DEAD MEN DON'T BLEED
by ROBERT CHERIN

     What possessed me to think this little man would remember
me? Not that I didn't try getting him to, by hamming it up. Sort
of an entrance left, shuffling up the aisle, extending my Army
cap as if it were a Panama straw. Ta-da! Still, no spark of
recognition on his part.
     It's grueling, having to ask, "Don't I look familiar?"
Especially when you know the answer in advance. "Will Hatfield,"
I said. "Little Will Hatfield," holding my hand out chest high.
"Amos Hatfield's grandson. Surely, Mr. Seltzer, you remember
me."  Mr. Seltzer tugged on an oversized ear. "You're not one of
the men who robbed me that Friday night, the week before
Christmas two years ago, are you?"
     The thought of that sent a shiver up my spine. "No, I most
certainly am not."
     "The man who stuck a gun in my face, and his hoodlum friend
had squeaky voices. Spanish. They were murderers."
     I've always feared violence, especially senseless violence.
A gun in the hands of a person with no conscience, who couldn't
care less whether or not he lived. It was how my Grandfather Amos
had met his end, caught in a crossfire between rival gangs right
out front of his church.
     Mr. Seltzer bowed his head. "See that!" tracing a finger
along a nasty snaking scar that ran out from a fringe of white
hair. "Murderers. They thought they had killed me. Murderers." He
sneezed; the air in his grocery store was dusted with cinnamon
and garlic. "Murderers and thieves. Twice since Rosh Hashana, I
have people breaking in. Ask for food, I give; but no, they come
in here and take. Feh!"
     His was a cheesebox of a store, walls of shelves laden with
canned goods and packages. An ancient glass counter where his
register was, and in the back but in plain view barrels of rice,
dried beans, commodities that weren't there on my last visit ten
years ago.
     I noticed too, there were new smells, more than likely
coming from the smoked hams that hung from hooks behind Mr.
Seltzer. The store looked the same, but also looked different.
     "I'm sorry you don't remember us," I said. "Grandfather was
the pastor at the Rock of Ages Church."
     A spark in Mr. Seltzer's eyes. "I do remember him. Yes, yes.
Some years ago. He came in and bought two candles. Very nice man,
thoughtful. I didn't think he looked Jewish, so I asked him what
sort of candles he wanted. He said it was for the memory of some
friends. So, he is retiring. Is he well?"
     I tried to contain the anguish of my grandfather's death by
fingering the gold cross on my uniform's lapel. Through clenched
teeth, I said, "I'm afraid he passed. I'll be taking over his
pulpit. I was discharged from the Army this morning."
     Mr. Seltzer muttered, "Such a shame," but a noise from the
back of the store grabbed his attention immediately.
     A young black mother who had been scooping beans into a
brown paper bag was in sudden flight chasing a merrily screaming
three-year-old who was headed for the jarred pickles. Mr. Seltzer
brought a hand to his brow, crying, "Oy, the jars, the jars."
When the woman had caught her son before he could topple
anything, Mr. Seltzer had recovered sufficiently to say, "I would
tell her to keep that child home, but you do not want to get
those people excited."
     I had a grocery list all made out and as I took it from my
tunic pocket, the black woman with her son in tow was padding
toward the counter. He looked just like her, except he was
playful. He laughed shrilly when I made a funny face at him
     She might've laughed too if her arms weren't so full. But as
I went to grab some of her packages, she recoiled like a cat in
the sudden company of a marauding Doberman.
     "I can handle it," she said.
     She no sooner said that when her son broke free and galloped
off. Everything in her arms, two family-sized cans of baked
beans, a plastic bottle of ketchup, a bag of dried beans, spilled
to the floor. By the time I had it all on the counter for her,
she managed to corral the boy.
     She had him by the shoulder, shaking him. He began to cry. I
shot him another funny face, but just then the front door was
opened with a bang.
     Two men swept in, the last one slamming the glass door
behind him. While the first man, the one in command, bobbed and
weaved toward us, his friend crouched down behind the door.
     The one coming toward us was black, maybe half a head
shorter than me. Couldn't've been more than fifteen, rangy
looking with dull graveyard eyes. In his fist, a cold, stubby
blue metal revolver.
     It took me a year to see beyond the gun, to the kid crouched
behind the door. He had the same dreadlocks, the same faded blue
jeans, T-shirt and colorful running shoes the one with the gun
wore. CRIPS in red dripping letters. I couldn't see the crouching
man's gun, but I assumed he had one.
