The Old Neighborhood

by Bill Hillmann

  Things got better for Ryan and Angel after that, but now they had to worry about the PG3s (they’d now become a branch of the Spanish Cobras) and, of course, the GDs. It wasn’t so bad for me. School over at Gordon was quiet. I didn’t know anybody, but that kept me safe at the same time. Most of the kids at Gordon were good kids, but things had changed since my older brothers were there; there just weren’t as many white families on the North Side anymore. Most of the white families had moved further west and had their kids in the Catholic schools like St. Patrick’s and Holy Cross, or they had left the city completely for the suburbs.

  I was a minority at Gordon, and now, the neighborhood that surrounded it was almost completely Hispanic. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans dominated. Some of the kids were screw-ups with good families, just like me, but most of ’em were good kids headed for blue collar jobs or even college.

  •

  I WROTE LIL PAT A LETTER asking him why Mickey hated the GD’s in the Jungle so much. Two weeks later, Mickey hands me an envelope with nothing but Joey written on it. It was typed on a typewriter:

  I wanted to be the one to tell you this story, so I had to get you this letter special delivery, and you got to burn it once you read it. I couldn’t put my name on it, but you know who it is ’cause you know who you asked.

  We were way up in Rogers Park rolling around in the Lincoln looking for somebody. We cut down a one-way, and there was a car double-parked blocking the street in front of some crack house. My boy Sammy was driving. He beeped the horn to try an’ get ’em to move. A shine jumped out the car with a pistol. He walked up and shot Sammy in the chest—just like that. He died in my arms on the way to the hospital. Over nothing. Over beeping a car horn.

  We came back that night. We knew it was the right house ’cause of the smell. Crack smells real distinct where they cook it: burnt baking soda, and the coca plant. We set it on fire—the front and back doors. I don’t need to say much more, but no one made it out of that house alive. We’ve been warring with the Juneway Jungle GD’s ever since. They’re evil motherfuckers, Joey. That’s why Mickey hates ’em. They all deserve to die.

  •

  I REMEMBER toward the end of our trip to the U.P. that year, we were out on Lac Vieux Desert near this point where a millionaire had a luxury duck blind set up with a TV, stove, and heaters. Suddenly, the light changed—the sky struck this purplish-green that reflected off the water, and the Lac began to swell and chop with a low, swift-moving storm.

  Rich and Nancy motored past us. Dad looked at him, frustrated.

  “What? It’s gonna rain,” Rich said.

  “A few more casts,” Dad urged.

  “I ain’t stayin’ out here no more.” Rich revved the motor. “We got skunked. Face it.”

  The putter of their motor trailed off across the large lake. Dad didn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on the water.

  “I was out here once with Patrick,” he said, flinging a hard, long cast. “Just me and him. The wind changed all of a sudden, to a southern. It was cloudy, and they parted just then and lit the water up.”

  I cast and began to reel it in. My callused fingers ached. The purple clouds rolled over the tall pine trees along the shore.

  “We hooked into five muskies in a row. Five consecutive casts. He boated a five-footer and hooked into something must have been six, maybe more. I got a couple, too. It was really somethin’.”

  Dad launched a cast out toward the point. The wind surged through the pines.

  “He wasn’t always…” He sputtered and coughed something back. “He wasn’t always like that, ya know?”

  The heavy lure splashed into a cresting wave and sunk quickly. He reeled it in hard and tugged on the pole with short jerks to imitate a wounded fish. I thought of Lil Pat—so far away, locked in a little cell in a place with people trying to hurt him any chance they got. I looked out across the wide horizon and saw the dark-green woods sloping up out of the lake. I concentrated and tried to send him that image telepathically, hoping it could somehow work, even if it was just in a dream. Maybe Da could bring it to him, so he could remember there were better places in the world. The rain began to sweep in from far off across the water, and a million tiny plucks spread along the surface with a foggy mist above. I hooked my lure into a line-guide and cranked it tight.

  “Here we go!” Dad snarled.

