Get Up Seven Times, Fall Down Eight

On July 6, 2016, thirty-two-year-old Philando Castile was pulled over by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, in a car with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old daughter. After being asked for his license and proof of insurance, Castile told the officer that he had a firearm. He was told, “Don’t pull it out,” and even though he insisted that he would not, Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot him seven times. The shooting and Castile’s death were live-streamed on Facebook by Diamond Reynolds.

I

The Road Runner is a beeping charmer, blue-feather pompadoured,hooked to his lusty habit of turning the Coyote into bloomingasterisk and spectacular dust. It’s believed that he has no soul.

The Coyote, bewildered and bulge-eyed, dies and dies and diesin a bloodless loop. His bones, ludicrously close to the sky,lance his nappy pelt and leave him deflated, as flat as the earth

he tramples. Or he hurtles forehead first into sudden wallsconjured by his turbo-footed rival, seems incredulousas his own skull splinters and falls to his feet. Or, sucked into

a paint-by-numbers tornado, he is speedily disemboweled,and thanks to a rapid-fire array of boulders, anvils, catapultsand cannons, which betray him after the bird’s sonic-boom

getaway, the Coyote’s spine habitually launches itself throughthe top of his head. And Lord, there he goes again. He falls.He’s the undisputed master of the drop, descend, plummet

and plunge, the dive, tumble, the topple—from mountains, fromneedle-topped cliffs, from the kind of heights that can simply notexist without religion. He falls and smashes into the canyon floor

with such force that his body smokes shut. And we fools thinkwhat we have always thought— Surely such a cascade has foldedhis needy soul into the earth again. Surely he’s joined the ancestors.

But through it all, the Coyote’s fat heart is a such a treacherousengine. Road Runner meeps gleefully, draws in a breath, and beforethat breath is released, the killed Coyote is whole, crazy ravenous

for fowl again. He doesn’t seem to have learned his loud lesson.He doesn’t care that he’s been killed so much, so many thousandsof times, killed like a black boy on a weekday. He doesn’t care

how many times he’s been axed, blown open, set ablaze, needledwith plump cartoon bullets. All that matters is that his skin is notbroken. All that matters is that his bulged eyes never really close.

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Little kids talk about dead people as if they just lay downfor a nap or went to the corner bodega. They’ll be back. Justgive them some cool water, a peanut butter and jelly, aspirin,maybe some magic. They’ll come back. Look at that wolf thing.He falls off a whole mountain and he comes back. That mousekeeps on killing that cat Tom, just keeps killing and killing him,and he comes back. Elmer Fudd shoots Daffy Duck right in hishead, twists his mouth all the way ’round, but that duck’s all right.

At age four, children begin to grasp the idea that death is final.

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Dae’Anna Reynolds is the daughter of Diamond Reynolds,who is the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who is dead, farbeyond the reach of aspirin or magic. Dae’Anna is fouryears old. But Dae’Anna grew up fast, fed by the iron stenchof mama’s boyfriend’s blood soaking into the dim upholsteryof a ’97 Olds, she grew up when she heard her mother swearand snot-weep while narrating a murder, that day she grewwobbling hips and dark lipstick, she all-of-a-sudden knewwassup with whiskey, she knew nightmare wider than sleep.He gon’ stand up soon, Mama, right? Dae’Anna was handedmore history than she could hold, the Not coming back, sorry!of recaptured slaves beaten of their nouns, men as wind-scarred foliage, wizards who somehow suicide...