Memory Corner 5

The Puppeteer

The puppeteer came to the projects a few times a year. No one knew if he had a schedule. One day, one kid would tell another that the puppet man was setting up his theater by the Chavez house or by Kike's house or who knows where. It was never the same location. But the word of mouth was always the same, and all it took was one kid to spread the word and soon dozens of kids would grab a seat in front of the puppet theater. Early birds got right up front. Late comers had to sit in the back, behind the big kids usually. 

On that day, the last day it turned out to be, my friends and I got front row seats sitting there on the lawn of the Jimenez house. We watched the frail old man gingerly set up his puppet theater on the TV tray he used as a foundation. After the set up, he gently lifted the puppets from his leather bag and place them on the stage. There were several puppets dressed like from the time of Jesus, and lastly, there was the Jesus puppet with a wire halo above his head. 

Once everything was set, the puppeteer acknowledged the crowd of kids with a bow, and they applauded as he disappeared behind the theater. The red curtains parted with a squeak, and the old man spoke through one of two puppets on stage. "Jesus is coming," he said. The other puppet answered, "Lord be praised." The puppeteer changed voices with each character on the stage. Two more puppets joined the first two. "Rejoice, rejoice," they cried in joy, "the Lord Jesus cometh. Yonder. Look." 

The Jesus puppet rose into the air from behind the stage and floated there with a huge sun behind him. The sun was cardboard, from the look of it, with yellow glitter glued to it, causing a sparkling from the real sun hitting it. At that moment, I realized that's why he chose this spot: It captured the sunlight to add sparkles to his cardboard sun to silhouette the wooden Jesus doll. 

The crowd cheered and clapped. One of the puppets on stage said, "Hail, Jesus, come to save us sinners." A second puppet said, "By the brilliance of the sun does the Son of God arriveth." A third puppet added, "Children, be ready, for Jesus is coming to save the and take you to Heaven. He will arrive in the chariot of the sun."

And with that, the puppeteer packed up his theater and placed the puppets back in the leather bag. He bowed to the children and pointed to the sky with a smile. Then he rolled the wheeled cart carrying his set up and bag. 

It was about noon, and the older kids went off to play, but the younger kids looked up at the sun, at first shielding their eyes with their fingers until their eyes adjusted to the glare as best as they could stand the intensity. "There's Jesus," said one, and more kids tried to withstand the fierce stabbing of the sunlight. "I see him," cried another. Then some started crying, while others rubbed violently at their eyes as if trying to erase some ink blot stained on their vision. 

Soon parents started approaching the kids and asking what was wrong. Too late. The damage was done. Permanent blotches in their vision. Some small, others not so small. The eye doctors told them that their young eyes would adjust to the spot in their eyes, almost until it looked like it wasn't there anymore. Much like older adults with floaters adjust their vision till their eyes see right through the spots in their vision. The spots don't go away. Your brain simply adjusts to it. 

This information didn't comfort the parents. They gathered all the parents in the projects and banned the puppeteer from ever returning. Some parents even made police reports. Rumors had it that the puppeteer would be arrested if he tried to return. 

We never saw or heard from the puppeteer again. There are lots of projects in the Los Angeles County. And there are lots of kids in those projects. I'd like to think he's still out there, teaching of Jesus standing in the sun, if you just look for him. 

 

The Seven Orbs

Chapter One

Wisdom, Winsome, and Agyle.

8

  

The Jenri Clan consisted of Mother Magrit Jenri, Head Council to the village and mother to Winsome and Wisdom. There was no Father Jenri. The story she told her sons was that their father fought in the War of the Three Kingdoms and lost his life to the dragon. He stood in the presence of the great beast, closed his eyes as the fire raged from its open mouth, and thought only of his family as he turned to ashes. When they were younger, Wisdom and Winsome loved that tale of bravery and honor, but soon they were nigh their teens and the story began to lose its truth. How could Mother Jenri know what was in Father's mind in his final moments? Still, Wisdom imagined that the dragon would not single out one single soldier. It would sweep its fiery breath across the largest pockets of warriors. Why waste your time on one single soldier?


Winsome was talking with his friend, Agyle, about the coming war. Word was spreading across all the villages of the three Kingdoms that the temporary King refused to grant freedom to the governors. The time of agreement was upon them, yet the King would not part with his throne, though it were made of paper, the villagers said. A true ruler would keep his word. There was peace. The treaty was temporary. The governors were patient. They waited till the time was at hand, not a moment sooner than agreed upon. And yet word on the air told of a King that betrayed the treaty. Was was necessitated, it was said. But was the King prepared for battle? This was a new age. Could the old defeat the new?


Wisdom sat quietly but fidgeted as he waited for a pause so that he could speak his mind. "The Bosque Governor and the Aquell Governor have been preparing for this War for years, since we were infants in the last War," Winsome boasted to a smiling Agyle."


Agyle agreed, "They hired blacksmiths from the village, stonecutters, and carpenters from their own villages to build their mechanical weapons. Deep the the forest, they cut trees for wood, collect rocks from the hillside and from the river for the ore they carry. One blacksmith told my Mother that it was his job to forge the spear-heads, big as a bear. The carpenters built the housing of the giant spears, big enough to kill a dragon. And the stonecutters built the wheels to carry the massive machines that will fling the spears. Catapults are nothing compared to these weapons, the blacksmith said."


"Where do they keep them?" Winsome asked.


"Beneath the Bosque Castle," he replied. "It is also rumored that there are new types of crossbows that can fire multiple arrows, smaller, sharper, quicker. Reloadable. It takes two men to wield one. Our little kingdom is going to fall."