  There was a bright-brown flash in the water before the strike. Dad cranked down, gathered himself, heaved back, and set the hook with all his might. The small motorboat swayed, and sure enough, the full length of a five-foot tiger muskie emerged from the water. The fish tail-walked for ten yards, then it slapped hard on the surface and disappeared into the choppy water. The reel squealed. Dad’s complexion went stone-white against the darkened sky. The muskie ran hard. The line cut across toward the bow out into deeper waters. Dad gathered himself. He leaned back and cranked hard on the reel. The muskie swept up to the surface and lofted out of the lake on a diagonal. Droplets of water cascaded off its underbelly, then it burst into a white splash and plunged again. Dad leaned, pulled the rod sideways, and turned him. Then, he spun the reel quickly and gained line on him.

  “Get the net ready!” he shouted.

  I stumbled over near the motor. The boat rocked with the struggle. I clutched the net, then got it tangled in my lure. I worked furiously to free it. A hook plucked into my palm, and I squealed at the sharp pain. Then, I dug it out. My fingers trembled. The barb left a fat gash that bled dark blood. Dad planted his feet into the floorboards and hauled on the sharply bent rod. There was a crisp snap, and the line went slack. And that was it. The muskie’s tail fin softly crested the water some 20 yards out on the starboard and was gone—sunk into that dark lake. The only big fish we’d hooked into all trip.

  Looking back, it must have been tough on the old man. He was working constantly to support our big family and only wanted to get out on the lake and get into some fish, spend some time with his kids. Having your kid locked in a cage can’t be easy, either.

  I remember motoring in as the big, cold rain droplets pelted us and the waves crested and gushed up spray on the bow. I remember a welling of tired emotion wrenching in my chest and not knowing if it was just water on my face. That was our last trip to Lac Vieux Desert.

  •

  JUST WHEN I THOUGHT EVERYTHING WOULD GET NICE and calm down, I strolled down to the sills one day. I’d just gotten home from school and changed outta that jive-ass uniform. I was barely in earshot when Ryan started up.

  “The Moes rolled some PG3 Cobra’s today,” Ryan said.

  “No shit?” strolled out of my mouth like nothin’—no weight to it, like a pigeon coasting to the ground.

  “Hell yeah. It was crazy as hell,” Angel urged.

  “Did you guys get in it?” I asked, restless at not being there.

  “You know we did,” Ryan replied.

  “Hell yeah, motherfucker,” I said, reaching out to grab Ryan’s hand. We shook up.

  “Man, nobody even talked about it, man… We were over by the courts. You know the Peoples own them courts by the side door.

  “Some PG3s were walkin’ through the field right there, and I thought shit would be cool, but, man, then they started throwing up the six-point star an’ shit,” Ryan said. “And just got rushed.”

  “How many of ’em?” I asked.

  “Like four,” Angel said.

  “Man, there was like ten of us just stompin’ ’em,” Ryan said as he raised his foot and mimicked the stomping. The white sole of his Puma was caked with blood-brown splotches.

  “So shit’s cool now with the Stones, huh?” I asked.

  “Real cool,” Ryan said. “In fact, Monteff’s coming through in a little bit.”

  “Yeah?” I confirmed.

  “Yeah,” Angel piped in. “We’re gonna smoke a blunt to celebrate; a ’stomped dem fools’ blunt.”

&n
bsp; “But now we gotta worry about them PG3s,” I said, thinking back to Sy. I imagined the PG3 Cobras, thirty-deep, all of them lounged along the side of the softball field fence beside Hayt Elementary School just a half-mile up Clark. I wondered how they felt right about now.

  “I ain’t worried,” Ryan said, looking over at Angel. “You worried, Angel?”

  Angel laughed and looked Ryan in the eyes.

  “Man, they’re too scared to come to this side of Ridge, anyways,” Ryan sneered.

  “What up, peeps?” a joyful voice came from the tunnel.

  I turned to see Monteff walk up the alley with little BB sauntering beside him like some comic book sidekick. Both of ’em had big smiles on their faces.

  Monteff had a cigar stuck in the rim of his Padres cap that came downward along the side of his face. He wore it tilted slightly to his left.

  “What up, party peoples?” Ryan said as he tilted his head to the side.

