Her father settled himself heavily in the sand beside her. "Hey, kiddo. What do you see?"
"The big dipper!" she said, pointing.
"Big dipper?"
"Ursa Major," she corrected herself. She pointed at the pairs of stars that made the bear's toes. "Alula, Tania, Talitha." Her tongue almost didn't stumble around the words she'd practiced for so long.
"Wow, you're good at that," her father said. Kay beamed.
"If I have a daughter, I'm going to name her Alula," she said. And teach her all the names of the stars, she thought.
Her father's face crumpled in the way she hated so much. He patted her head once, hesitated, and stopped. "You're a good kid," he said. Then he stood and walked away.
Kay snuck back to the house early and pulled the golden fish out of the hidey-hole where she'd stashed it. Using a blunt screwdriver that her mother had modified to fit her hand, she cleaned as much of the sea-scum out of the fish's head as she could. In the light of the forge, she could see the glint of an impeller buried deep inside the fish. Carefully, she prized flecks of grit out from the blades.
She fell asleep on the floor of the workshop and only woke for a moment when her mother carried her to a bed in the neighbor's house.
Kay woke up before sunrise. The sky was clear and lavender-gray. She snuck away from the sleepy household and found the fish where she'd left it in her mother's workshop. Peering into the access panel that her father had opened, she tried to figure out what he had pressed to make the fish shut off. She saw a few likely candidates, but decided to check on them later.
With a piece of scrap aluminum and the hammers that her mother had made for her, Kay fashioned a new tail for the golden fish. It was ugly, dull silver on one side and yellow on the other. She thought of all the fish she'd seen, and the curve of a black triangle flicking the air. As she set the last pin cinching the fish's new tail tight to its stump, the machine became something not quite so artificial. It looked, she thought, like an ancient armored creature dredged up from the deepest ocean.
She flipped the access panel open and prodded at likely-looking nubs until the fish jerked in her hands and thrashed its new tail.
She hadn't heard her mother come in. The tall woman smiled down at her. "Looks good," she said. "Come on. Let's go down to the beach."
Her father was waiting for them on the porch. Kay held the fish aloft. "Look!"
"Did you make that?" He said. Kay nodded. Her father said, "Cool," like he always did, but he smiled as he said it and looked her in the eye. He fussed over the fish as they walked, asking her how she'd made the ring that held its new tail and how she'd picked that shape over any other.
The sun hung just below the horizon, and the tide was out. The landscape looked wrong. Kay saw why right away, and stopped. Her parents took one more step before they noticed.
The behemoth, the old starship, was gone. Beyond the twisted remains of its fence, the shelf of black runway that stuck out over the water had crumbled away. The storm had taken the derelict on its final voyage into the dark. Across the waves, boundless and empty, no sign remained that this place had once been humanity's first and last stepping-stone to the stars.
Her father said, "Oh," and took his wife's hand. They stopped walking to gape at the empty horizon. Kay slipped around them, the fish wriggling impatiently under her arm. She walked down to the sea and waded out until she was knee-deep, then lowered the fish into the water.
Its eggshell fins spread out, steadying it. Its tail thrashed uselessly, making no progress.
"What're you doing, kiddo?"
"My fish won't swim," Kay said. Her father splashed into the ocean next to her.
"Won't swim, huh?" he repeated. "Won't swim. Have you... why don't you try push-starting it? Like this," He pulled his hand through the water. Then, quietly as though he were alone, he said, "My father taught me how to push-start a fish, back when I was a kid... younger than you... and we used to go fishing."
Kay pushed the fish through the water, harder and harder, until a vibration ran down its back and shook it out of her hand. The fish surged forward, aluminum tail slicing through the waves. Its scales shone as it vanished back into the sea.
Her father leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "Good job, kiddo," he said. "I wonder what you'll catch next time?"
Kay shook her head. "Can't fish," she said, and pointed to where the starship had been.
"Can't fish? Oh. Oh, your old fishing hole." He frowned, and then turned to shout back up the beach. "Sweetie?"
