Sacred City

by Theodore C. Van Alst

  Bam! He laughed and I took that shot I was talking about at the beginning.

  Like I said, I lunged at JD, took a swing, but the little weasel was too quick. I chased after him, getting ready to dig deep into my already expansive swear-word trough, the one recently enriched by a recent Cormac McCarthy read.

  That’s when I felt another shot, this one digging into my back.

  “Motherfucker!” I yelled, now loquacious in no ways, my trough icing over before my mind’s eye. Jimmy1 had waited at the top of the stairs until I went tear-assing after JD.

  I looked up through my watering eyes and saw that fucker JD, jogging backward, working the slide and getting ready to shoot me one more time and then run for good and then

  Jimmy3 cracked JD in the back of the head with the butt of the other Daisy pump rifle. Now that I think about it, he might’ve got that piece of shit cause he was black, just sayin’.

  Jimmy3 was about the only one from our set who wrote me when I was in the Navy. His letters were epic. They’d have clips about shootings and shit from our neighborhood and they’d be covered with bent-right-ear bunnies in top hats, 3-D crosses, and upside-down crowns galore. King Killer Queen Thriller VLK GLK UKK and six-points with cracked Vicky Lou stars below broken pyramids and horned hearts with pitchforks and dead klansmen abounding, and he’d ask me how I was doing Folks and tell me about all the stupid shit everyone was still doing. Glorious.

  JD crumpled like a wet paper towel, and I ran up and kicked him in the nuts. I spit in his face and was about to put a knee in his throat when Jimmy1 grabbed my left arm from behind and tried to spin me around. I broke free and grabbed the barrel of my rifle, which wasn’t shit for shooting anyway, and brought it down on the chain link fence that finished the line of the gangway out here near the alley. The stock snapped off and I held the barrel up under Jimmy1’s chin as I pushed him back out of my space. His hands went up in the air.

  “What’s the matter, fucker?” I hissed out from closed teeth.

  “Teddy, quit man,” he said. “Peace.”

  “No shit, peace,” I said. “There ain’t never gonna be peace, motherfucker.” Where did that come from? I thought.

  “Man, calm down. It’s me,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah. Cool. Peace.”

  What the fuck am I doing?

  These guys are my brothers, the only real family I got. Yeah, there’s dysfunction like in any family, but dysfunction here will get you killed. You can’t fuck around. We need each other. We’re a pretty small set up here, and there’s Kings on all sides. And now these Vice Lords. Plus I got PR Stones, Eagles, and Unknowns down where I live. Fuck. It happens this way, I think. Some of us have regular-way family, but they don’t know this shit, care even less. “Don’t get busted. I ain’t coming to get you.” “Don’t get caught, dumbass.” These are some of the loving instructions we get. So we have to raise ourselves, know and love each other, be there for everyone, no matter what. We police ourselves, feed ourselves, represent ourselves, and respect ourselves. It’s a lot, but we’re in charge, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Have I read Lord of the Flies? Yeah. Three or four times. I get it. I get that. But that’s a book. This shit right here is for real. And if you fuck it up, you’re gone. So there’s constant negotiations between respect, and rights and responsibilities, and love. That’s what it all boils down to. That warfare shit between sets? You’re a Crown, you’re a Hook, GD, Royal, whatever? Lots of times if you can talk, just talk, you can settle shit. Give respect, get respect. I got it worked out at school. Shit, it’s all Kings and Vice Lords, but you know, you gamble a little, talk some shit at the right time, and well, you can get yourself a pass, that’s all I’m saying. I go to school, do my shit, and we’re good. So yeah, for now, that’s the way it works.

  That’s why this Cowboys and Injuns shit is bogus. It was disrespectful and they knew it. Did it get a lil crazy? Well yeah. But this is

  Cowboys and Injuns.

  And

  that shit ain’t no joke.

  18.GOLD COIN

  Your own historians, true to their trust, have recorded the cruelty of their own race, that unborn millions might read it as a testimony against them. In the name of all that is sacred and dear to mankind, tell Pokagon, if you can, why less love, pity, or sympathy should be required of the civilized and enlightened people than of untutored savages.

