Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  Finally the almost empty bus lumbered and hissed to the stop. Riding the bus almost always made him think of his mother and sometimes Mary—remembering the safe closeness when his mother would pull him against her on the seat, sometimes Mary on her other side.

  • • •

  Cold night was fast overtaking the gray afternoon. The crowd was swelling. Groups of students, unsmiling, grim, solemn, packed the streets, forced to walk close to the cops who lined the sidewalks toward Woodruff Park, where the young women had been shot. “Don’t cops have more important things to do, like catching the white men who gunned down our sisters?” The squad stood respectfully silent, absorbing the angry looks of the protesters.

  Then it seemed school had let out; the marchers were joined by younger teens, certainly some from school, others, young gang members who’d likely rolled out of bed on the lookout for the day’s opportunities; many of the youths wore looks of disaffection, discontent, or unfocused anger. Some disembarked from city buses, others rose from the lower level of the Five Points transit station. Some came, four and five deep, in battered or pimped-out ghetto cars, vibrating bass drowning out the amplified voices of the protest organizers.

  “Lord. Lord. Lord,” Pepper said, standing at parade rest beside Salt. They were on Peachtree Street across from the southern end of the park. A beer can, heavy and slinging foam, flew past the rookie’s unhelmeted, ducking head, splashing beer on his shoulders and the officers near him.

  The sun had not so much set as it was blotted out by dark night clouds. Rush hour became a gridlocked nightmare, snarled to honking cacophony; all of them, students, cops, dope boys in lowriders, trapped alongside suburban commuters as night fell.

  • • •

  The green, hard plastic chair in the lab’s waiting area reminded Lil D of school. He shifted against the uncomfortable seat. Jacket unzipped in the warm room, he inhaled that Homes smell again—his first memory of his grandmother’s, his father’s mother’s, apartment in The Homes, where she’d sold shots of liquor and single cigarettes and kept a card game going. When he’d make a little money slinging dope, she’d make him give it to her. He didn’t want to, but he remembered that was the first time he came to know Officer Salt, when he’d fought his grandmother and somebody called 911. Salt had said she could get him away from his grandmother’s apartment if he wanted. But she didn’t, or couldn’t. He didn’t know which. He winced, clicked his cheek, and tried to rein in his wishing for, for what? And Mary, stuck with their mom’s mom, as bad as Granny M in the other way; wouldn’t let Mary hardly breathe she was so hard on her. He didn’t know who to blame for any of it. Now he was here, the last of his family, here to give his DNA for Mary.

  The man behind the window called out another number. He looked at the ticket in his hand and stood.

  • • •

  When Lil D came out of the lab building, the sidewalks were packed and overflowing. He’d heard about the white boys being flexed in Man and Johnny C’s trap. He’d heard about and seen on TV those college girls being shot. But his whole life, it seemed, he spent worrying more about what was fucked up in his and Latonya’s life and how he and Man were trying to make it. Now as he shouldered his way, crossways, through the crowds, unable to see much since he was short, it just felt like this was part of that. How would he hook up with Man in all this? he thought. Finally he backed against a wall and punched Man’s number on his phone.

  Stone answered. “We trapped.”

  “Gimme that,” Man said in the background. “Yeah, this traffic ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said.

  “Where you at?” Lil D asked.

  “Whoa!” Man said, his voice rising. “This some serious shit. Dude just took a bat and smashed the blues on a police car. Man!”

  Then it sounded to Lil D like Man had dropped the phone. His voice came at a distance from the mic. “Take it easy,” he said. Then he was back on. “I didn’t know all this shit goin’ on. I would tole you take MARTA. And Stone be needin’ somethin’. His medicine ain’t workin’ right. He . . .”

  “Man?”

  “Hole on. Got damn! Stone done got out. He can’t take no crowds and carryin’ on.” Man’s voice had lost its cool.

  • • •

  Across the street at the south end of the park streetlights shone through the bare limbs of the trees. To their right, in the triangle of the intersection, was an abstract steel sculpture rising thirty feet, reminiscent of rail tracks, trusses for water towers, girders, and ladders.

