Clean,Spotless Streets

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CLEAN, SPOTLESS STREETS is a true story. Be aware. There are a few curse-words.
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CLEAN, SPOTLESS STREETS
© by Yianni Palos

It is about 12:50 after midnight. The sidewalks and the nine bars on the strip are jammed with university students, locals, and football fans from all walks of life, celebrating our glorious football team’s victory.
I am the owner of one of those bars. My place is crammed wall to wall with smiling, yelling, singing, dancing, drinking, smoking, flirting, laughing people, and I walk outside to take a breath of fresh air.
I see two young students crossing the six lane street, from my side to the other. Although the speed limit is 35, I see the 60 mile-per-hour speeding car advancing at them. Noooo! I scream, but no sound comes out of my mouth. Then suddenly my eyes see and register the events in my mind like a slow moving picture. I hear the screeching sounds of tires on the hard asphalt. The front of the car hits one of them head on. His body flies above the car, his feet and hands move as if he were a soft-rug-doll, the car moves from under him, and the young man’s head hits on the hard road first, his body follows. Brain matter and blood oozes through his cracked-open head. Everyone seems to be paralyzed. No one moves, no one makes a sound. We staring, staring. Then a loud siren from across the street strikes my ears as if one hundred thunderclaps released themself within the same instance. People start moving, shouting, pouring onto the street, three more police cars arrive, sirens, flashing red lights, and the six lane street shrinks to two lanes within minutes.
12:55 a.m. I talk to an officer I have known for many years. I saw the whole thing, I say. Get back, he says, get the hell out of here. But–, I say. You heard me, he yells. Get the fuck out of here. I walk back to my bar, pissed and furious and cursing and giving him the finger.
I know the police are not in love with me, and I am not in love with them either. They dislike me and they know I detest them. I hate drugs passionately, and I hate drug pushers more. I know some of them, officers, sell them on the strip. They know that I know who they are.
1:05 a.m. The ambulance arrives followed by the red-shining fire truck. Two police officers stretch the yellow crime-scene tape around the fire truck, the ambulance, and the body of the young man. The paramedics check the body. They look at each other and they nod knowingly. They are too late. The young man is dead. I just know he is dead. They pick him up and place the dead body on the stretcher and carry it into the ambulance.
1:25 a.m. The ambulance leaves the scene, lights flashing, sirens on, and I am cursing all of them as loud as I can. Your sons-of-bitches, don’t you think you are too late for that? Shut you mouth, the blond officer says. Make me, I respond, full of anger. Make me, I dare him. I know he won’t dare. They all know that I have four cameras in my place recording day and night. Fuck you, you fucking foreigner, he mumbles and walks away.
I’ve seen death before. So, why am I yelling? Why do I feel broken-down to pieces? I will tell you. Nine days earlier, I stood in front of my city commissioners and mayor and asked them to do something before someone died. I even gave them four different, simple solutions. They did nothing. Nothing.
2:15 a.m. The bars shut their doors earlier tonight. Earlier than usual. The parking lots are deserted. Very little traffic on the street. I still watch. One officer removes the warning tape. Two firefighters stretch the hose close to where the young man’s brain and blood oozed. High-pressure water hits the black asphalt. Withing seconds there is nothing left on the street but the darker shade where the water fell. The rest, dirt, dust, brain, blood, and memory flowed hastily down the drain.
2:35 a.m. And I thought, Hey, look, look. Yes, a young man died here on that darkest spot of the street, yes, he was only 21, yes, he wanted to be someone, yes, his mother will weep for him, yes, his father will rip his heart out from unbearable pain, yes, grandparents, brothers and sisters will moan and grief, yes his friends will share their sorrow at the graveyard, yes, yes, yes, yes to all that and a thousand more, but hey, look, look at the bright side, look . . . look at our streets. Aren’t they clean? Aren’t they spotless?
Something vile rushes up to my throat. Halfway to the bathroom, I kneel and violently vomit on the freshly cleaned linoleum-tiled floor.
The next morning I posted a FOR SALE sing in front of my bar. I locked myself in my office and wrote, using just one finger, an editorial. The local paper refused to publish it. Too defamatory, they said. I published it in two different university weekly publications.
The bottom line of my editorial read: "I know who is legally responsible for the death of that young man. I also know who is morally responsible for his death: My City Commissioners, my Mayor, the Police."
Strangely, within two months all my teeth fell off. I stopped voting. Is there a point?
Six years later they placed yellow warning lights on that same street.
I am sorry S . . . I did my best to save you. Rest in peace.

REVIEWS
Your frustration was expressed very well with this piece, Yianni Palos. You made me frustrated, and that's a good thing. Causing an emotional reaction in the reader is the best thing a writer can do, and though your style is a bit different, the main ideas were all crystal clear. The death of the young man was the focus, and the could haves, would haves, and should haves of the know-nothing do-nothing civil servants and bureaucrats exemplify the shame that is twenty-first century civilization.

What struck me most profoundly when I came away from this piece is how it evoked so much comparison to the movie Casablanca, the way in which we take a random but seemingly ubiquitous instance of a man abroad, a fish out of water in an unfamiliar and seedy culture, who desperately attempts to maintain and proliferate his moralistic virtue in an environment where the pressure of moral bankruptcy is omnipresent, predominant and rife.
The language of the piece, the broken English, doesn’t immediately become apparent whether it’s unintentional or indeed a device deliberately employed - either way it makes no difference, it helps hugely to emphasize the vulnerability of our protagonist, his naivety and his apparent exploitation by the corrupt authorities whose environs he inhabits.
This piece flowed very well to me, it moved along at a relentless yet smooth pace, and although the bare minimum was allocated to the graphic description of characters and settings it was still incredibly vivid, an enormously remarkable achievement again conjuring many a romantic notion of the lone wolf, steel-willed and adamant in his righteous ideologies, clashing head-to-head with the scandalous underbelly of a corrupted establishment, our heroic David taking on the might of the governmental Goliath.
The only difference here is our hero finally does not emerge unscathed and victorious, you’ve bravely forsaken sentiment and conformity and dictated that he becomes broken physically and spiritually (portrayed through the vomiting, loss of teeth and apathy towards voting), and wracked with guilt and remorse over his inability to contribute towards the prevention of the young man’s death. I came away very much with the impression that this was once a man zealously involved in the affairs of his local community, but who now has become completely disillusioned with everything.
The paragraph I found particularly powerful is perhaps an obvious choice, but it’s just so very symbolic of the underlying moral of the whole story. When the fire brigade come and hose down the street, washing away the ‘dirt, dust, brain, blood, and memory’, I am left with a hauntingly evocative and darkly pessimistic image of a town so corrupt, a community so devoid of morality and ethics, that this kind of catastrophic, devastating occurrence – replete with so many monumental repercussions (‘his father will rip his heart out from unbearable pain’) – is a ubiquitous and entirely commonplace incident indigenous to communities such as this throughout the world, leaving a resoundingly stark and bitter taste in my mouth, yet simultaneously providing me with a shockingly candid insight.