Murph and Mo

Murph and Mo could have been brothers; broad shouldered, black-haired, brown-eyed brothers. They held their head at the same angle. Their hands were the same size. Neither needed many words to get a point across on the rare occasion when they had a point to get across. Both men’s eyes held the same heavy vacancy, although for very different reasons.

Mo drove, Murph sat in the passenger seat; both of them just tall enough to touch the ceiling of the car with the crown of their head if they sat up straight, which they never did. Murph was the leader of their pack of two, which suited Mo perfectly. Their friendship was as effortless as the mindless turning of the wheels beneath them. Like Cain and Abel, they might have had a chance. But everyone, no matter what god they believe in, knows the end to that story.

Murph was a Walmart stocker and an army reservist. Mo was a mechanic at the Jiffy Lube next to the SuperWalmart where Murph worked. Three years before, Murph’s license had been revoked and his car impounded for repeated DUIs. Mo drove him back and forth to work with a nightly pit stop at Chili’s on the way home. They sat at the bar under the enormous flat screen TV and watched whatever game was on. Sometimes, at commercials, they’d talk about their day in a series of gruntingly brief exchanges. Mostly they’d ignore each other, secure in their brutish camaraderie.

Peggy, in her brightly-colored red and green polyester uniform, brought their orders automatically and with a smile. Plain burger, fries and a Budweiser for Murph; chicken quesadillas and a coke for Mo. Peggy loved regulars, and Murph and Mo were like clockwork. Mo thanked her everyday; Murph ignored her but tipped her well.

Murph had always figured that Mo was like any other Mexican. When Mo had pulled up next to him on the day his car was impounded, Murph took one look and knew that Mo swam his way into Texas. Murph considered distracting the police by pointing out a wetback, but his car was already hooked up. He knew they wouldn’t just unhook it and take the beaner in its place. So, instead, he took Mo up on his offer to give him a ride home.

Three years had passed and Mo still drove Murph to and from work. If Murph worked on a day that Mo didn’t, he had to take the bus. Murph hated taking the bus; bunch of lowlifes on the bus.

Mo knew that Stan Murphy was a bigot, like a deer can sense a cougar. But his co-workers at Jiffy Lube kept their distance from him, scandalized by his praying. His family was very far away and Murph was easy company, so he just kept picking him up. He dreaded the day after Murph came back from his weekends with the reserve. Murph would jump into the car in a jaunty and smiling mood, eager to tell him about all the camel-jockeys he’d practiced killing. Mo just kept quiet. Fortunately, Murph’s mood soon disintegrated to his usual passive aggression. He was practically mute by the time it was his weekend to go play with guns again.

That day it was an ordinary 6:30 p.m. at Chili’s after a Saturday shift. The would-be brothers sat on their usual barstools wordlessly eating their dinners under the roaring flat screen. Both men were as happy as it was possible for them to be.

It’s a mystery what made Murph speak. Maybe he’d had a good day at work. Maybe his football team was winning. Maybe he inexplicably felt like filling some of the three years of comfortable silence between them.
With his open-mouth halfway to his double-fisted hamburger, Murph jostled Mo with his elbow, “So, where you from anyway? You legal?” He took a bite, chuckled at his joke as he chewed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Mo breathed out with a heavy sigh. His time was up.“My home is Syria,” he said softly.

Murph’s eyes hardened in a deep, squinting stare at his beef patty. He turned to briefly glance at Mo’s face, hoping to find the relief of a teasing grin, but there was no grin.

“Real funny man.” Murph’s voice faltered. “You’re no Hadji.” He swallowed hard. Mo was silent, waiting.

Murph’s anxious eyes shifted to the bar below his suspended burger. Mo’s motionless hand lay between their red Chili’s baskets; dark oil-stained skin, black under his fingernails, black from the cars of Walmart shoppers.

Murph felt heat in his belly. He put down his burger and sat up to his full height.“Syria? Are you fur real, man?”

Mo was rigid, like an animal attempting to avoid the notice of a predator.

Murph, sensing guilt in Mo’s demeanor, jumped off his barstool and stood above him, cruel betrayal gripping his heart. Mo wouldn’t meet his glare.

Murph pushed his shoulder, edging Mo off his stool. “How could you be from Syria?” Murph pushed Mo again. “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me!” Murph yelled, hiding his panic behind his bravado.