  “Some of them seem so angry,” Salt said as another group passed, yelling, “Cops don’t care. Cops don’t care.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other in order to lessen the ache from the hard sidewalk and the cold.

  “They want us to solve the sisters’ murders, but instead we’re representing here.” Pepper was tired, too. He’d told her his boys were acting up with him being gone long hours. They needed his energy. They needed him to bring them to the aikido lessons at Salt’s.

  “You ever think we’re on the wrong side sometimes?” Salt said. “I agree with them—we should be out there finding who shot those girls. We should be working to solve Mary Marie’s murder. You could be closing the dope trap where those Confederate-flag-flying boys got flexed.”

  Sodium-vapor streetlights spotted the streets in burnt-yellow auroras that in the cold night seemed to offer false warmth. Exhaust from thousands of vehicles and the noise of horns polluted the air and set nerves on edge. And the cold continued to seep from the sidewalk concrete through Salt’s boots and wool socks.

  “We don’t get to pick and choose,” one of the other guys said, having listened in on part of their back and forth.

  “What about all the times cops were on the wrong side? Civil rights marches, freedom riders, Vietnam?” Salt said.

  “Cops weren’t the problem then, either,” Pepper weighed in.

  “Some cops were. Some made reconciliation more difficult,” she said. “And now—Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner. Are you saying those incidents are all no-fault on the part of the police?”

  “Cops have become symbols of the problems,” Pepper argued. “Those incidents didn’t start when cops came in contact with those black men. The incidents had their roots in slavery, Jim Crow, and the legacies of poverty and systemic racism. If the outrage becomes only about police reform, then the system will not change, only the cops.”

  “Officer down! Officer down!” The radios on their shoulders burst in broken, garbled transmissions. They turned their backs to the street and leaned their ears close to the receivers on their shoulders, looking up at one another with pained and worried eyes, trying to sort out the radio traffic.

  “Hold your traffic. Radio, what units are transmitting the ‘officer down’?” the commander ordered.

  “Alpha units at Auburn and Courtland,” reported radio. “Ambulance and Fire Rescue are already at the scene.”

  Blood rushed from Salt’s head. Her mouth went dry. She pleaded with the universe for Wills’ safety, bargaining for it to be one of the others in Alpha squad. She looked at Pepper and he put his arm around her shoulder. “Sarge, can you get command channel?” he asked Fellows.

  They gathered close. All of them knew someone in Alpha. Fellows already had the radio in her hands twisting the channel knobs, ear pressed to the mic, hand held up for silence. “It’s Big Fuzzy,” she said, lifting her shoulder to press the radio receiver tighter against her ear. Most of them knew him. Salt and Pepper had worked alongside the big cop in their former assignments. “Head injury. Already at Grady ER,” Fellows relayed. “They’re not reporting his condition over the radio.” Media would be monitoring all the channels and the PD had learned the hard way not to give out officers’ conditions so that their next of kin didn’t hear it on TV or radio. So every family member of every cop began to suffer until they heard f
rom their loved one. “Homicide is at the scene.” Homicide would handle any serious assault on an officer, so it didn’t necessarily mean his injury was fatal. But they were reminded, and each of them brought out their phones to call home and let their families know they were okay. Salt tried to call Wills, but of course he wasn’t answering, probably because he was the “Homicide” working the scene in Alpha squad. She left a message.

  “Listen up,” Fellows said. “We’re still on post. We’ll do our jobs. Squad! On line!” she called them to attend their positions. Faces ashen and grim, they turned back to face the people.

  Salt’s phone vibrated. Startled, she answered without looking at the ID, thinking it was Wills.

  “This is Jim Britton.”

  “Mr. Britton. Sorry, I’m on a detail now. Can I call you back?”

  “Where?”

  “Downtown. I’m sorry—”

  “In that protest? I thought you were a detective? The news says the police department has lost control, that traffic is at a standstill, and that an officer has been injured.”

