BoysLaughter
“Remember what happened to Steve?” Steve who’d changed his name to Steve from Ngoc when he became a US Citizen. Steve whose face was smashed after he tried to crowd an Accord which crowded him back and they both slammed into that screaming wall of death in the middle of the freeway. “Remember what happened to Haun!” who died when he hit a hubcap at 140 mph, had a front left blowout and his Civic flipped. “Closed casket funeral! Remember?” Jocelyn waits for an answer but none comes.
Young husbands often don’t know how to answer when the thing they love the most is attacked by the woman they love the most. Besides, he’d gotten it for her. This is a safe car. Out of any jam with the merest touch of the gas pedal. Acceleration is its only purpose in life. Because she now had the power to zoom out of the way, she would never have to worry about an accident. Roll bars built into the body to keep the occupants safe from intruders, and fenders, bumpers, even trailer hitches and screaming walls of death. “It’s going in the Auto trader tonight!” Jocelyn demands.
“Then put me in the husband trader!” Chad isn’t yelling it nearly so much as he’s just saying it louder than normal. Odd for Chad to raise his voice; most of the time his speech is so soft.
Glaring at Chad, Jocelyn articulates her ultimatum with a bit more precision, “Then I’m putting it in the Parts-Trader.” Her voice growls all the words except for “parts” which she screams at him while leaning in his direction as far as the seat belt lets her.
To their left an unofficial basketball game is taking over the official Mira Mesa Leagues’ court for the afternoon. Several adults are discussing with a policeman whether the children of their Kleberbach family reunion shouldn’t be allowed to finish the game. Shirts against skins games “are not the problem” the officer is explaining, it’s the shirts against brassieres part that’s bugging the neighbors. One irate man who does not know he’s about to be arrested for public drunkenness is asking if they shouldn’t just take them off then. His wife is suggesting to the policeman that they could wear bikini tops although really they show off more than the underwear currently is so what’s the point. Suggestions from her husband keep coming over and over that they should just take them off anyway, why not?
On Jocelyn’s right is a picnic in full swing with dancing and a string quartet accompanied by a drummer and a keyboard player. No Doubt’s amplified melody, Underneath It All, is stringing its way across the lawn to the road. Microphones stand in front of each of the quartet of octogenarians in tuxedos. Two violins, the viola and cello are all older than the oldest grandfather of the bride. Each instrument is worth more than the most expensive Mercedes in the car park. Together they are squeaking away at a song barely older than the youngest guest.
Several interlocking platforms fresh from Raphael’s Party Rentals make up the dance floor. In grey tails and golden bow tie, a tall young man twirls a young Caucasian woman in blinding white. Not far from them a smart looking man all in black is carrying a black camera with an objective lens as long as your forearm and as broad across as your hand including fingers and fingernails. He stands, squats, shifts, stands, squats again, never removing the camera from his face.
Chad Troung drives around the bend next to the Mira Mesa Friendship Park. His new wife Jocelyn is in the passenger seat. Notwithstanding its name, a male student, aged sixteen, brown hair, brown eyes, Asian, extinguished the young life of a fifteen year old female student, brown hair, green eyes, also Asian shortly after several violations of California Penal Code Section 647, annoying a minor. Perhaps it should be renamed the Unfriendly Park, or maybe the 2nd least friendly park in San Diego County. Rounding the curve, Chad’s aim is to show Jocelyn just how fast she can use the car to get out of the way of trouble before trouble finds her. Mira Mesa Boulevard is the main drag running east west through Mira Mesa, and Camino Ruiz is the principal artery leading north and south. Together they form a cross in the heart of Mira Mesa. From Camino Ruiz, you can drive in an easterly direction on Cumquat Way, which takes you back to Mira Mesa Blvd. Cumquat Way draws a quarter circle on the map before it reaches the stoplight at the boulevard.
Chad has been working on a friend’s car for a week in secret at another friend’s house to impress his new wife Jocelyn Monzon Troung. She’s known he was up to something because of the grime under his finger nails and still embedded in his finger prints when he would arrive at home in the evenings. Asking what’s up, he’s only answered that it was a surprise and she’d love it. Clearly she did not.
