The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

call Solomon Grundy and Gorilla Grod for simplicity’s sake—were beaming their flashlights into the car. And who was standing behind them, looking in on the scene inside the car with an expression of sheer murder? Why, the capitán of course. Ybón’s boyfriend!
    Grod and Grundy yanked him out of the car. And did Ybón fight to keep him in her arms? Did she protest the rude interruption to their making out? Of course not. Homegirl just passed right out again.
    The capitán. A skinny forty-something jabao standing near his spotless red Jeep, dressed nice, in slacks and a crisply pressed white button-down, his shoes bright as scarabs. One of those tall, arrogant, acerbically handsome niggers that most of the planet feels inferior to. Also one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away. He’d been young during the Trujillato, so he never got the chance to run with some real power, wasn’t until the North American Invasion that he earned his stripes. Like my father, he supported the U.S. Invaders, and because he was methodical and showed absolutely no mercy to the leftists, he was launched—no, vaulted—into the top ranks of the military police. Was very busy under Demon Balaguer. Shooting at sindicatos from the backseats of cars. Burning down organizers’ homes. Smashing in people’s faces with crowbars. The Twelve Years were good times for men like him. In 1974 he held an old woman’s head underwater until she died (she’d tried to organize some peasants for land rights in San Juan); in 1977 he played mazel-tov on a fifteen-year-old boy’s throat with the heel of his Florsheim (another Communist troublemaker, good fucking riddance). I know this guy well. He has family in Queens and every Christmas he brings his cousins bottles of Johnnie Walker Black. His friends call him Fito, and when he was young he wanted to be a lawyer, but then the calie scene had pulled him and he forgot about all that lawyering business.
    So you’re the New Yorker. When Oscar saw the capitán’s eyes he knew he was in deep shit. The capitán, you see, also had close-set eyes; these, though, were blue and terrible. (The eyes of Lee Van Cleef!) If it hadn’t been for the courage of his sphincter, Oscar’s lunch and his dinner and his breakfast would have whooshed straight out of him.
    I didn’t do anything, Oscar quailed. Then he blurted out, I’m an American citizen.
    The capitán waved away a mosquito. I’m an American citizen too. I was naturalized in the city of Buffalo, in the state of New York.
    I bought mine in Miami, Gorilla Grod said. Not me, Solomon Grundy lamented. I only have my residency.
    Please, you have to believe me, I didn’t do anything .
    The capitán smiled. Motherfucker even had First World teeth. Do you know who I am?
    Oscar nodded. He was inexperienced but he wasn’t dumb. You’re Ybón’s ex-boyfriend.
    I’m not her ex-novio, you maldito parigüayo! the capitán screamed, the cords in his neck standing out like a Krikfalusi drawing.
    She said you were her ex, Oscar insisted.
    The capitán grabbed him by the throat.
    That’s what she said, he whimpered.
    Oscar was lucky; if he had looked like my pana, Pedro, the Dominican Superman, or like my boy Benny, who was a model, he probably would have gotten shot right there. But because he was a homely slob, because he really looked like un maldito parigüayo who had never had no luck in his life, the capitán took Gollum-pity on him and only punched him a couple of times. Oscar, who had never been “punched a couple of times” by a military-trained adult, felt like he had just been run over by the entire Steelers backfield circa 1977. Breath knocked out of him so bad he honestly thought he was going to die of asphyxiation. The captain’s face appeared over his: If you ever touch my mujer again I’m going to kill you, parigüayo, and Oscar managed to whisper, You’re the ex, before Messrs. Grundy and Grod picked him up (with some difficulty), squeezed him back into their Camry, and drove off. Oscar’s last sight of Ybón? The capitán dragging her out of the Pathfinder cabin by her hair.
    He tried to jump out of the car but Gorilla Grod elbowed him so hard that all the fight jumped clean out of him.
    Nighttime in Santo Domingo. A blackout, of course. Even the Lighthouse out for the night.
    Where did they take him? Where else. The canefields.
    How’s that for eternal return? Oscar so bewildered and frightened he pissed