  Salt took a breath, then another, willing herself to be patient. “What’s up, Mr. Britton?”

  “I thought of something, about the quarry.”

  “You know that’s Detective Felton’s case?”

  “Yes, but you and I—we already talked. I told you about my family, my great-grandfather.”

  Salt kept quiet again, listening for what was behind Jim Britton’s words.

  “The mayor,” he said.

  “Your ancestor,” she prompted.

  “No, our current mayor. He came to the quarry one day with some people, that rap music guy, the one in the news. He’s from here. Jones?”

  “Flash Daddy?”

  “I think so. It’s not unusual for movie people; all sorts of entertainment people use the quarry for filming. But here’s what was off—Flash Daddy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He got there before the mayor and let himself and his assistant in. They already had the access code. Everybody before had to be admitted and accompanied by city employees.”

  A fraternity in purple hoodies with gold symbols shouted their Greek letters in unison. Fists raised, they stomped by, boots keeping time.

  “Hold on. I can’t hear,” she said.

  Heavy glass shattered on concrete somewhere nearby, around the corner or down the street. The crowd parted as a group of teens ran through, high-tops slapping the pavement.

  “Are you in danger?” were the last words she heard from Britton before the phone was knocked from her hand as the marchers mushroomed, pushing onto the sidewalk, jostling each other and pushing into the cops. Salt grabbed the phone off the ground before they began to move the line back.

  Pepper, Fellows, all of them wore faces lined with worry for Big Fuzzy, a big, simple, loving guy, always there for his friends. He and another friend came to the Homicide Unit last year to warn her about rumors of threats to her safety. He had a wife, son, and daughter and regularly came to work in uniforms and shoes that were worn. Salt squeezed her eyes and swiped her hand across her cheeks. Then she remembered the phone call and put the phone to her ear, but of course there was no connection. “Call ended” read the screen.

  • • •

  Lil D started walking toward where Man told him he was stuck in traffic two or three blocks south. He walked crosscurrent to the crowd that was headed toward the park nearby, in the other direction. Guys bigger than his thin frame bumped into him, going the other way. They all seemed in a hurry. In the street, traffic was stopped, going nowhere, so drivers blew their horns, faces red and white, and pounded their steering wheels. Young people sat on hoods, trunks, and the tops of some of the stopped cars, their bass beats booming. The smell of weed crisscrossed the air. The sound of glass breaking came from several directions.

  • • •

  “I don’t like it,” Sergeant Fellows said to Salt and Pepper, “but they need to get this traffic unblocked and want me to send two of our squad to one of the intersections, Decatur and Peachtree Center.” She nodded east. “Switch to channel four to coordinate with motors units.”

  Salt and Pepper shrugged at each other and took off toward their new assignment. Wind picked up between the buildings as they turned the corner. The red awning of the shoe store, famous for catering to professional athletes, was flapping and snapping. The crowd passing the store surged, billowing out while a smaller group pushed inward toward the sound of shattering glass. She and Pepper turned sideways to wedge their way through the packed people struggling to get away.

  “Can you see?” she asked Pepper, who was taller than most of the crowd.

  Craning his neck, raising himself on his toes to see over the heads of the people, Pepper said, “Can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing they’re looting Walter’s.” He held the mic on his shoulder. “Radio, suspected looting at Decatur and Peachtree Center,” he reported as they continued to shoulder forward. They emerged from the crowd, broken glass on the sidewalk crunching under their boots, and into a scrum of looters battering the already broken windows of the store. Ignoring the shards of glass that hung precariously at the top of one window, young males kicked their way through, jumping over displays and into the dark interior. Standing on the sidewalk right in front of the store, in the midst of the melee, was Stone, his red-brown round face and head like a troubled moon, wearing an expression of frozen glee as he watched the back-and-forth looters going through the missing plate-glass windows and through the broken glass door, tossing boxes and running away with armloads of shoes. Without clothing from his waist up, chest bare, he tightly held a six-inch shard of glass close to his heart.

