I laid like that in my room all afternoon. No one came to see how I was. I was glad they didn’t but lonely at the same time. Outside my window, the block flourished in the full-tilt summer. The little boys played war with plastic machine guns that rattled as they cried out and flopped on their bellies in death throes. Why do boys have to war with each other? A Mother pushed her stroller across the way. In my mind, I saw DeAndre on a hospital bed with his mom weeping and holding his hand as they waited to do a brain scan. An old man with a brimmed hat walked his muscular pit bull along the sidewalk, and I wondered what Da would think of me now—if he’d be mad with me, or just sad and disappointed. An epic, golden green filtered through the full-leaved tree out front. It splattered on the front porch’s roofing but fell short of my window. It was too bright, and eventually, I just pulled my drapes closed.
•
I HAD A STEADILY BEATING HEADACHE well into the night. I never turned the light on—just sat there on my bed as dusk saturated my wall in a heavy orange-red. Then, darkness, until the streetlights lit yellow and empty. Sleep would come, and the headache would nudge away. The wires slung heavy in my veins, pinning me to the bed. Then, there was a giant red bubble-shaped organ lying on my belly. It was like a transparent tomato. Wet, slimy, and pulsing, it bobbled there, light as a feather. Its force pinned me, not its weight. Then, light images began to pass through it at a quickening pace like a strobe light: pit bulls fighting, encircled by laughter. Cows quartered with enormous, circular blades. Then, the images took on a terrible speed like someone flipping through a thick deck of cards: the Assyrian’s cracked skull, Sy’s gaping eye wound, the blood beading through Monteff’s fingers, Ryan’s purple eye, the stitches along Lil Pat’s brow. Then, it froze on DeAndre’s eyes, swollen shut and bleeding steady tears that dripped down on me like rain. Then, the bubble clouded and undulated atop me—alive. I raised my hand against the force and dipped my finger into it. It elasticized against my fingertip, recoiled, and floated upward. Then, it burst and flooded down in hot, red ooze, and I awoke panting, covered in sweat, gripping my hollow stomach.
Couldn’t sleep after that; I kept sifting through all of it for meaning. I felt somewhere deep inside that what I did was wrong—that I should have only jumped in if they did first. Dad’d beat me like that because what I’d done was villainous and cowardly. A one-on-one fight was sacred bond. Win or lose, there was honor in a fair fight, and breaking that code was a terrible thing to do. It was an unjust thing, and I should have let Angel lose if it had to happen. But in what I did, there was no dignity. Fear made me do it, and that made me sick. I resolved to not do it again. If they’d have moved, it’d have been OK, but since I jumped the gun, I was as bad as they’d been when they jumped us. That sin infuriated and dejected me. A man was only as good as his code. I wasn’t a man. I knew that. But I was trying, and I’d failed that afternoon.
•
I SNUCK OUT a few nights later. I walked down the street towards the sills as David Letterman’s voice eked out of the Bernhart’s open front window and traffic soared quietly along Ashland. There were a few kids down there. Angel had his midnight-purple Lowrider out, and he gazed solemnly down the arterial alleyway as he sat on his bike. Its serpentine lines swayed and twisted together beneath him. The chain-link steering wheel spouted up from the bike’s neck like a chrome crown. The other kids shuffled around him, inspecting it. The tall, wide expanse of the hospital wall behind him loomed, immovable, like the prison walls in Joliet.
Ryan sat in his sill with his legs dangling down, toes barely touching the sidewalk. His scowl was harder than a boy’s face should be allowed to scowl—harder than it is was capable of. His freckles were dark and large and spattered across his arms and face, and the skin beneath them was milky white—the type of pale that never darkens, only singes red; the kind of burn not easily forgotten.
Ryan saw me and got up to greet me. Angel looked, then he leaned his bike on its pedal and sauntered over.
Ryan flashed his imbecilic, crooked smirk. “Drown your sorrows,” he said, raising a half-pint of whiskey in a crumpled paper bag.
“Thanks, man,” I said, taking the half-killed bottle.
Ryan and Angel glanced at each other. The bulbous, purple mound on my widow’s peak had dissipated into a hazy orange, but my cut lip was still puffed out.
