Concrete Cowboy

by G. Neri

  But then he grins and says we passed!

  We about to all jump up and down, when he adds that we’ve won only half the battle. “There’s still the question of who has the rights to this land. We’ve taken a step in the right direction, and” — Harper looks at all of us proudly — “we’re not going to give up now. We’ll find a way to call this land our own. Even if we gotta buy it from the City to make it proper in everyone’s eyes.”

  “Where we gonna get that kinda cash?” asks Tex.

  Harp smiles and shrugs. “Haven’t you seen the price of real estate around here? They should give us a rock-bottom price just to shut us up!”

  Maybe. But still, it can’t be that cheap. I start thinking of things we can do to raise money. I seen how good he is with the kids in the neighborhood. Maybe the schools would pay him to get the kids working with horses. Maybe Tex could show off some of his rodeo skills. You never know. . . .

  One morning, I hear a bunch of noise downstairs and go down to find Harper taking Lightning out.

  “Where y’all going?” I ask.

  “Ol’ Lightning here is moving back to the stables now that they’re all fixed up. Besides, I’m tired of him making noise in the middle of the night.”

  I stare into his makeshift stall. “What you gonna do with that space?”

  “Thought I’d have you clean it out.”

  I make a face. “Had enough of that kind of work. I need to rest for a month just to recover.”

  He shakes his head. “I was thinking it could maybe be your room, after we fix it up some, of course.”

  I give him a look. “You want me to live in there?”

  He shrugs. “Hey, it was made for people first. Lightning was just a temporary renter, you know.” He pats Lightning, like he thinking of something to say. “But if you want to, you know, stay here for real . . . this could be your room.”

  The room is dark and dirty, but I seen what we just done with the stable, so I can imagine it all fixed up nice with my own bed and stuff. It might be cool to have my own room. Even back home, I had to sleep on the couch.

  “What happens if someone wants this place back?”

  He steps outside, looks at the row houses around his, half boarded up. “No one will want it back ’cept us,” he says sadly.

  Then he looks at me and smiles. “Think about it. It’d be nice to have someone here who could clean up after himself.”

  I nod and watch him and Lightning go.

  I wander into the kitchen to get some cereal, thinking about what my room could look like. I hear the door open and shut again, so I shout, “Don’t tell me you changed your mind?”

  “Yeah, Cole. I did.”

  I whip around and almost drop my bowl.

  Mama.

  We stand staring at each other for a long time. Half of me is real glad to see her. The other half still hates her for what she did. But there is still a part that knows I never woulda become a cowboy without her.

  “Does Harper know you here?” I ask.

  She shakes her head slowly.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  She struggles to say it. “I want you to come home, baby.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Just when I was thinking maybe I could stay here, she shows up again. Just when I thought I might be okay without her, she wants me back.

  I watch her as she stares at the broken wall, with Lightning’s stall inside. She sighs. “I can’t sleep at night. I don’t like thinking of you living like this.”

  I put my bowl down. “It’s okay. They taking care of me all right.”

  “They?” She looks surprised.

  “Harp and the guys at the stables. I been learning to ride and all. I helped them build the barn up and stuff.”

  She moves toward me. “I miss you, Cole.”

  I step back. I don’t feel like hugging her. She stops, searches for something to say. “I wasn’t trying to punish you, Cole.”

  I know that. I look at the rings under her eyes and I know that. But why can I forgive Harp and not her? “We doing okay,” I say, knowing the we gotta hurt.

  But she takes it, ’cause she knows she has to. “I’m getting help now.”

  That throws me. “Help?” I say. “Why you need help?”

  She looks at her shoes. “Because I’ve been feeling over the last few years like I’ve been disappearing, like I couldn’t handle anything or anyone. It was like things was getting too hard to handle.”

  “You mean me?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “You were just a part of it. As soon as I left you here, it kind of woke me up. I went and found someone who can help me, you know, cope better, and that’s why I’m here. ”

  That kinda surprises me. “You mean like a counselor or something?”

  She nods. I can’t picture her doing them sessions, but looking at Mama, she seem like she really trying and that she really do want me back. “Cole, I know you know what it feels like to be helpless, even if you don’t say it. That’s what I was feeling.”

  Helpless. I think of all the times I felt that way. Most of the time maybe. I thought I was the only one feeling like that. And there she was, feeling the same thing all along.

  Man.

  For most of my life, Mama was the only one who stood by me. The only one who raised me. The only one who tried. And what was I doin’? Skipping school and causing trouble and not pulling my own weight. I didn’t have her back or protect her from the bad that’s out there, ’cause I was just thinkin’ of myself the whole time.

  I wasn’t living the Cowboy Way.

  I feel my eyes get wet. Her eyes get all big like she’s reading my mind. Soon tears is coming down her face and I gotta do everything I can not to cry too.

  She takes a step closer to me and puts her hand softly on my arm. “Maybe we can be there for each other again,” she whispers. “Like in the old days, remember? You and me. Then we both won’t feel helpless no more.”