  Monteff looked me in the eyes. Something sad and somber overcame his face. A glint of regret smoldered in his eyes. He rolled his head back and looked away. “Hey, Joe,” he said. “Man, come on,” he waved his hand toward Ashland. “Let’s talk, bro.”

  “Alright,” I replied. We started towards Ashland together.

  “Recognize this?” Monteff pulled out my old chain with the crucifix Lil Pat’d given me from his pocket. We stopped. Something reached up and clutched my heart, and I almost fell over. “I been looking at this thing a long time, thinking about things. I wondered if I was right to think you were in on what your brother’d done. I wanted to believe it. It made it all so simple, black and white. It made what we’d done right. But there was something deep in here,” he patted his chest, “told me ’no.’ I was wrong. You never woulda done nothing like that to me. You was my friend.” He sighed. “Your brother, he did what he did. It’s probably like you say—he’s crazy. Shit, maybe he regret what he did, too. Sometimes people do stuff that don’t make any sense. Stuff they regret a whole lot later. Things they could never take back. But either way, it wasn’t you that did it. I knew I was gonna give this back to you one day. I just didn’t know how.” He handed me the cross. “Here you go, Joe. I’m sorry for how it all went down.”

  “It’s cool, Monteff. Thank you, bro. You don’t know what this cross means to me, man. My other brother, he’s been locked-up a long time.”

  “Patrick,” Monteff remarked solemnly.

  I nodded. “He gave this to me before he went away.” I blinked and swallowed back some tears. I slid the chain over my head.

  “I’m sorry, Joe. You was always a good friend to me. I hope we can be boys again.”

  “Monteff… man.” I took the cross in my hand and looked at it. It was in the exact condition it was in when I’d last put it on. “I think we were friends all along. We just didn’t know it.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said, grinning. We shook hands and hugged each other with our free arms.

  “Come on, let’s go chief dat blunt,” Monteff urged.

  “Hell yeah,” I replied as we turned and walked back.

  As we got close, Angel smiled his slick smile and said, “You two done making out?”

  “Shut up,” Monteff slugged him. “We gonna smoke or what?”

  “I got some Swisher Sweets,” Ryan said as he took out the pack.

  “Man, fuck that. Use this Philly, man,” Monteff said, then reached up and slipped the cigar from his cap.

  BB grabbed the blunt from Monteff before Ryan could take it. “I got it… I got it,” BB said, shooting his eyes at me. “You know I was about to whoop yo’ ass that day before five-o showed up.” BB was almost up to my shoulder now. I smiled and gave his sixty-five-pound frame a quick up and down. Then, I just shook my head.

  “BB, just roll the blunt,” Monteff whined.

  “Man, I just had to let a mothafucka know,” BB said, walking to one of the sills. His narrow head flexed. “But you know how them pigs like ta whoop a nigga’s ass ’n’ shit.” Angel tossed him a bag as he sat down at one of the sills.

  “See, I roll these blunts up nice, mothafucka—not like you white ma’fuckas,” BB said. He split the blunt down the center with a small razor. “This how brothas roll a blunt.” He looked up at Ryan, who watched intently. BB took his index finger and dug out all the tobacco, then he started crinkling the buds up in the bag so they were almost dust. The rest of us stood around the sill to block any view from the street.

  BB sprinkled the green dust into the empty cigar, then lightly rolled it over snugly. He licked his fingertip and used the saliva to seal the crease. Then, he took the lighter and burned the crease to finish the seal.

  “Let me see that,” Angel said, ready to inspect the blunt. It was smooth and had a near-perfect shape—flat on both ends and ballooning out on a perfect slope.

  “Not bad,” Angel said, looking up. “Let’s see how it smokes, though.”

  Angel was always serious when it came to weed. It was one of the only times he was serious. He sparked the blunt with his lighter and took a deep hit. As he exhaled, he said, “Nice.” The dank, musty smell of the Jamaican Red Hair plumed from his lips.

  “Man, Joe… I don’t mean to bring this up or nothing,’ but man…,” Monteff said as Angel passed him the blunt. “What the hell was you thinking going heads up with Tank, man?” He took a long, hard hit.

  “Shit,” I said and looked down, shaking my head. “Hey, I actually thought I was gonna win, bro,” I laughed.

