Hector

When I got to the house of my friend Hector, I noticed the familiar, beater, black Lincoln had been doused with a blanket of white paint. Its doors were open, and the interior was maligned as well.

His wife’s ‘dream catcher’, was torn from the rear-view mirror, and stomped into the wet, spring-evening grass. 

The path that led to the front steps was also painted white, and as I slowly climbed their stickiness, toward Hector’s custom made ‘bones & bullets’ wind chime…off to my left, I saw the old angus cow had been painted too. She stood, tree tied, and dumbly in puzzles. 

 And the front door stood open. Empty paint cans and shattered whiskey pints littered the entry. White paint was smattered everywhere.

I followed Hector’s bellowing voice to the living room. A table was overturned. The TV was blasting at maximum static volume, and was painted white.

 At work that day during lunch, our four legs dangled into the trench we’d labored to produce. Hector invited me to dinner. He didn’t mention anything about this.

Before me: Hector’s wife and two small children, sat cowering on the couch, like captured Indians. Their long black hair, faces and hands, were painted white. Their tears ran brown, down vast sobbing glaciers of semi-gloss enamel.

Hector was standing over them. Shaking paintbrush in the face of his family, enraged. His broad shoulders bore menacing shovel arms. His screams concave-ing the walls.

“You wanted a white man’s house, and a white man’s family, and a white man’s dream, and a God Damn White Man!? You GOT IT!”

 As Hector slapped the dripping brush across his face, I turned and ran from the house. Grateful, that I didn’t need the paintjob, and that Hector would have one hell of a hangover, and not make it in to work tomorrow.