  I nod, feel my cheek is wet, and wipe it with my sleeve. Harp abandoned me, but he trying to do better. Now I see Mama trying too. “Mama.”

  I fall into her arms. She holds me tight. We stand that way for the longest time.

  After what seem like twenty minutes, she still silent like she don’t wanna ruin the moment. She wipes her tears and tries to smile. I try too.

  “You like it here, huh?” she asks.

  I nod. “I’m gettin’ used to it.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Well . . . maybe we could come to some kind of arrangement. . . .”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Like maybe you can live with me in the school year, then come back here next summer. Maybe having a break will help us both.”

  I look up at her, and I think about our place back home, the neighborhood I grew up in. I wonder if I’d fall back into my old ways or if the cowboy in me would keep me in line. I used to think there was no point in trying before, but now I can see things can change if you put your mind to it.

  “You think I can still get into summer school?”

  She takes my hand. “I already talked to your principal, and there’s a space for you. He knows we been dealing with some personal problems. He reminded me that we really have to commit to working on this together. That might mean you working with a tutor and checking in with a truancy officer. But if you finish summer school, then he’ll consider having you back without repeating. He’s willing to give you another chance.”

  Just thinking about all that work makes me tired. But then I think about this past week and how all that hard work turned into something good.

  She squeezes my hand. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, Cole. You have to put in the work and be part of the solution, not the problem.” She takes my hand. “I’m just saying we should try again. Don’t you think we deserve a second chance?”

  I nod. But just when I think this can’t get any weirder, Harper walks back in.

  He sees us standing th
ere, his eyes moving back and forth between us. He has this look on his face, relieved that she here and at the same time protective of me. It’s a weird feeling after feeling for so long that nobody wanted me. Now we all standing here, looking at each other, not sure what to do next.

  And I think, This is the first time my family been all together since I was born.

  It’s a year later, and me and Harp is staring each other down. Boo and Lightning doing the same thing, even trying to nip each other.

  “You’re not gonna hate me when I whup you, right?” Harp says.

  I give him a look. “Old man, you been retired from this racetrack for almost a year. You don’t think I can take you?”

  He laughs. “It is your first race. Even I lost my first race.”

  I grin. “Don’t you know you talking to a playa now?”

  He nods. “Just because you made it through the school year without repeating don’t mean you’re a player. Just means you listened to me and your mama and put in the work. That’s a start.”

  I nod toward Jamaica Bob. “Bob says I’m gonna give you a run for your money. We been practicing behind your back when you was at work.”

  “Yeah, I know. I also know Bob’s dreads been sucking out his brain cells.”

  Big Dee breaks in. “Are you girls gonna gab all day or honor the Speedway with your presence?” He standing there with a red bandana in his hand, ready to get things started.

  I shrug. “I just don’t want Harp to die from a heart attack when he see how fast Boo go now.”

  The guys all bust up, Bob and Tex bumping fists. Nobody’s laying bets on this, ’cept what you call a gentleman’s bet, which means no cash. But that don’t keep Tex from yelling, “I got my money on the boy!”

  Harper can’t believe it. “After all I done for him,” he says, laughing. “Looks like they glad to have you back for the summer, Train.”

  I look over at the guys who is cheering me on, chanting, “Bring on the Train!”

  Mama’s standing on the sidelines, looking worried. She got a smile on, but I know she thinks I’m gonna kill myself now that I’m startin’ to race. She didn’t want me racing, but that was part of the deal: summers with Harper, and that includes the Speedway. She wasn’t supposed to come back till August, but she’s already here a few weeks after she dropped me off, just to visit. Truth is, she misses me.

  I wave at her, then I hear it: “Mama’s boy!” Smush and Snapper crack up. I don’t mind. It’s just good to be back with Boo.

  “Ready?” shouts Dee.

  Ready as I’m gonna be.

  “Set?”

  Nothing’s set. Harp’s still fighting for the land with the City, trying to get them to sell. He slowly wearing them down and working double shifts exercising horses back at Philadelphia Park to save money for a down payment.

  “Go!”

  Boo takes a step, then I yell in his ear, “Boo!”

  He takes off, and I can barely hold on. The wind sails by me, making my eyes water. Boo’s running like he don’t have a care in the world, like this is what he was made for. But I hear hoofs coming up fast behind us.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen with me or Boo, but right now, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing away all my troubles. I look at the ground speeding by and think this is what it feels like to fly.

  The stables is still alive for now, and so am I.

  I’m barely holding on, but I’m holding on.

  I see the finish line ahead, and I’m moving toward it. And that’s all that matters.

  What a strange and wonderful journey it’s been.

  Back in 2008, I received an email from a friend with the subject header This will be your next book. I clicked on it and found myself looking at a scanned photo-essay from Life magazine. The first thing that caught my eye was a photo of a young black kid standing on the back of a horse in the middle of the inner city. The rest of the essay showed a series of images of black urban cowboys roaming the streets of Philadelphia like they were in some kind of modern-day western. My reaction was What’s going on here?

