Sacred City

by Theodore C. Van Alst

  But tonight is different. The air inside and out hums with something that smells unusual, that curls around my cortex as I stand in the bathroom stall and do bumps off the corner of a book of matches, oblivious to the stink of missed opportunity around the toilet, wondering if I should share with Vassily, who though fading at his stool out there is a world-class hoover with no sense of propriety when it comes to coke and takes the this-might-be-our-last-night-on-earth approach to doing drugs, or drinking, or fighting, or fucking.

  I walk out of the shitter and sure enough, I’m right. Two gangbangers with about thirty years between them are sticking the place up. They’re waving crappy little automatics around, yelling in Spanglish to the Korean daughter to hand over the dinero. Her English is limited to serving shots and beers and her Spanish might get her a burrito with no crema, but that’s about it. She’s not too sure if they’re joking or not, since they’re so young they look like they should be hawking that shitty school music band chocolate instead of robbing liquor stores. She’s ignoring them and no one else is really paying attention, Uncle Theo up on the little screen about to snake a sweet parking spot.

  “¿Qué paso wey?!” I stupidly shout from the bathroom door, and promptly take a bullet to the leg.

  “Mierda, mierda, mierda,” they apologize in tandem, now realizing they’re never going to make themselves understood unless they can find a gringo with a rudimentary understanding of Spanish to translate their larcenous plans.

  It’s gone through the meat on the side of my thigh. I reach back and realize it’s a through and through, so I say, “Chevere, chevere. Está bien. Estaré bien. Qué paso wey?”

  “¡Es un robo, pendejo!”

  “Yeah, I figured that. Okay. Just relax,” I say, holding up both hands, palms out. I look over at Vassily. He’s passed out, head down, elbows up on the bar. No help there.

  I tell the daughter very slowly, my hand held up with a trigger finger and cocked thumb, that these two are very bad guys, and they are robbing her family’s place of business, that she needs to give them all the money in the register or (pulls trigger finger, makes pow! Sound) they will shoot and kill us all. She just started high school in America, so she gets this one quick. She takes up the bills in a pile, sets them on the bar, and then upends the drawer and starts to pour the change onto the counter. The clanging in the silence is deafening. Vassily wakes up and

  out of nowhere pulls out this huge chrome revolver and starts blasting away.

  One of the ceiling fans pangs and crashes down on the bar.

  Kojak takes a shot to the lollipop, and the TV shatters dark and empty.

  One of the Coronas gets grazed in the shoulder, and as he heads to the floor, he pulls off a shot that nicks the brim of his buddy’s LA Kings hat and spins it off his head. Startled, his own .22 pops a cap into the open cooler, its only casualty the top of a St. Ides 40 ouncer that quietly leaks all over some Zimas in the bottom of the case. I grab the first kid’s piece while he bitches about his arm going numb and tell the other one to drop his gun. Vassily is kinda hyperventilating while the daughter is grabbing up the bills. I try to blow my hair back off my forehead but no use and end up curling a bunch back behind my ear with one hand while my other holds the automatic out in front of me. I keep it steady on the two Kings while I walk over to the bar and grab my smokes, shake one out and light it, then flick my new pistol toward the door. I take a drag and go with “Vamanos, muchachos.” They help each other out the door while the daughter yells about calling the police. I mumble something about “no harm no foul,” but she’s yelling and pointing at the ceiling fan. All the old folks go back to their drinks, and I jock the .32. Jesuscahrist. What a fuckin night. I talk the daughter into a complimentary twelve pack. I’m starving all of a sudden, but of course the Tombstone oven behind the bar is crapped out. Burritos it’ll have to be. I grab up my brown paper bag of ree-wards along with Vassily and we head out down to Ashland Avenue for some carne asada, but not from the gringo pile. No cilantro, por favor. I wonder if I have any Vicodin at home for this leg, or at least some Tylenol 3s.

  Twenty minutes later we’re heading up the stairwell to my crib and I hug him like my whole life has depended on it.

  I can hear him smile in the dark.

  13.GYROS AND GAYLORDS

  I don’t want to be murdered beside the garbage cans in some Chicago alley.

