Farewell, My Father

One night my father was out with a drinking buddy at his favorite social club. Every poor neighborhood had a club like this one, an adult hangout where the liquor flowed and infidelities flourished. Details of that night only filtered back to me later, but the story goes that he was having a good old time with a barmaid, one of his many mistresses. As she served him his drinks, they flirted back and forth, with whispers, giggles, and cute talk. Apparently they had been lovers for a while, and my father lavished time, money, and attention on this good-time girl who had become one of his special girlfriends. Witnesses said she was wearing a low-cut top, skintight skirt, and fishnet stockings. She had been dancing around drunkenly, tottering on high heels, just a half hour before my dad entered the club.

While they flirted and laughed, a man entered the club, a stranger to my father who turned livid and purple when he recognized the woman my father canoodled with. As the stranger watched

them flirt back and forth throughout the night, he became enraged. He started to pick a fight with my father’s friend. Noticing the confrontation, the Great Eustaquio jumped up from his seat to shout at the stranger and defend his friend.

My father no doubt planned to just intimidate the stranger with the “evil eye” or a bare- knuckled defense if necessary. At the worst he would endure another ambulance-to-hospital stay, but either way he ultimately would be the barmaid’s hero and resume their relationship.

The angry stranger had something final in mind. Without warning, in the middle of that escalating argument, he pulled out a piece of gray heavy metal from his black leather jacket. Unblinking, the stranger pulled the trigger and blasted a fiery gunshot into my shocked father’s face, the bullet driving into his brain just above the eyebrow, killing him instantly. Pandemonium broke out in the bar, and the gunman fled into the night on foot and disappeared.

That night in our apartment, we heard a loud knock at the door as though someone were trying to break it down. As my mother opened the door, one of my father’s sisters came in screaming hysterically “Eustaquio is dead! He just got shot . . . he’s dead!”

Since I was the oldest, my mother grabbed me and we ran to the social club a block away. That night it rained like I had never seen before in a very mysterious way. It seemed as if heaven was crying and the sky was mourning. The raindrops fell heavy and hard like fifty-cent coins dropping from the sky. It rained nonstop. My mother and I stood in front of the social club wet and cold as my dad’s body lay inside the smoke-filled room. As I watched the throng of policemen and curious onlookers surrounding the whole area, I asked myself why God was crying. Was it because my father lost his chance to go to heaven? I stood there, shivering from more than the cold rain, and tried to make the tears come, but my eyes and heart were empty.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 791