  —SIMON POKAGON, “THE MASSACRE OF FORT DEARBORN AT CHICAGO: GATHERED FROM THE TRADITIONS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES ENGAGED IN THE MASSACRE, AND FROM THE PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS”

  Back in the day you could tell the people who never thought they’d live to see thirty.

  I mean why the fuck else would you tattoo your hands? Do you ever think about when you thought about living to see thirty? How far off that would be? How you might get hit by the proverbial bus, or by a five iron like the one Latin King that Frankie took out on Clark Street? Did the thought “at least I won’t have to live to thirty” maybe pass through that Playboy Bunny’s head as it caromed off the side of Belmont Towers by Lake Michigan on the way down to the sidewalk when she jumped from the roof after Hef and Co. fired her? How about, “Thirty? Shiiiit, I can’t believe I’m stuck at seventy” passing through the mind of that old lady by the John Hancock building a few winters ago right as an eight-by-twelve-foot sheet of ice that had silently peeled away from the eighty-third floor sliced her in half and left her Pomeranian wondering whether to shit or stay? Have you ever walked over a river on a bridge and thought about jumping, maybe Beelzebub or Astaroth whispering over your shoulder, or your own vertigoed brain daring your billowing soul? Will you now, the next time you cross one? Like the line that comes after “riding alone in the dark,” when Marty is singing about El Paso and you’re at the end of the bar with the old man, pretty drunk at sixteen, trying to keep up and thinking about heading out to see your boys before you puke; up in here, that’s the one that plays in your head more than it should some days. There’s just too many ways out there, too deep a rabbit hole to even risk spending more than a split second on it. I remember the first time I really listened to BOC’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and that shit made sense. It’s really a wonder that more folks don’t check out daily.

  But since you only get one grand exit from this plane, it should probably be a good one. Like for me, I want to live a life that when I pass from and through this world, I want to leave a hole, one that gets filled with love and other shit. Stuff like the smell of cookies baking in the oven at Jimmy’s house, and a fresh pack of ’ports, and Grandmaster Flash starting up at 140 decibels, and a hug and an ayyyyywhutsup from the whole fucking planet.

  Do you know, somehow, when it’s coming? Can you hone that sense, the way you can do with your intuition, the way you can get out of stuff if you just listen from your chest and somewhere in the center of your head? Or get into stuff, like when you can’t lose at Hi Lo, betting the pot on a 5–10 turn, taking side bets from the watchers, doubling your money, taking everyone’s loot? You don’t get a ton of those moments, so don’t waste them, but know when you’re getting them. Sometimes you can spend them on other people.

  I was sitting with JD in the Gold Coin Restaurant at Howard and Clark, picking at a tuna melt deluxe and a vanilla malt (best hangover cure ever), him at a coffee and cigarette, both of us telling lies. The Gold Coin was one of those diners in the city that appear about every eight blocks or so. Places like that all seemed decorated from the same 1950s scam plans foisted by guys named Chip and Mack on immigrant entrepreneurs and cooks who had saved up to buy out their white-flighted suburban owners. Brown wood-veneered booths with alarming orange vinyl padding, burnt-gold glass ashtrays, pudding-brown ceramic coffee cups, and an industrial shake mixer. A long, curved, sliver-specked Formica-topped counter lined with red pleather–covered stools leaking stuffing onto rarely swept floors. An obligatory cigarette machine by the front door and a bowl of stale buttermints on the counter. Andes and Ice Cube chocolate squares i
n foil for a nickel next to the cash register, the one with the heavy buttons and pop-up numbers that sits on top of a greasy-windowed display of kick-ass pies and cakes. Finally, the patrons provide a film of cigarette smoke that covers everyone and everything. At least the lights were incandescent. The whole place was staffed and patrolled and animated by waitresses in powder-pink uniforms with bleached white aprons, hennaed and blue-rinsed bouffants, and names like Flo, Jo, and Frannie. They chewed gum and smoked cigarettes while they worked. Virginia Slims and More menthols. Man, those Mores were terrible. But Tareytons were even worse, and those’re what the cooks smoked while they took care of the food orders.

