You are a young child of three. You hear the phone ring in the night. Your father answers. Your mother screams and then starts to sob. For hours and hours. Your father’s cousin’s husband was shot in his bed from outside the house, through the stucco. The wife, his cousin, survived. The unofficial explanation was that the husband had gotten mixed up with the wrong group and he was eliminated.
Your grandfather and his friend are sitting outside, under the grape arbor, cracking walnuts and reminiscing. They speak of a mutual friend of theirs who, all of a sudden, disappeared, car and all. Years later, as Los Angeles grew out, and subdivisions were developed, the car was found, rotted out from being buried in lime. There were no signs of their friend, who was never heard from again.
An aunt in the last years of her life, telling stories about her childhood. Her father was mercurial. At times they would live in two story homes and drive long black cars. At other times, the family was so poor some of the kids were farmed out to orphanages. The father’s brother was a promoter of sorts. One day, in South Dallas he was found with a new pair of fitted concrete shoes, several feet under the Trinity River.