Working off the down payment, his friend Mo had lent him the money for the new 2005 Nissan 540Z car. Two doors; Jocelyn wants four because she’s pregnant and hasn’t told him yet. This car has a fat monthly payment; she wants no payments because babies cost at least two car payments per month already. Because she’s not yet told him about the baby, Chad doesn’t know why she’s angry. It is a Christmas gift, and why doesn’t she like it, Chad doesn’t understand, and he’s not ever going to. In Jocelyn’s eyes, the whole car is hardly the size of just the crumple zones on the Infiniti Q 45A she’s been eying at her uncle Fernando’s car lot. Babies are usually a big surprise, and the Q45 was supposed to be her 2nd Christmas surprise. Her uncle would let her work off the ten year old Q45 over the next seven months at twenty-five hours a week in his office at the car lot. After the birth, she’s going to be able to bring the bassinet to work once her maternity leave is over. Last night she signed the deal with her uncle and she starts work on Monday. Wrapped in a little box under the tree for her new husband of two months, the Infiniti purchase contract is folded around the double stripes on the early pregnancy test stick which has been washed in alcohol. More importantly, her uncle has promised to leave it out front on Christmas morning.
Just as Chad is squashing the gas pedal and considering shifting into 4th, the little boy in sized five bright white leather tennies and a Thomas the train shirt and little blue overalls is climbing down the curb. Running into the street he looks like a little train conductor. Blue overalls and a railway conductor’s matching cap make him look like a walking talking doll. Jocelyn is thinking of her own little doll baby who has only just started making her loosen her belt. She screams. The doctor is asking just say “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
The boy stops. He stands on the yellow line. Jocelyn is seeing him laughing. She’s seeing what he sees; a Boxer dog which she later learns is named Ralphie. Ralphie is tugging on his leash and barking at the Conductor. Brown hair, brown eyes, 2’1″ Caucasian male, named Charles Billington. His arms are straightening down at his sides while making fists and an upside down grimacing smile at the animal. Each muscle and tendon in the boy’s neck stands out showing rivulets in his skin. Cameraman is sprinting like a mule deer but runs over the bride’s maiden of honor while crossing the lawn in the park. Not the maiden everyone thinks, she’s lost her honor a long time ago and isn’t finding it in the grass and piles of used paper plates that she’s landing in. White ice cream and red cake splatter her little black dress. For a moment she thinks “he’ll never work in this town again.”
First to the left, the Z Car is fishtailing while Chad compensates thinking the boy is going to slow down. Chad isn’t watching him as closely as Jocelyn, and he aims right. Sliding, the wheels have lost all sense of grip on the road. Chad manages a flat spin counterclockwise; the boy was sprinting and is now stopping right in the middle on the line. He just stops as the Z car continues to rotate until it is flying sideways with the passenger side door in place of the front of the car. Jocelyn slaps the window with the flat of her hand just once, that’s all there is time for.
She looks directly into the train conductor’s eyes, who punches with his fists at the car’s direction, his father would later say like he always did when he was finished eating and you were still trying to shovel spoonful’s of yogurt into his mouth. Underneath her thighs, Jocelyn feels the first bump, followed minutes later by another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another.
Almost at the intersection the Z car comes to rest. Oddly enough, there are no cars waiting there at the light. Normally heavy, the momentary moderate volume of vehicles has left the lane open. The Nissan is not smashed into the rear end of someone else’s Buick. Jocelyn watches as the Buick is driven away. On the rear of the Buick, there is a quarter sized hole in the red plastic molding over the turning signal light.
Over Chad’s shoulder she sees the tire skid marks on the road which they have just made. There are only two black streaks on the pavement because the passenger side tire markings have merged into the driver’s. Occasionally the two single marks widen and narrow in unison as they go. In the middle, a red mottled streak marked with bits of material and whatnot starts about half way down and parallels them to the end. Ralphie is barking his fool head off and won’t stop, he’s inconsolable.
Chad Troung must have stepped out of the car to see if he could help, and he might even be saying so or maybe she just thinks he is. Vaguely she becomes aware of the sound of more thumping and bumping up against the other side of the car this time at the rear and she is wondering how Chad has hit someone else when the car isn’t moving. Dry heaves which turn out to not be so dry after all cause her to double over and she fills the extra spaces in her shoes with vomit and bile. Wiping her mouth, she hears commotion and screaming but without looking she drops her head and vomits in her lap. Blood in the barf on her legs causes her to panic and her knuckles are pale yellow and gripped onto the door handle and central molded cup holders. In front of her eyes, the car appears to be vibrating but it turns out to be her own head shaking and she can’t make it stop.
Someone is saying, “Miss, miss, miss, can you come out of the car? Miss are you injured?” In the window to the driver’s side door, there’s a police officer flanked by the bride from today’s wedding and a woman only in her bra.
