The Guns of August

I have this recurring nightmare:

A punk kid drives by a supermarket and opens fire with an AK-47.

An old lady, a baby, two Rhodes scholars and a dog are killed instantly, and four others are injured.

The kid is hunted down and arrested.

“What compelled you to kill people you didn’t know and against whom you bore no rancor?” a judge demands.

The kid remains silent, smirking slightly and stealing glances at a girlfriend in the courtroom audience.

“I’ll speak for the boy,” a defense attorney says. “He did it because it was hot. Don’t blame him. Blame the weather.”

“If he’d only had air conditioning,” a social worker says, “this never would have happened.”

“He did it because he was sexually abused,” a psychologist says. “Don’t blame him. Blame his id.”

“He did it because he has nothing else to do,” a priest says. “If someone had built him a gym he’d have never bought a gun.”

“He sucked his thumb as a baby,” the school nurse says. “It affected his interpersonal relationships. Blame his thumb.”

“He’s short. Blame his size.” “His father worked too many hours.” “Someone stole his bicycle.” “His ears stick out.” “He lisps.”

“I see,” says the judge, pounding his gavel. “Circumstances made him do it. Society is to blame. I feel for the poor child. Case dismissed.”

The courtroom breaks out in applause. Hardly anyone hears the father of the dead baby ask, “But what about justice?”

It’s no dream. Not really.

I returned from vacation to hear the guns of August echoing in L.A. and a litany of voices explaining why 263 people died violently in one month.

One of the reasons was the heat. It figures that if the weather’s hot you’ve just naturally got to kill, right? Not just with guns, of course. Grab a knife. Toss a brick. Throw a shoe. Any old thing will do.

“When the temperature soars,” a shrink says, “boy, oh, boy. . . .”

But I don’t hear anyone, not old silent Tom Bradley or Willie from Philly or the City Council or the Board of Supervisors or anyone down the block, yelling their heads off in rage and anguish saying WHAT IN THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Twenty-eight members of the African National Congress die in the Ciskei homeland and I get calls saying, “We’ve got to stop the killings in South Africa.”

Twenty-eight people die in one weekend within an hour’s drive and not one damned person calls to say, “We’ve got to stop the killings in L.A.”

It’s not enough to bury and forget. What’ll we do about the murders of Ed Kislo and Desiree Macias and Timothy Lamb and Mark Gasca and Paul Thompson and Jimmy Rodriguez and Cary Guzman and Felipe Sotello . . . and, well, all the rest?

“You sure you want to go back?” a friend in Monterey asked when I was up there visiting.

He left L.A. on vacation five years ago and never returned. “Burn my Guess jeans,” he wrote. “I’m gone for good.”

I picked up the L.A. Times wherever I went in Monterey. The headlines read, “Man Stabbed to Death.” “2 Women Found Shot.” “Business Owner Shot to Death.” “Woman Shot to Death.” “Ice Cream Vendor Shot to Death.” “1 Killed at Hamburger Stand.”

I sat in a Monterey hotel room with newspapers piled around me, looking out at the bay. Burn my Dockers and my bulletproof vest, I’m gone for good.

Maybe it’s distance that isolates mass tragedy. Mileage sharpens perspective. It all seems so bloody and senseless in the Ciskei homeland, so crazy in Sarajevo.

But if you’re right in the middle of it, reading about it every day, watching it on television every day, hearing it on radio every day--hell, that’s just life in the big city, dude.

Welcome to L.A. Take Cover.

We’re a town struggling with itself, unwilling to recognize our own madness, accepting violence with the tolerance of a saint and the passivity of a dead man. We’re sated on murder. We’ve lost our taste for reform.

Maybe the heat does fry our brains. Maybe abuse fosters abuse. Maybe poverty saps our reason and racism our sense of balance and moonlight our ability to understand consequences.

I don’t give a damn.

I still want someone to do something about the blood that flows in the streets. I want outrage in the council chambers. I want 9 million people to realize we’re dying in our own nightmare.

In my recurring dream, the punk kid swaggers from the courtroom and buys an AK-47 again and goes out killing again and we shake our heads again and say it’s the heat again.

Maybe when the weather cools . . .