Mo met Murph’s disbelieving glare, his face the calm of a doctor about to diagnose cancer but still holding a tiny glimmer of hope. “I am from Syria. My name is Mohammed Armush. My family emigrated from a small town south of…”

“Mo? Mo!? You told me your name was Mo?” Disbelief and rage choked Murph’s words.

“Mo is my name. It is what I am called in this country.”

“This country?! I thought you couldn’t speak English right cause you were a stupid taco-stuffer, but you’re a fuckin’ terrorist!”

Murph lunged, driving Mo off of his barstool and into the side of the bar, audibly cracking his ribs. Mo crumpled to the floor, hitting his head on the way down. Murph balled his fist, shoved the stool aside and moved to strike. Mo cowered, waiting for the blow. The bartender caught Murph’s arm as it swung. Murph wrested his arm from the barkeeps grasp and darted for the door.

In the parking lot Murph realized he had no where to go and no way to get there. He couldn’t call his reserve buddies. How could he admit he’d been fraternizing with the enemy for three full years?

Murph ran over to Mo’s car. His jacket lay on the passenger seat, where he’d thrown it carelessly, minutes before his best friend admitted to being a bloodthirsty jihadist.

He leaned down and picked up a large pointed stone from the flowerbed that surrounded a giant, half-submerged chili in front of Mo’s car. He slammed the rock into the Mo’s headlight and felt instantaneous relief in the breaking glass. He slammed it into the hood and the windshield again and again until his hand reverberated like a tuning fork.

He moved to the side of the car, smashing the passenger side window, covering his jacket with broken glass.

“Fuck!” He grabbed at the jacket, pulled it through the broken window and shook it out.

He wanted to break something else with the stone. He wanted to bash Mo’s head in for lying to him all these years; for being friendly when he knew damn well he was a Muslim.

Murph paced back and forth. “I’ll kill him, I’ll fuckin’ kill him and they’ll thank me for it.” He turned and walked back through the double doors, palming the stone.

The manager wanted to step in front of him but the heat of Murph’s hate sucked all the resolve the manager had mustered while he watched the destructive spectacle outside. Murph side-stepped him easily and continued to the bar.

Mo was still picking himself up off the floor where Murph’s last push had landed him. Peggy helped him while the bartender called the police from the phone behind the bar. Mo’s ribs and arm were broken and there was a seeping cut over his right eye. A line of blood snaked toward his temple.

As Murph approached them, he could feel the power of that blood, he wanted to make the stream stronger, make it flow wide and long; payback for all the horrible things Mo’s murderous people had done.

Mo saw Murph coming but he could not move to defend himself. His arm hung at an awkward angle; his eyes were rings of disappointed resignation.

Murph lifted the stone, aiming for the wound above Mo’s eye. He brought the stone down heavily, saw a flash of bright red and green, heard a woman’s muffled scream, and felt his blow strike flesh and bone.

Recoil brought the scene into perspective, Mo stood in the same place, hunched and bleeding, eyes wide with horror, staring at the floor. Murph followed Mo’s eyes to a red and green polyester pile with blonde teased hair heaped face-down on the floor; blood, streaming from a wide crack in the back of the head, spread in a puddle beneath it.

Neither of them moved, Mo afraid to reawake the beast, Murph afraid of what he saw. Someone pulled Murph backwards away from Peggy’s motionless body and turned her over. Her eyes were stone-cold and wide with shock. Her face was hollow, draining of blood and life.

Mo looked up at Murph with horror and Murph unthinkingly motioned to him to get out of there. Mo didn’t move and Murph realized that, for the first time, Mo wasn’t leaving with him.

His face a mask of terror, Murph dropped the stone and ran, roughly pushing the gathering onlookers out of his way. Past the parking lot and Mo’s dented car, into the street; he ran, directionless, tears streaming down his face.

It only took a few hours for the police to catch up with him, limping, alone, exhausted, lost in a collapsing worldview and the hideousness of his crime.

They put him away for 30 years; assault and involuntary manslaughter. He was dishonorably discharged from the reserve and none of his buddies ever came to see him. None of the Walmart stockers came either. The only person who visited him was Mo. His muslim would-be brother, his only friend.