“I’m missus, mis-sus Troung.” She answers, pink saliva running down her chin. While answering she’s remembering that that was not the question that was asked. She can feel drool coming out of her mouth and she wipes off bright pink spit.
“Was this your husband?” The officer asks. A woman somewhere is screaming about her baby, and where is it, and why are they taking her husband away, he didn’t hit that baby that chink did and why is her husband in chains that spik bitch’s man should be in chains and where was her baby she wanted her baby and then she invokes deity though she does not believe, she’s begging for them to please let her go . . .
“Missus Troung . . .” the officer has been waiting a long time but she finally looks him in the eyes, “was this your husband?”
But rather than getting out the car on her side, she leans across the seats and out the window, sees a leg with a New Balance running shoe on it. Chad has always liked racing so much that he did it on foot, on bicycles, in cars.
Crawling to the door over the shifter, she is on her hands and knees on the driver’s seat looking out to the left. Lying on the ground with his head next to the flat rear tire, Chad has a look of peacefully sleeping away the momentary anxiety of the situation; he’s sleeping with one eye open though just in case something bad might happen. On his back, his head is bent to the side and facing up. The top of his ear is touching his shoulder and if you put a protractor on the bend in the middle of his neck, the angle would be about negative ten degrees. “The chiropractor bill is going to be murder,” she thinks but does not know if she’s said it out loud.
An officer is calling for the coroner, back up and add another truck “with tweezers and a whisk broom and cheese cloth . . .” Although tears are rolling down his face, his voice does not betray his professional calm. Referring to it as DNA evidence a mile long he sees Jocelyn and hurriedly turns away walking from the scene of the accident . . . and the crime.
Rotating, Jocelyn puts her feet on the floor. Sitting in the car, both feet on the ground, her head in her left hand, she vomits blood into her lap again and cries. Opening to her left the gentle breeze is blowing into the car and the door is wide now. On her belly her right hand can’t feel the baby, but he’s still so tiny to find. Jocelyn can’t tell if the wet in her lap has come from her mouth or elsewhere. At least the contractions have been moving things upwards as far as she can tell and seem to be stopping. Emergency technicians are asking questions and she’s answering without knowing what’s being said.
She’ll need her uncle’s Infiniti Q 45 tomorrow rather than Christmas morning; no doubt, she’ll never set foot in this car again.
And an echo of a little boy’s laughter is fading away.
Officer Daniel Rothman
“It’s not the shirts against skins that’s the problem, it’s the bras that’s buggin the neighbors.” Officer Daniel Rothman could think of better places for family reunions other than the Mira Mesa Friendship Park. Who would bother to bring a hundred people to Mira Mesa? And why didn’t they check the Meagan’s Law website first? Confronted with the scene at hand, he thinks the beach would be more appropriate. Before him stand three shirtless boys and seven beautiful young women in their bras except the one in a pink camisole. Behind him, seven athletic boys in t-shirts and three somewhat more robust girls, also in t-shirts. Officer Rothman wondered how that had come about. If you simply split boys against girls you’d always get the boys team as the skins.
To his right a drunk man is saying into his shoulder patch, “it’s a shirts against skins dame, uh game, they should um just play it that way, the way it was-ss-meant to be.” Following up with, “the way it was meant to be,” over and over again. Drunk though he as is, he forges ahead not knowing he’s about to be arrested.
Next to him a woman is adding, “What if they wore bikinis instead, would that be legal? That would be legal wouldn’t it?”
“Listen Lady that’s not the problem, I was told somebody was topless.”
She points at the boys in a sickle’s swoosh and in a raised voice blurts out “but they are topless, are you looking? You are looking aren’t you?” Officer Dan looks around and notices one of the younger chubbier boys looks quite feminine and knows why he’s been called.
Tall, at least 5’ 11”, a young woman steps across the circle from the girls’ team and walking to dumpy girl in a t-shirt on the boys’ team, she tugs a bunch of the t-shirt from behind into a handful. “If I wore a shirt I’d look like this.” Clearly no one else thinks so. She is the child of the Guess Jeans girl and the Ralf Lauren underwear model. On Chubby Girl’s t-shirt big sweaty wet marks melt into the heavy body making it look like a tattered ghost of a top. Complaining she wriggles away.
