To Kill a Mockingbird

I sat in front of my computer, trying to finish my work.  I could hear Norteño music playing next door.   It was getting dark.  The brown men had been tearing down Boo Radley's shitbox house by hand.  For three days.  The scary house.  The one that rats ran out of as I run past on my way to school.  These men had been busy depriving Americans of a job they had been clamoring for.  Tearing down walls, beams, asbestos dust everywhere.  No machines.  Hands.  What a-holes.  So many Americans would have done that in a second!  In three times the time, for three times the money and half the house would still be standing.  I had a beer.  I considered going over there and offering them one.   Then I thought of walking up to a relative construction sight with beer in my hand and thought better of it.  I liked listening to the Norteño music, drifting in the warm winter dusk, accompanied by the sing song lilt of Mexico City Spanish. 

I had a party for my milestone, get a walker birthday.  It was fun.  Really fun.  So many people I loved crammed into one kitchen I could barely get around fast enough to speak to all of them.  Cristian's family came.  He tried to cross again.  And he got caught.  Six thousand dollars, down the drain.  They played catch and release on his dad, who returned to central Mexico.  They kept Cristian.  He is in a federal prison, for six to twelve months.  Even though he has never done anything.  All I can think of is when is he out, when he will try to cross again to see his family and his new child.

And open the Christmas presents that have been waiting for him since 2011.