The Brother of Benito

I have been so overhauled with boring schoolwork that I can't think of anything good to write about. So I'm posting some old stories I wrote.

I met the brother of Benito in Rockdale, Texas, and honestly, if it wasn't for my journals, I'd have no idea what his name was today. I wrote this during cherry season 2007 using everything I could remember about the guy plus a bit of fiction to make it interesting. When my dad read it, he told me, "I felt like taking a bath in a mixture of clorox and Republican campaign rhetoric after reading it." This one is just sad. His brother Benito, however, was a nutcase of a different variety. Enjoy.

The days and nights are one to the brother of Benito. He looks in the mirror and sees a grown man’s life in shambles. For this reason, he doesn’t look in the mirror too much anymore. In fact, all existing mirrors are shattered from occasional bouts of anger and violence. “But I don’t blow gaskets too much these days. I’m too tired.” If he were to look at himself, he’d see one big, hairy tired Native American. “These days I tip the scales at 305 plus or minus a few Big Macs. As a matter of fact, I could go for one of them about now- have any spare change?” He’s currently unemployed- “But I just applied at the ALCOA for one of them boiler room jobs.” If collective bargaining talks are still going raw the union down there at the coal mine is going on strike next week- he’ll be hired as a scab. There better not be a dress and grooming code. He’s long overdue for a haircut. It’s black and nappy, down past his shoulders, and streaks of silver like lightning bolts show his age. The messy array of darkness provides a solemn background for his lined face- which is shaped with the dignity of a Sioux chief, but screams with emptiness through his well traveled eyes. They tell us a story we’re afraid to hear- the type no one wants to hear. Which explains why he won’t look at himself in the mirror.