Officer Dan rolls his eyes up to heaven stating that “the neighbors are complaining.” Pointing to a nearby row of houses, he adds, “and they’re not all nice neighbors you’ve got a rats’ nest nearby.”
Two years before the game, the whispered pact had been sealed with a knuckle bump: Ronald Kleberbach, 16 would pick the cute girls and the so so players while Terry Nilsson, 17 would pick the good players and the so so girls. Older and maybe just a bit smarter, Terry knew that he’d win the game and the small prize that came with the betting their parents and older cousins will have going on. Parents will bet on the outcome of the game, younger boys will bet on wardrobe malfunctions and the older boys will probably also bet on wardrobe malfunctions.
One of the uncles by marriage tried to rig the game two years earlier, tried to get one of the girls to “take a dive” but she wouldn’t have it. Because she was only thirteen, his wife wouldn’t either, and his reunions have now become every other Wednesday and Friday nights to Monday mornings. The younger girls who didn’t play won’t much watch the game let alone bet on anything and the older would pretend not to care but watch the boys like hawks betting on other things. Thus, the Kleberbach family reunions bi-annual shirts against skins basketball game was picking up a solid following among all.
Flipping Terry’s two-sided coin would decide that Ron’s team will be the skins team. Ronald however could only think of how tall and pretty Claudia Miller had been even at 14 two years earlier. He’d forgotten last reunion that her name was pronounced like a cloudy day, and had ticked her off. That in mind, he was praying that she would join the game, so he could fix it. Taking a deep breath he let it out slowly whispering inaudibly, “Shirts against skins.” Of course, it wouldn’t be skins, but more specifically shirts against not shirts.
On the way to the Reunion Ron was thinking of the bright red camisole his sister Liisa was wearing under her blue silk blouse, he’d tried to imagine it on Claudia. Though beautiful at 14 two years ago, he still couldn’t wrap that material around that beautiful and pure vision that he’d stored away of her in his mind. So he tried it on her older sister Ulla and smiled. Ulla was 26 last reunion and just over being pregnant and still so stunningly beautiful. Her third child hadn’t damaged her figure in the least as far as Ron could remember though she’d complained enough. Her husband Bob joked over and over that when he’d sneeze she’d conceive even when he was at work in New Mexico. Ulla had said only what a schmuck he was and that maybe that’s how he’d get his next one. She’d make sure his next child had red hair and freckles.
“Remember what you said, you’ll get Liisa to play, yes.” Terry was saying. “Are you listening to me?”
“What, sshh, I’ll do it.” he whispered harshly. “She’s in the back you dork,” Ron turned around and pointed to the rear of the motorhome looking to see if she could hear, he didn’t see her. “I can get Liisa to play, and remember to call her Leeza she hates Lisa.” Ronald nodded. Liisa liked to do whatever would shock her parents and at 17 she’d been getting a bit more daring. Then for a moment Ronald looked like a gnat had blown into his eye, “but hands off, okay, this is window shopping only.”
Terry, looking at Ron’s twitching eye said “alright man, don’t worry about it. It’s cool.”
Team captains had been chosen by lottery at the prior reunion. When Ron and Terry had received the high honors, they took to practicing choosing the best players for their respective teams over lunch. Realizing in their playing and joking that they could engineer an outcome, they set to planning. So this was how Ron and Terry had agreed that Ron would have a mostly pretty girls team. More entertaining than anything in the last four years, Ron was sure he’d be explaining this to his grandchildren at Kleberbach family reunions decades later. Not since Aunt Sylvia danced a gigue in champagne covered underwear and then kissed the wrong Uncle Jim had anything interesting much happened. Ron & Terry’d been 10 and 11 at the time so they’d been too far away to even see it. But it was legendary. So legendary in fact that Sylvia quit drinking to grandma’s satisfaction but also started selling t-shirts of herself dancing on the table. Uncle Fred had taken some striking stills of the spectacle.
In practicing certain of their lines they’d given it the seriousness of Macbeth. Rehearsals, however, abruptly came to a halt when Liisa came to the front of the Motorhome demanding a sandwich and coke. By the time the coin toss came about on Basketball Theater in the Round, it looked more The Comedy of Errors and threatened to degenerate into The Taming of the Shrew. Coin tossed, Liisa looked at her teammates and shook her head just a little side to side. Because the RV’s restroom had been near the boys, she’d heard most of their conversation. When Terry won and picked “shirts!” Claudia stepped forward and insisted that the coin flip had flopped, she wanted a do over. Liisa ran at Terry and almost tackled him pulling her blue blouse over his head. As the quarter he’d flipped hit the ground she palmed it quickly and fumbled it in the process. Ron grabbed it as fast as he could and before he could think how to switch it, Claudia’s shadow darkened his skies. Long and thin her fingers held his hand firmly in hers, his heart raced, his face reddened. Washington on the front, Washington state logo on the back. Half sneering and half not quite smiling, she spanked the quarter into the air with her thumb and turned away pulling her top off as she walked at the same time.