Kay's mother looked up from the piece of scrap that she and a few latecomers were excavating from the sand. "What?"
"Do you think you could make me a boat?" Her mother cocked her head to one side. "A boat? I don't know... yeah. Probably. I'll give it a try, once I'm done with the house. Why do you need a boat?"
Smiling, Kay's father put an arm around her strong shoulders, and if he flinched, she didn't feel it.
* * *
Snapshots
Kristine Kathryn Rusch | 4408 words
"Let the people see. Open [the coffin] up. Let the people see what happened to my boy."
—Mamie R. Bradley, mother of Emmett Till, quoted in "Mother Receives The Body of Her Slain Son," The Atlanta Daily World, September 7, 1955
Snapshot: 1955
The church was hot. Last of summer in Chicago. Cleavon didn't hold his mama's hand. At ten, he was too big to cling, but he sure wanted to. He ain't never seen so many people all in one place, and they was cryin and moanin and carryin on, even though the preacher ain't started yet.
Mama didn't want him sayin "ain't," but he could think it, at least today.
Mama was draggin him here, not Papa, not his older brother Roy. Roy was the same age as Emmett Till. They'd been friends, and Papa said it just be cruel to make him go, but Mama said she would anyways.
Roy ain't been home since. He probably wouldn't come back till the funeral was over.
Cleavon never knowed anybody who'd been on the news, and Emmett'd been on the news for days now. And in the Chicago Defender, too. Papa kept staring at the headlines, but the only one Cleavon kept looking at was "Mother Waits In Van for Her 'Bo." Ain't no one outside of the South Side knowed that Emmett wasn't Emmett to the folks what knowed him. Emmett was Bobo, and he hated it.
Cleavon didn't talk to him much, couldn't call him a friend. He was too big a kid for that—nearly grow'd—which was why, Mama said, them Southern white boys thought he was whistling at that stupid white woman. The idea of it all made Cleavon shiver whenever he seen white folk, and there was a lotta white folks near Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ today. They was all reporters, Mama said, and ain't none of them gonna beat up little black boys.
"Not with all these people watching," Mama said.
Cleavon wanted to correct Mama. Emmett wasn't beat up. The papers said he was pistol-whipped, then shot in the head. Cleavon had a whipping before, more than one, with his Papa's belt, but never at the hands of white boys. Whippings didn't scare him so much as guns. It was hard to run away from guns.
He'd said that to Papa, and Papa'd given him a sad look. You ain't never had a true whip ping, son, Papa'd said, and I hope you never get one.
It was after Cleavon said that Papa stopped arguing with Mama. Papa said it'd be good for the boys to know what them whiteys was capable of. 'Cept Roy was too scared to look.
Cleavon come'd here in his best Sunday clothes, the collar of his starched shirt too tight on his neck, and stood in line near to an hour now, right beside Mama, so they could pay their respects to Emmett. That's what Mama said to the pastor, but that's not what she said to Cleavon. To Cleavon, she said he was gonna see something he wouldn't never forget.
They finally made it past the pews up front, and Cleavon could see the open coffin a few yards ahead. Grown-ups looked in, then covered their mouths or looked away. Next to it all, Emmett's mama sat on the steps, tears on her cheeks, men Cleavon didn't know hol
ding her shoulders like they was holding her up.
Last night, Mama said to Papa after she thought Cleavon was asleep that she didn't know if she could live without her boys, and he said, You go on, Janet. You just go on.
So Cleavon was watching Emmett's mama, not the casket, as he come up. Papa told him 'fore they left, he said, What you're gonna see, son, it's not pretty. But it's the way life is. It's what death can be, if you're not careful.
Mama yelled then. She said there wasn't any proof that Emmett wasn't careful, that whiteys killed us anyway just for breathing funny, and especially down south. Papa said, Now Janet, bad things happen in Chicago too, and she stood taller like she did when she had a mad on, and she said, Not as many bad things, and Papa soft like he did when he didn't want no one to hear him, You're dreaming, honey. You're just dreaming.
