The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid*

Heat it comes. In Houston. Summer Houston. This one time I went to Phoenix and heat there was heat that stabbed you. It was like you were being stabbed. Not in Houston where heat happens like a great submersion instead, in paraffin wax maybe, or in napalm. I’m not sure. It is hard for me, just thinking up similes in this heat, but that’s probably the gist of it. Yes. Submersion.
I was going down to the law library yesterday, and walking, and the heat was making everyone crazy. I had this feeling that everyone was melting or crazy.
A man up on the rail platform on Main stomped. He stomped. He dared us to look at him. You could see this man wanted to fight, or I could see, anyway. He accused us all of doing things with our mothers. Repeatedly. Angrily. “C’mon, you motherfuckers!” he said, “You wanna fight? You wanna fight?” and his fists were up and he was lurching at strangers.
None of us – old pros, I guess – made eye contact.
I wanted to say “This never happens in January,” but I did…

It’s better to best is all I’m saying, and not that he’s wrong at all. He’s one door away. Better to best. These things take time, the greatest changes always do, and in politics more than most things.
To narrow it down to a single door, “What could be simpler?” you say. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick narrows the problem of school shootings down to a single door but I say he is not going far enough.
Politics!
If it were up to me, I’d take away that door. Dan Patrick’s last remaining door to the schoolhouse. And the windows. And any vents leading inside. I’d turn Texas schools into enormous, opaque cubes with no means of ingress or egress.
I’d paint them black but for the golden letters S C H O O L across their fronts. Or, maybe, E S C U E L A, just so that future generations can read it, if they can read at all, which, if you think about it, probably they won’t. The word “escuela” is more pleasing than “school” at any rate, from an aesthetic point of view, I feel. These are details whic…

This is the part where I tell you about why I haven’t been writing.
I haven’t been writing. I have noticed this. You might have noticed this.
After two weeks working full days at the pro se assistance office, my brain began to rewire itself. I knew that my brain was rewiring itself; I could feel it happening. Of course I could. The dreams, you see they were a dead giveaway. Lots and lots of docket sheets. So very many docket sheets you would not believe it. Docket sheets have filled my dreams more than any person ever’s, maybe.
There was a night I awoke because, in this waking world, Astro was leaping off my bed and my dreaming self feared I’d neglected telling him how and where to file an answer to a lawsuit. But cats are sued only rarely and even more rarely represent themselves in court. It was just my brain rewiring itself. Like I said.
After three weeks working full days at the pro se assistance office, I stopped commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s just there wasn’t time: Forty…

It was Blind Father Tom got us into this. Me, Doctor Wren-who-says-dude-a-lot, and Blind Father Tom. Under the seminary, which is someplace only Blind Father Tom could get us, under the Cardinal’s house, he said there’s something we should see and Blind Father Tom rarely lies to me. He’s taken vows.
And the elevators were, well, they were like intestines, I guess you could say, and we kind of pushed down ch-ch-ch, only maybe not always down, in what felt like peristalsis. It got harder for me to read my book.
“I TOLD you you had to see this!” Blind Father Tom said and then the elevator doors came open and then we saw holy people all around. I suppose they were holy people. Some holy people you can pick out by their garments and their very specific hats. Others are richer with impressive pinstriped suits and you know them from the t.v. All of them were there and they’d all gathered around a cage.
At first, I mistook the man in the cage for my friend, Gerber, but it was not Gerber. He had …

I nearly said “wall,” I swear. I wanted to say “wall” and truth be told, I still do, in a way. “Fence” is maybe the right word here and I know this, but when one cannot see through, what then? O, to have reached this age without knowing the difference between a fence and a wall!

It’s the other side that concerns me anyway. Of this fence, I mean. This wall.
On my walks, it bows out and across the sidewalk almost. I cannot see through it. It’s twelve feet tall so I cannot see over it. It is wicked. It is tempting. It is wicked and tempting.
Bamboos peer out over the edge of it, the top – you should see them peer! – along with preternatural light and there’s something about the way sound carries. “Preternatural.” I chose that word, instinctively, just now, without a care, and I’m really having second thoughts about it. I’ll leave it.
What’s on the other side of this wall?
I checked it out on Google Earth and I was not satisfied. There’s just a feeling I get. It’s a mystery and I’ve got to kn…