“Whoop his ass, ’Dre!” the fat girl squealed joyfully. The group cheered and swelled in around them. Their eyes lit like a frenzied mob. BB squeezed to the front. He squeaked and began to slap his hands on the car hood beside Angel’s head.
The wires looped around my throat and pulled tight. They’re jumpin’ in.
Fear does all kinds of things to people. A dark, cool wave swept through me. Quickly, I rushed up behind DeAndre close, as if I was going to whisper something in his ear. I bent down and gathered my leverage, then I swung up with all my might. My fist crashed into the side of his head near the ear. It felt like hitting a 16-inch softball off a tee. He halted and went limp. Then, he tipped over and flopped flat on the car’s hood beside Angel. There was an awestruck silence. Then, one of the girls screamed. Swiftly, I spun as a kid stepped up to my side. I stuck him straight in the teeth. He twisted away clutching his mouth. I heard a hard crack and spun back to see a kid fall at my feet holding the side of his head. Ryan heaved over him, glowering down. Ryan’s skin pulsed in a cloudy red.
This monster erupted inside me. “COME ON, NIGGERS! RUSH DIS CREW! RUSH DIS FUCKING CREW!!!”
BB sprung at me. I smirked, twisted, and popped him in the eye. He sprawled backward. Then, he looked pleadingly at everyone, in complete shock. They’d all frozen and just gawked at us. Thank god Tank isn’t here.
Angel slid off the car’s hood. He snagged DeAndre’s collar and pulled him to his feet. He reached down and pulled DeAndre’s shirt up over his back and head and entangled his arms. Angel began to whomp DeAndre mercilessly with his free fist. The punches were dug and driven in with the absolute worst intention. The sound was sickening, like heavy boot stomps in mud.
The mob of kids unraveled and spread. Their mouths hung open. They ewwe’d and flinched at each punch. All three girls sobbed. As I watched, something rattled up from my sternum and eased out in a vile snicker. Angel was the only thing that held DeAndre up. He repeatedly bent at the waist and ripped uppercuts into DeAndre’s head. DeAndre’s face dribbled blood all over the blacktop. Angel’s fist, shirt, and pants were smeared in the dark-red mess. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were poised in a focused trance.
A McDonald’s worker emerged at the entrance and yelled, “Get on outta here! We called the cops!”
Just then, a squad car with its strobes swirling but no siren swerved in off Clark. The whole group scattered like candy when a piñata bursts. Angel let go, and DeAndre flopped flat on the pavement. We ran toward Ashland when another silent squad car careened in our path, screeching to a halt. A cop with spiked hair sprang out of the passenger door with his gun drawn. He screamed ’Freeze’ so ferociously that all three of us stopped mid-step.
Next thing I know, I was belly down on the steaming pavement with cuffs crunched down on my wrists. Angel flopped down next to me. Then, above, I hear the cop shout, “You think you’re tough, you little Mick?” Ryan hit the deck on my other side. The cop loomed over him, then he clinked the cuffs down so hard Ryan screamed. The cop cracked Ryan’s head off the pavement. Then, he snatched him by his Guess shirt and yanked him so the fabric tore. Ryan’s chain broke and thumped on my shoulder. Angel, still un-cuffed, snatched it and dug it in his pocket.
“Fuck you, motherfucker!” Ryan screamed. He writhed, so the cop slammed him on the hood of the squad car.
Angel and I ended up in the back seat together. I leaned forward to keep the pressure off my manacled hands. Someone must have dropped a bunch of fries during the fight because a squad of pigeons were squabbling over them. Then, a small fleet of seagulls swooped in and angrily ran them off.
“Think he’s alright?” I asked as an ambulance rolled into the parking lot.
“No.”
“Come on, man. You think he’s going to the hospital?”
“Yeah. Fuck that motherfucker.”
“Fuck.” I let my head hang back into the cushion.
Ryan writhed in the squad car across the lot and tried to kick out the windows, screaming so loud we could hear him.
“Ryan’s gotta chill the fuck out,” I said.
“Man, you know that’s the best shirt he’s got.”