Wisdom stood with anger on his cherub face, cheeks fiery red, lips white from biting them. "You speak like traitors. Our Father died on the field of battle for our King. We must do as our King demands. We must support him."


Agyle pushed the feather-light Wisdom, and the young boy fell to the ground. "Winsome," he said, "you must instruct your brother to learn his place. His elders are speaking. He must learn to listen or he may never learn his place."


"I tell him, but he idolizes the King," Winsome said with a sigh.


Wisdom placed his hand on the small wooden sword that he carried in his belt line. It was no more than a sharp flat slat that had fallen from the sheep yard fence. He got to his feet so Agyle could see the weapon's hilt, a cut of leather wrapped around the end of slat.


"What are you?" asked Agyle. "A King's Guardsman? See how my hands tremble. Why, look, Winsome, your brother is a Guardsman, and he can't even withdraw his weapon." He stepped toward Wisdom, who backed away two steps. He lost his grip on his sword as the leather hilt loosened. He glanced around nervously and restrapped the hilt.


Winsome and Agyle laughed at the boy's foolishness, then walked away from him. Now his face was flush with shame. He couldn't even draw his sword. What good was he with War at hand.

Chapter Two

The Secret Passage

1

COMING SOON

 

The Plastic Grotesque: Uncanny Beauty

Introduction

If we wanted, we could track cosmetic beauty enhancements back to the early days of civilization, but that could trigger academic minutiae. Instead, we'll cover general observations on homeopathic and medical approaches that have led the way for cosmetic surgeries and self-corrective fads to emerge on the social scene. 

World War I and II: 

Soldiers coming home from the war with disfigurements often turned to cosmetic surgeries to reconstruct their wounded faces. 

1950s

With Hollywood glamorizing sex symbols, such as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, breast implants were sought after by those who could afford the expensive and risky procedure. Risky because the sponges used for augmentation hardened and caused pain and infection. Blacks in the movie and music industry had "conks", a chemical formula containing lye, which when applied directly to the scalp to straighten out curly hair, risked severe burns and permanent hair loss and scarring. 

The Conk Procedure

1960s through 1970s

Rhinoplasty and Facelifts followed as Plastic Surgery competed with Cosmetic Surgery. Plastic surgery reconstructed the face for aesthetic purposes, while Cosmetic surgery tried to rebuild what was lost in accidents or war wounds. PS restructures the nose, for instance, to reduce its size to something more appealing for the patient. CS rebuilds the nose to as close to its original form before the damage was done to it. The cosmetic industry sold over-the-counter creams and ointments designed to "tighten" skin and give the appearance of wrinkle-free features. Supplemental vitamins joined the market with promises that their "drugs" could reduce years off one's appearance. Risks were reduced for side effects but the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rarely approved such creams and vitamins. 

In the years that followed, we saws the introduction of Botox, weight loss drugs, and miracle messages performed by homeopathic healers. The door was opened for even more promises of beauty by means other than genetics. 

Today

LooksMaxing is a combination of self-inflicted damage to the face and body to achieve a perceived beauty and attractiveness. Based on social media reports, both pro and con, the achieved effect of these techniques is wholly open to interpretation whether or not it can be described as "beauty". It's basically homeopathy gone rogue. No promises of healthiness--only attractiveness to the opposite sex. Although I could list the many procedures of the self-harm one must perform on one's self, I'll name only one. Breaking your cheekbones with a hammer so that they can heal into a new structure for a look of perfection, like super-model high cheekbones. I don't need to explain the danger of hitting yourself in the face with a hammer. But one can simply ignore this risk when the result is a beautiful face. And therein lies the illusion of perfect beauty. 

Bone Smashing

Tomorrow

What is scary about the risks that come with all these procedures to attain an illusion of beauty is that AI is now becoming available for the next generation of beauty seekers. I'll let the science fiction crowd address that scenario. It's scary enough that we know something is coming. But what? 

 

Memory Corner 4

"Hercules"

Growing up in the projects on the Eastside, we had our heroes and our villains. Bad guys were easy. The cops, because they hated the projects. And even though we were right next to a community college and down the street from a state university, that didn't matter. The projects were trouble. There was this older man, dressed clean and sharp, like a waiter or a banker, had a head full of bushy curly hair and a thick dark beard that was always trimmed neatly. We called the man Hercules because he looked like a movie version of the Greek myth. 

He was always hanging around the park. Now the park was made up of a gymnasium, where kids played basketball and adults had talent shows. It was also the place where the doctors and nurses set up tables and lines formed for our vaccinations. Behind the gym was a handball court. To the right of the court was the baseball field, and left of the gym was the soccer field, where Sunday the park filled with soccer fans and taco trucks, snow cone vendors, and tamale carts. Behind the baseball field was the playground, with the merry-go-round, the swings, the slides, the sandboxes, and the main office of the park attendants. And at the opposite end of the park, opposite the gym, was the community swimming pool, which we called "The Plunge". The pool was fenced in and surrounded by bushes and trees to keep the lookie-loos away. Hercules took turns hanging around each of the parts of the park, but especially liked the pool.

We kids loved trailing Hercules around the park. We always got him to pick up heavy things, like rocks and trash cans. He seemed to like entertaining us, or at least, getting attention from admirers. He lived in the projects with his brother and father, who both had jobs. Hercules said he didn't need to work. He got a government check for serving in the military. That must be where he got his muscles. He always stayed home when his family was working, and when they got home from work, he took to the park. We knew his routine, waiting for him to leave his house, then followed him into the park. He always hit the gym first, shot some hoops, and then moved on to the baseball field bleachers, but only if there was a game on; if not, he headed for the playground. Even though he was too big, he loved the swings. It took three kids to push him till he was swinging high into the air. He swung back and forth until the lifeguards walked by heading for The Plunge. Then he jumped from the swing and said Hi to the lifeguards, especially to Tina, who the two male lifeguards called Tiny because of her small size. 

