My Dad MURDERED somebody... and I WATCHED IT HAPPEN!
They say that a boy's father is his framework on what a man should be. A moral beacon; someone who if ever does something wrong handles it like an adult. But going back to an event that I lately can't help but think about, I'm not so sure.
My Dad and his friend, Ramon, were roofers. They did basic stuff like re-shingling to patching holes and stuff on the roofs of rich suburban houses. Sometimes if need be, Dad would do other stuff like clean gutters and whatnot. Him and Ramon have been business partners back before I was even born. They were best friends, well at least I thought they were.
I can't exactly remember why I went out on the job with Dad and Ramon that day but I did. And up until the last house we did of the day, I thought it was pretty fun. Dad brought a lawn chair for me to sit in and set it up next to the side of the houses he would work on. We had lunch, we would drive around in the truck from job to job, and I would just sit and watch him work. But that particular day, I remember him and Ramon were arguing. Part way through they day, they would pull themselves away from me and would yell at each other about something. Looking back, I think it was about money. But I can never be sure.
The last house they did was pretty simple. A basic hole on the top of the roof, an easy job that should take less than 45 minutes. I was sitting in my chair, looking up at the roof and I watched Dad, working away at the broken area. Ramon was on the ground, near me having a cigarette. Dad would occasionally look down at me and then at Ramon.
"Hey, maybe don't smoke next to my son?' Dad yelled down to him, abrasively.
Ramon would always shake him off. But I assumed that was normal. Dad and Ramon were good friend who would always josh around and give each other a hard time. But this particular day, Dad was not having it.
"Why don't you get the fuck up here and make a fucking living?!" Dad would shout at him. Ramon climbed the ladder and made his way up to the roof. This is the part I have a hard time remembering. I couldn't quite hear them but I remember Ramon getting defensive, and Dad getting physical. I can faintly hear them yelling about something that, like I said can't quite remember but it got to the point where Dad started laying into him. Dad pushed Ramon, and Ramon slapped him in the face. At this point I was very intrigued. I had never seen my Dad and his best friend be this aggressive, let alone on the job.
And then it happened. To this day, a part of me has to believe that Dad didn't mean to do what he did. Dad reared back and punched Ramon in the face. Ramon fell over and over to where I could not longer see him from where I'm sitting. Distantly, I could hear a loud "thud" from around the other side of the house where the driveway was. It sounded like a sack of meat slamming weightlessly downward. I could see Dad looking over the edge, with a look of both shock and disgust on his face. At this point I got up from my lawn chair and ran around the other side of the house.
Ramon laid there, a large pool of thick red blood surrounding him. He looked up at the sky, eyes wide open. A little stream of blood gushed from his mouth and his face and neck were badly bruised. It was without a doubt the most traumatizing thing I've ever seen. I got a good enough look at it and a moment later my father came up behind me and pulled me away.
"Son, I'm calling your mother. You need to go home."
"Dad does Ramon need to go to the doctor?" I asked innocently, very unaware of what was going on.
"He's gonna be okay son" he reassured, although not convincingly "but I need you to go around to the other side and wait until I come over there. Mommy's going to come for you; you need to go home."
"But Dad-"
"Now son!" My Dad was not messing around. Like I said earlier, I had never seen him like this. I walked around to the other side of the house, looking back at my Dad standing over Ramon, looking worried.
Not long after, my mom came and got me. I'm pretty sure she was concerned about why she had to come get me early, but I'm sure Dad gave her some kind of reassuring story because I don't think she knew about what happened either. Before she came however, Dad told me that I was to never tell her or anybody about what happened to Ramon. He said that Ramon was going to be fine and telling people would just cause more worry than was needed. I listened because Dad always knew what was best.
I never saw Ramon again, and now that I think about it, it was around the time really stopped seeing Dad. He would always come home late, drunk and depressed. He would lock himself in the garage and start crying. Screaming at himself until he figured out I was listening, then he would plaster on a fake happy face. My mom told me it was because Ramon went missing; he didn't show up for work one morning and his family just figured that he was gone, never to be seen again. None of them knew the truth but I did.
By the time I was 10, Dad and mom got a divorce. He quit the roofing business and went off somewhere out of the state, or hell if I know out of the country. But as I got older I guess my consciousness forced that bad memory out of my head because it was the beginning of a really shitty part of my life. My Dad's downfall, my parents divorce, and eventually me and mom moving into a really bad part of town because we couldn't afford our old house on one income.
I'm posting this 15 years later because something brought those memories back up. I don't know if it's been all the time I've been spending at home because of quarantine or just the general state of the world. It's been keeping me up at night and inescapably dominating my mind throughout the day. The way my dad acted that day, seeing Ramon's twisted bloated corpse dropped casually on the pavement. I would tell a therapist but I don't know if I can because I'm technically an accessory to murder. All I really know is I wish I could find my Dad so I can make sense of all of these fucked up thoughts that I'm having.
Even worse, is this one repressed memory going to bring up hundreds of others???
Credited to society_mastermind
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