“So’s DeAndre gonna press charges?” I asked, taking a slug.
“Naw, man. I think the cops were just trying to scare us,” Angel answered, exhaling hard.
I snickered as Ryan offered me his mint-green pack of Newports. I dug one out.
“I think they did a little more than that,” I said, sparking it.
We were silent. I could feel ’em staring at the lump; it felt tight and slid across my skull every time I talked or toked.
“Didn’t even see it comin’. Son-of-a-bitch sucker punched me. Believe dat? His own kid.”
“Hey man, you alright?” Angel said, putting his hand on my shoulder. His mahogany eyes were soft like a child’s.
“Yeah, I’m fine, man. My brothers got it a lot worse den me. Old man must be getting soft or somethin’.”
“Didn’t he break Rich’s nose that one time?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah, broke his nose real nasty. I got off easy.”
“Hey, Angel, can I ride it?” a stoner with a threadbare flannel shirt tied around his waist asked Angel, looming beside his bike.
“No,” Angel answered, turning and swaying up to it.
“He’s drunk, huh? I better catch up,” I said. I took a few hard swigs and handed the bottle back to Ryan.
“Yeah, you missed it. We smoked a blunt earlier,” Ryan added.
“No shit? What’s dat coming out of my cut?”
“Naw, it was outta Angel’s personal stash.” Ryan took a swig off of the bottle. “Said we were smoking it for you actually. ‘For our boy on house arrest.’”
Angel started riding in these wobbly, tightly torqued circles, and a couple of the younger kids ran alongside him. Then, Angel threw his head back and rocked it side to side, gazing into the murky night sky. “My Daddy taught me-ta ride bikes… My Daddy taught me-ta ride bikes…” he sang.
Everybody laughed except Ryan and me. We just walked over, sat in our sills, and watched solemnly.
“Man…,” Ryan said and took a swig. “I’d like to say I miss him.” His brick of a forehead creased. “All he ever did when he was home was beat the shit outta us. Ma got the worst of it, always with her mouth, ya know? Waa, waa, waa,” Ryan mocked his Ma’s whiney voice. “Ya know?”
I nodded.
“But still, man, the kinda shit he’d do to her… He’d hit her with a closed fist man… Hard as he could!”
“Damn.”
“I’d try to stop him, ya know, but he’d just whoop my ass, too.” Ryan shrugged, defeated. “One time though, Bear got him. Oh, he got him good. Ran him right out the house. Bit his whole hand up real bad. Had to get stitches and everything.”
“No shit?”
“That’s a good dog, man. That was one of the last times he hit her. It was right before he got locked up.”
“Damn, dat is a good dog.”
Angel Rode on. His old man had been in the Army, and they’d lived on a base out in California. He had a screw loose from Nam or booze or drugs, and he ended up going insane. He got a medical discharge, and they committed him into an asylum. It’d been ugly. He’d started lashing out at Angel and his Ma—tormenting them with his delusions and horrifying things brought on by some kind of mescaline or LSD. Monsters and demons, and sometimes, even his little boy became the demon. That was just too much for Angel’s mother to take, so they got on a bus for Chicago in the middle of the night. She had a cousin here and a job waiting. Later, they found out about the asylum, then the half-way house, then who knows. He sent Angel a letter every Christmas with five bucks in it. Not another word all
year round. Angel told me that one night in the garage when it was just him, me. Tears avalanched off his face.
Suddenly, Angel’s front tire smashed into the hospital wall. His springer fork gave, and the frame surged upward, but he let go just before his handlebar grips slammed into the concrete. There was a surge of laughter. Angel laughed, too, then stood, grabbed the handlebars, and started crashing his front tire into the wall. The metal fender crinkled. His forearms flared, and his face knotted in a concentrated grimace. The back tire jolted upward with each collision.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, then we sprang up and dashed over. Ryan yanked Angel off, and the bike thumped and clanked to the sidewalk. I picked it up as Ryan held him back. The front fender was dinged pretty bad. The smooth, curved metal dimpled near the neck of the frame.
“What?” Angel giggled.
“What the fuck are you doing, bro?” I pleaded.