"Aren't you too old for swings?" asked one of the boy lifeguards sarcastically.

Hercules just gave him a dirty look and watched him until they entered the pool building, where a long line of kids were waiting in their swim clothes and carrying towels. They always cheered when the lifeguards arrived. When Tina turned and waved to the cheering kids, Hercules dropped his angry look and smiled. That's when he headed for the bush and tree area surrounding the pool. And that's when we kids parted ways with him. It was weird to us to be hiding in the bushes just to watch the swimmers in the pool. 

And that was the routine of our hero Hercules. 

A week or so after our last hangout with Hercules, he was arrested. The story goes that he was naked in the bushes behind the pool and he dragged Tina into the hideout he had created inside the bushes. She fought him off and screamed for help. The other lifeguards arrived in time to save Tina from harm. They beat Hercules almost to death. Cops didn't care. They were glad to arrest a project dweller, as they called us who lived there. Hercules went to prison. We heard that the other prisoners beat him up all the time when they found out he tried to harm a young girl. Even his father and brother moved out of the projects because gang members kept breaking their windows. 

When we were old enough to leave the projects to go to college, Hercules was still in jail, we thought. Some say he was dead. Some say he got out but moved to another state looking for his brother and father. Others say he haunts the park. The new kids from the projects even made a song about staying away from the bushes or Hercules will get you. I guess that's how urban legends are born: Part truth, part Boogeyman. But I know it's all about heroes and villains and not knowing how or when to distinguish the difference. 

 

The Listed

Chapter Four

Lieutenant Sally Mason reviewed the list that she was assigned by the Bureau's new office, Department of Abnormal Forensics, which predicted patterns of deviant behavior from criminals in the prison data base who had possible predictors of future crimes, particularly serial killings, based on past social behavior, trauma, and emotional IQ. Mason didn't understand all the goobledegoop. She followed orders. The ten names on the list were men and women who didn't pass the psych test and showed sign of growing aggression that rehab and three hots and a cot just didn't squelch. 

She was assigned three ex-cops. All she knew was that they were accused of police brutality, but she never got the specifics, and there was no need for her to know, so she didn't question her new team members. All they had to do was follow orders. The other three members were ex-military, two marines, one army, far as she could figure out, what with the tattoos and all. They were all the quiet type, which was fine by her. They scored high marks on the first kill, though it wasn't pretty, and far from perfect. The target seemed more like a wife-beater than a serial killer, but the FBI Psychs knew best. These ten had to be put down, including all the wife-beaters. 

"Hey, Lieutenant," shouted Greeley, the army man, "when do we eat?"

"You can pull into the next Denny's," she answered. "Just making sure our next target is kosher."

"Kosher or no," said Blaine, an ex-cop from Texas, based on his accent, "a target is a target is a target."

The team in the back of the military van whooped and hollered. The camouflage green was painted back, which she thought made the vehicle look more conspicuous. Thus she parked the van walking distance from the target and hoped local punks didn't spray-paint their gang insignia over the outside panels. The driver, Sargeant Baker, ordered the men to shut the fuck up. 

Mason wasn't familiar with the 101 Highway that ran along the Pacific Ocean. There wasn't enough moonlight or city light across the dark stretches of road to give her a good view of the water. She wondered at the people who lived in the beachfront homes that lined the highway. The big California earthquake followed by the bigger California tsunami would surely knock these little piggy houses into the sea. Is this where they really wanted to spend their last days?

"Sarge, Denny's at 12 o'clock," yelled Blaine over the noisy engine of the vehicle.

"I see it," Sarge replied. "ETA ten minutes. Strap in and keep your yaps shut."

"What the hell's a 'yap', Sarge?" asked Greeley. 

"Ask me again when we pull over and I'll shut yours for you," Sarge said without a hint of humor. 

"Shutting my yap now, Sarge," said Greeley, who couldn't wait to order pancakes, courtesy of the U.S. of A. secret police. 

Mason regarded the second victim with some interest. The first woman. Petite. College grad. One of those straight A types. All work and no play. Victim of abuse as a kid, no doubt. Her file didn't say, but you could read it between the lines. Poison was her skill apparently. Chemistry major. The lieutenant never could fathom the college mind. Right out of high school she enlisted, hoping for a chance to fly, but she didn't pass the eye exam. Seemed she couldn't distinguish far from near, and that was important when flying an aircraft. Air Force didn't want their pilots flying into a mountain. Still, she managed to climb rank pretty fast in the Army. She was good leader material, her tests showed. And she proved that not only on the exams but in the field as well. 

Won three straight capture the flag missions in high stress environments. Got her team to safety every time. Except that last time. Wasn't her fault. The new recruit wasn't ready for the heat of the desert. Two of the team had to carry him for most of the mission. And she completed the mission. Captured the flag. Only the recruit was pronounced dead. Her C.O. liked her record and offered her a chance to lead a new team for a secret mission, off the record. If she succeeded, her error in judgment for placing the flag over the health of the recruit would be buried. And she knew just what that meant. If she didn't complete the secret mission, she would in all likelihood end up dead. Win-win for brass. But she liked the odds. Nine more names on the list to go. And the good news was, they had just pulled into Denny's. 

Chapter Five

Miguel Winter pulled into the University of Southern California faculty parking lot.  As he exited his car, a well-dressed woman in her forties approached him with an extended hand. "Hello, Mr. Winter, I suppose," she said. 

