“You’re wet!” Mom said as I tried to slink by.
Dad’s eyes caught fire as I told how, at White Oak
Bayou Park—where, last year, a boy “disappeared”—
a man in the restroom showed Joey, Ted, and me
his thing, and I peed my pants, rushing out of there.
Dad roared away, returning soon with Joey’s dad, R.D.,
and Ted’s—“Big Ted,” because he was five-three.
“Call the cops,” Mom said. “Please. You’ll get yourself killed.”
She gripped Dad’s arm. “Dinner’s getting cold . . . “
“We’ll heat it up,” Dad said; and we were out the door.
The restroom glowed in evening mist as we drove up.
“Stay with Ted,” Dad told me, then led R.D. inside.
A man tore from the gray brick room, just before Dad
and R.D. dragged another out into the silver chill.
“This him?” Dad asked, meaning, It better be. “I think,”
I said. The man—about Dad’s size—tugged feebly.
Dad’s fire-eyes flared. My goof-off dad,
who made me squeal, playing Horse Bite—who sang
“O Holy Night” so sweetly the church ladies cried—
growled, “Sure it’s him?” “I think,” I said again,
and rubbed my eyes. The caught man whined
as Dad and R.D. bulldozed him into the dark.
“Guys—I was takin’ a leak, I swear,” lofted back,
then sounds like sofa-thumping, then sobs and a splash
before Dad and R.D. stalked like red-eyed zombies
from the thickening fog. “We warned him, but he felt
like playing frog,” Dad said, and everyone har-hared.
Sounds bad, I know. In those days, though,
cops told men to “take care of” molesters,
then looked away. Our dads had shot, bombed,
bayoneted Germans, Koreans, Japanese. So—
is this poem in praise of vigilante veterans?
I’ll tell you this: in six months, the “disappeared” boy
reappeared. Turned out he’d only run away.
Nothing bad happened. Nothing he hadn’t wanted done.