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outside this open screen door of the coffee shop with one leg folded beneath him the sole of his foot flat against the wall of the building and hands in pockets. As I pass the doorway of the shop, I glance inside out of the corner of my eyes and see three or four teenage guys playing a couple of pinball machines, riding the flippers and machines with bucking hip motions and thrusts and they’re actually in the process of breaking open the machines to get the money. I flinch a little in that moment, realizing there is danger and I don’t know where I am. I’m a stranger in these parts. My body is in motion as I take all this in and the kid leaning outside the door says what the fuck you lookin at? and before I can answer he whips out this long knife. It’s about nine inches of thin steel blade and with a flick of his wrist slashes my bare arm open from wrist to elbow. I look down in slight shock and step back waving my hands in front of me saying, “Nothing man … nothing … sorry.” He seems satisfied and lets me pass on down the sidewalk. I’m holding my arm to keep the wound as closed up as possible and when I reach a section of the sidewalk where there’s an alley I step inside to lean shakily against a wall. I notice two other guys about my age all cut up on the arms, legs and bellies. I stumble out of the alley and suddenly this policeman shows up. He’s wearing tan pants, shirt and cap and black boots and he’s holding a whip about a yard long. The kid spots him coming and starts running down the road in the direction I came from. The officer starts chasing him and I run after the two of them to see what happens to the kid. The kid is in the distance and the officer stops in the middle of the road. The kid turns while running to see where we are just as the officer snaps his arm and the whip elongates into the distance and wraps around the kids head bringing him to a halt—his hands come up to his face completely wrapped in leather thong. The officer runs the distance and catches up to the kid and hog-ties him like a rodeo calf. By the time I reach them the officer steps back a few feet and pulls out a shotgun taking aim on the kid. I’m thinking, “Oh man … he ain’t gonna shoot him—he wouldn’t do that.” And as I’m thinking that, the officer pulls the trigger and blows a hole open in the kid’s side. The kid’s side is gaping open near the waist showing pulsating intestines and stomach. I’m crouching near the kid’s head looking into his eyes as the officer comes up and squats down next to me. The kid is no longer a kid; he’s some kind of stray dog with bristly black fur and frightened eyes. The officer takes the kid’s knife from the ground and with the other hand carefully parts the flesh of the wound until the organ that seems to be the stomach is revealed, its delicate pink grayish bloat quivering like a lung puffing in and out. The officer delicately cuts it open and clear liquid pours out. I look into the dog’s eyes and watch the terror and pain change into an opiumlike daze. A sensual pleasure passes beneath their surface, a strange state of grace in the flight behind the eyes speeding up, the fading of life into the pale glaze of death.
    Americans can’t deal with death unless they own it. If they own it, they will celebrate it, like in the air force base museum of the atomic bomb, where whole families of camera-toting tourists gather after the required i.d. security checks. In the gray-carpeted rooms, they walk the mazes of portable screens and platforms and enlarged photographs of death and incineration as seen from a discreet distance. The distance is far enough so you can’t see the bodies, only the architecture. The tour in this museum is led by an ancient matronly type who explains various levels of the bombs invention with all the glad bearings of a parent who has just given