As Liisa, Ron and Terry stood up, she punched Ron in the arm and said, “Good hustle little brother.” To Terry she gave a flat smile and said, “window shopping,” then she kicked him in the ankle. “I thought you might need a handicap.” Walking away, she spun around and pulled his ear to her face, “if you get more points than me, I’ll let you put that shirt back on me.” Skipping she bounced off back to Ron’s side of the basketball court.
“If you get more points than her, I’ll strangle you with that blouse before you ever get near her.” Ron visibly had shivers like from your first ever taste of beer and headed back to his team. He could barely talk. Only Tricia Helfer was prettier than Claudia but she wasn’t standing before him in her birthday beauty. Okay, Claudia wasn’t either but close enough for Ron.
“So Captain, what do you want us to do?” Claudia was asking. Ron was staring, realized he was staring and looked away so that he wouldn’t be staring and was faced with a situation of untenable consequence for his teenaged mind. As his mouth dried out his OCD kicked in and he started counting cups.
Liisa took over as acting captain. “First, team, everyone check your equipment, we don’t want any malfunctions unless we’re losing the game.” And after a deep breath, “well maybe not even then.” Putting her hands on her hips, she said facing Claudia, “You’re our secret weapon, get in the center, get under the ball and crush it.”
“Okay.”
“You’re taller than anyone on the court and you’ve got a secret boy mind control device installed in your under-wire. So get in their faces and stare them in the eyes, stare them down hard!!”
Ron looked at his sister with new eyes and managed to squeak, “Great, uh, coaching.”
To Kelly she said, “Get this man a glass of water,” and hugged her arm tight around his neck. “All of you girls, I want you to do this, come here,” she pointed to Claudia, “Bend down to eye level with Ron and stare him in the eyes.” Claudia complied, it was a long way down. When Ron couldn’t take it anymore he looked down and that was worse but even worse than that, Claudia dipped a bit lower so that her eyes were where his gazed had dropped to.
“See that girls.” Liisa was holding her left hand under Ron’s face and her right vertically at the side of his face with her palms touching. “See how red he’s turning. Soon he’s gonna look like a ripe strawberry. Get most of them to look like that and you’ve won the game. Claudia pointed out that some already did.
Zack and John, the computer geek twins, who still had their shirts on wanted to know what they should do. “Take your shirts off, stay cute and stay quiet. We’ll do the heavy lifting. If you somehow get the ball, give it to Claudia.” Amazing how they all were dumbfounded. “Got it?” she yelled at them.
“We got it,” came the universal response.
Maybe Terry isn’t so smart after all. As Officer Daniel Rothman approaches the alleged scene of the crime, he notices a wedding taking place in the Mira Mesa Friendship Park to his right. Standing next to a black Mercedes C240 from the mid-2000s a skinny man dressed all in black is holding a camera that looks like it could be mounted on the bottom of a spy plane. From there he is facing the alleged scene of Daniel’s crime. Perhaps this is the real crime. Nevertheless, he isn’t actually taking any pictures with the camera that Dan can see. He’s inspecting the settings, looking down at it as he holds it in front of his solar plexus. Maybe after his investigation, he’d go and have a look at the pictures on the camera. To his left, the crime scene, a group of kids is playing a shirts against skins basketball game and it’s the first one where he’s ever seen or heard that the girls are the skins team.
“What a bunch of idiots,” he says to himself and the dispatcher, “don’t they know where they are?”
In the middle of two semi-circles, Daniel has the feeling that he can escape if he has to through the two holes in the circle if he can just get passed the drunk talking into the SDPD patch on his shirt sleeve. Bugs Bunny would have called him a “maroon.” Officer Daniel would like to slap the guy but his wife is clearly the bigger problem, keeps prattling on about bikinis. No one is in a bikini. Claudia Schiffer steps forward and grabs a bunch of the back of Rosie O’Donnel’s t-shirt. For just a moment the sounds of everyone’s talking reminds Officer Dan of the hum of bees on a pepper tree in the summer when it’s otherwise quiet.