     Redundantly, the gunman in front of us said, "Don't nobody
do nuthin' stupid." He had the gun in Mr. Seltzer's face. "Give
it up, old man! The money. Now!"
     Color was sucked out of Mr. Seltzer's face like a bathtub's
backwash. I felt so cold that I savored the warm touch of the
little boy Gabriel's mother's hand that clutched my arm. All I
had to offer was my free arm; she wrapped herself into it.
     To Gabriel this was television fare. I reached for his arm
     before he could run to what he probably thought was a toy in
     the gunman's hand. I managed to catch his wrist; I somehow
     found the strength to hang onto it. With his free hand
     Gabriel made a gun and aimed at Mr. Seltzer.
     "Bam! Bam!" he said, grinning.
     The gunman screamed, "The money, the money!" I wondered how
long he would hold on.
     Mr. Seltzer scrabbled over to the register. Pressing the No
Sale button the ancient cash drawer opened. Once it had, he
stepped far back.
     Leaning over the counter, the gunman scooped everything out
of the till. Folding his emaciated take he stuffed it down into
his pocket and glared at Mr. Seltzer. Then, in one sudden
movement his fingers grabbed the wooden till from inside the cash
draw and sent it clattering to the floor.
     "You white sonofabitch!" he screamed.
     Under the till was where Mr. Seltzer stashed the larger
bills, twenties and fifties.
     A good haul like that, I figured they would probably leave
without hurting anyone. Instead, the gunman said, "You!" at Mr.
Seltzer. Pointing to the till, he ordered, "Go pick that up and
bring it to me."
     Forlornly,  Mr. Seltzer looked at the crippled wooden till
on the floor. "But it's empty."
     Thumbing the hammer back, he said, "I said, bring it to me."
     I had heard how Jews in the death camps had marched to their
ends without so much as a whimper, but I never thought I would
see such despair. Mr. Seltzer after inching out toward the till,
hovered over it, head bowed and dry lips quivering.
     Mr. Seltzer sank to one knee. With the till held out in
front of him, he said, "Here it is."
     Grinning cruelly, the gunman said, "Bring it here, old
man."       He was going to shoot Mr. Seltzer, but what could I
do? Gabriel in one hand, my other arm comforted his mother's
shoulders.      The man from the front turned from the door and
yelled back, "What you waiting on?"
     Mr. Seltzer cringed, so did I.
     Prayer was answered.
     Seemingly pleased by his booty, he told Mr. Seltzer to kiss
the tops of his shoes. The old man did, and afterward, the gunman
took a step back and told his friend, "We got a nice load. You
hear me? A real nice load."
     "What about them? One of 'em can follow us out and shoot us
in the back."
     The gunman stiffened. For punctuation, he let the gun's bore
bounce with each word: "Don't none of you follow us out. I see
your ugly faces, I shoot it. That goes for you too Mama."
     He turned the gun onto the little boy. "See what I'm
saying?"
     Wide-eyed, tight-lipped, fingernails hurting my arm, she
nodded.
     As the gunman started back toward his partner, Gabriel's
mother uttered a soft, "Thank you, Jesus," and rubbed her wet
face against my sleeve. She sucked breath in deeply, noisily,
like someone with a head cold.
     At the front door, the kid crouched behind it rose slowly.
Then something caught his eye. With his neck strained, he
screamed, "Hey man! Po-lice. Place's stinking with them."
     "What?" and the gunman wheeled, staring us down.
     "They all around us," his words sparking like tracer
bullets. Opening the door a crack, he stuck his nose out. "The
whole damn block is tied off."
     "You! Get over there," the gunman said. Mr. Seltzer's hip
flirted the counter's edge as the gunman rounded it.
     The gunman's fingers felt their way along the counter.
"Panic button," he hissed. He vaulted the counter again and
rushed up to Mr. Seltzer.
     Jamming the gun into his face, he said, "Old man, now you're
gonna die!"
     "No!" shrieked Gabriel's mother.
     The gunman slammed the heavy gun against Mr. Seltzer's
collar bone. With gleeful eyes he watched the old man sag, and
once on his knees the gunman grabbed Mr. Seltzer's head and
pulled it back. "Open your mouth," he said.
     Mr. Seltzer shook his head.
     "Open it!"
     As Mr. Seltzer's mouth opened, he closed his eyes.
     Mr. Seltzer's teeth were clenched around the gun barrel;
lips were pressed back into a rictus grin. The gunman's trigger
finger tightened.
     A beam of light washed the front of the store. The man at
the door went into a sudden drop and lay flat. Calling to his
friend, he said, "There's no way out, man! We're trapped!"
