Streets on Fire

by John Shannon

  Krasny was back, leaning over the wood railing, and Jack Liffey’s heart fell. “Come on up here, fellow. I like Chuck Berry, too. And Bill Alexander. You can really hear those country rhythms in him.”

  The bearded man gave Jack Liffey’s arm a powerful tug, and the dog crouched only a foot or two away as they made their way awkwardly onto the patio deck.

  “Aw, shit,” the one with the rifle said. This was the first good look Jack Liffey had had at him. Something seemed to be wrong with his eyes, and the baseball cap had a logo that said, DISREGARD PREVIOUS HAT. He was staring at his foot, which he lifted off something. “I skooshed a snail. What the ugh’s a snail doing up here?”

  “Looking to eat my mint, probably,” Krasny said.

  “This snail sucks,” the man complained morosely. He propped the rifle on the railing, sat on a plastic bucket chair, and began scraping his sole with a penknife. “Skooshies,” he said to himself and shuddered.

  “Have a beer.” Krasny shoved a beer bottle in Jack Liffey’s hand. He was tempted, because it wasn’t really the moment to explain how he wasn’t in a drinking phase of his life, but he set the bottle down on a glass table.

  “Not a good enough brand for you?”

  “I’m not drinking, thanks.”

  “Then sit. Bri, would you go make sure Kelly’s actually out of here?”

  The bearded man went into the house.

  “Hey there, Jack, what do you have when a hundred liberals are buried up to their neck in sand?”

  Jack Liffey said nothing.

  “Can’t guess? Okay: not enough sand.” He gave his approximation of a laugh, a kind of deliberate bray that did not seem to have much to do with humor.

  “You’re not very funny.”

  “Of course, I’m funny. I’m the funniest man in North America, if I say so. And I’m the guy who’s going to make it safe for white sissies like you to go on enjoying your life.”

  He wasn’t enjoying his life all that much as it was, Jack Liffey thought, but he wasn’t going to play straight man. Krasny eyed a chair and passed close to Jack Liffey, his huge presence pressing him back a few inches like the bow wave of a steamship; then he sat and became rooted. “Go on, sit.”

  Jack Liffey sat in another plastic chair.

  “So, maybe there was a time for cultures to mix and learn from one another, but it isn’t working any longer. All you got to do is look around. I tell you, Jack, you go down to some Korean minimart in the middle of Watts, with the glass security cage inside, and the insulting graffiti about gooks on the outside, and see if you can find out what these great Asian and African civilizations are learning from each other.”

  He had decided that arguing with them was a bad idea, but despite himself, he replied. “You’re talking about people living in poverty. I’ve seen people mix fine when they all had jobs.”

  “Lost your job, did you, to some smart gook?”

  Krasny was quick, Jack Liffey thought, and observant. Of course, what had really taken his job was the imperative to maximize profits, working itself out as merger mania and a runaway shop, all of which had been implemented by very white, very European men. But this time he managed to stay silent.

  Perry Krasny suddenly looked at Jack Liffey with an almost wistful stoicism. “All your life, the rim of real civilization has been patrolled by men like me with guns to keep out the barbarians. Cops and soldiers and warriors and ordinary security guards. First it was the Russians and Chinese and North Vietnamese and now its self-degraded thugs with colored skin. Let us not be hypocritical. My ring of defense makes possible your fine humanist fantasies of what the world is like. Men like me are your sacrifice to your self-image.”

  The one called Brian came back out the sliding glass door and closed it. There was no room to sit so he waited at parade rest. “She’s gone.”

  “Great. And what none of you liberal pantywaists ever manage to understand is that the dirty work of our people is nowhere near over. Any people that lets their country be wrecked deserves what they get. If you open your eyes and look around, you will see that I am the only thing standing between white people and the flood of filth. I may even lose this fight some day, and all the you-rang-ee-tangs and the Mexicans may end up totally overrunning this damn country, attended by all you liberal sissies. Who knows? Even if you can give me mathematical proof that the white race is going to lose, I am still going to do my best right now to prevent it.”