“Fuck you. It’s my fucking bike to wreck,” he said, smiling bitterly.
“What the fuck, Angel?”
“Come on,” Angel sang. “It ain’t so bad.”
Ryan let go, and Angel mounted it. He started to ride again, but the front tire deflated where it contacted the ground and spilled out flat. His smile’d vanished, but he still rode in tight figure eights. The kids’d stopped following, and the tire finally flopped to the side. The rim ground against the sidewalk, and he toppled off and flopped onto his stomach. Ryan rushed over.
“C’mon, let’s get you home, bro,” Ryan said, picking him up by his elbow. “You’re a fucking mess.”
Angel bounced up and twisted away, then teetered across the street towards his house.
“Where the fuck you going, man?” Ryan said, following him.
“I’m going home, dog,” Angel said over his shoulder with a constrained laugh.
“Let him go, Ry,” I urged. Ryan stopped before he got to the street. “I’ll put it up in the garage tonight.”
Angel loped down the alley atop the uneven pavement and disappeared around the T. I hung a while, killed the bottle with Ryan, then brought the bike home to the garage. I stayed up, patched the inner-tube, and re-fit the tire. Then, I banged the fender back enough to allow the wheel to spin freely—something Angel could have done in half the time and with half the effort, but I did it anyway.
Being fourteen, it was hard for me to see how lucky I was. I thought I was in the same kind of boat as Angel and Ryan—just had a hard-ass for an old man who liked to beat the shit outta his sons. It’s incredible how wrong a kid can be. I couldn’t understand what it was like to have a dad that was mentally ill or locked up. Maybe none of us could understand what each other was going through, let alone understand what we were going through by ourselves. But at least we had each other to get through it together. At least we had each other.
•
RICH HAD TO SELL the Ramcharger after handmade neon-pink wanted posters of him started to circulate along Clark near the gay bar where he’d shot those guys with paintballs. He’d bought a little black Toyota pickup that had a lift kit and gigantic Mudder tires with gnarly tread.
He said there were some great dirt trails way west near Central Avenue for off-roading, and it was a blast. So, I went out there with him one weekend. It was a long ride, and he didn’t start up with the ranting until we were almost there. Once he gets you in the tight cab of a vehicle, something comes over him, and he just starts to let you have it. The confined space shrinks. Trapped, you start having claustrophobia. Somehow he got on the subject of Blake recently becoming a Chicago police officer.
“I can’t fucking believe Blakey’s a cop. Crazy fucking shit the way things turn out. That accounting job he had flopped. They were paying him like twelve bucks an hour. He was nothing more than a secretary!!! Hahahah….”
We knifed through the tight, winding trails. The deep, water-filled ruts splashed up waves. We rambled on as the overgrown foliage slapped at the windows.
“That’s why he took the test to become a copper. All of that money Ma and Dad paid for him to go to school, and he gets a gig chasing down fucking Ricans and niggers on the West Side! And you don’t even need a degree to be a pig; all’s you need is a high school diploma. I could go take the test right now, but fuck it, I wouldn’t! I’m making more than him as a frickin’ carpenter!”
We came into an opening, and there was a muddy pit with a half-built concrete manhole structure sitting in the center. Green-epoxied rebar sprouted up from the freshly stripped walls.
“But one good thing’s come outta this: all his speechy crap about how blacks, browns and whites are equal and the same and should have the same opportunities—that’s all gone now, man.”
He floored it toward a path that twisted into greenery. “It took six months for him to wake up to the fact that they’re all sewer rats. He’s plain-clothed one night, picked up by some special gang unit, and he’s sitting there on North Ave. right by Humboldt Park. Him and his partner got out of their unmarked squad car, and they’re wearing black and yellow. All of a sudden, somebody shouts ‘King Killa’ from across the street and—Pop!-Pop!-Pop!—some little Spanish Cobra’s shooting at ’em.” We ascended a muddy hill, and Rich floored it. When we reached the top, there was nothing. The shocks sprang and locked out, and we vaulted into the air. Rich smirked at me through his tangled beard. We plummeted and landed in an explosion of mud, then we bound on.