"Yes, that's me," Miguel answered. 

"From the Daily Gazette, if I'm not wrong," she said tentatively. 

"You're not wrong," he assured her.

"Good. I'm Pamela Hensworth, Executive Assistant to Professor Hinecker. He sent me to make sure you didn't get lost on your way to his office." She waved her hand in the direction of the Psychology Department building. "He's there waiting for you now."

Kashmir Hinecker was a medium built man in a ruffled grey suit that didn't seem to fit right on his thick shoulders. He was seated at his cluttered desk with his elbows resting on some ungraded essays and his fingers interlaced supporting his sharp chin. He took a deep breath, stood, and extended a hand to Miguel, the reporter. He wondered for a second if in this day of bloggers and vloggers, if there was still such a thing as "reporters". "Mr. Winter?" he asked courteously. 

"Yes, that would be me. Call me Mike, if you prefer," he said, immediately regretting not giving him the option to call him Miguel. What was it his brother used to call him? Coconut. Brown on the outside, white on the inside. 

"And you may call me Professor Hinecker. I worked hard for the title. I think I've earned it," he said with a  overly friendly grin. "As I'm sure you've earned the name Michael. Winter? Your father's or mother's surname?"

"Father's," Miguel admitted. "Mother's Chicana, father's German."

"Of course," Hinecker chuckled. "Vinter, right? No, no. No need to answer. I'm sure you're eager to get to your questions, Mikey boy. Shoot."

Miguel fumbled through his flip notebook, but his mind was elsewhere. He wanted to defend his name. But which one: Mike or Miguel? What was his mother's maiden name? Ramirez. She worked in the school cafeteria. She always brought home those leftover baloney sandwiches. His brother always called them mayonnaise sandwiches. But she was born and raised USA. People just couldn't understand that. She helped fix his German dad's immigration papers. Why did everyone assume they were Mexican?

Hinecker knew what he was thinking. Plant a few seeds and watch them grow. He smiled triumphantly, but the clock was ticking, so he cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Vinter, but you have some questions. I have a class to teach in a few, you see. Es ist Eile geboten. I mean, Time is of the essence."

Miguel Winter closed his notebook and pocketed it. "If you'll excuse me, Professor, I'm not feeling well right now. Can we reschedule?"

"Of course. Talk to my secretary.... I mean, my Executive Assistant, Pam. She handles my schedule. Hope you're feeling better. Hope it wasn't something I said. I did so look forward to our tete a tete."

"Bad breakfast, that's all," he lied. "We'll talk soon."

"Goodie." Hinecker stood but didn't walk the reporter to the door. "Ta ta."

Miguel approached Pamela's desk to reschedule, then he was going to go somewhere to throw up whatever was left in his stomach. 

Pamela looked up at the reporter's pale face and tucked her smile away. It was Hinecker Shock, as she called it. Newbies and their first time, every time. They were never prepared to face their deepest insecurity. And, boy, could he dig it out, root and stem. She opened her scheduling calendar. "Real peach, isn't he?"

Chapter Six and Seven

Coming soon...

Memory Corner 3

Troops, Feds, State & Local Law Enforcement 

Retake MacArthur Park...Again

May 7, 2026

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan's Immigration Amnesty Program (IRCA) commenced. If you were illegally in the United States, but could prove you had resided in the country with a job, paying bills, and staying out of trouble, you qualified for Temporary Resident Status, which after five years, could be converted to Permanent Resident, which in turn could lead to U.S. citizenship. That's the easy version. The hard version requires too much legalese. I was certified that year by the then Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to serve the "illegal" community with fixing their papers. So I got to witness first-hand a lot of the upheaval to the City of Los Angeles communities because of this Amnesty. 

First off, phony law offices began to open offering worthless legal services to the immigrants. In Spanish, there's a difference in terminology for lawyers: Licensiados are more akin to legal aids, while abogados are licensed to represent clients in court. Many notary publics represented themselves as Licensiados, collected their fees, and disappeared into the night to open a new office in some other part of the city. Immigrants began to mistrust both real lawyers and those who claimed to be lawyers. So they turned to people like me, certified by INS, to fix their papers. I had a government grant, so I didn't charge a dime. But the influx of business to my small office was enormous. Eventually I had a staff of 17 reps assisting me. 

Second off, new immigrants were crossing the border from as far away as South America to try their luck at a temporary green card. We turned away many, many people, because they didn't have proof that they'd been in the country at least ten years. They needed gas bills, electric, rent, phone, grocery, anything to prove residence. But since many of them had only just arrived, they had no such proof of residence. And thus the first clue of organized crime appeared on the streets of LA. Receipts for sale. A small band of Salvadoreans had set up shop at MacArthur Park in Westlake. They were not yet known as MS 13 or 18th Street, but on my side of town, that's where it began. 

Because the Metro Subway was being built and the lake had to be emptied, the receipt sellers moved their business over to 6th and Alvarado Street, where they muscled their way into the Photo Shop; in addition to receipts, they also sold passport-size pictures, and eventually expanded into counterfeit Social Security Cards, which they made on the shop's computer system. Every time I got off the bus to head to my office, I was approached by these young men, who badgered me to buy receipts, photos, or an SS card. It wasn't long before they added drugs and marijuana to their inventory. And there was such a huge demand for all these things that no one went to the police to complain. And once the subway work was complete, the MacArthur Park lake was refilled, and our little gang took over the park, as their expanded business now expanded their membership. 