  “And you’re going to kill a whole lot of ordinary people like me along the way.” He eyed the one called Brian but could see no doubt in his eyes.

  Krasny grinned. “We got a saying, you know: Kill the body and the head dies.”

  *

  They had kicked the twin beds closer together so they could giggle and talk in the dark. It was still far too early to go to sleep. Now that they were blood sisters, Maeve had told Ornetta about her stepdad Bradley hitting her. The memory was starting to soften up and recede, along with her outrage, so she didn’t play it up very much.

  Ornetta went silent for a while and Maeve thought she might have fallen asleep. “Sis?”

  “Jus’ deep in my head.” There was another long pause, filled with some tension Maeve didn’t understand. “My momma was a princess in New York City,” she said finally, her voice happy, but something hollow echoing under the happiness sent Maeve rigid with attention.

  “We was staying in this big palace with lots of rooms and all these princes come to talk to Mama, like in the old days when the king daughter so beautiful. And they one prince is special for her, he protect Mama and live next door. He got big gold chains and laugh a lot. Mens bring him food in boxes and other mens stand around like old-time genies, they arms folded, to protect him.

  “I had my own room, too, and lots of dolls and things. But Mama got sick and I asked the magic to make her better but it wasn’t working so Grandpa Ban had to come get me. That’s where I got my magic bottle, gives me wishes. You wanna see?”

  She was clutching the neck of her cotton nightie, where she seemed to go so often when she needed reassurance.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ornetta wriggled right up to the gap and fished a necklace string into sight. Maeve didn’t think of herself as particularly wise in the ways of the world, but she did know a crack vial when she saw one.

  Maeve hopped quickly across the intervening space to dive under the thin quilt with Ornetta and hug her. “Oh, sweet little sister, I’ll never let anyone hurt you, I swear to God, I won’t.” And Maeve burst out crying.

  *

  While they conferred among themselves, he worked out that the bearded one was named Brian and the one with the cap was Doug, still worrying about the mess on his shoe, scraping at it from time to time. Krasny and the bearded one whispered together for a while longer, obviously trying to figure out what to do with their captive.

  Jack Liffey looked for ways of escape, but the dog squatted at his feet, glaring up attentively at his throat—a kind of sinister version of His Master’s Voice—and the rifle was well out of reach on the far side of Doug.

  “Listen to me,” Krasny said to his friends. “I am put on the earth to enjoy myself when I can and do my duty when I must. If I were perfect I’d be Jesus, not His poor servant. I am an extra force of nature, it is true, but my sweetest fruit is my gentle nature.” He threw his head back and gave out his approximation of a laugh and then abruptly turned serious. “We have the future of the whole Christian nation in our minds at every moment of our lives, and that justifies us in anything that we have done and feel we must do. You both know that.”

  “If you’re going to kill me anyway,” Jack Liffey said, “at least tell me what happened to Amilcar and Sherry.”

  They all eyed him as if he had just farted in church.

  “That’s none of your business,” Brian snapped, which told him about all he needed to know. Doug frowned and studied his shoe all the harder.

  “Ever stand up front in those old
subways in New York?” Krasny asked. He settled back into his creaking plastic chair. “The ones that let you see out to the tracks. You could watch the future rushing at you faster than you could do anything about it, the driver in the booth right next to you winking out of existence and coming back as you pass bare light bulbs on the tunnel wall, and leaving you wondering if he was in charge at all. That blackness just up ahead there—maybe there was nothing but a flat wall painted black waiting for you. It’s not a time you want to be smeared with snake oil. You want the truth when you’re looking down the big black subway tunnel. But do you really want the truth now, Jack Liffey?”

  He watched the man press his palms together in front of him like a Hindu mystic. Jack Liffey had to admit he found something energizing in the man’s utter confidence and all his off-center vitality, but it left a bad taste, as if a kind of promiscuous sense of charity had seduced him into complicity with evil.