Years later, I’d hear it from Blake himself during a lunch break—he was catching some extra hours as a carpenter, and I was working my summer vacation as a laborer.
“So, my partner, this fat Mexican guy named Perez, starts sprinting right at ’em. I figure I’ll cut through the alley and head ’em off,” Blake elaborated, then took a pull on the straw of his Wendy’s cup of Coke. “I’m flying down that alley. I’m telling ya, I’m booking faster than frickin’ Carl Lewis ever ran!” He laughed as I took a bite of my spicy chicken sandwich. The traffic on 55 howled past and made the cab of the pickup truck bobble. We sat on the shoulder, right in front of the Harlem Avenue bridge. “I can hear my partner firing on him with the .9—boom-boom-boom! I see an open gangway and cut through it, get to the mouth, and peek my head around, making sure I don’t get caught in the crossfire. Then, the shooter screams out, throws the gun, and falls flat to his belly on the muddy grass. But I know he’s not hit—he’s fakin’, playin’ possum.”
“I shout for Perez to stop shooting, dash out, snag the guy by his shoulders, and lift him up. Then, I realize his feet are dangling two feet off the ground. He’s a kid—twelve years old, maybe, his face a smear of tears. But Perez is still running up, and in full-stride he kicks this kid in the balls so hard that he flies right up out of my grip and lands on the hood of the parked Chevy right next to us.”
A malicious grin streaked across his face as he finished. My heart pulsed and squeaked. Images of my brother getting shot at flickered through my mind. I thought of his kids. What if Karen got a call in the middle of the night saying he was dead—gone—just like that?
A frowning sneer wrenched onto his mouth, and he gazed out onto the wide, sloping circle of yellow grass between us and the off ramp. “They’re animals,” he said, and threw the half-full Wendy’s cup out the open window. He yanked the door lever and got out, then he slung his tool belt over his shoulders, bent, and yanked the cord on the gas-powered generator. It rippled and petered, then it rambled up to its steady roar. He stepped briskly into the shade of the concrete bridge; the long gray I-beams spanned its underbelly like ribs. The other truck and car doors strung along the shoulder yawned open slowly.
CHAPTER 17
PHYSICAL SCIENCE
IT’S FUNNY HOW WHEN YOU’RE A KID, one little spark can engulf you in flames.
I didn’t try on the high school entrance exam, so they put me in the lowest track at Gordon Tech. I didn’t really give a shit. School was never my thing, and this would make it ea
sier to do less and still pass. Don’t get me wrong—I listened to shit that interested me. It’s just almost nothing I’d ever heard a teacher say sounded interesting.
That’s when I stepped into the Mr. Dydecky’s Physical World class—the dumb-kid physics. The room had faded linoleum tile floors with five rows of long black-topped tables spanning its width that sat four students each. I walked in and sat in back. Then, I flopped my tie on the table, folded my arms over it, slipped my chin into the nook of my elbow, and braced for boredom. A lot of the kids in there were on the football team—the big meathead linemen mostly. Dydecky was a young guy, maybe twenty-something. He was skinny and wore an off-yellow button-down shirt and a frickin’ brown bow-tie. He had short, curly, black hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His thick, bushy unibrow wiggled on his face when he talked.
Everyone was bored out of their fucking minds, which was usual with the low-track. On the far side of the back row, a tall, lanky Polish kid exchanged shoulder shots with a pudgy Mexican kid with no neck; his head just popped out of his balloon of a torso like the top ball of a snowman. Both of them snickered and shrieked like a couple rejects.
Then, this guy Dydecky starts talking about physics. The motherfucker’s blabbin’ like ninety miles per hour about this shit and that. He’s drawing multicolored pictures on the big white marker board and jumping from mechanics to thermodynamics without really making any connections. His hands are all trembling like he’s got the shakes, and I started thinking the dude was having some kind of a breakdown! But then, he starts in on the universe, galaxies, the solar system, the sun, and what’s going down in there. And his beady, brown eyes are glowing behind them glasses like the fuckin’ guy’s possessed by a demon! But the stuff he’s talking about starts sparking shit off in my head. Got me thinking about everything—I mean everything.
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