Dispatch Number 82 -Shot Dead

The violence broke out at 9 on a Sunday evening. Mothers and small children crying, some wail as they walk away from the scene in the cold night air. The shock felt in the aftermath of violence. People stood quiet without emotion. Quiet like a funeral service. The tidy curbs and paving stones betrayed the violence that brought people out of their houses in the small Colombian mountain town of three thousand people. The night was quiet except for aimlessly barking dogs. Quiet the way small agricultural towns are after sunset when they shutter up and the streets become still.

A man was shot dead one block from my hotel. The sounds: killing and shock could be heard in clear detail, the crack of the pistol and the horrible guttural wail women make when someone dies. Six rapid pistol shots, like Chinese firecrackers rang out shattering the peace of early evening. I thought someone had lost their temper and shot one of the barking dogs, when in fact, they lost it and shot another man.

I stood with the gathering crowd. We stared in silence at the dead man laying in the gutter. He looked so peaceful he could have been mistaken for a passed out drunk of 40 or 50 years, a man with a swollen face of too much salt, oil and beer. No sheet or jacket tossed over him, just his still body facing the cold night sky with closed eyes. He lay dead in front of a tienda, a small convenience store, the kind I buy toilet paper, beer and food at.

A crowd formed and stood quietly with a stillness only felt when you walk the streets late at night. Still, very still, like sex after an orgasm, expired and calm. No police car sirens or bright flashing lights, just one cop who arrived on foot in a two cop town. The townsfolk slowly grew into a crescent shape around the dead-man. Not a whisper.

I stood close, close as an outsider dare, looking for Hollywood bullet holes and blood. Unlike the movies there were none. I stood with the rest of them staring. Contemplating. The freshly dead are ghoulish. So strange this man in morbid state with not a whisper in the crowd.
I think to myself, What he did he do for work and wondered what the argument could have been over? How many dead bodies have I seen in my life?

I had to remind myself I was looking at a dead man, one shot dead like the days of the Wild West, there it was again: Hollywood. Listening to my thoughts I can see how much of life is played out on film and not in real life. I left the community to itself, its shock, its whispers. My return walk to the hotel was solemn as I passed whispering women standing in front of a house. I bowed my head and walked on.

Death makes you value life, albeit usually temporarily. You make half-hearted promises to yourself to do something different, much like the cheap new year resolutions we make and don't keep, or like this night, the next death.

Ernesto J. was shot dead over something. Nothing. It could have been anything, a woman, religion or saltine crackers. I sensed the killer was the man sitting next to Ernesto's still body, with his head hung low looking unhappy with his rashness. The policeman's radio crackled.

David
Lima, Peru