I was scared about what the cops were gonna do, what Dad was gonna do. I didn’t feel bad about DeAndre just then. I knew exactly what those guys woulda done to Angel if I hadn’t jumped in—what they would have done to all three of us if we hadn’t fought so hard right-off like that. All the violent things I’ve done to people over the years—all those terrible things—it was the fear that made me do it. The fear of them, of the unknown, of what they would have done to me or my friends, my loved ones. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve got loved ones, too, and hurting them, whether I like it or not, hurt a lot of people. And that’s something that just gets harder with the years—facing down all those terrible things. Looking in the mirror trying to figure out who you are—if you was a good guy or a bad guy. Maybe there just wasn’t enough good to go around back then.
We rolled south on Ashland, and the summer afternoon was bright and golden; the neighborhood was obliviously happy. An old lady poured water into flower pots on her front porch—the tulips white and mauve and perky as they unfurled into blossom. Even the dandelions sprung up through the sidewalk cracks with a buoyant, yellow resilience. A little Mexican boy rode his bicycle in the St. Greg’s Gym parking lot, and his Grandpa watched, grinning, as the boy tottered on the training wheels. I wished it hadn’t happened. I wish I was a little kid again.
CHAPTER 16
JAILBIRD
THEY PUT US IN SEPARATE CELLS—three of ’em lined up next to each other.
My cell was small. Two cinderblock beds—one had a gray, plastic bed-roll folded up at the head. There was a metal toilet with a sink rigged into the top in-between the beds, and the bowl was filled to the brim with piss and stale water. There was a foggy trail of toilet paper that floated up from the drain to the water surface like smoke. The three walls were cinderblock, but the fourth was all glass, framed with brown-painted steel. It was an electric system, and when that glass door slowly slid shut, there was a deep boom, like an enormous explosion in the distance. Even then, it didn’t sink in that I was a person locked inside of a cage. It was still a game, and a game we’d just won.
Being locked up is primarily an auditory experience. Everything to see is there unchanging. The pale, tan cinderblock walls coated with inch-thick layers of paint. The pitchforks and five-point stars etched into the metal housings. You fall into a world of listening. Footsteps, buzzers, keys jingling; ’I ain’t ate all day, Mothafucka!’ reverberating from some long corridor like the echo of all the world’s hunger; the cops cracking jokes and talking sports, the Cubbies; newspapers folding; strange Morse codes tapped on steel.
There was a far off scraping sound that came from an air duct in the ceiling. I climbed up on the bed and whispered, “Ryan, you there?”
“Yeah.”
“You alright, man?”
“Yeah, man. That fuckin’ pig ripped my shirt,” Ryan spat, his voice faint like it was coming through a long tunnel.
“They didn’t whoop your ass or nothing, did they?”
“Naw, man. In fact, O’Riley showed up and chewed into dat spiky-haired, Sonic the Hedgehog lookin’ motherfucker.”
“I want my baloney!” Angel’s voice whined through the ventilation system. Feet panged off sheet metal. “Where’s my baloney at?”
“That motherfucker’s going nuts,” I said as Ryan I burst into laughter.
“Angel, chill out, man. They’re gonna put you in the loony bin!” Ryan yelled in a high-pitched squeak.
“Who dat? Ry-Ry?” Angel said, emulating a cartoon wino. “Aye, man, I got your chain, bra, but I might just have to keep it doh. I kindsa like dis ma-fucka.”
The door to my cell buzzed and slid open. O’Riley walked into view with his chin tucked into his tree tr
unk neck. He took his cap off, and his beet-red forehead gleamed like a freshly painted fire hydrant.
“I was hoping this day wouldn’t come, Joe… Let’s go,” he said. I walked out of the cell and down the hall to the processing room and called home.
Ma went nuts on the phone. “I’m calling your father! And you’re just gonna have to wait there for him! So get comfortable!” she yelled as I eased the receiver into the hook.
“You know you hurt that boy,” O’Riley said. His brow furrowed. He frowned at me across the gray metal table between us. “He’s staying the night in the hospital.” There was a sharp click and flash as they photographed a gnarly bum in a long, tattered, brown coat across the way.
The silence hummed after we’d all made our calls home.
