yet he has always been fat. as he takes another bite of his burger stuffed with a chile relleno, my grandma remembers a face that has long been gone, and how at one family gathering, that man started an unbelievable food fight in which the family began tossing tamales at each other. that man– and his two brothers– went to prison some years later for killing someone at a party. their family bond was strong. it is a trivial detail at the end of the story, but my grandpa begins to remember many of the other offenses those men had committed in their youth, and how when he confronted their father, all he had to say was, “You tell whoever told you those things to mind their own god damned business.” we have all done things to make our parents ashamed of us, and we all lingered in that silence, drowning in our embarrassment.
my cousin’s dog begins to bark, and my grandpa says, “man, those birds get at that dog food all day and that dog just sits by and does nothing about it. i remember your dogs, mijo. those two dogs would sit there and watch those birds eat the food, and they’d slowly start to creep towards them. put one leg up slightly and then BAM! boy, they’d be on those birds like white on rice! i remember when we gave those dogs away. i put the ad in the paper. ‘Two Hunting Dogs, FREE.’ Boy, those dogs were gone the next day.” i sink into my chair, feeling a hot rush of panic run through my body. i had cried for weeks when he gave those dogs away. i felt his shame in my weakness. i stood up quickly to get something to drink, in fear that my mom would speak about the nights i screamed for those dogs, but luckily my cousin (the face with the relleno burger) began to speak.
“man, i should do that with some of my dogs. i got seven of those sons-a-bitches. i remember me and my neighbor took one of the dogs out to the desert, out there in Canutillo, porque tenía worms or algo así, and i didn’t want her to suffer. so we put her in the back of the truck, and one of the other dogs jumped into the bed, too, so i thought, hey, i’ll just leave him out there, with her, pinche pendejo. so, we get out into the desert, and my neighbor is taking the dogs outta the bed while i get my pistol outta the glove box.”
my grandma interrupts, “you were going to shoot her?!”
“pos sí. i didn’t want her to suffer or anything. so, i aim at her, and just as i pull the trigger, el otro pinche perro jumps in front of the goddamn bullet to protect her! and he comes running at us and jumps all over me and goes flying back into the bed of the truck! so now, there we are, trying to get this dog out of the damn truck! he was fucking pissed, too. he was snarling at us and ready to bite the hell out of us, man, but finally, i guess because he was bleeding so damn much, he started to calm down. i pulled him out of the bed of the truck and off we went, man. i mean, can you imagine if we had gotten pulled over after that? todo lleno de sangre? how could we have explained that to the cops? they would’ve thrown us in jail, man.”
everyone laughs, and agrees.
my grandpa removes his cap. “you know, there’s some of those animal rights people who will get real pissed off at something like that.”
my cousin replies, calmly, “yeah, but they’re just dogs. can you imagine trying to explain to the cops why we were covered in blood? they would’ve thought we had killed a person.”
my grandpa cooly runs his hand through what is left of his shining, silver hair. “yeah, well i’m pretty sure they would’ve given you more time for killing that dog than they would have for killing a person.” his hat returns to his head, and he laughs to himself. the back door of the house opens and out come more familiar faces. more ghosts.
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