  If you looked around before you went in, you could see how Clark St. turns into Chicago Ave. at the Evanston border, but the Northwestern train tracks and their attendant woods are running off to your left crossing both cities, and on their corner across the street over there is a big overgrown empty lot. It might as well have been a mountain pass to Transylvania or the last roll uphill before you dump into the ravine by Garryowen. It looked wild and wooly as fuck, a no-go no-man’s land. We rarely crossed the border except on the El to go to Chandler’s to try and steal stuff anyway, and we never crossed over at that corner on foot. I couldn’t tell you why, even to this day.

  I sat with my back against the wall, feet stuck out along the bench seat of the booth. Man, I needed some new shoes. These Chucks were ratty as fuck. Big toe coming through the top, the heel just hanging on, and the sides were starting to rip. I remembered JD and me were able to eat here because we just cracked some guy’s piggy bank after we quick in and outted his crib after we watched him head out, to the liquor store we guessed. He came out the back door pretty fast and down the stairs. After he turned up the alley we ran up to his apartment and, sure enough, he didn’t lock the door. We grabbed the ceramic pig (twelve dollars and thirty-nine cents in coins, two fives in paper), and I found a .25 under the couch cushions. I found a copy of Michener’s Tidewater on the kitchen table. I stood there thumbing through it while JD made a Braunschweiger sandwich.

  “Just don’t tell me you need to take a shit,” I said.

  “Well, I might have to use the bathroom—”

  “Oh no you don’t. Keep it in your pants. That guy—”

  “was drunk as shit, Teddy, c’mon, man.”

  “Yeah. But he didn’t lock the door. He’ll be right back. OP is only two blocks away.”

  “Fine. But I’m pouring a glass of milk,” JD said.

  “Alright. Wipe the mustard off your face and hurry up, jagoff.” I walked over to the guy’s TV and changed it from I Dream of Jeannie to some shit on PBS. Figured he didn’t need any false hope.

  “Fine.”

  JD finished that fat-ass sandwich in about twenty seconds.

  Time to go.

  “Alright. Let’s hit it,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, stuffing Stella d’Oros from the top of the fridge into his pocket.

  “Fuck,” I laughed at the grossness of those. “Don’t you have any food at your house.”

  “You know we don’t.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Alright, let’s go, motherfucker,” I said from the doorway, the Michener going in the side pocket of my powder-blue cargo baggies.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Alright then. Sko!”

  We hustled down the stairs then turned left toward the street, headed through the gangway. As we turned right onto Damen, I looked over my shoulder and saw our man wobbling in from the alley, already chugging at a brick of Richard’s. Shit, I thought. He won’t miss a thing ’til tomorrow. I smacked JD in the back of the head maybe a little too hard, smiled big at his wide, wide white-boy eyes. He just stared at me, mouth twitching and unsure of itself.

  We got to the head of the alley off the corner of Fargo and Damen and headed down toward Pottawattomie Park and its mess of open fields. I looked forward to getting there, needed some space. JD wasn’t talking. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the smack in the head, or the high off the score, or if the Braunschweiger wasn’t agreeing with him, but I appreciated the silence, the fall air. Midmorning Chicago in early October when everyone is at work and it’s just you and the birds who haven’t figured out it’s time to head south yet? That shit is magic.

  Once we hit the soccer/football fields, JD relaxed a little.

  “I fount these in the bathroom,” he said. He said “fount” like Frankie did. We got a weird mishmash of accents, truth.

  “What the fuck are those?” I asked.

  “10s.”

  “No shit. Valium. Dang,” I said. “Gimme a couple.”

  He shook out three or four from the amber plastic bottle.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You can keep the rest,” not feeling bad, but maybe a little generous. Besides, I don’t really like downers, I’m waaaay more of an upper guy, if you know what I mean. But I could sell these, no problem.

  “Thanks, Teddy,” he said.

  “Sure thing, Folks. No problem,” I said. “Let’s go eat something.”