Now, 40 years later, this million dollar gang enterprise was raided by the joint federal, state, and local law enforcement in an operation called FREE MACARTHUR PARK. As I've stated, this is the nutshell version of events leading to today's raid. I've skipped the end of INS, which was divided into the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and United States Naturalization & Immigration Service (USCIS) departments in 2001/2. I quit when this change was made. It stopped being about helping people and about rounding up all the "illegals" who didn't muster the amnesty requirements. The thing is, if you applied for amnesty, you gave up all yoor information: where you lived and worked, where your kids went to school, everything ICE needed to find you if you didn't get your papers fixed. It didn't matter how close you came. Maybe you were one receipt short of getting your green card. Close but no cigar, as they say. Amnesty was designed that way: you legalize a handful in exchange for a database full of illegals. 

But I digress....

Here's a story that actually happened to me on my bus ride home from my office:

I had just closed up my office on 6th Street and Alvarado Street around 9:00 P.M. Most shops were closed. Very little pedestrian traffic. Only the MS13 vatos were out on the street corners waiting for cars to pull over, roll down their windows, and tell the vatos what they needed; they then passed them folded bills, which the gang members pocketed while waving to another member on the other corner. The driver then drove to the other vato and collected his goods. I walked over to Wilshire Boulevard and caught the Number 20 heading for Downtown LA, where I was staying at the Frontier Hotel. Inside the bus was the usual crowd of workers heading home and assorted fringe sorts, two drunk MS13 vatos, a Trans probably headed for the LA night-clubs, and an elderly Black man seated by himself in the back of the bus, where I joined him. He had a LA Times newspaper folded on his lap. He smiled and nodded at me. "Hey, little brother," he said. I nodded back to him. 

I thought it would be another quiet ride back home, but not this night. The vatos were getting rowdy with the passengers, who were doing their best to ignore them. They began badgering an older woman, who tried in vain to stare out the window until they left her alone. It didn't work. "What do you have in the bag?" one of them asked the woman in Spanish. 

I stood up and said, "That's enough." Like the fool that I am. They walked right up to me.  "Mexicano cedote," one of them said. That translates to Mexican turd in English. To MS13 vatos, all Mexicans were turds. Then he suddenly switched to English. "You want to die brave?" He lifted his shirt to show me his gun. All I could think was "Just like in the movies," which wasn't helping. So I remained silent and kept my cold stare on him. If it was my time, so be it. The other vato who didn't show a gun said, "You don't scare us." Odd thing to say since they held all the aces. I was a deuce high card. 

Then out of nowhere, the Trans in her lovely dress and perfect make-up put her arms around the two vatos and said, "Come with me, muchachos." The bus stopped and they got off. The doors closed, and the bus resumed its journey. I sat back down and took a long deep breath. The Black man leaned over to me and said, "Don't worry, little brother, I had your back." He unfolded his LA Times newspaper to reveal a handgun. He folded the paper back over it, smiled, and nodded again. I nodded my acknowledgement, and we resumed our silent journey home. 

And that's what today's raid on MacArthur Park made me remember. 

The Cucuy

It was midnight. Everyone was asleep in the three bedroom housing unit of the Penumbras Projects. I had the top bunk-bed where I could look out the window to the comings and goings of the graveyard shift workers. I had tried to sleep, but the snoring from the bunkbed underneath mine kept me up. I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, so I sneaked out the window and sought out my companions for a late night trek. There was Willo, the youngest of the three at fifteen years of age, Andre, who just turned sixteen, and BB, the oldest at seventeen. BB was short for Bob Blake. We gathered when the Shadows, as we fondly called the projects, were at their darkest. At midnight, police and gang member alike feared the projects; they feared running into old ghosts, victims of the bullet and blade, the trail left by a blood-feud between the hoods. We wore our dark clothing to blend in with the Shadows under the new moon tonight.

When I got to BB’s unit, Willo and Andre were already there. BB was playing some Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company softly on the stereo. The clicks and pops of the vinyl crackled over the hiss of the worn out record. BB loved his Janis. The wall over the stereo was covered with family pictures. There were baby pictures of BB at age eight or nine with his mom and a guy in a Marine outfit. Since he never mentioned or discussed his dad, I assumed that’s who the soldier in the picture was.

Suddenly, the stench of death entered the room. Even though the factories were miles away, the smell of cows and pigs being slaughtered wafted into the projects late at night. BB’s mom worked the late shift at some meat packing factory on the southside of Downtown. I closed the door and sat on the sofa by Andre.

BB passed me a Michelob. I twisted off the cap and tossed it on the coffee table with the Soldier of Fortune magazines. He loved those mags and often bought handguns from their catalog, using his mother’s credit card. Since he paid the bills for his mom, she never knew about the guns in his room. It’s safe to say that I felt safe at BB’s place. He had no dad or siblings to worry about and his mom wouldn’t be home till morning. It was the one bright spot in the projects that even the darkest of nights could not touch.

Once we got a good buzz going, we chipped in to replace the beer that belonged to BB’s mom and turned the conversation to topics worthy of the night.

Willo started, “Oldies but Goodies kick Rock and Roll’s ass.”

BB shot back, “Fuck your oldies. Janis rules. Hendrix is god. Zeppelin is bigger than all the oldies put together.”

Andre added, “Zeppelin! Sabbath! Blue Cheer!”

I nodded my head and said, “Fuck that shit. What’s your favorite monster movie?”

Willo raised his hand.

“Just say it, stupid,” I said loudly. “You don’t have to raise your hand. This isn’t school.”

Willo used his raised hand to throw me the middle finger before lowering it. Then he said, “Frankenstein.”

Andre laughed, “Compared to Blood Feast, Frankenstein’s a pussy.”