Mama stopped in front of the coffin. She made a sound Cleavon ain't never heard before. She grabbed Cleavon's shoulders tight with her black gloved hands and said, "Never mind, Cleavon. You don't have to look. We've paid our respects," but now he was determined. She'd dragged him here, and he was gonna see what Emmett's mama wanted the whole world to see.
He yanked himself outta his mama's grasp and faced that coffin. Something was in there, dressed like him. Black suit, white shirt. But he didn't recognize the rest of it. It had a chin and sorta mouth and some black hair what might've been Emmett's. But there weren't no eyes at all, and the skin was peeled back in places. Plus there was holes in his head.
Cleavon stared at them holes. Gunshot holes.
"Come on, Cleavon," Mama said, but he wouldn't move.
That was someone he knowed. That was someone he talked to. That was someone he liked.
"Holy Gods, Bobo," he said real soft, like his Papa done just that afternoon. "This ain't right. This ain't right at all."
"There are more senseless, irrational killings," First Deputy Police Superintendent Michael Spiotto told the Tribune for [a 1975] series [on Chicago's high murder rate]. "There are more cases of murder for which we can't determine any motive."
—Stephan Benzkofer, "1974 was a deadly year in Chicago," Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2012
Snapshot: 1974
The traffic light turned red half a block ahead. Cleavon Branigan's shoulders tensed. Kids—reedy, thin, maybe ten-twelve years younger than him—ran into alleys, away from the glass-strewn sidewalks. He was on a cross-street heading toward Sixty-fifth, and if he didn't stop, he'd probably get hit.
If he did, he wasn't sure what the hell would happen.
It was his own damn fault, really. He'd been the one to take this route home after shopping down on East Seventy-first. He wasn't sure why he'd left the Near West Side anyway. The idea of good fried chicken for lunch and a black birthday card for his roommate, not one of those Hallmark pieces-o-crap, had seemed like a good idea.
Not good enough to stop here, right in the middle of the gang wars.
He slowed, foot braced over the brake, hoping the light would change before he got there. He scanned, left, right, back again, but there was oncoming traffic. He swallowed hard, deciding he'd punch it after the last car left.
He eased to a rolling stop—a California stop, his roommate called it—and all hell broke loose. Gunshots ricocheting, exploding at impact, those kids shooting at each other, not caring about him.
He eased down in the seat, peering over the dash, and slammed his foot on the accelerator. Oncoming traffic could fucking avoid him.
Someone swerved, brakes squealed, and then he was through the intersection, still driving like a crazy man. He didn't stop until he was halfway up Martin Luther King Boulevard, almost out of the South Side, as far from the projects as he could safely get.
He pulled over into a vacant lot, his heart racing.
Then he saw the bullet holes in the side windows, rear window shattered, glass on the backseat. He hadn't heard that. He'd thought all the explosions were outside the car.
He started shaking.
Enough. That was enough.
He was done with this Godforsaken town.
He was done, and he was never coming back.
"I love Chicago because it made me who I am.... But it's the city I hate to love, and I won't go back—especially now that I'm raising a son. I don't want to lose him to the streets of Chicago."
—Tenisha Taylor Bell, CNN.com,
February 15, 2013
Snapshot: 1994
"You don't get a say, Dad." Lakisha Branigan grabbed her book bag, the beaded ends of her cornrows clicking as she moved. "What part of 'I got a scholarship' do you not understand?"
Her dad put his big hand against the big oak door, blocking her way out of the house. "The part that ends with 'to the University of Chicago,'" he snapped. "You're not going."
She flung the bag over her shoulder. He was getting in her way, getting in the way of her opportunities, opportunities he had said he wanted for her.
"Do you know how hard it is to get a full scholarship to the University of Chicago?" she asked.
