Nothing, Next We Deal With Kevin... (POV Switch)

My name is Kevin Alonzo Jesus Miguel Rufino DeLaCruze, but call me Kevin, or just 'Kev'. I've had an OK life I suppose, though my mom and dad divorced when I was 12. I went to live in Mexico with my father, but while I missed my mom and the states I learned to love Mexico too. The warm sand, the spicy food, even the raging Santa-Anna winds bring a smile to my face...

Not so much my father.

My father was the epitome of the Mexican concept of 'Machismo'. He never married again, and usually had five girlfriends at any one time. He was connected to the cartels and I knew better than to ask where our money came from, but we had lots of it. He tried to raise me to be like him but the more he pushed the more I pushed back. Finally, the day after I graduated high-school, he pushed me too far.

*Come into the den son.* My father said as I put down the skimming stick for our pool.

*Yes, Papa.* I said as I collapsed the long telescoping rod.

Inside the air was blessedly cool, we could afford to air condition down to a chill sixty-eight degrees even in the depths of summer, so of course my father did.

I went into the den and there, on my father's leather sofa, was a young Guatemalan woman who I had never met: NAKED, and hogtied.

*Papa, what is this?!* I demanded in shock.

*This is your graduation present son, tonight you become a man.* He said, and I could tell he was disappointed that he had to do this, I didn't do it for myself...

Perhaps it was that constant note of disappointment in me... Perhaps it was my own Machismo... Perhaps it was Honor, the duty of a true Hidalgo to protect those who cannot protect themselves... Whatever the cause; I SNAPPED.

Father kept a heavy glass bottle of brandy on a stand by the door. Before I had even thought about what I was going to do it was in my hand: then smashed over the back of the ****-pig's head! He roared in anger but he was in his sixties, where I had just turned eighteen.

I tackled him into the liqueur cabinet, smashing more bottles of expensive spirits and slashing open my arms while I drove my knee into his balls as hard as it would go! He took the long knife that never left his hip and tried to drive it into my stomach! My hand shot out like a snake and twisted his wrist, forcing it to fall from nerveless fingers to clatter on the floor! He pushed me back and tried to rush me into the stained glass coffee table! I used the judo my mother had taught me and turned his momentum against him; causing him to be the one that crashed through the glass plate, stained glass, and florescent bulbs! He dragged me down on top of him, and I felt a shard of glass stab into my calf! I raised my fist to strike his face...!

There was no need.

Open eyes stared back at me unseeing. The monstrous soul that had driven my mother into the arms of other women for comfort was gone on to whatever punishments awaited it. No longer did it animate the bluberous corpse that now lay under me. Bleary and dazed I climbed out of the ruins of the coffee table and retrieved the knife. I cut the woman's bonds, and managed to croak *Get help!* before I passed out from the blood loss.

I awoke in the hospital two days later. The woman (her name turned out to be "Maya") had told the police everything. My mother had heard somehow and hired the best law firm in all Guadalajara to represent me. I was given a brief hearing a some months later after being held at the American consulate since I have dual citizenship to determine if a grand jury should be summoned to hear my case. After listening to the evidence the judge declared that my actions fell under the precepts of "in defense of home and family" and I was free to go, the case against me was being "dismissed with prejudice". Less than two days after THAT I was landing at L.A.X. international airport, where I saw my mother again for the first time.

At my side was a woman who I was unsure quite what to do with. It seemed Maya was originally from a one of the reclusive Hill-Tribes of Guatemala, and in her village's traditions were two important things: 1: If you were a woman, and left the village without two other people to vouch for your conduct, you were unclean and could never marry. 2: If someone saved your life, (without anything to gain by it), you owed them a life debt, and had to serve them until you had saved their life.

Maya was not unattractive, about my own age too, but there was nothing between us: no chemistry, no spark. We both had also seen me kill my own father: that lingering image ruined any chance of there being a romantic connection. However we were becoming good friends. There was something about sharing that horror that touched us deeply. We two knew my father for the monster he was, when no one else did. (No one we ever wanted to meet face to face anyway...) However my mother got rather the wrong impression of things...

"Kevin! I am so glad to see you! Seven years was much to long! And how you have grown! You left here a boy and return a young man! ..." Mother stopped dead seeing Maya pulling our baggage trolley. "And who is this?! Kevin! Why is your girlfriend carrying your bags?! Have you no shame young man?!" Mother demanded, never even giving me a chance to explain.

*Excuse me, what's your name? I'm Beth, Kevin's mom, should you be her boyfriend?* Mom said in very rusty Spanish and both Maya and I just about fell on the ground laughing. "What's so funny?" Mom demanded, and we both went to our knees gasping for air while trying to get our fit of mirth under control.

In the car I explained everything, the sanitized clif-notes version, and Mom was horrified. I have the good fortune of being a dual-Mexican/American citizen, but Maya was from so far back in the hill country of Guatemala that she didn't even have a birth certificate, assuming we could have found the village she came from anyway. Mom said she would talk to some of her friends, and see what the Guatemalan Consulate here in LA could do for her. Right now she was in the country via a weird jiggery loophole as my personal domestic servant hired in Mexico and under contract there to accompany ME wherever I went, but that wouldn't hold up for long, and we all knew it...

When we got to Mom's house, (the same one where I grew up, I don't know why, but dad let her have it in the divorce), there was a welcoming comity. Right in front were two people I had missed horribly ever since I went to Mexico, Angelica and Ellie, my "Very-Best-Buddies-Forever-And-Always". I knew things would be different with so many years apart, but that they had come to meet me filled my soul with gladness...