  “Do you want the truth?”

  “I think the truth is a lot more complicated than any of us ever imagine,” Jack Liffey said, “and it’s a good idea to let it happen in its own way rather than trying to force it.” It was the best he could do.

  He was tempted to say something insulting before acting, but it would have been stupid to take even the slightest risk of alerting them. He jumped up out of the chair and kicked off the decking all in one motion, away from the dog, diving straight over the railing with a hideous plummeting-elevator drop in the pit of his stomach.

  “Chew, Rex! Chew!” he heard behind him. He fell a lot farther than he wanted and hit the dirt at an odd angle and slid for a bit, disoriented in the darkness, but he shoved himself off the slope again with both hands and by some miracle, windmilling in space, managed to right himself, hit the slope with one foot and get himself into a giant-step rhythm. He let one foot dig deep into the soft dirt as it came down, then kicked off to fall another thirty feet or so and land with the other.

  Chew, he thought with a chill. He might have guessed that one.

  FIFTEEN

  Rest in Peace

  Each long plunge sent his stomach up through his throat, left foot kicking off into the darkness, then ramming itself down into the silt; right foot hurled out in trust that the slope was still there as he giant-stepped into darkness. He prayed that nothing would catch at his ankle during the descent. His worrying Other insisted on picturing himself catching a foot and lurching forward into a swan dive into the abyss.

  Just after his dive, he’d heard the dog come after him with a thump and a scrabbling sound, presumably four legs working hard in the soft dirt. The sound seemed to be gaining fast.

  Ahead of him from about hundred yards below he could faintly see a line of dense brush, but there was almost no vegetation up on the slope where his feet dug in. The animal sound got ever closer behind him and a growl started up. He hoped the dog would have the decency to wait until he hit bottom to bite him. Chew!

  Jack Liffey wrenched off his jacket in mid stride. It had been a smallish shepherd, he thought, at least there was that. He wrapped the jacket hastily over his forearm. At what he judged was the last possible moment, he flung his arm around behind himself and went into a feet-first slide on his flank. The fiend was right there, bearing down. Jack Liffey’s padded forearm whipped into the dog’s jaws, and he grabbed for the dog collar with his other hand. He got his fingers around the leather and held the dog’s jaw hard against him as the two of them skidded crazily down the grade, locked in a death embrace.

  The dog worked its teeth against the padding, growling in a renewed frenzy as it discovered its entrapment, all four legs madly backpedaling against the slide. It was incredible how strong a small animal could be.

  “Lash!” he shouted, but it did no good.

  One of the fangs was coming through the matted cloth and it hurt like hell. Jack Liffey managed to wrench his body around and slam the dog over himself to the opposite side. The dog’s body hit heavily, the furious chewing only interrupted for an instant before the dog’s legs were digging for purchase again. Jack Liffey found that opposing those mad surges of dog energy was exhausting him.

  “I got a night scope, mister! Don’t hurt that dog!”

  “Call it off!” he shouted up the slope.

  “Not a chance.”

  His jacket was beginning to give up the fight and it wasn’t going to be long before his forearm was raw meat. Jack Liffey got flat onto his back in the slide, tensed and then dug his heels. The instant his heels caught, momentum took him upright, lifting him and the dog off the hillside. He felt his back straining under the weight of the animal. Rex must have weighed in at fifty pounds.

  Loco, forgive me, Jack Liffey thought.

  He transformed all that momentum into a body spin like an Olympic weight thrower and flung the dog straight out from the hill. There was a sharp pain as angular momentum ripped the dog’s jaw off his forearm. A plaintive howl rose into the night and then a gunshot sent him giant-stepping downward again into the darkness.

  “You bastard!”

  In a few seconds the howl broke off abruptly far down in the ravine and two more shots cracked. He thought he heard the sizzle of a round passing near his ear.