BB shook his head, “That’s not a monster movie.”

“Kinda,” I said. “He puts that girl together from dead body parts, like Frankenstein. I say it’s monster.”

“What do you know?” BB scolded me. “Godzilla’s a monster. None of this dead body crap counts. Night of the Living Dead ain’t monster.”

“What about ghosts?” asked Willo. “Are they monsters?”

“Depends on what you consider a ghost,” I offered.

“Ghosts,” Andre explained, “are the spirits of people that die. It’s like the soul leaving the body and floating around the earth until God takes it up to Heaven or sends it down to Hell with the Devil. They usually hang around their old neighborhoods and watch what their old friends and family are up to. If the ghost scares someone on purpose, then the Devil gets to have its soul, but if it does a good deed, then God takes him to Heaven.”

“You’re drunk,” I said sharply.

“No way, man,” Andre said defensively, “it’s in the bible.”

“What bible you been reading?” spat Willo. “But that’s kinda right. A ghost is a dead person’s soul, but it doesn’t do good or bad deeds. Only an idiot would believe something like that. Ghosts can’t tell the difference between good and bad. God decides that stuff. There is a place called Limbo, where the new souls hang out until they are called to Heaven or Hell. It’s like a big waiting room. But Limbo is not on Earth, that’s for sure. The ghosts that are on Earth cannot find Limbo. They’re confused and think they’re still alive; they don’t know where to go, so they go around acting like they’re still alive. I think they’re like poltergeists or something like that.”

BB exploded in anger and stood to speak, “You guys are full of shit. “Ghosts aren’t anything but projections of ourselves, our memories, the residue of life-particles left in space over a period of time. It’s like when you have a clock on your dresser for a long time and one day someone moved it, but you see it for a moment like it’s still there. You see the residue of its former presence. The image is the ghost of the clock.”

“And you say I’m drunk,” Andre said, shaking his head.

BB continued, “I once read that people who saw ghosts always said the same thing, that the ghost was only visible at the periphery of your eyes, but when you looked at it square on, it vanished. The same thing happens when people live in a house a real long time. They leave particles of themselves behind. The longer they lived there, the more particles that are left behind. It never leaves enough particles to be looked at straight on. It evaporates. That’s why you can only see it at the corners of your eyes. Years after the people move out of a house, the new tenants begin to see the old tenants walking around the house at the periphery. They’re washing dishes or watching TV or just sitting around the spot where they always sat. The old tenants aren’t dead. They just moved somewhere else. It’s their residue in the house. But if they died, it’s the same thing. It’s just residue. No God. No soul. No Heaven or Hell. Just people who left their image behind.”

After he finished speaking, BB looked at each of us, anxious for one of us to disagree with him. Cautiously, I spoke up, “I don’t believe in myths, whether it’s Odin, God, or Superman. When a person’s dead, that’s it; they’re dead. The mind and the brain are the same thing. They both die at the same time. It’s chemical death. The body and the spirit are the same thing. When life is over, they all rot equally. There are no ghosts of people, or of rocks, or of trees. Superstitious people made up the bogeyman, the cucuy, to scare kids who wouldn’t go to sleep. We’re not kids anymore. There is no cucuy.”

The Janis Joplin record had finished, and the phonograph needle slid across the record label screechingly. Rather than turn the record over and play the other side, BB turned off the player and returned to the conversation with a seriousness that I had never seen on his face before tonight. “Go on,” he told me.

“Alright,” I agreed. “No spirits like religions teach. There are just too many religious points of view of what ghosts are, you can’t just pick one and say that’s the right one. If you want to believe that we have a soul, like Willo and Andre say, that’s cool, but I say we’re just live meat getting ready to be dead meat. The chemicals and electrical impulses stop churning. It’s over. You’re dead. You’re not handed a harp as your spirits ascends your corpse like in the cartoons. Maggot time, bro. Not even residue. Nothing.”

Willo shook his head disapprovingly. “You’re going straight to Hell for talking like that.”

Andre nodded in agreement. They were both joking, of course, but they were taught by the priests to fear God more than love him, so there was some particle of belief in their jest.

“I know one thing,” Andre said, “if I ran into a ghost, I wouldn’t care if it were a lost soul, a residue being, or a figment of my imagination. I’d run the shit outta there.”

“That’s for sure,” Willo agreed.

BB shook his head and asked, “Why run? Residue can’t hurt you anymore than a memory can.”

“You’re wrong,” Willo added. “Some ghosts can hurt you, and the ones that do turn into demons in Hell.”

“That’s fairy tale crap,” I argued.

“You’re going to Hell,” Willo said with mock seriousness, “and I won’t be able to visit you while I’m in Heaven, so you better behave.”

BB, however, fended off the humorous direction the conversation was taking. “When you die, I’ll still see you guys sitting in this room because you’ve done it so many times you’ve left enough residue to create an image of yourselves. You will be sitting there by the door like you always do.Andre, you’ll be there between the speakers so you can hear the stereo effect of the music. And Willo will be at the refrigerator looking for something to munchie.”

“I know when I’m being criticized,” Willo tried to joke.

“There’s only one way to settle this argument,” Andre cut in. “There’s an empty unit a few rows down from my place where moaning and groaning can be heard at night. I overheard the maintenance men telling my mom about the noises. They said that a few nights after the old tenants moved out, the noises started coming from the place at night. Some of the neighbors complained about it, but the guy that they sent to investigate says that there weren’t any noises. Why don’t we go over there right now and see if we can find out what it is. Maybe we’ll find the residue of the old tenants or the ghost of some dead gang banger, or maybe nothing at all.”

We all agreed to go. We finished the beer and headed for the haunted unit of the Shadows.

