When vengeance fails a parent

Over the Hogback

I regained consciousness to the sickening feeling one gets before falling from a great height. The next moments are unclear because things happened quite rapidly, and of course, the concussion might have played a part.

But this I know: we were in the car, my wife and I. She was at the wheel and she was screaming -- although I remember it sounding more like rage than fear.

Out the windshield, the entire Denver metropolitan area, or at least the western half of it -- mostly the stretches of Golden and Lakewood through which the infamously skanky Colfax Avenue slices like a trashy, glittering spike -- briefly dropped beneath the car's hood, then reappeared at an odd angle, then slipped very suddenly upward, to be replaced from below by the rapidly approaching dry brush and colored soil of the Hogback formation in the foothills west of Denver.

Of course, it all happened much more quickly than one run-on sentence can convey. The impact was quick -- thankfully so was the pain -- and conscious thoughts extremely truncated. Later recollections are scarce.

Speaking to a television reporter while pointing up at the precipice behind him, a young witness regaled the television-viewing community with his account of the 1995 Honda Accord's flight, dust and gravel trailing through the blue sky a la Dukes of Hazzard. He also recounted his thoughts at the time: "They're never gonna make it..."

Recovering in a hospital

But we did, which is why I'm lying in this bed, pondering everything leading up to that moment; pondering how that particular week, which held such promise, ended so badly.

The back story

After a harrowing couple of days, we had finally recovered our 9-year-old son from his Mexican captors. Although my Spanish is poor, I sensed they were as happy to be rid of him as we were to find him. Characteristic of many native Spanish speakers, the coyotes never precisely described their thoughts, preferring to communicate through beautiful colloquial expressions tainted with vulgar slang. For example, instead of "the boy," they addressed our son as "El Penetracion," which we found to be a cute, yet eloquent way of putting it.

For our part, Social Services had been breathing down our necks for a week -- ever since my wife reported him to the authorities. Evidently, the little bastard had done a little reporting of his own while he was on the road. My wife and I were surprised when we returned home with the boy, only to find the house ransacked by frumpy female social workers. Child pornography, child prostitution, undue hatred of a child, abuse and sexual assault on a child by a person of trust -- never in her life had my wife heard the government level such vicious accusations at a parent.

She didn't buy if for a moment.

That's about when the vengeance kicked in, and, if I recall accurately, about the time my wife's violent nature began to backfire. Our son has always had a preternatural ability to sense when the shit was about to hit the fan, and an equally unnerving willingness to take advantage of those situations. In what seemed like two seconds, he fled out the front door and stole my wife's old but cherished hunter-green Jaguar, smashing his way past the social workers' 1995 Honda Accord.

The ruckus in living room was unbearable, mostly for the social workers who didn't yet understand the gravity of my wife's emotions. To their credit, they backed off and relinquished the Honda's keys after only a few of my wife's notorious closed-hand blows to face and neck.

We chased the boy west on 6th Avenue, merged onto Interstate 70 and continued west until Morrison Road, where the boy veered off the highway and, with the sound of a million Coors-light cans stomped in concert, dislodged the Jaguar's right front fender on a large road sign and left its wadded carcass rocking on the asphalt. Stalled traffic forced the boy to slow down at the intersection. Sensing her moment, my wife mashed the accelerator to the floor and rammed the Jaguar's rear at a horrible speed. That's when I blacked out the first time.

Back in the hospital

The boy has disappeared again. I haven't seen my wife, either, although I haven't asked. This time, I can't go after him because I must endure months of recovery from the reconstructive surgery, but the waiting is no longer difficult, because I have forgotten the meaning of time.

On reflection, I've concluded that vengeance isn't as useful today as it might have been in the past. It's a lesson I should have learned sooner, and one I'm afraid my wife will never learn. Had I been a little wiser, I could have recognized the danger, and perhaps even avoided all of this. I could have chosen a better woman to accept my seed. When I do find my son, I hope to teach him this lesson before he makes the same mistake as his old man and entwines himself in a demonic terrorist like his mother.