The Death of Chico Perez

Drowsy, he leapt into the Chevy truck only to fall after hurting his ankle with an unnatural twist that was sure to obliterate any painless existence. Regardless Chico’s life had not been pregnant with joy so when he fell into the dirt puddle beneath him, he just said “mierda!”, ignored any pain, ignored the mud that had perched on his hair, and just got into the truck, successfully this time, and blasted some sickening rock music that to him quieted the world, inside his truck ended all the “maldicion”, even as he called to it.

The road ahead was dark, he pushed the gas pedal using the aggression that he had in storage full, and perhaps that is why Chico saw behind him the blue red lights that were pursuing him and blurring upon his sweating forehead. Chico was not undaunted by them, he kept on going, he didn’t stop, he knew this country back roads better than any other Chikee hoodlum; Chico belonged to a gang, they called themselves The Chikee gang, something to do with some conjugation of this and that gang members name, only the founding fathers had long be riddled with bullets or given way to knife wounds, and so perhaps the folklore of the name had gone too, only the name remained. The Chikee gang was mostly a group of third rate vandals, selling marijuana and cocaine and occasionally robbing a convenience store so as to maintain true gang status. On one occasion they actually tried to kill this punk that had molested one of the sisters, but the gun run out of bullets before they hit him, and so they had to run from the sirens. Everyone still blames Chico for that goofed up revenge; but none of the gang members have gone back to rectify their missed calling.

The siren continued to scream into Chico’s ear, ah this was all part of a bad life, the truck renegade headed for a twisted conundrum of barns and lettuce and grape growing fields and this cop behind was having so much fun that he had not called the chase to headquarters to request assistance, he was going to bag Chico himself, and besides the chase was a good chase, and Chico didn’t really have an out, the roads did not really hide enough, the geometry of modern farming is hostile to country life and banishes the labyrinth. Siren cried on.

“You have to be here to be here…” Chico screamed along with the tone dead lyrics, “Smash me to the other side…” some how all this hid a whole world, but not the siren, not the cop which had now managed to bang the rear bumper, the truck was not in perfect shape, this didn’t affect Chico, emotionally the truck refracted a rough existence, you could trace from the damage on the right door the day that Chico lost his girl, he had put a leg through it only the metal felt more the need to tell Chico that it was no use trying to hurt something so by nature inflexible; Chico’s girl hemorrhaged to death, next to him, from a stab wound to the neck from a jealous woman, Chico’s ex, Chico did not cry, he watched her healthy bleeding, let the blood run through his hands, and as her head released all tension, Chico dropped her immediately, went and kicked the door, an unnatural curvature sealed it shut, hasn’t opened since. On the dash board are cigarette burnt marks, Chico’s mother, while she was alive, had the bad manners of putting out her cigarettes by pressing them against the paneling, Chico knew she had no class or manners, but he got tired of saying, “Mom you aint got no manners.” Chico now looks at those burn marks and knows that in that ash is his mother’s breath, she is still with him, even now on this getaway chase. The globe compartment reminds Chico that trusting your friends is wrong, it lays open, the lock had been picked, the latch broken, by his gang member Joey, on his way out of town borrowing the money that they had both stolen from a gas station, Joey hasn’t paid it back, no one has seen him, Chico doesn’t really care about the money, when he stares at the open globe compartment he wonders where Joey is.

The siren presses on, Chico is suspicious of the absence of more cops, there is a natural instinct to distrust a cop that just banged your bumper, telling you he doesn’t care about your car or your life, and why isn’t he calling for assistance. Chico summons reason to think some logic about his situation, “…damn cop probably wants road kill, think up an excuse to shoot me up badly.” “…no witnesses, bit of fun, maybe plant a stolen gun, maybe cop will hurt himself a little…” It has not however seemed reasonable to Chico that he should have stopped for the siren, that thought has not occurred to him, Chico knows from youth that you run away from cops, it’s a natural and healthy thing to do.

Then the bad tree happens, Chico turns the steering hard and fast, he is adept at it, but he losses control of the tires, the free spin dazzles up a huge display of dust, the fog of dirt playing with dynamics, and the truck does seem to try to avoid the oncoming tree but the inevitability of the destined moment rises to secure a left front side collision, which dimly lights the end of the road for this truck, though the tree held out rather well; except for three squirrels, one got it badly on the head, the other two took off occasionally looking back to see if their friend had made it, didn’t. The blue light and the red light caught up to the scene. “Get out of the car with your hands up.” Imagine that you are holding a revolver and repeat this line three times, each time raise your voice a little higher until it culminates in frustration. Cop was tense, adrenalin had gone to his nervous system and the drainage of blood from the brain had moved his resolutions into act-action.

You know already that Chico has to die, you know I am going to have the cop kill him because it is too late for a car crash to kill him, I can continue to draw the story from here, but there is a huge inevitability to his death by a murderously crazed cop. But I will continue anyway for my own sake, you can stop reading here if you like.

Chico was still alive, he dizzyingly walks out of the car, his hands trying to reach for the sky but frankly not very successfully, the hazing dust had settled, the hue of the early evening was beginning to calm the horizon, the red and blue lights were still announcing the grand event, the siren howled had gone, hey guess what, Chico knew this cop, he saw him through the dirty blood in his eyes, when you know a person it is harder to kill him; the cop knew Chico, a cop named xxxxx, he did not take his eyes of off Chico, staring with the intensity of an eagle that has found a rabbit, Chico continues to maintain his arms half way towards heaven, xxxx utters his defiant phrase, “You can’t run from the law Chico, the law always catches up to scum like you!” Chico is still recovering his ability to think, speech is not in the forefront of his aspirations, still he utters a few incoherent words, blood is obviously in his throat, groaning something, xxxx looks up at the sky, “Jesus!” “Look me in the eye, I want to see your crooked eyes before I waste the scum that you are.” It was then that something rather odd occurred, a donkey stumbled into the scene.

Donkey looked incomprehensibly at cop, sort of twisting his head, and asking for accountability, sort of saying, as much as a donkey can say “what is going on here, this doesn’t look right to me.” And it was that look, that sort of ignorant knowing stare that caused the adrenalin infested cop to switch his aim and pump the lead load into donkey. Chico stared dumbfounded, and xxxx just got more furious, red as a tomato and said, “oh fuck off!” and sped away in his blue red flashing cruiser.

Hey the donkey surprised me too.

RC