#

The Penumbras Housing Projects were at one time an army barracks, according to local legend. No one ever confirmed or denied this, but the layout of the projects themselves pretty much told the whole story. Each complex contained four units, each unit had four rentals with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Four complexes created an unconnected square shape, and long rows of these semi-squares stretched across each block. The projects consisted of four blocks in the form of another square. To the north was Birch Road, to the south Maiklyn Avevue, the main street that the buses traveled, with Barbosa Street to the east and Mine Road to the west. On each block there was a long cement walkway dividing the complexes into two rows. The southeast block had the Mary Maiklyn Elementary School, named for a neighborhood nurse who served and died in World War Two. The southwest block contained the Barbosa Bridge Park. The northwest block had the administration building where tenants paid the rent, and the northeast block housed the maintenance building and the town meeting hall. It was by the maintenance building where we were headed, to the unit with the moans and groans.

Tonight, for the first time since we started hanging around at midnight, we were leaving our block to visit another. We may as well have been heading for another planet as we drunkenly crossed the streets into territory unknown.

BB was the only one who carried a gun. He offered us a gun each, but we refused. Andre said that a bullet can’t kill a ghost. BB retorted, “It’s not ghosts I’m worried about when we step off our turf. Willo nodded in agreement. But we did agree to carry some sort of weapon. Willo carried a steak knife from BB’s kitchen. BB warned him not to lose it or his mom would kill both of them. Andre had a crow-bar slung over his shoulder. I warned him that he’d probably need a tetanus shot with that rusty piece of metal. He said it was better than the short toilet pipe with a nail sticking out of one end that I was carrying. I considered the weapon for a throw and run encounter than for face to face combat since we’d experienced more of the former than the latter on our midnight treks.

When we reached the haunted unit in question, we assigned Andre to the look-out post, which he was glad to accept since he didn’t want to be the first one to enter the place. He was still under the impression that an evil spirit bucking for a demon’s role in Hell was waiting behind the wooden planks that boarded up the windows. He wholeheartedly believed that the odds were against us meeting a good spirit because only bad people died in the projects. Forget that innocent bystander crap. If you were in the line of fire, you were up to no good, he reasoned.

To get into the unit, we had to remove the boards the maintenance men nailed over the windows to keep young punks like us out. Not tonight.

It took BB a couple of minutes to remove the two planks to the rear bedroom window, using Andre’s crowbar. He seemed very anxious to get inside and find his residue beings. I tiptoed and peered through the window into the darkened room, and seeing nothing, pushed open the window. With Andre bringing up the rear, we entered the unit.

Once inside, Willo struck a wooden match and held it up. The room lit up. I blew out the flame and admonished him, “What if someone sees the light. Wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Just wait, like at the movies.”

After a few minutes, we could see the room was filled with painters’ equipment: paint cans, brushes and rollers, a small scaffold, and rolled up tarps covered with droplets of white paint. Half of the room had been freshly painted; the other half still had the old paint yellowed by cigarette smoke and nicotine.

“Now what do we do?” I asked, not wanting to take the leadership role.

“We wait for the moaning to start,” BB said matter of factly, “and then we follow it to its source. Simple”

“But what if ghosts are invisible?” Willo asked. “Have you ever thought of that? There might be one here right now in front of us and we don’t even see it.”

“We’d probably here it,” I said.

“Or smell it,” suggested Andre.

“Maybe we should just go home,” Willo sighed, probably feeling the buzz of beer wearing off. “Maybe we’re just wasting our ti—“

“No way,” BB interrupted. “We’re staying until the moaning starts. Then I can prove to you that ghosts are nothing more than the residue of living people. The people who lived here before lived here a long time. They must have left enough residue for us to see them.”

“Maybe enough to hear something,” I said. “Concentrate on the periphery. If they did leave some trace, we should be able to see them at the corners of our eyes.”

“Right,” agreed BB. “Concentrate on the corners of your eyes.”

Andre and Willo made cross-eyes and giggled till BB shushed them. I participated with some reluctance. I figured that if I didn’t try to see a ghost, I wouldn’t see one. But deep inside I kind of hoped that I would see something. BB, on the other hand, truly expected to see one. There was not a single trace of doubt on his face, which was tense with concentration.

“I’m starting to get a headache,” joked Willo.

No one laughed.

Suddenly a flash lit up the room for a split second, and we saw ourselves standing there bug-eyed like frogs, smiling at ourselves self-consciously. Then the darkness returned.

“Maybe it’s a residue being,” Willo mocked BB.

“Shh,” I hushed him. “There’s someone outside.”

Something at the window cast a shadow against the tarps on the floor. Then there were voices, low and whispery sounds that vanished into the gust of wind that pushed its way into the open window. We shivered but remained still. Again the voices outside sounded, this time low and rapid, then loud and forceful. I couldn’t make out the exact words, but I thought it was a good time for us to move to another room, away from the view from the windows. We edged along the wall and slipped quietly into the long hallway where the voices were acoustically louder and clearer.

Outside two people were in a heated discussion. “There’s no one in there, babe. Some stoners must’ve took off the boards just to look inside to see if there was anything to steal. But I checked inside with my flashlight and all my equipment and paint are still there. You know how expensive that white paint is. If someone did break in, they would’ve stole a few cans of the white stuff for sure. Now come on, girl, let’s go inside. I got the key again to get in, and our sleeping bag should be just where we left it last night in the front room.”

“Okay,” agreed the girl, “but first make sure and check again.”

The older guy searched the room with the paint cans with the flashlight until the girl was satisfied that the room was empty. Then we heard the boards being nailed back in place. We were trapped inside.

