The Darkest Place
I want to share something deeply personal, that I've only touched on a wee bit on social media. Backdrop: political twitter. Subject: extrajudicial execution by an employee of the government.
How timely, one might think. "Maybe she's trying to cash in on the zeitgeist of ACAB, BLM, peaceful (& not so much) protests and what not." Meh, not really. Ya see, every person killed by a cop while in custody cuts me to the bone. They might be shitty people, they might be innocent souls: doesn't matter. The state shouldn't be killing people - not locally, not globally. I'm adamantly anti-war/anti-imperialism as well.
It cuts because in 1980 one of my brothers was shot to death by a small town deputy with a record of brutality. The anniversary is coming up, decades later it still kicks my ass. It's been so long that only three people are left who feel, and remember. Parents are dead, two siblings are dead, so just myself, my middle brother & my sister in law are left. We were a troubled family, I'm quite familiar with police showing up on the doorstep to arrest someone for some petty bullshit crime or another . No drug deals, no gangs, no murders, just stupid "wtf were you thinking?!" shit. Visiting hour at the country jail was a weekly ritual on and off for years, generally to see my oldest brother, may he RIP. Howard, the one who was killed, at age 19, was sent to a place called Eagle's Nest as a teen. He was the youngest boy, six years my senior. He could be bullied into anything, just by saying "you're afraid. Howard the Coward." One holiday he escaped and came home. I don't remember how long he stayed, I was prolly 6-7. I remember, however, the unhealed cut from wrist to elbow, You know what that means. I didn't find out until years & years after his demise that he'd been sexually abused while in custody. I was 9 when he finally came home to live with us for awhile.
He had a weird quirk when he spoke. After saying something, he'd repeat it back to himself under his breath, almost like a question. Every sentence. He'd disappear, hitchhiking to who knows where. Once I went with my mom to La Tuna Prison in Anthony, TX to see if he was incarcerated there. Maybe 1976/7. He was still a minor, tho. One foray he'd been taken in by some B'Hai people, who got him back to NM safely. He broke into houses, My kid sister and I were beneficiaries of a few broken toys he swiped. This went on a few years. I remember him having a Grand Mal seizure on our pathetic kitchen floor once. We were very poor, no white privilege here.
Our oldest brother, Jerry, had been in and out of jail, as you know. He was living with us, working crap jobs, feigning injury to get Workman's Comp. I don't remember all the details, but he decided to take one of his employer's company trucks into Texas for a little illicit joy ride. Boss reported it as stolen, and they got picked up as soon as they got back into town. Jerry told the police it was his idea, and that Howard didn't even know what was going on. Jerry went to Santa Fe, to prison, for that crime. He was there during the now forgotten riot of 1980. He was in protective custody for almost killing the guy that tried to rape him. "Nobody ever fucked me," he said. The National Guard literally saved his life. The guy in the cell next to him, a snitch, was burned to death with a blowtorch. Jerry would have been next.
At the time Howard was still living at home, and had a girlfriend. I don't remember her name, but she was sweet to me. He got into a fight with my parents and left. My Nana was staying with us, so he went to her house, 75 miles away. Nana had a starter pistol, in case she had to scare away an intruder. He swiped it. Fast forward a few days or a couple of weeks. It was finals week, I was in 8th grade. I was up early trying to finish an essay for Spanish class that I'd put off until the last minute. Six a.m. knock on the door. The officer asked to speak to my mom.
(This is killing me, fuck!) Ever hear a truly blood curdling scream/wail that reverberated through your everything? Mom had to be sedated. About four hours earlier Howard had been shot in the face by a deputy's shotgun, in an empty field, while still handcuffed. Enquiring minds might want to know, how did he get there? One bad decision can change your life forever. Howard, and a buddy there in town, had broken into a lonesome honky-tonk called the Silver Slipper after hours to raid the till and steal some booze. His friend got away when the police arrived, but Howard didn't.
Howard was skinny, had a mass of long, curly, dirty blonde hair. He wore his jeans tucked into his Frye boots, and went shirtless a lot. Guess what else was tucked into those boots... the fucking cap gun that looked like a real revolver. As the official story goes, he was handcuffed, in the car, when he scootched his hands under his feet, dug the pistol out of his boot, jumped out of the car and started running. He turned around, they said, dropped to one knee, into a "firing position" and threatened the two deputies. It cost him a chunk of skull and brain tissue, as well as his life.
The inquest was held hours before we could pack it up and drive to T. or C., where it happened. His killer, not even reprimanded. The Las Cruces Sun News had the story before we did! It was already in the paper on our doorstep when the officer told my mom. Small cities used to have no secrets. We lived on a main thoroughfare in and out of town, so our family drama was embarrassingly public. So, my dad & I drove to tell my other brother (still living, you don't need to know his name). The sun was just rising, gorgeously beautiful day. I promised to remember him every day at that time. We drove to my Nana's house, and my folks went to identify his body. They took a couple of pictures of his head, there lying on the slab - four shot made contact, one through his left eye. At least the funeral home did a decent job with the makeup for his funeral.
While they were gone I took a nap in Nana's bed. I dreamed he came to me and told me not to worry, that he was in a safe place, then we hugged. I awoke feeling that warmth. The state let Jerry come home for the funeral, and he was released on parole a couple months later. We drove to El Paso, then walked across the bridge to Juarez, where my folks commissioned a headstone. Mom insisted it say "Murdered by a Cop." He's buried in (is it still there?) an old rural cemetery, next to my mom's dad, who died decades before.
He visited me another dream-time that summer. I dreamed we were driving from Cruces to TorC, and ran into a deep fog. My dad pulled over, the sliding door on our van opened, and Howard climbed in, again to reassure that he was okay. Jerry always felt responsible. Between that and the trauma of the riot, he was pretty messed up for awhile. My mom went into a pit of bizarre isolation. She began praying the Rosary for him. Hours a day, every day for years, she'd sit at the kitchen table. She'd draw the rosary as she prayed, then color it in next round, then another layer of color... hundreds and hundreds of pages. We'd drive to his grave and she'd place the pages at the headstone. Good times, right? My parents went to Legal Aid and filed suit against the town, which offered to settle for $500k. My mom turned it down, and they lost the case. The verdict, "he'd never amount to anything anyway, so no loss to society."
In 2000 I was haunted by nightmares of him: dreams of me being a kid, trying to save his life from the police, shooting surrounding him and opening fire. That's not how it happened. He had a toy gun tucked in his boot, and he was executed for it. This past Christmas (2020), my last living brother was on facebook and got a message from someone who worked with the Sheriff's department when Howard was killed. Elderly man, now. He said he always felt something was off about the case, and it had bugged him for decades, and he wanted us to know it wasn't right. That was the closest we got to justice, and it took 40 years.
In my life I've been called poor white trash, and a privileged white person (bc you know, all white chicks are rich debutantes, right?). This last year of BLM protests making a hero out of George Floyd, has been enlightening. My name is Susie Hewitt. I am #HeritageAmerican I'm not a victim, I'm not an oppressor. You can't offend or shame me, and I will never submit to the whims of government and the global elite. #IFearNothing
Thanks for listening.
Never submit to globalist communism... just saying.