"I'm proud of you, baby, I am," he said, moving in front of the door, nearly knocking over her mother's prize antique occasional table as he did. "But you haven't been to Chicago. I grew up there—"
"And left when gangs were shooting at you, I know," she said. She'd heard that story a million times. Her dad hadn't done anything, he hadn't gotten out of the car, he hadn't shot back, he just fled. Reggie, her boyfriend, said that made her dad a coward.
She didn't like the word, but the sentiment made her uncomfortable. It always nagged her that her dad ran away.
"It's not like that any more," she said. "The crime rate is going down. You want to see the statistics?"
"I want you to go somewhere else," he said. "Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere—"
"And my scholarship there is tuition only," she said. "Do you know how much that'll cost?"
"We'll get loans—"
"I'm not going in debt," she said. "University of Chicago or nothing."
That threat always worked. Except this time.
Her dad sighed and shook his head. "Then it's nothing," he said.
She stared at him, shocked. All her life, the lectures: education lifts you up; education is the only way our people can compete; education will make you equal when nothing else will.
"Baby," he said, "the school is on the South Side."
"No, it's not," she said. "It's in Hyde Park."
"Bullets don't acknowledge neighborhood boundaries," he said.
"And you're paranoid." She flounced away from him, threaded her way through the heavy living room furniture and hurried into the kitchen. She'd wasted fifteen minutes she didn't have fighting with her dad. She'd take his car, then, and drive herself to school.
She was an adult now, whether he liked it or not.
"Hadiya Pendleton, who performed at President Obama's inauguration with her high school's band and drill team Jan. 21, was shot in the back Tuesday afternoon as she and other King College Prep students took shelter from a driving rain under a canopy in Vivian Gordon Harsh Park on the city's South Side."
—Judy Keen,
"Chicago teen who performed at inauguration fatally shot," USA Today, January 31, 2013
Snapshot: 2013
Five black SUVs stopped in the alley beside Greater Harvest Baptist Church. Thin serious men in somber suits got out, cleared the snow away from the tires, nodded at other black-clad agents holding back the crowd. Not that anyone was cheering, like the last time Lakisha Branigan had seen the First Lady.
Only Michelle Obama hadn't been First Lady then. Just First-Lady-elect, if there was such a thing. That cool night under the klieg lights in Grant Park, the Obama family tiny on a tiny stage, a quarter of a mile from where Lakisha and her nine-year-old son Ty stood. She couldn't even get her father to visit that night, the night the first African-American got elected President of the United States.
An African-American from Chicago. So there, Daddy,
she'd said that night. And he'd said from his suburban Southern Illinois home, only three hours away, I don't want you near Grant Park, baby. And I don't want my grandson in downtown, ever. You hear me?
She'd heard. She never listened.
She helped Ty out of their own SUV. He was taller than she was now and had already outgrown the suit she'd bought him for the science fairs he specialized in. He'd been the only kid from his school to participate in the First Robotics Competition and he'd been busy with his team for weeks now.
Normally, he complained when Lakisha wanted him to do something extra. His time was short these days. But coming to Hadiya's funeral had been Ty's idea. He'd known her all his life.
One of the Secret Service agents bent over, picking something off the ground. His sports coat moved slightly to reveal his gun.
"No," Ty said, stopping beside the SUV's open door.
Lakisha almost slid on the ice. She was wearing the wrong shoes for standing in the cold. And nylons. Her legs were freezing.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I can't go in."
He looked at the weapon, then at the side doors. Someone had set up metal detectors. Security protocols, because the First Lady was here. Lakisha's stomach turned. Normally there weren't security protocols at this church—at any church.
"You go through that stuff every day at school," she said.
Ty held onto the open door like it was a shield. "I changed my mind."
"Why?" Lakisha asked.
"No reason." His voice shifted from its new tenor range to soprano. He didn't even blush. He usually blushed when his voice cracked.
He slipped back into the SUV, and started to pull the door closed. She caught it.
"What aren't you telling me?" she asked.
He threaded his fingers together. "Those men have guns."
Analog Science Fiction and Fact - March 2014 Page 12