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No Mercy
Fermin asked me did I want one and I said sure so he went into the Dumaine foyer where all the school supplies, toys, and kid stuff is stored and cut me a two by three version of his ninth grade graduation picture from Bell. I used to keep my unloaded shotgun in that foyer closet with three hollow point slugs stacked nearby but moved it elsewhere the weekend we kicked Shelton out because the imprisoned Sr.'s advice to M "to be careful" echoed inside me as good advice.
In my forty plus baby boomed years the expression "code red" has mostly been a phrase used in jokes and as a way to suggest an irony regarding situations that aren't really that serious.
And the idea of parallel universes is perhaps written off by many as the fancy of science fiction geeks but I suggest otherwise, as geek, freak, republican, facist, or whatever category fits me on the given day. In America, of which I study, one can if one looks, see the evidence of worlds which exist in a parallel but diametrically opposed relation to each other. What I think confounds the most of us who would even consider such foolishness is the obvious similarity between the opposites. It doesn't make the kind of sense we can easily digest, we the body of people whose biggest conundrum is the answer to the question--"is Pepsi ok?"
As lightweight intellectual I can only offer primer material as example and it is this: last week, six blocks from here in the 2000 block of Dumaine the Andrew J. Bell school effected a code red on it's students because outside on the street at nine in the morning a dude with forehead tattooed No Mercy shot a cop three times, once in the back of the head, and the school immediately went into a lockdown mode that kept all persons in, in, and all persons out, out.
This is a situation that could be, but sadly is not, the definition of horror. The horror is our reaction or lack thereof, which can only look like affirmation. What a crazy world. Glad it's not the one I live in.
"You were in school last week when the cop was shot?" I asked Fermin.
"Yeah," he said.
"You heard the shots?"
"Yeah," he said.
"What happened?"
"They locked all the doors, made us sit down, and stay away from the windows," he said.
Me, I just nod.