Out of the corner of his eye, Officer Daniel Rothman is seeing the commotion. In dress whites and sparkling black shoes a naval officer is sprinting across the lawn. All black camera man is chasing him. Mid-toast, camera guy ploughs down the Maid of Honor. She and her little black dress do a quarter flip with a twist in midair. She’s stiff like a mannequin. Big kitchen bags of trash brake her fall catching her face. “She’ll be alright,” Daniel thinks. A late model dark purple 540 Z is whipping around the curve between the wedding and the game. Racing down the street, it fishtails, slides sideways passenger side forward and rolls once landing on its wheels like a cat. A Raggedy Andy doll flies out the window. Daniel Rothman hopes the baby-seat is strapped down real tight because if it is, he’d be okay.
Officer Rothman is running first but the Norse Goddess runs faster. Faster than all the naval officer arrives first. Punching through the window, the dress whites uniform pulls a young man through the opening. Twisting, Daniel thinks he might actually take the head off. Daniel’s screaming at him to put the boy down. Shaking him like a baby against the back fender and trunk he lets the body drop like a towel. Daniel has his gun drawn but the Navy Seal is already on his knees with his hands behind his neck. The Teutonic beauty is alternating looking in the windshield and driver’s window and saying “Miss” over and over again. From across the street an officer arrives from the Pho Ca Dao restaurant, home of Southern California’s finest beef noodle soup. His partner Cheryl Lewis has secured the area at the front of the restaurant directly across the street from the roll over.
Master Chief Gerald Barrett of the US Navy SEAL Teams, light skinned African-American, about 5’8” 175lbs is breathing slowly. As Sargeant Daniel puts the cuffs on, he asks Officer Bill Lightman to “check on the child in the backseat.” Officer Barrett groans slowly.
“There’s another one?” asks Bill.
“Another what?” Dan asks back.
“Child.” Bill says, “we’ve secured the decedent child, we think male, in front of the restaurant across the street.” Gerald chokes and coughs. He moans loudly like a 6 month old bull asking for milk and his mother won’t give him any. Deep and long the sound keeps coming and coming from him.
Daniel sees the tears streaking down Bill’s face and he understands. There is no Raggedy Andy doll. The half-naked police detective is asking, “Miss, miss, is your child okay? Miss are you alright? Where’s your child? Are you hurt?” But the woman in the car only blubbers and sticky bubbles come out of her mouth and nose. Bright white, the bride runs up to the driver’s window and peers inside. Daniel, the Bride and Claudia all look through the opening where the driver’s window should be at the same moment. In the passenger seat a young Philippine woman is crying and screaming about her baby. She’s lost her baby.
Eying the young man on the ground, “Is he . . .” Claudia is asking and stops.
“What baby did she lose?” Daniel asks no one. Claudia is running away and amazingly will be consoled in Ron’s understanding arms and all will become well. The Bride has thrown herself on the accused. Daniel whispers to Officer Lightman, “I’ll take him.” Bill is calling for a coroner, emts, ambulance, back up. The bride vanishes. Squatting in front of Officer Barrett, Daniel asks, “was that your baby?” Ashen faced, Gerald nods, and as he does the tears that have welled up in his eyes spills over the lashes and down his face. Daniel down on one knee puts his arm around his shoulder, “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and after about 15 seconds he adds “but it’s time to go.” Daniel helps him stand. Emts and more police arrive.
Behind them they could hear the other policeman’s voice talking about DNA evidence and Daniel is listening to Gerald’s throat choke as he stumbles. Together they walk back to Daniel’s car. Together they can hear Gerald’s wife screaming for her baby, and “whose child did that chink hit?” and “why are they taking my husband away in chains, it was that chink that did it, take him away . . .” And they are taking him away too, without the cuffs. The bride and at least three brides’ maids are holding tight to her arms.
Gerald’s father, another officer, the father of the groom and the father of the bride walk with them. The father of the Bride speaks about lawyers and counsel and how they’d be right there to bail him out right away and . . . and it’s not his fault and everything will be fine. They’d get him off immediately. Gerald’s father just cries all the way to the car. At the squad car, his father asks, “May I?” with his hand gently on Daniel’s shoulder. Stepping back, Daniel allows the older man to put his arms around his son and hold his head tight to his chest. “Oh Jayboy . . .” he says crying. Daniel leaves them together for about a minute and a half. Gerald would later say it was until the sun set.