Have You Seen Luis Velez?

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“Children always feel they are the ones at fault,” she said. “They think they are defective somehow, if everything is not just as it should be. But usually not. If there was a lot of love going on all through that house, I think you would feel it. You would know.”

“Never be afraid to look, Raymond. It’s always better to look. Whatever you’re afraid of, turn toward it, not away. Once you’re willing to do that, it loses all its power over you.

As he stood, watching the two women and letting himself cry for the first time in as long as he could remember, he noticed something about himself. His self-consciousness, his physical self-awareness—it was gone. It must have been gone for approximately as long as he’d known Mrs. G. She had pulled him out of himself and set him down in a place that was not all about him anymore.

But that’s no excuse. There’s no real reason why we didn’t. We just made the mistake of putting it off. We thought we would lose nothing by putting it off. We thought we had plenty of time. I guess that was our key mistake, right? We thought there would always be more time. Why do we do that? I mean, not just Luis and me. Everybody. Why does everybody do that? Think we’ll always have more time?”

Raymond figured he got along fine with his father. They had no beefs with each other, and never argued. But they went nearly two weeks at a time without seeing each other. And then, when they got together again, neither one of them seemed to be able to think of much to say. If anything.

Is this person I’m supposed to be judging our tribe, or another tribe? If she’s us, mistakes can be forgiven. Hell, everybody makes mistakes. The mistake becomes an anomaly, because it’s us, and we’re good people. If she’s them, mistakes need to be punished, because that’s just how they are. The mistake only proves the point that that’s always how they are. So I tried to appeal to the jury as the tribe of the law abiding. We don’t shoot people, and that’s the us in question. Didn’t work, though. And I’m sorry it didn’t work.

“And another related thing, but don’t quote me on this either. They could imagine being afraid of Mr. Velez better than they could imagine being him. I shouldn’t have pushed the prejudice angle. Because the whole time the defendant was pushing back, the jury was pushing back, too. And I knew it. I knew it was a mistake at the time I was doing it. But it was just so . . . there. It was all just so there, in front of everybody’s face, and I couldn’t bring myself to coddle the jury by pretending I didn’t see it. But now you and your friends have to pay for that lack of self-control on my part. Wherever you are tonight, know that I’ll be getting very, very drunk over that decision.”

Because my father had the equivalent of a few thousand dollars, and their fathers had nothing. Money, my friend. Money bought us our lives. And that is called privilege. We bought our lives, while those who couldn’t afford to were slaughtered like animals. Does that make our lives worth more? Of course not. No life is worth more, except by virtue of one’s character. But I was eleven. My character was no better than that of my peers.”

“The world will still be a place where people do terrible things. But here’s the thing about despair. We fall into despair when the terrible gangs up on us and we forget the world can also be wonderful. We just see terrible everywhere we look. So what you do for your friend is you bring up the wonderful, so both are side by side. The world is terrible and wonderful at the same time. One doesn’t negate the other, but the wonderful keeps us in the game. It keeps us moving forward. And, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Raymond, but that’s as good as the world is going to get.”

“After all, the only thing that hurts more than tears shed is tears unshed.”

“I was hoping it would be another light for you,” he added. “You know. In that long night.”