  —ADELARD CUNIN (BUGS MORAN)

  I got sent to Lane Tech Home of the Indians High School. At Addison and Western, it was, maybe still is, the second-largest high school in Chicago, right behind CVS. That’s Chicago Vocational School, not the viral cut-rate dope dealers with the eighty-eight-cent two liters of generic pop and the place to buy stale Whitman’s for all your last-minute Valentine’s / Anniversary / Mother’s Day shit. The other school close by was Gordon Tech. I think Styx played their prom once when they first started out. And that was a Catholic school, so it was full of them and the better-off kids from my grammar school. Whatever. This one time in the back of the bus I watched some of their seniors grab this Timmy kid, fresh off the boat from Ireland, turn him upside down, and tie his shoelaces together over the hand-holding bar up top. Every time the driver pulled into traffic or cut a sharp lane change, Timmy and his big red Irish head would swing into the empty seats, and he would go “Owowow, woe and begorrah” or some shit like that, sounding like the Lucky Charms guy, but the side of his face was getting more purple-blue-green by the mile. The bus driver finally stopped laughing and came back to cut him down with a pocketknife.

  Lane was on the edge of Gaylord territory, so there weren’t all that many of them, but there were enough. The nearest rival public high school was Schurz, and it was crawling with them, but it was a ways away. I still remember the day a bunch of Lane football players walked through the cafeteria with purple Schurz jackets they probably ganked off some hapless freshmen, each with the bright gold H and R cut out so the backs read “SCUZ” in big block letters, remembered it at the time at least a little better than I remembered the school was named for Carl C. Fuckin’ Schurz, the kraut piece of shit who was of course known for his civil-rights and reformer crapola, but forgotten for his reservation, relocation, and assimilation policies. So yeah. No one gives a shit about Indians, so fuck everybody all the way around, I guess.

  I was late to school one day. Well, late for detention. Before School Detention. Just cruel. Got off the Western Avenue bus to no one around. Shit. Class had already started. I lived all the way up near Howard and Damen and had to get to Addison on one Howard Street and two Western Ave buses. It’s a haul. Map it out some time. At 7:50 a.m. At thirteen years old. At a school I didn’t want to go to, one that exactly none of my friends were at. One that gave me detention on the second day for being late. I didn’t even know what that was, so I missed it, and got some more. That’s why I had to get here today on time. Fuck.

  I had already missed zero period, so I lit a smoke and walked around for a while. Periods were fifty minutes, so I had some time to kill. I sat on the sidewalk by the sub shop, which still wasn’t open. I looked at my history book, but I had already read it when I was in fifth grade. I had like forty pages left in The Silmarillion, so I finished that. I grabbed my books, stood up, and lit another smoke. Flicked the match in front of me looking west on Addison and as it came down my eyes rack focused on a scrawny white boy wearing light-blue baggies and a white dago tee. Construction boots, dirty-ass hair, zits, and the eight-haired hint of a mustache that will never look quite right, no matter how long he grows it, that definitely will never be groomed. I could see the outline of a pack of smokes over his chest, straining against his shirt. It was about sixty-two degrees and cloudy.

  A Gaylord.

  Son of a bitch. Well alright, I thought. This’ll kill a little time. I’m not gonna be hearing the bell for a few minutes.

  But he will.

  He sees me. Dark, dark hair, down past my shoulders. Giant glasses. Same blue baggies bu
t with black hi-top all-stars crossed up with blue laces. Black Bad Company shirt, the one with the glitter reefer leaf. Dark blue bomber. Yup. He knows.

  “Royal Killer!” he yells.

  I laugh, look for a place to stash my books. The Greek in the sandwich place is putting the key in the door, getting ready for the good kids and the neighborhood old men to head over for coffee and baklava.

  “Hey, George,” I say. “Can I set my books in here for a second? I’ll just stack ’em up on that phone book pile.”

  “Sure, sure, Theo,” he says. “No problem.” All the Greek people I know like to call me Theo instead of Teddy or Midget or whatever.

  I step just inside the entryway and set my books down on top of his Yellow Pages archives, lean right back out onto the sidewalk.

