At one point, he lived with two women, as husband and wives. The women shared the same first name. They lived in the same house. They had babies on the same day.
He was in his twenties when I remember briefly staying in his house on a ranch near Brenham when we came to live in Texas permanently. He was affable and generous. When we moved to Houston, he was already living in the city. The first thing he did when we arrived was to take us to eat at a fancy Mexican restaurant. He had talents and interests. He could tame a wild horse and train it to do tricks. He played guitar. He had a shelf full of history books which he liked to discuss. To those who did not know about his perplexing behavior, he led an ordinary existence.
His second oldest son was convicted of murdering two people, including beating a person to death, stabbing him twenty-three times. One of the victims was a vagrant. After about ten years behind bars, his son was released but wound up in prison again. The second term in prison was the result of an aggravated assault conviction; He, the son, tried to stab his girlfriend to death. Enhanced by a prior criminal record, the trial court assessed punishment at 40 years in prison. The particulars of the assaults are mentioned in the appeal filed after the second conviction. His son died incarcerated.
Before becoming a killer, his son attended middle school at the same time as my sisters. One day, I went to get my sisters from school, his son was surrounded by other teens and in the process of getting jumped. I walked to where the incident was taking place. I guided his son to the vehicle I was driving and took him to his house. Today, I wonder about how the course of the lives of the persons he murdered may have been different if I would have just left him to suffer a beating.
Whether it was paternal affection or a skewed sense of right and wrong, after his son was arrested, he spent much of his accumulated financial resources defending him. Worse, when his son was arrested for murder the first time, he accused his siblings of being police informants. He proceeded to terrorize his sisters by abducting their grown children. On a Sunday morning, he got bold and he tried to abduct my younger brother as he was walking to the carniceria to buy the Sunday paper. My brother broke away and ran home. As soon as my brother entered the house and told my parents, my dad grabbed a gun and went to the culprit’s house to address the incident. According to my brother, my dad admonished and challenged the abductor, “Si quieres darnos en la madre, aquí estoy. Pero no te metas con mis hijos” (I’m here, if you want to resolve whatever is bothering you. Your problem is with me. Do not mess with my kids). Enraged, allegedly, my dad fired shots short of the abductor’s feet.
This moment had been building for years. As a kid, I witnessed as this same person would come to our residence drive his vehicle onto the front yard and incessantly knocked on the front door. Fueled by alcohol, his bad behavior was inexplicably tolerated. His incivility had an impact. Only a boy, I could not see how his actions undermined the stability of our society. But I did not need life experience to know that it was unsettling to my world.
I struggled writing about the example of dysfunction he provided. My conscience asked, should I write about these seemingly too personal truths? And where do I begin? I decided to follow the advice Ernest Hemingway imparts in his memoir, A Moveable Feast, about what to do when one does not know what to write or where to start. He said, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Then, go on from there.
Behavioral dysfunction in individuals is evident in all segments of society, regardless of socioeconomic class, race, or ethnicity. Traditionally, in most communities, families do not acknowledge it. In one’s mind, it always seems like the troubled persons that create havoc in our communities reside in the neighbor’s house. We have difficulty accepting that people with behavioral issues may be one’s brother, sister, cousin, father, mother, uncle, aunt, grandfather, or grandmother. That, they started off being someone’s cute baby. That, they grow up and visit our homes. That, they sit beside us in school and church. That, they could be elected and/or appointed leaders. Ancient and modern history provide ample evidence of individuals who reached levels of power whose dysfunctional behavior made them infamous. We have a problem admitting that the origin of what afflicts humanity is not in the stars but in ourselves.
Existentialists posit that who we are as individuals is bound to every decision we make as a society. Thus, if societies are to evolve, it is incumbent upon each individual to see the dysfunction that exists among us, and within us. Understanding and conceding who we are as individuals may enable the creations of a better version of ourselves.
Too often, the subject of this essay did not comport himself in a manner to merit respect. Yet, the day I found out that he had joined the growing COVID-19 casualty list, I was saddened. I thought about how conflicted I felt as a young man the day I watched as he was getting ruthlessly beaten by a stranger in the middle of the street. I wanted to intervene on his behalf. My brother, the fifth-born of ten, wisely advised me to leave it alone. Despite the turmoil he caused, upon his death, my siblings and I made a contribution to his funeral expenses; and my deeply religious sisters represented our family at his service and prayed for him.
I last saw my paternal uncle over thirty-years ago and even more years had passed since I saw my late cousin. Emotionally, spiritually and intellectually, it is hard to come to terms with the fact that we share genes with brutes. May God have mercy on their soul. May God have mercy on our soul.