Looking back on it now, I can’t imagine how it must have been for the old man then—grinding all day, running a crew and swinging a hammer out there with nobody to watch his back, nobody to look out for him. Got guys on his crew older than him with more years, more experience, and there he is getting by on reputation and proving it true every morning, figuring out the hard shit and fixing the office’s mistakes in the real world of concrete, steel, and wood. Cracking the whip on these guys and still beating them on output, setting a pace no one except the crazy hardcore—the kind with blue union pride pumping in their veins; the kind who saw it as their life’s work—could ever keep. All this while teaching himself to read plans, shoot grades, and bring it all together to the point where they brought him on as a super. The guy don’t even got a high school diploma—not even close—and he’s doing a job guys with engineering degrees are supposed to. The whirlwind of those long hours, the daylight burnt trying to break out of the neighborhood. I didn’t have a clue. Out there thinking everything was riding on me having my boys’ backs, and here he gets a call: Joey’s sitting at the police station. Gotta leave the jobsite and come get him.
After a restless half-hour, I climbed up by the vent nearest Angel’s cell.
“Hey, we got the story right: it was one-on-one, they jumped in first, and we all fought, right?” I whispered.
“Yeah, man, I got it,” Angel replied.
“I mean, dat’s what happened, right?”
“Yeah… I mean… Look, man, I ain’t gonna say anything if dat’s what you mean, alright?”
I paused and took a deep breath.
“Look…” I said. “If worst comes to worst, and he’s hurt bad, I’ll tell ’em I jumped in, OK?”
“Naw, man, don’t worry. That’s the story, we’re sticking to it: they jumped in, so you guys did.”
“Hell, I ain’t tellin’ ’em a damn thing,” Ryan yelled through the vent. “They can go fuck demselves.”
Angel’s ma came in first. Her scuffed-up Payless tennis shoes squeaked across the cement floor. She wore a white collared shirt with a factory logo on the breast, and there was this stunned look plastered on her face like someone’d just slapped her for no reason at all. They went into a questioning room across the hall, and about twenty minutes passed, then the door swung open, and they came out. Angel looked down at the floor, his face wet. He didn’t look up as they left.
The old man came in about a half-hour later. He stepped down the hall lightly in his work boots. His arms were wrapped with curling white hairs and all speckled with sawdust. He shot a fierce glance into Ryan’s cell as he ground his molars and pursed his lips. The knot of his jaw pulsed. The door buzzed and slowly slid open. There was a silent, negative charge that radiated from him as he glared at me. O’Riley stepped up beside him as the door finally unlocked.
“What do you got to say for yourself?” Dad asked. His eyes darkened.
I stood and hung my head.
•
THE INTERROGATION ROOM was small and white with a heavy oak table in the center. The arresting officer sat with his back to the door and a pair of gray-framed sunglasses perched atop his thick, prickly hair. The yellow light spread a bronze sheen across the lenses, and that was it for me—dude’s name was Sonic. We sat. I had Dad on one side, Sonic on the other, and O’Riley across the way. O’Riley asked the questions, and Sonic scribbled notes on a document attached to a clipboard. I told the truth, except for the part about them jumping in first. When I got to the part where I hit DeAndre, Sonic stopped writing and pointed the butt-end of his ballpoint pen at me.
“So, what did you have in your hand when you hit him?” he asked.
“Nothing. My fist,” I answered.
“So, why did your friend,” he continued, flipping through some papers under the one he was writing on, “Angel say different?”
“First off, he didn’t say different, and second, there was nothing in my hand.”
O’Riley sighed and waved dismissively at Sonic.
“Just answer their damn questions,” my father snapped.
I finished, and O’Riley took a look at Sonic’s notes. He crossed out a few lines, unclipped the paper, and slid it over to me.
“Now read through that, Joe.”
It was pretty much what I’d said.
“Is that what happened?” O’Riley confirmed.
“Uhuh.”
“Then sign it there at the bottom.”
Dad turned toward me in his chair and went to say something when Sonic tossed his pen so it hit the table and rolled next to my hand. Dad snarled. Sonic got up and walked around behind me, then leaned in over my shoulder and placed his stubby hand on the table beside the document. He smelled like Brut aftershave and sweat. Dad shook his head and grumbled. Sonic’s starched-stiff uniform scratched my shoulder as he hovered there, and I snatched the pen and signed it quickly in the hopes it would end all of it.