Gentlemen, have yourself a seat. Do you know why I get up in the morning? I can’t for the life of me figure out why it is that I drag myself out from under the covers just to see daylight. It’s not like I slept at all the night before. You know those nights when you can’t get to sleep no matter what you try? You put on more covers; you take them all off; you hug a pillow; you get a glass of water; you go to the bathroom; you get a glass of water just so you can go to the bathroom again- and you’re still lying there without a snowflake’s chance in hell at going to sleep. Gentlemen, that’s every night for me. Every lonely night.
The most disturbing part is how tired I am. It’s like I just finished shoveling two tons of manure and I take a shower, but the stink just won’t go. Even if I use Dove.
It’s like I have weights. I feel weighted down on my shoulders. Weights in my head, weights pressing down on every part of y body. And I’m a grown man, you see, I have a big body. So that’s a lot of weight. And after some time all that weight gets to feeling really heavy, you understand? And I know I’m a big man- used to be a strong man, too, but after years and years of shoveling manure I ain’t worth a crap. I’ve become weak. I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore out of shame for the story my eyes tell me every time they look at me. Ashamed at the state of affairs my life is in. It’s ugly. I’m ugly.
Gentlemen, this all began when I finished working for Cal Johnson. And when I say ‘finished’, I mean threw out my back and couldn’t do no more hard labor. Cal’s a good man. I started working for him in the seventh grade, getting paid under the table for work at his lumber yard. Well, I suppose, it was my fault for never asking, but all these years he just kept paying me cash, and I just kept working. I didn’t mind not having to share my hard earned money with Uncle Sam, but what I didn’t consider was that one day I’d be hauling half a redwood tree on my back and I’d hear one of them “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” Rice Krispies commercials from my spine. I figure that tree was smashed on top of me for a good ten minutes before they got enough forklifts over to lift it off of me. But like I was saying, I got paid under the table.
Gentlemen, do you know what happens when you get hurt at work and you’re being paid under the table? You don’t work. And when you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Gentlemen, I got hurt, therefore I did not work- nor was I paid, as you might have put together on your own. Now, there are many things a man can do when he cannot provide for his family by working under the table for Cal Johnson at his lumber mill. He could request workman’s compensation. He could start collecting Social Security. He could steal- or even go in professionally and be a thief. He could go down to the welfare office and request food stamps. He could donate plasma for $30 like a starving college student. He could sell drugs. He could lean back on some investments from ten years ago. Or he could start buying and selling on the stock market- or if he lived in California, the real estate market. Or he could start internet gaming by entering in online poker tournaments. Or even better, he could move to Vegas and bet against the odds laying it down on the parlays. All great ideas, all reasonable, respectable and rememberable ways to provide for a family. But I did none of them. No, this pain in my back is so devilishly excruciating that I would lie in bed all day in serious pain. We’re talking about pain so violent it’ll make you bite through steel beams. But even when the pain subsided and the Valium and the Vicodin and the Morphine cooled me down, that weight started coming down on me.
That weight, it’s the shame of not being able to provide for ones family. It’s the worry of causing a financial burden for my 78-year old crippled mother. It’s the hopelessness of returning to full health. It’s the embarrassment of how my wife handled the situation. My father always told me to never let my woman make the decisions in my home; since I was the man of the house it was my responsibility to make sure my family was in the best of care. Gentlemen, as the head of my family I have always placed myself in front of my wife and children-- that I might break the barriers of the perplexing world and pull us through to safety. Of course, some days I’d come home from work just exhausted, or from the bar swerved beyond belief, and incapable of maintaining full consciousness. In such cases I delegated all responsibility to my mother, with whom we have lived since we got back from our honeymoon at a KOA outside of Detroit. Even though I was under the influence of medication strong enough to sedate an elephant for two years, and hallucinated so much I now have a complete understanding of lyrics to Pink Floyd songs, I felt that as long as I laid off the bottle I would be in fine shape to make executive decisions for my family. My wife, however, thought I needed some help and came to me with some ideas.
First she suggested that I sell the pharmaceuticals my doctor prescribed to me. I had to object to that idea. At that humiliating time in my life, those were my lifeline; they kept me strong enough to open my eyes and see the light of the next day. She called me selfish. I couldn’t even raise my hand to slap the ho, but thought ill of her for suggesting that I put myself through such agonizing pain without the assistance of medication. Then I thought of how selfish I was for not making such a sacrifice. I would see how long I could go without a pill, but give in when my back cried like a lost dog in wan for its master.
Her next idea was that she use the morphine to make dope and sell it on the side, while I could still use it for medicinal purpose. That was unacceptable. See, gentlemen, my Uncle Jerry was a great ball player back in high school. He had no scholarship offers his senior year, because he was dumber than a box of rocks. So he thought about skipping the whole college thing and going pro after graduating. Well, his grades were lower than required for one to graduate at Dupont High School, and he did not get to walk with the rest of his classmates, or wear that silly looking hat. And come June, there were no NBA teams looking his way for a good shooting guard. But Jerry, he loved basketball more than he loved his mamma, and almost as much as he loved his mamma’s grits. That young dreamer went and moved up to Canada to play ball in some CBA league that starting up that year. Everything looked good for him. He had gone through the process of getting a physical, and was shooting some free throws when a tall bald French Canadian came up to him with some less than satisfying news. As it turns out, the league had a substance abuse policy, and in his urine they found traces of every cheap drug you can find on the streets of Toronto. Jerry told them he had a poppy seed muffin for breakfast. The team trainer took my bloodshot-eyed uncle out to his car, parked perpendicular to the painted stalls, explaining to him that poppy seeds wouldn’t really cause them to find traces of methamphetamine. My uncle’s addiction to drugs lost him his dream of being a professional basketball star. I wasn’t about to sell my medication- which were being used in a perfectly legal way- to some schmo ruining his life of opportunity the way my uncle did.
And no matter how many times my wife asked, I always told her that I would not collect Social Security or any government handout of any sort. Being a Native American, I feel that I’ve already intruded enough on the white man, being in his country and forcing him to put aside the most ugly and barren pieces of land in between the Atlantic and Pacific for me and my people. My father left the reservation in rebellion to accepting a government gift, and I’ve lived my own life with the same self-reliant attitude. So that mean no Social Security, no food stamps, no welfare. It’s said that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Well gentlemen, it can be said that I refuse to be fed by the hand that beat me.
Now don’t get me wrong, I married a good woman. I’ve been satisfied with the children she’s brought into the world. And we’ve brought them up as well as we could. I might wear the pants, but the legs wouldn’t move without her help. But in this, our most recent (for there have been many), most desperate (for many times have we been desperate) time of need, she used poor judgment in finding a solution. That woman has gone a-whoring, selling herself to every Tom, Dick and Harry who rolls down his window.
Gentlemen, do you know how much it hurts when one you’ve loved for so many years and called your own sells herself to others in order to support your family? It’s demoralizing. It’s plain out immoral. And it’s killing my morale. So I can’t work and my wife turns into a prostitute. For some reason it makes sense to her. She needed income badly, and the hours of street walking work around the kids’ schedules quite well. And what’s worse, is that my 15-year old daughter is now growing up with it enveloped around her, going down the same path, soon to become part of the abomination that her whore of a mother has started. No one should have to see this. I can’t bear to sit back and watch, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.
She took all five kids in the Geo Metro and went to stay at her parents’ house. They live comfortably in a trailer home a block away. My mother’s house is a two bedroom house built in the late 1800’s by two drunk farmhands, who obviously didn’t have a level on hand, and were cutting costs of production by using nails sparingly. It had been a tight squeeze, the seven of us and my mother, but our youngest is five, it’s been crowded for a long time. The reason she left is because she couldn’t stand seeing me as the slouch of a husband I am. And I can’t complain because I’m not being the father I want my four sons to see and become.
When a pregnant dog sees that it will not be able to provide for its young because of its own malnourishment, they’ll jump in front of a car and kill itself rather than suffer its young to live and suffer with it. Gentlemen, I feel like a pregnant dog.