If in America

Hmong Hunter Charged with 6 Murders Is Said to Be a Shaman — new york times If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? If a rifle fires a shot in the woods, whose body first hits the ground? If a group of angry hunters surrounds, curses at, and accosts you for wandering onto their land If you apologize for being lost, inform you saw no posted signs, swallow their chinks this and gooks taking over that; are walking away over mud and fallen leaves when a loud crack far behind you kicks up black earth If your father was conscripted to fight on the side of the United States for the cia during the war in Vietnam If he, your mother, you—the oldest son— and all your younger siblings were later abandoned in the hills of Laos as targets for genocide by the Viet Cong If after five years in a Thai refugee camp, you come to this land as a teen, a casualty of history and time, then receive three years of training to become a sharpshooter in the u.s. military If you spent your adolescence watching blacks, Asians, Latinos, and whites watching one another watch each other for weakness and flaws If, after this first blast, you wheel around in a bright orange vest; glimpse in that split second an angry, possibly inebriated man lowering or resighting his rifle If, in that icy moment, you recall the Native friend you used to collect cans with; once watched his three-hundred-pound father unload himself from a Chevy Impala and chase the boy down University with a ball-peen hammer If, of your own children, your quietest son lately lacks the wherewithal at school to defend himself; and your oldest daughter has always been for some inexplicable reason ashamed of you If hunting for you is not just a sport; never a time to drink beers with friends in a cabin, but rather is a factor in considering your family's winter protein consumption If you believe in God, but not the good in everyone If you hate to think about this shit, because why the fuck is it always on you to preprove your loyalty and innocence? If—frightened for your life and the livelihood of your immediate and extended family—in that split second, you reel and train your own gun back at the far face of that vapory barrel now aiming at your own If, yes, you are sometimes angry and so look forward to escaping your truck driver's life on certain designated dates, on certain designated lands, not always clearly demarcated, but always clearly stolen from the ancestors of fat drunk red men so confused they chase their own firey songs in the form of their sons Stolen from generations of skewed black backs, hunched your whole life on street corners laughing and picking their bones Stolen from the paychecks of your brown coworker social security ghosts Stolen like your own people from mountains in one land only to be resettled and resented here in projects and tenements If you barely finished high school, but you know from all you've ever seen of this system Might Makes Right, and excuses, treaties, and cover-ups appear the only true code inscribed on most white men's souls If, after such slurs, pushes, and threats in these woods it is now also on you to assess if that far rifle still locked on your face just issued a mistake, a warning shot, or murderous attempt— and the answer is: your military muscle fibers act If you then spot three four five six seven? other hunters now scattering for their atv s and, of course—if a gook, don't be a dumb one— scattering now also for their weapons If you are alone in this land, on foot, in miles of coming snow, wind, and branches and don't even know in which direction you'd run If from birth you've seen what men with guns, knives, and bombs are capable of doing for reasons you never wanted to understand If in this very same county's court of all-white witnesses, counsel, judge, and jurors it will forever be your word against theirs because there was no forensic testimony over who shot first If, yes, sometimes you can hear voices, not because you're insane, but in your culture you are a shaman, a spiritual healer, though in this very different land of goods and fears, your only true worth seems to be as a delivery man and soldier If, upon that first fateful exchange in these woods, your instinct, pushing pin to balloon, were to tell you it's now either you and your fatherless family of fourteen, or all of them Would you set your rifle down; hope the right, the decent, the fair thing on this buried American soil will happen? Or would you stay low, one knee cold, and do precisely as your whole life and history have trained? And if you did, would anyone even care what really happened that afternoon eight bodies plummeted to earth like deer?