Sonic pinched the corner of the document. Dad muttered, “I’ll slice your fuckin’ toes off.” I turned to him and almost said ’What?’
Sonic began to lift the document when Dad’s massive hand lurched out from under the table. It swung up high, then swooped down right in front of my face and banged the document flat, dead-center. The oak resonated. The corner Sonic’d pinched ripped clean off. Sonic grabbed Dad’s wrist. Dad squeezed the document, and it crumpled into a ball inside his fist. Then, Sonic lunged to grab Dad’s arm and knocked me clear out of my seat. I sprawled onto the dusty gray-tiled floor. Dad burst upward from his seat. He dug his elbow into the center of Sonic’s chest and drove him into the wall. A deep thud boomed from Sonic’s nostrils. His eyes swelled open. He grasped at my father’s elbow and tried to pry it out of his chest cavity. Dad raised his jutting chin and peered down at him clinically, like a physician inspecting a patient’s throat. A cloud of white bloomed in Sonic’s pink face. His Ray-Bans clattered on the tiles.
O’Riley got up and barreled towards them. “Now dat’s enough, Pat! Let up. You’re gettin’ too old for this crap!” he said, snagging Dad’s other arm in some sort of lock. “Let up, or it’s gonna get ugly in here!”
There was a throbbing second. Dad snarled and burrowed his eyes through Sonic, who blinked back tears and heaved for breath. The crumpled paper clapped to the floor.
They let up, and Dad stepped toward the door. Sonic bent down and snatched the document, tugged it open, and scowled at it. A little shot of joy blossomed in my heart, and a grin snuck onto my lips. O’Riley caught it, then he grimaced at me, and I hung my head in shame again. We stepped out into the hall, and Ryan was glued to the glass of his cell, all wide eyed. I just shook my head as we walked past.
I’d gotten a few slaps in my day but never a real beating, not like the ones I’d seen Dad give my brothers. He trembled with rage the whole drive home, and I watched him in my periphery—waiting for it. When we got in the house, he said, “Get to your room.” I stepped toward the stairs. He followed and I halted. He paused, then stepped in front of me and up the staircase. I followed him. When he reached the top stair, he turned left toward his room, and I stepped right toward mine. I
sighed with relief as I walked inside.
There was a whirl, and a heavy palm impacted the whole side of my head. I was airborne. My entire room flopped sideways, then upside down, and I landed on my belly with a hard squeak of bedsprings. Then, I curled into a fetal ball as Dad rampaged through my room. He tore my big Lowrider poster off the low, slanted ceiling, then vaulted my stereo off my dresser to the old shag carpet. “I’m tearing all this shit outta here!” He yelled, smacking my CD cases so they sprinkled over me. Then, he stomped up and snatched a handful of my hair.
“YOU THINK YOU’RE TOUGH?” He planted a punch into my hairline. Then, he smashed one into my lip. Blood poured in through my teeth. “YOU THINK YOU’RE TOUGH?” He chuckled. He released me and surged toward my open door, then halted in the doorway. “YOU THINK YOU’RE FUCKING TOUGH? YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TOUGH IS!”
I peered at him through the thin crease between my forearms as he vanished into the hall.
Well, that was the first time he cracked me for real, and I spent the rest of that day and night thinking about why. Was it ’cause I’d gotten caught? Screwed up his day? Maybe because I’d jumped in on a fair fight, or because DeAndre was hurt so bad. I never asked. Looking back, I guess he was just scared for me, wanted to wake me the hell up. Sometimes, that’s the only way to get a young man to pull his head of out his ass. I didn’t though—spent the rest of the day thinking about how to run away and how to maybe hit him with something heavy when he wasn’t looking. Then, I thought about what was waiting for us out there in the neighborhood. Everyone’d want a piece of us now. I couldn’t believe how deep of shit we’d gotten in. I was proud, too, crazy as that sounds—proud that we’d stuck together so tight, proud that we’d fought without hesitation, proud that we hadn’t gotten jumped again.
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