  “Negative on a response to looting. Hold your position. Do not confront looters. Maintain traffic control,” said the voice of command from their radios.

  Adding to the already surreal scene, Lil D, in his orange jacket, appeared from around the far corner.

  Pepper drew his gun. “Drop it, Stone. Drop the glass now,” he shouted.

  Salt fought through the scattering crowd and running teens, circling, canister of pepper spray held close to her leg, low ready.

  • • •

  Lil D turned the corner and there was Stone in front of the shoe place, holding a big piece of glass close to his chest, naked from the waist up, rolling his crazy-ass eyes to the sky, blind-like, in the middle of people breaking out the store windows. People had broken the door and were jumping through it and the windows, glass flying and falling, and all the shoes. Shoes lying in broken glass on the sidewalk, shoes thrown by the people inside to outside. Shoes in boxes and out, all kinds and colors of the good shoes. Salt was there, too, coming ’round to Stone while Pepper held a gun on him, yelling for him to drop the glass. Lil D didn’t care ’bout Stone. He watched out for him; Man had some reason for keeping him around.

  He’d looked in the window of Walter’s lots of times. Now he looked down on the sidewalk at a pair of shoes the color he’d been thinking of for Latonya. He squatted to look at the shoes, like in some dream—he didn’t care what happened to Stone. And here was Salt. She’d told him to come downtown for the DNA for Mary, killed and left to rot. He wanted the shoes. He didn’t care about any of the rest.

  • • •

  Like he was hit by a plank, Stone fell from the blast of CS spray Salt aimed directly into his face. Flinging the glass shard from his hand, he grabbed at his eyes, screaming and writhing on the broken-glass-strewn sidewalk. While Pepper covered, Salt rolled Stone facedown to get him cuffed from behind. Pepper holstered and got on the radio to call for an ambulance for Stone while trying to block Salt and Stone from people jumping in and out of the store, throwing boxes and shoes. Right beside her Lil D bent down and picked up a shoe, a single green shoe. “You need to get out of here,” she told him while she struggled to get glass from under Stone, who
was screaming and squeezing his running eyes shut, then opening them wide, trying to clear the capsicum.

  “You tole me to come for the DNA.” Lil D looked over the scattered, broken-open boxes and reached for a box, like he was shopping for just the right shoe. “All these . . .” he said.

  Salt laid a hand on his as he picked up another box. Pepper was on the radio loudly clarifying their location for the ambulance. Lil D looked at the people coming and going. He looked at Salt, shook off her hand, went over and ducked under the door bar into the dark interior of the store, returning in half a minute with a box under one arm just as Salt stood, both of them jostled by another youth coming out right behind Lil D. The box fell from his hands. Salt bent down to lift Stone out of the glass, but picked up the box first and without thinking handed it up to Lil D. And he took it as if he were a person who’d paid and sprinted down the street through the gridlocked cars.

  DAWN

  Overcast, the sun didn’t appear on the horizon; Rather, the streets and buildings emerged from the gray dawn. Everywhere was litter and detritus from the conflagration of the night and early morning: partially burned wet paper, garbage, bottles and cans rolling toward gutters, soggy bits of food. Sergeant Fellows’ team—Salt, Pepper, and the rest—had been held over until the streets cleared of people. They stood by in Woodruff Park monitoring the barricades that blocked Peachtree Street. Pigeons flew at the last second from their pickings in front of the street sweepers as they whirred south from Auburn Avenue.

  Big Fuzzy was going to be all right. Part of his left ear was severed by the falling bullet; it missed his brain by a few millimeters and lodged in the upper part of his fortunately meaty back.

  Stench from the garbage trucks soaked the air. Salt had that staying-up-too-late stomach, sour and jittery from too much caffeine and junk food. Waiting for the van that would take them back to the academy, they stood around stomping their cold feet at the base of the phoenix rising statue, its female figure holding the bird’s legs as it took flight, symbolically pulling her from the ashes of Atlanta.