  We headed across 3-D, the third baseball diamond. Hung a left behind the backstop and followed the fence line that marked off the tracks. Right before it gets to this person’s backyard, there’s a hole we widened and bent back in the metal chicken wire. We climbed through and headed up the side of the hill. We could’ve just walked another half block to the end of the dirt road and turned onto Birchwood, but the tracks are ours. We surveyed and walked it for that reason alone. This part of Chicago is weird. It’s Rogers Park, a place incorporated by the city back in the day, one defined by Indian trails like Ridge Boulevard and Rogers Avenue. It has some tiny rural sections too, like this one behind the park. For those reasons alone, I dig it.

  We walked the tracks for a bit, headed down the other side, and popped out behind the Clark station, next to Big Pit.

  “Where we going, Teddy?”

  “Gold Coin.”

  “You like that place, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, man. I like people waiting on me. And diners have everything on the menu. They’ll make you whatever you want. And if it’s owned by Greeks, they’ll make it any time of the day. They made me a gyro omelet there once, no problem. It’s pretty cool.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Let’s split up the money now, okay?” I said. “While we’re walking here.”

  “Sure,” JD said, pulling all the coins out, squatting down and dumping them on the ground. He handed me a five and a shit ton of change. I’m good with it. I never told him about the .25, so whatever he hands me besides the paper is gravy, in my eyes.

  He put the other five and the rest of the change in the right front pocket of his dark-blue baggies. It bounced around as he walked. Must’ve been a shitload of nickels and pennies. I laughed at this burgling penguin I’m walking around with.

  “What’s so funny?” he said.

  “Nothing, man. All good. Let’s go,” I said.

  We came out of the parking lot of Big Pit onto Clark Street. I saw Howard Street Bowl, its inscrutable windows probably hiding a bunch of Kings. We walked across the street from it until we got to Howard. Then we crossed over and headed into the Gold Coin.

  The smoke and the fryer smell hit me full in the face as we made the second door after the little lobby with its pay phone. JD checked the coin return. Nothing.

  “Two, sugar?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I replied.

  “Right over here,” she said. It’s JoJo. She was cool, handled the more difficult customers. Had a three-pointed cross tattooed on one hand and a butterfly on the other. She put down two menus and a fresh ashtray.

  “Coffees?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. “That’d be great.”

  “I’ll be right back. Do you know what you want?”

  “Tuna melt and a vanilla malt. How ’bout you, JD?”

  “Just coffee,” he said, hand on his stomach.

  “Alright then. I’ll just take t
hese menus now.”

  “Thanks, Jo,” I said, smiling over at JD.

  She winked and walked off, writing a ticket for us.

  “Them sandwiches finally caught up with you, huh?” I laughed.

  “Fuck you, man,” JD said.

  “It’s cool,” I said. “But I’m gonna eat.”

  “Yeah. Whatever,” JD said, lighting a smoke.

  Jo came back with the coffee pot, filled us up, frowned at JD and his cigarette, drifted away.

  I reached for the little silver creamer pot, JD grabbed the sugar shaker.

  I slow stirred with a spoon, set it down on the saucer, lit a smoke. No sugar for me. I only had coffee with cream and sugar in it one time. After my ma kicked me out and I ended up living with my dad, we had coffee that first morning.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I asked him.

  “Coffee,” the old man said.

  “Okay.” I poured myself some into an old chipped piece of shit American Indian fundraiser memento he probably traded some cigarettes for and then added milk and a couple teaspoons of sugar.

  “So you gonna drink it like a woman?” he said.

  What the fuck, man. I haven’t put sugar in my coffee since. It tastes just fine, but I still don’t take it that way.

  I glanced up at JD, dumping creamer in his coffee. He didn’t look quite right. Sometimes, JD would get these moments of profound sadness written on his face. I wondered about that, how maybe it was his ma being a Latin Queen, or his sister being one too, but that he didn’t know who his dad was, maybe that was it. All of us knew our dads, whether they had flown far or down the block to the bar. But not JD. It made his light a little dimmer sometimes, made him meaner, I think. I flicked my ashes on the floor under the table, too tired to reach over to the ashtray.

  “What’s up, Folks?” I asked.

  “Nothin’, Teddy.”

  “Alright. Be that way.”

  “What way?” he said, without looking at me.

  “That way. You know what I mean.”