The Old Neighborhood

by Bill Hillmann

  “Ah, fuck,” Angel said as his cheeks ballooned with vomit before he swallowed it back.

  “It was like the 4th of July, man,” Ryan said. “You couldn’t hear that shit?”

  “Naw,” Angel and I said in unison.

  “Man, it was like three in the morning, man,” Ryan said. “They shot up all the apartments.”

  “Anybody get hit?” I asked.

  “Naw, nobody. But I talked to T-Money, and they ain’t playing,” Ryan said. “I think the Stones already rode out on them last night, too.”

  “Ah, fuck, man,” Angel said.

  “I talked to Mickey last night, man,” Ryan said, looking me dead in the eyes. “It’s war, bro.”

  My mind reeled. It felt like a hook was dragging through my gut, and I was dizzy in the late morning light. Images of fire bursting from cars along the street, Tank in cuffs and an orange jumpsuit. I closed my eyes, and the Assyrian had stepped up to my face. He grimaced and bore his teeth at me. His mangled skull flexed as blood streaked down his cheeks and neck. There was a deep rumble, and I whirled on it, expecting a carload of PG3 Cobras—all of them with pistols and ball bats—ready to erupt from its doors. Some old lady craned her neck to look over the steering wheel and dashboard as the pink chain from her glasses jostled on her face.

  Everything’d changed. It’d been coming for years, slowly festering. I just didn’t know that it would come like that—as phantoms in the daylight.

  •

  THAT NIGHT, I dreamt I was at the star dock at Montrose Harbor. I watch myself as a young boy casting my lure into the circular center. I fly above in a slow sort of glide. Then, SLAM! The seagull explodes into the lure, and suddenly I’m looking up at Da weeping as he tries to untangle me. There’s another one crying—it’s a child’s cry that transforms into the scream of a gull. White feathers fly everywhere as Da slices at the lines that constrict and dig into me. Then, a swell of feathers gushes past Da’s face. Suddenly Da’s face morphs into my father’s face—cold, grimacing, baring teeth. My father lifts a long blade with a pointed tip and lowers it down, aimed directly at my heart, and I woke screaming, ’NO!!!!!’

  PART THREE

  JUVENILE

  CHAPTER 22

  DARK MATTER

  THE NEXT NIGHT I was down at the sills by myself when I saw a dark shadow moving towards me. It came down the alley through the rising fog sifting up from the PVC pipe that traced down along the hospital wall. As the dark figure got closer, I saw it was a guy about my size in a large black hoodie. The hood was up; it and hung low and masked his face in blackness like an executioner’s cloak. There was something familiar and unsettling about his gait as he hesitated. He turned away, shook his head, and wiped his face with his wrist. I gripped the blade in my pants pocket, then I ripped it loose from where it’d twisted and dug the cloth into a knot. The shadow resolved itself and stepped directly toward me. Both hands disappeared into the large front muffer pocket of the hoodie, and I was thinking: if it’s a gun, break towards Ashland; if it’s a blade, let’s dance. Where the fuck is Ryan and Angel at? I ain’t lettin’ dis bitch run me off my own set. I was hot. The blood flow swelled all over my chest neck and arms, warm and itchy.

  I turned to my side. The Assyrian… The Assyrian’s little brother coming for revenge. No, a PG3. Pointing my left shoulder at him, I pulled the blade from my pocket and hid it behind my thigh, ready to ride. Suddenly, I realized: there’s no way he’d come at this spot without a burner, all alone! Wires seemed to claw up into my mind. I thought that he was a decoy and that they were surrounding me, ready to give me the same fatal beat down that PG3'd just got. Then, he was only a few steps away. Too close to run away now, get shot down through the back. My eyes darted wildly all around—across the street at Ashland, down the alley. Shadows morphed into leering monsters. I couldn’t believe I let this go down! Why hadn’t I run straight off? Fuck it! I could at least kill this motherfucker right now! I squeezed the blade, and then a face emerged from the shadow below the hood: Monteff’s yellowish-brown skin, all wet and glistening in the arc lamp. A tear dribbled off his nostril.

  “Fuck,” I said and exhaled. “You scared de shit outta me. What’s up?”

  “It’s Tank,” he said, wiping his mouth and nose with the back of his wrist. “Dey shot him.”

  “Damn.” I was awestruck as I slid the knife back in my pocket.

  “Man…” There was a crack in his voice. “I’m gonna kill all those motherfuckers,” he said without conviction. “All of ’em.”

  “Shit, man, what happened?”

  “Man…” Monteff hung his head and started to cry. His whole body throbbed with each sob.

  “Tank…” He tried to get himself together and looked up at the night sky. “He’s fuckin’ paralyzed man.”

  “Oh my fucking God! Are you serious?” I crouched down on my hams in shock and gripped my head with both hands.

  “Man… They say he ain’t never gonna walk again. Ever.”

  "Oh my God, man." The news settled down on me like a heavy iron blanket.

  “I was at the damn hospital all day. When they let us in to see him, man…” He shook his head, and tears gushed from his eyes. “Man, he started screaming at us to get away. He ripped all his IVs and shit out. He was throwing stuff at us, even his momma.”

  The images of this flashed bright in my mind.

  “They said he tried to cut his own throat, man, with a plastic knife from his hospital tray.” Monteff started to cry again.

  “Ahh, shit, man.” I touched his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

  “Man, of course I ain’t alright! That’s my cousin, man!” Monteff shouted through the tears. I looked down, ashamed. ”Man, I’m sorry, Joe, man. I just can’t be over there right now, ya know? