😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

life I’d seen that image as a shrine. Four heroes. My dad on the far right, the tallest.

I held the phone up to the old man.

“Tell me who’s who.” The old man ran his trembling finger across the screen.

“This is Güero”—the one next to my dad, the short one who laughs with all his teeth. “This one, the one at the other end, is Lalo. Lalo stayed on the hill.continue reading …