Seconds later, the front door creaked open and slammed closed. The clack of the bolt slid shut, locking the door. BB pulled the gun from his waist as we gripped our weapons, expecting to be confronted by the couple. The sleeping bag’s zipper chirped open and the girl giggled.

Then the moaning started. There were a series of grunts, a rhythmic thumping, more giggles, and the sound the cross between a siren and a brat’s whining. “You know what they’re doing?” Willo asked innocently, although we all knew the answer. The old dude was forking the teenaged girl.

We tip-toed back into the paint room.

“We should sneak out now while they’re busy. They won’t notice us,” Andre suggested.

“Sure,” I whispered sarcastically. “How could four guys walking by bother a screwing couple?!”

Willo grinned his most mischievous grin and said, “Why don’t we just scare them out of here?”

“How?” BB asked.

“Like this,” he said, quietly prying open a paint can with the steak knife and brushing a coat of white paint on his face. “We’ll pretend to be cucuys.”

We slopped on the paint until we each covered enough of our face to pass for a ghost. We used the tarp to cover ourselves so that only our ghostly faces were showing. We looked each other over and nodded in approval. We slid our weapons under our belts and walked into the front room where the moaning had reached its highest levels. We had to be quick.

“Ooooo, ooooo, ooooo” we chorused, one hand holding up the tarp, our faces bearing expressions as scary as our limited imaginations could come up with. And there they were. Naked and coupled. And they knew we weren’t ghosts.

“Fucken punks,” the old guy screamed as he rushed us with his boner still glistening in the weak light in the room. “That’s my fucken paint.”

He rammed us and we fell together bundled in the tarp. BB’s gun fell away. The naked guy picked it up and ordered us to stay down and not to move. He rushed on his pants, released the safety on the gun and aimed it at us.

“Get up,” he growled. “You broke in to steal my stuff. I saw you and followed you in. You attacked me and I shot you. I’ve worked here for over ten years. They’ll believe me. Your stupid punks. Who’s going to believe you?”

Then he laughed. “What am I saying? You’ll be dead. Who’s going to believe dead thieves? Get up!”

He told the girl to leave, that he didn’t want her to see him do what he had to do. The tarp slid off our shoulders and we stood there like stupid cows waiting to be butchered, our weapons useless in our hands. “Perfect,” he said. “You attacked me with those toys. Idiots. You think you can fuck me up? Do you?”

We nodded no. Willo started to weep. Andre looked down in shame. BB was staring at the gun. I followed his line of vision. He was looking at some writing on the side of the gun: HELL FROM ABOVE, it read. The girl dressed quickly, unlocked the door, and opened it to leave.

“Which of you wants it first?” the old dude asked us in all seriousness.

Then the girl gasped.

In the doorway stood a guy in a Marine outfit. It was the guy from the picture on BB’s wall of photos.

The girl screamed and ran past him.

The painter turned to face the soldier. “Benny? I thought you were in Nam.”

“That’s my gun. That’s my brother. You still a child-molester, Eddie?” the Marine asked with a stern accusation that sounded more like a threat than a warning.

Eddie aimed the gun at the soldier. “You got no right to be here. I know about you. All the gang knows about you.” He leveled the gun at the sharply dressed military man who walked toward him. His gun hand shook. Then he pissed himself. And then he fired the gun. We heard the sound of a rock hitting a side of beef.

The soldier smiled. “With my own gun, Eddie?”

He fired again and again. He ran out of bullets just as Benny reached him and removed the gun from his hand. He passed his other hand into the painter’s chest and twisted his wrist about, as if he were fishing for something. Eddie’s head bobbled like a broken toy. Then Benny found what he was looking for. Eddie dropped to the floor, his face frozen in fear and death.

“Bobby,” Benny said to BB, “you have to be good people. Mom needs you now. I’ll see you later at home. Take my gun.” Then he walked out the door.

I walked quickly to the doorway. There was no one outside. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said. And we did just that.

#

We washed off the paint from our faces with warm water from the hose in BB’s backyard. Most of the stiff, dry paint came off easily, but a few flecks stuck in our hair. We tried combing them out but quit after painfully yanking out small clumps of hair. BB sat off to one side of us, silent and sad. Willo made a few attempts at making fun of the painter and his girlfriend, who didn’t even bother to cover up her tits while we were threatened, but no one cared to pursue the topic. It didn’t seem like the time for joking about what just happened. So we simply stopped talking for a while and let the whole thing sink in.

Minutes later, Andre said to BB, “I thought you were an only child. I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“His real name was Benjamin. He used to take a lot of acid and mushrooms, so everyone in his unit called him “Peyote’.”

“Used to?” I asked.

“Yeah. He died in Viet Nam about a year ago of an overdose. It was before I knew you guys. Anyway, you guys are like brothers to me now.”

“But I saw him. We saw him,” said Andre. There were tears in his eyes. “He saved us. He said you’ll see him at home.”

“And I will,” BB agreed. “so I guess I’d better head home. See you.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow, BB,” Andre said. It was doubtful that BB heard him since he went inside his house so fast.

#

As I walked home, I thought about the words, HELL FROM ABOVE. I thought about how the police would ignore the painter’s death. Just another dead homeboy in the projects. I sneaked back into my bedroom through the open window and undressed for bed. I slipped between the covers. The snoring returned from the bunk under mine. I looked down at the empty bunk-bed and listened to the steady snores coming from the pillow area. “Goodnight, you residue being,” I whispered, choking back a sob. As I turned down my eyelids and drifted off to sleep, a final thought nudged me: ‘Just another dead homeboy in the projects’.