The Good Guys

The slab slowly swallowed up the blocks under its thin tires. The chrome on the over sized rims flashed and sparkled under the city lights. The tires swished in the darkness barely heard over the soft rumble coming from beneath the shimmering blue paint job. Aggressive rhythms and deep beats beat the moment into a solid reality. Within, beyond the darkened windows, four young men sat encased in steel, leather and smoke. They cradled, between their legs or in their arms, weapons meant for war, and a war is what these men thought they were fighting. There was a driving force that pushed their tank of a passenger vehicle down the road that night; a dark shadow that demanded vengeance for the slights committed by other young males. Real or imagined, the group must be defended against interlopers. They, the four and so many more, were adolescent lions with no hope of a pride of their own. Only a life lived for the glory of a violent death.

The windows on the car slowly descended, one further than the others, the one behind the driver; that one came all of the way down, that young man carried the heaviest of the weapons and he sat on the sill, shooing over the roof. The smoke from within poured from the open windows and in that haze of sparkling chrome and blue and fire, the dragon roared and breathed death upon the corner that night, in the dark places of our world.

Later, too much later, long minutes passed as mothers wailed, and babies died on the street like dogs. Hit by bullets and left to die; these young lions, victims of their viscous rivals, bleed while their mothers wailed and they died on a dirty corner in the dark places of our world. The flashing blue and reds echoed off the stark and dirty store fronts, vying with the fluorescent beer signs and the naked dim street lamp over head, they lent no comfort to the macabre scene.

The men that climbed from the vehicles that carried the lights, were uniformed, and foreign; enemies in a hostile land they only incited more violence by their very presence; so long after those the mothers loved had died.

"But we are the "Good Guys." They plead with the gathering crowd. But the wailing mother knew better, they knew that if their sons and brothers spoke too loudly of their pain they would be whipped into submission, beaten into compliance, or carted off to never be seen again. The mothers understood better than the men did. The men were angry, the mothers were hurt. Somewhere in pain there is a sense of the world you cannot find in anger and so the mothers said to their sons and brothers:

"Let the Good Guys go."

And they went and there, on that corner were only the stains, the memories of that night when the dragon breathed death on that corner. Bathed now only in the light from the naked dim street lamp over head, and the fluorescent beer signs.