  Jethro, or whatever the hell this clown’s name is, is about thirty yards off. I don’t want to fuck up Georgie’s place so I yell, “C’mon punk ass! Let’s take it to the grass! GLK!” and start walking across Addison to the giant lawn in front of this school that’s a square city block.

  He closes the gap quick, so now I’m jogging backward talking shit.

  “Ima beat your ass, punk!” I let him know, trying to be thoughtful.

  “Fuck you Injun! Royal Killer!” his vocabulary kinda lacking.

  “Let’s do it, motherfucker!” I say, encouragingly.

  “RK all day!” he yells.

  Jeezus this is weak, I think.

  “Alright ya hillbilly cousin fucker!” I say. “Come get some!”

  Probably shouldn’ta said that, I think, since my great-great-grandparents from Tennessee were first cousins. Shit. Anyway,

  “Let’s humbug!”

  He comes at me having seen too many Bruce Li movies and not enough Bruce Lee ones. He’s got his hands moving in front of him, but they’re just for show, not doing anything. I have to decide do I want to punch through that shit, or am I going to try and aikido this asshole.

  As I punch this Gaylord in the face, I think,

  Out in the field, all these whites.

  He closes on me then. Grabs me under the armpits, trying to throw me to the ground. Hmmm.

  Muskrat didn’t understand the horde of white people out in what used to be a swamp, somewhere between Algonquin and Ottawa. Illinois this way was flat, and white, and windy, mostly. He watched a man in a hat, could smell his sweat meeting polyester, the man-made fibers releasing noxious gases and a particular heat signature that were all unsettling. Muskrat was full, had eaten a bunch of dropped potato salad that was giving him indigestion, and so he decided to observe these humans. He saw quite a bit, witnessing what he supposed were their courtship rituals, and speculated they might be in big trouble.

  I knee him in the balls. He screams, but not too loud. I look at him lying on the ground and

  He also decided that he understood even less why they were lighting floating lanterns and sending them across this dried-out field, but there they were. These humans. Just. Not. Smart.

  I grab up a handful of his dirty blonde hair (the grease, jeezus) and yank him around

  Jenny wasn’t sure who this guy was, or why she kept listening to his drivel, other than she thought it might be good to get laid at her sister’s wedding. It was warm, she was drunk, and it really was a beautiful evening. She didn’t care that his favorite band was Rush, but that should’ve told her some things. She liked R.E.O. Speedwagon, figured both bands started with “R,” so good enough. They drank some more, managed to keep from throwing up (both complained about the potato salad and had that to keep coming back to when the conversation thinned), and generally thought sex with each other wouldn’t be horrible. She was on the pill, and he was fixed; there was that.

  So his face is looking at mine upside down. I pick up my foot and, royal-blue laces flashing,

  As he rooted around on top of her, barely keeping it up, but yeah okay, that’s pretty good right there, she thought, the lanterns started to come down. White blips and lights turned to fire on the extinct arid prairie and raced her way. She turned her face from the heat and thought, hurry up already.

  I stomp on the crest of his nose, the bridge and the left orbital making that one sound and

  Muskrat just stared back.

  14.FOREVER YOUNG

  But so far as the portage at Chicago was concerned this change of sovereignty made little difference. What with the constant strife among the savage tribes whose normal condition was that of warfare, and the dangers to the whites caused by the neglect of military protection, the region was left a solitude; and the few references to its existence during a hundred years indicate confused relations between the tribes and the few whites who ventured to visit the region.

  —J. SEYMOUR CURREY, THE STORY OF OLD FORT DEARBORN, 1912

  This gangbanger thing never leaves you, never goes away.

  Even if you want it to.

  Much later in life, I’ll find myself at an academic conference, this one in Minneapolis of all places. I’ve never been here before, but it’s a pretty big city, makes me comfortable.

  I’m alone, the way I usually like it. I need to eat something, and after being on the unfriendly and miserly East Coast for ten years or so, I’m excited to be back in the Midwest where people say hi back and serve you normal portions of food. I know my team is in town so the game will be on and I’m looking forward to watching it, a luxury never provided out East, unless we make the playoffs or play the jesuswhofuckingcaresalreadyBostonRedSox. I find a bar near the dorms where I’m staying.

  I tell the bartender I’m here to watch this White Sox game, currently in progress.