  “On the real?” Monteff gave me a serious look as he exhaled. A trail of smoke sauntered up over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I said. Ryan scrutinized me with a glance. “Right up to the point where that motherfucker hit me!” We all burst out laughing.

  “Now that’s one nigga you just don’t fight with!” Monteff admonished.

  “Hell no,” Angel said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Man, he’s been knocking motherfuckers out every day over at school, man,” Monteff informed us as he shook his head. “Ev-er-ry day!” he shouted, his eyes wide. “He knocked a dude out dat was nineteen years old the udder day.”

  We all agreed.

  “Joe, man,” Monteff said. “You’re the only one who got him yet, when y’alls went at it after school de other day.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan cut in. “It’s a whole lot easier when he ain’t looking.”

  I took a hit, and thick brown flecks sifted across Ryan’s face like a migration of dust mites. I exhaled.

  “Don’t forget, I was saving your ass when I did dat,” I said, smiling and pointing at Ryan.

  “I won’t forget, man,” Ryan replied in a serious tone, but the smile remained. “I won’t forget.”

  “You see him still off that spick today, man? I thought he tore his head off,” Monteff said, his eyebrows hiked up. “Man, when I saw you guys coming, I was like, ’Damn, these fools is going to the hospital fo’ sho’ now!’”

  “Y’all wanna talk about fightin’, man? Now I can straight up box,” BB said, jumping off the sill and bouncing on his red Fila high-tops. Then, he threw fast punches into the air with his face all squinted up in fury.

  “Fuckin’ Sugar Ray Leonard, mothafucka,” he said as he punched the air even faster. “I’ll whoop Tank… I’ll whoop any mothafucka in the hood.”

  “Oh, I’ll let Tank know then, nigga,” Monteff said.

  “Man,” BB replied, waving his hand in the air at Monteff.

  “Smoke dis blunt and quit talkin’ that crazy-ass shit,” I said, handing him the blunt.

  “Ah, hell yeah,” BB said, snatching the blunt and taking a short inhale. He puffed it out and sucked it up through his nostrils, then he toked a long one and squinted his eyes.

  “Man, give me that blunt, you little fool,” Angel said, snatching the blunt out of BB’s mouth. Then, Angel loomed over him with his tall, thin frame. “Sug
ar Ray Midget,” he mocked BB’s squeaky voice.

  There was the sound of an engine idling, and I turned to see a blue Civic pulled across the walkway lines at the end of the block on Ashland. The light was green. It was parked there at the corner.

  “Hey,” I said, looking at Monteff and nodding toward the car. There were two Mexicans in it, glaring at us.

  BB squeezed past us and threw up the 4-40 diamond as he stared into the car.

  The Mexican in the passenger seat leaned his Raiders-capped head out of the window. “Stone killa, nigger,” he shouted and threw up the PG3s and that C-shaped pitchfork.

  Everybody jumped up, and we let loose with a barrage of shouts.

  “Cobra killa!”

  "What up den?”

  “Moes here!”

  “Fuck you, spick!”

  “Fusion!”

  “What up, flake?”

  Ryan ran up and snatched an old Bud Light bottle out of the gutter. He threw it like a bullet, and it bounced once, then crashed on the sidewalk. The broken shards skipped across the concrete and sifted below the Civics’ undercarriage. The engine revved, and they pealed out south on Ashland.

  “You ain’t got V’d in yet, man. Quit doing that shit,” Monteff said as he pushed BB.

  “Man, I was born to be a P Stone, fool. V me in right now,” BB snarled.

  “Man, I’ll give you a mouth shot right now. Dat’s about it.”

  “Man,” BB whined.

  “Scared to come across Ridge, huh?” I said, looking at Ryan. He just took another pull off the blunt and stared at Ashland, his temple pulsing.

  CHAPTER 20

  VIRGINS

  MOST HEROICS ARE PURE CHANCE—extreme circumstances thrust onto average people. It resides in all of us. It’s there somewhere in the depths of our primal chromosomes, just the same as the rage and fury to murder. The only difference between you and a hero is luck. It’s the same difference between you and a murderer, maybe.