  What was going on was a very American story hidden from public view. For decades, the urban riders of Philly’s Strawberry Mansion district — an area of North Philly many considered to be the most dangerous place in the city — have been saving retired racehorses from going to the slaughterhouse by bringing them back to their neighborhood. More than that, they’ve been saving local kids from getting into trouble with gangs and drugs by giving them those rescued horses. Anyone who has ever owned a horse knows it’s a full-time job; if you have your own horse, you don’t have time for any nonsense. Kids would show up at the Fletcher Street stables before school, after school, and on weekends. It became their second home, and in some cases, their first. But instead of thanking the cowboys for helping the community, the city wanted to raze their stable to make room for new developments. It was like something out of the Old West, where land barons drove people off their property to expand their cattle-grazing territory. Only this was happening today.

  I knew immediately that I wanted to set a story in this world. Aside from that Life magazine photo-essay by Martha Camarillo, nobody had written about these cowboys. Even googling black urban cowboys Philadelphia produced zero results. I felt their story needed to be told, so I collected hundreds of stories from the community and it grew into this novel for young people. I gave my story the title Ghetto Cowboy after hearing some young riders refer to themselves that way, taking back the word cowboy (which some say started as a slave term) and also claiming the word ghetto as their own.

  As I traveled the country with Ghetto Cowboy, I learned that what I’d thought was unique to one neighborhood turned out to be happening all over the country. Black cowboys came out to see me in Brooklyn, Chicago, DC, Houston, St. Louis, Compton, Baltimore, Oakland, Tampa, Nashville, Tucson, and many other places. These cowboys and their young ’uns took the book to heart. “We’re the real ghetto cowboys,” they often said. I heard from many teachers and librarians that their young readers were saying, “This is my world. This is about me.” And when I met many of these readers in person, one question they always asked was “When is this gonna be a movie?”

  In December 2016, the book took its first steps toward becoming a movie when director Ricky Staub called me to option the story. I felt immediately that it was in good hands. Ricky runs a small indie film production company in North Philly, close to Strawberry Mansion, and they’d already produced two amazing commercials featuring folks from Fletcher Street. He also was involved in social justice causes, running a program to train formerly incarcerated people in film production skills. He told me that after he’d made his buzzworthy short film, The Cage, his former boss and Hollywood producer Sam Mercer said, “It’s time for you to make your first feature. What do you want to do?” Ricky showed him my novel and told him it said everything he wanted to say for his first movie.

  As excited as I was, I tried to keep my expectations in check. I have many writer friends whose books have disappeared into “development hell,” never to be seen again — after scripts were written and rewritten, options renewed and dropped, people attached then gone, and so on. But when Ricky called me in 2018 to tell me that Idris Elba had become involved with the project, suddenly things started to move.

  I knew the movie would be different from the book; they’re different mediums playing by different rules of storytelling. But I also knew that the novel was my version of the story and would never change. My hope was that the movie would drive more readers to the book. And I was eager to see the filmmakers’ version of the story!

  So I flew up to Philly in the summer of 2019 to watch the filming — an incredibly surreal experience. As I wrote the novel, it had played out as a movie in my head. Now the movie was playing out in front of me in real life. In fact, seeing these actors costumed-up momentarily baffled me. Instead of thinking, There goes Idris Elba!, my first reaction was Oh, that’s Harper!
Then I found myself standing with Idris (aka People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive), Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things, and Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man — and they were all playing characters from my imagination! I tried to wrap my brain around that, but I soon realized it didn’t matter how famous they were — they were all just good people lending their enormous talents to make this project happen because they believed in it. Wow.

  I wanted to be a fly on the wall and soak it in. It was all so meta — the novel was inspired by a real place, and here we were, shooting a movie in the actual locations with the real folks that inspired it all around, talking to their fictional counterparts! Ricky’s concern for the people in the neighborhood ran deep, and he wanted them to be intimately involved in the making of the movie. This was their story, after all.

  It felt good that I was no longer needed, that the neighborhood and the filmmakers were working together to make sure the story was real and felt right. Some of the local riders were actually in the film, and the community was all around us, because when we took over a block, people sat on their front porches to watch — sometimes just a few feet from the action. Some locals played extras, and some had jobs behind the camera. This was a neighborhood film, so it’s fitting that the film company is called Neighborhood Films.

  I couldn’t believe how complicated the whole project was and, given the film’s low budget and incredibly short schedule, how forgiving and patient everyone was in stepping up to the challenge. One moment in particular captured the spirit of the Cowboy Way that was going around: I saw someone in costume getting ready for the last shot of the day. I’d not met her before, but I recognized her as the actress playing Cole’s mother. Her name was Liz Priestley, and this was her first movie role. And her first scene happened to be opposite the stars, Idris and Caleb (neither of whom she’d met), playing her ex-husband and son. And she was about to jump up on a horse (she’s not a rider) and pretend the three of them were a real family — all without rehearsal, because the sun is about to set. Welcome to Hollywood. (She nailed it.)