     So were we.
     The man at the door said, "They're coming with the
quickness." He lay prone with just his head up high enough to see
out. His head jerked. His voice seemed very calm, reasonable.
"Two of 'em just ducked behind those cars," he said.
     "You, with the gun," I called.
     Both men turned to me.
     "I'm a man of the cloth. A minister. A Baptist minister.
Here, look at the cross."
     The gunman said, "Who the fuck cares!"
     The one at the door said the police were positioned behind
all the parked cars across the street. He said he thought they
had a pretty good view of what was going on inside. "With the
lights on in here, we're sitting ducks."
     The one behind the door jerked his head training his eyes on
something across the street. Raising a gun, he fired it.
     "Got him!" he snorted. "Nailed the sucker good."
     An immediate blast nuked the door. From behind it the man
was hurtled across the floor, amid a shower of glass.
     It was like a VCR on fast forward. Glass rained down on us.
The hurtled man landed with an awful thump. Even Gabriel threw
both arms around my leg, pressing his face as far into my knee as
he could.
     The hurtled man struggled to his knees, his left arm had
been detached and lay on the ground behind him. "Didn't feel a
goddam thing," he said. Then he collapsed.
     His friend screamed, "He's dead!"
     "Maybe he's not," I said. "Let me check it out."
     With his gun on me, he repeated, "He's dead!"
     Once I freed myself from human encumbrances, I walked
smartly over to the man on the ground.
     He was dead.
     "I can feel a pulse," I lied.
     "Bullshit! He's dead!"
     "He will be if he doesn't get help right away." Then I
remembered the gunned-down police officer outside. If I had
forgotten, maybe he had too.
     He sidled up to his friend, keeping low, the gun trained on
me. "He's bleeding awful bad."
     "Shows you, he's alive," I said. "Dead men don't bleed."
     "I-I don't know what to do."
     "Just put your gun down," I said. "Let me go out there for
some help."
     The man's eyes fixed on Mr. Seltzer. "You, old man."
     "No!" the black woman wailed. Her face was that of a quick
little bird. She tugged at my jacket. "Don't let him do it."
     I said to the gunman, "Don't be a fool. You and your friend
still have a chance to get out of here, alive."
     "Yeah? And what about the cop?" he said. "He's dead, ain't
he?"
     "Maybe not," I said. I fought for ideas, for words. "You
thought your friend was dead. And there he is, bleeding."
     "I-uh-he is dead, ain't he?"
     "You know he isn't. I already told you, dead men don't
bleed."
     "But--" and he pointed. "To them, I'm just another nigger."
     "Lord, he's gonna kill us all," Gabriel's mother wailed.    
He
yelled, "I ain't never killed nobody!"
     "You're lying," Gabriel's mother said.
     "I ain't, I ain't," the gunman said quickly.
     Chanting, "Lord, Lord, Lord," she turned her face upward,
tears pierced out from under closed lids. She was making her
peace.
     The gunman squirmed, taking quick little jerky steps. He
looked at Gabriel's mother. "You and the kid are gonna get me out
of here."
     "No!" she said. "You'll have to shoot us right here, right
now, because we ain't going with you."
     He saw that he had to do something. Turning the gun back on
me, I guess he figured that if he shot me, that would put the
fear back into the woman's heart, and she would then acquiesce to
his demands.
     But he was wrong, judging by her defiant look. Even I knew
it was time for all of us to die, and I was ready.
     "Here goes," he said, thumbing back the hammer.
     Sticking my chest out, I said, "Then do it!"
     His hand looked smaller as the fingers began to constrict
around the gun. Terror had renewed itself. A prayer inside my
head went from synapse to synapse at lightning speed.
     The hand got smaller.
     A shot rang out.
     Crisp.
     Loud.
     Then the gunman lurched, looking right at me.
     A black-faced cop in a black SWAT uniform was kneeling
inside the door. White smoke hung in the air like a cloud,
smelling of burnt gunpowder. It seemed to come from the black gun
between his outstretched hands. For a moment I was even more
frightened than before. This man's quietness, his frugal
movements, the efficiency of his kill was cold-blooded.
     They came in like ants, cop after cop. Hours spent laboring
over statements that were checked and double-checked. Bad coffee
poured from Thermos bottles.
     About all I can remember about the aftermath was when a
woman police officer took Gabriel up in her arms, and said,
"Everything's fine now."
     I remember crying, seeing that black child in her porcelain
grip. Courage is a fine thing, a wonderful thing, but it was
nothing compared to that true human caring when that police
woman's arms cradled that child. Life really is grand.