  And I say,

  “Don’t get mad at me, but we are going to beat your ass.”

  He wipes out a glass with a bar towel, considers me and my statement, laughs.

  “We’ll see,” he says.

  Jermaine Dye hits a grand slam about five minutes later. I can even tell you the date and the inning—May 21, 2009, in the fourth—because all I have to do is Google “Jermaine Dye’s grand slam beats Minnesota’s ass.”

  I order up some wings (a shit ton in a small order) and some potato skins (even more).

  I have a pop with my food because I never have understood the food and liquor thing. I just don’t get it. Beer and pizza. Margaritas and nachos. These should be mutually exclusive things.

  After I eat, I start drinking. Like the business it is.

  I look over from the TV to the mirror behind the bar as people walk in and out. Old habits die hard.

  A buddy-to-be of mine shows up. He’s at least one of my tribes—nerd. Even has glasses and fucked-up teeth, just like me. We’ve never met before, but we recognize each other right away. Turns out he’s a mixed-blood Crow. I’m an iyeska Lakota/Anishinaabe/Mohawk who is obviously here for the conference, this being a weird sports bar near the hotel for our meeting. I, covered in tattoos, having hair to my ass and a Black Panther–style leather jacket hanging on the back of my stool with books stuffed in the pockets, am not the typical clientele. We ain’t cousins, but we’re cousins.

  About four or five beers in, the White Sox with a comfortable lead on their way to the win I promised the bartender, these two guys walk in. One is about my age, the other one is older, like an uncle. They’re Native, too. The guy my age is wearing a red hoodie. Looks just like my old bro GoofGoof, a fellow Simon City Royal and a Choctaw with a fucked-up Indian nose and ill-repaired harelip, but he seems familiar from somewhere else, besides. My brain whirls through its Rolodex. I don’t know too many folks in academia yet, and besides, these cats dress like me, not like these professor-type nerds. I needa talk to this guy.

  Easy enough, he walks right up to me, uncle in tow.

  “What’s up, Peoples,” he says, eyeing the big-ass bent right-eared Playboy bunny tattoo with a blue diamond eye and a gold tooth tattooed on my arm.

  “You see it, Folks,” I give back.

  “Hunh,” he says.

  “Hunh,”
I say. “Have a seat, bruh,” I continue.

  Him and the uncle pull up a couple of stools into the aisle and sit down across from me and the Crow.

  “Where you from?” I ask. This right here is how folks introduce themselves to each other: tell your tribe, your family, your relations. But he knows this ain’t what I wanna know. He eyes me up and down, that same glimmer of rec I’m feeling too flickers in his eyes.

  “Kilbourn Park,” he says. “How ’bout you?”

  “Touhy and Ridge. Farwell and Clark,” I say.

  It’s on now.

  “Yeah. I thought you looked . . . familiar,” he says. “You’re a Royal, hunh?”

  “Yeah, Folks,” I say. “You’re a Gaylord, hunh?” I say, Kilbourn Park being a main branch of that set. “And ’shnaab?” I say.

  “Yup. What are you? A Sioux or something?”

  “Yup. Alright, den,” I say.

  And we look at each other for a while. A good long while.

  His uncle picks up the vibe. “What are you two doing?” the uncle says.

  “Nothing,” we both reply.

  The Crow sips his beer, eyes ping-ponging back and forth on us.

  Me and this Ojibway GL watch each other, meaning we watch each other’s eyes. That’s where violence happens, hints at its own oncoming escalation and arrival. It’s in the lids, the subtle raisings, widenings. As you talk, talk shit, maybe even talk through things, you watch the eyes—it’s where acceptance, rejection, calculation all happen. You can watch the consideration of the moves they want to make and then see them coming if they’re on the way.

  Quiet edges of light crawl over and into the folds on his oversized sweatshirt with its hood bunched up across his shoulders. The soft rays come in different colors from the TV and the neon beer signs, but they’re mostly pale blue. They make me think of spirits, and that starts to fill the space between us. Back in Chicago we’re deadly opposition, but here in Minnesota, both of us with Anishinaabe ancestors, well, yeah. I want to think about what’s happening here. The Crow senses it, raises an eyebrow above his crooked glasses.