The world is not beautiful. The man across the street is drunk, loud, and slurring his yells- punctuating this are the sharp and sensible words of a female officer. His child--a toddler at best-- is howling its sobs ('mommy' is barely discernible among the cries) although the main and most penetrating of communications is its pain. No matter the words, it's the pain that's communicated most clearly. Hands down. God to think my heart could break, this scene leaves me in ribbons. "Do you want to go to jail, sir?"..."whaddya mean?!"
Two hours ago loud mariachi music blared across the street, and men poured in and out of a private residence near mine. Motorcycles peeled in and out of the area with abandon and engines flared- fanning heated tempers. Meanwhile I typed away at a keyboard hoping it would stop, finding myself an unwilling spectator of what would inevitably be a gruesome night for all.
The man 'responsible' for this blog's contents seemed to take a kind of jovial pride in his antics-- that is from what I could hear. His wife tried to stop all of this, hissing common sense in a foreign tongue- yelling reason and pleading truth. His buddies laughed-- loudly.
In the not-so-far off distance, a child no older than five, his child, began to cry.
What, I wonder will he learn from all of this? Even to me this scene is heartbreaking and incomprehensible.
This must have irritated someone, because following this prolonged display, a sleek black car pulled up to the end of my block-- two dark-clad figures exiting noiselessly. Merced's finest. What a joke. They-- who are hired to protect and serve being made to clean up after the drunk and disorderly man-child coward across the street. Lovely.
I hear a scuffle and a neighbor woman cursing in Spanish at the drunkard, and then addressing the female officer directly--"Do you see what I havva deal wit?"...she responds in what I can only imagine is her practiced, and uniform calm--"There is absolutely nothing I can do about that"-- the bottom line. End of story. Or it would be.
Arguments begin between the drunkard and the neighbor, loud and unintelligible, only half in English, and mostly slurred. Abruptly it ends. Cuffs click, and a car door snaps shut. The road quiets. These are suburban problems. Drunk in public and unruly neighbors.
By now the child has been quieted.
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