  The shots got him kicking off recklessly, and this time he stumbled and began to windmill again, which might have been what saved his life. He landed hard on his chest and slid another twenty feet, the air knocked completely out of him so his insides went solid and he could not breathe. He came to a stop and lay in agony for a long time with his nose in the dirt, fighting lungs that did not seem to work. The shooting had stopped, but lack of air was beginning to panic him.

  A breath trickled into him finally, then a shallow exhale, and he eked another small breath, as something inside began to loosen up. Maybe he was going to get to stick around for this life after all. Gradually he became aware of his surroundings: There were no voices calling after him anymore, no more gunshots. He guessed they were regrouping, sending a car down to wherever the ravine would empty him out. Little by little, he found he could expand his lungs. He hoped someone had called the police over the gunshots, but maybe they were a nightly occurrence out in this farthest rim of suburbia, all the would-be Daniel Boones potshotting coyotes and jackrabbits off their decks.

  He scrambled down the last few yards into cover in the bottom of the ravine, wedging in among the water willows, mule fat and yerba santa, where he settled to his knees and tried to get his bearings. He parted the leaves cautiously. Back up the hill he could see a spill of light from the deck, where one man was silhouetted against the sky like a tiny tin figure. The figure appeared to be scanning back and forth slowly with the rifle. He knew he had better stay well down in the brush, because his image would stand out like a giraffe at noon in that night scope. These days, you could buy the damn things from gun catalogues for a few hundred dollars.

  He brushed himself down and found that his thin shirt hadn’t been torn in the ragged descent, testament to the looseness of the silt on the hillside. Remarkably there was only a skin abrasion, where the dog’s fangs had been torn away, and one little puncture.

  There was a faint scent of damp off the ground, though in high summer it could only have come from lawn runoff. There would be no running streams up here. He felt with his hand and the sandy bottom of the ravine seemed dry enough.

  What would Daniel Boone do in this predicament? he wondered. Make his way back up the hillside, treading in his own moccasin tracks? Whistle up a faithful Indian companion? There were damn few real options. If he followed the canyon down, he figured he would run smack into one of the Gideon’s 300 sent to outflank him. And up was worse. The night was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t see how the vegetation thinned out progressively up the ravine until it gave up completely many yards below a drainage pipe at the high road. That was just about where he had parked, he thought, but if he tried to go that way he would be completely exposed for the most perilous part of the scramble. If he settle
d in for the night, they’d eventually send someone after him. And the longer he waited, the worse it would get.

  Down was easier, he thought, so down it was. He got up off his knees and started picking his way discreetly through the brush, trying not to sound like a moose beating the undergrowth. It wasn’t steep, but underfoot there were tippy flat rocks, matted vegetation and loose gravel, all invisible, so he planted each foot carefully before shifting his weight. Here and there, the land dropped away a foot or so in a little terrace and he clung to the branches of a brushy willow to lower himself.

  He checked the deck up the hill and the figure still on watch. There was a suggestion now from the man’s posture, a hand to the ear, a cock of the head, that he was consulting a cell phone tucked up to his ear. As Jack Liffey returned to his descent, the aroma of sage grew stronger on the warm air and he realized he could hear faint traffic sounds now, probably from the Simi Freeway far out in the valley. The Ronald Reagan Freeway. There was even, oddly, a smell of frying hamburger on the faint warm wind.

  What little light there was caught on a white plastic pipe emerging from the hill at chest level. It wasn’t much bigger than his forearm and it trickled water. He heard it as much as saw it. As he passed the outlet, he could tell that the matted organic matter underfoot was damp. He hoped nothing nasty was coming out of the pipe, just runoff from late night lawn watering. A bit of mud clung to his shoe and the going got squishy for a while, but it hardened up again quickly.

  About fifty yards ahead, the ravine fanned out wide and ended at a road embankment as if dammed there. A big culvert pipe passed under the road. Anyone up on the embankment would have been clearly outlined against the lights of the city far out in the valley, and there was no one. So far so good. If he could crawl through the culvert, he might just pass into some domain where there was more than one route downward.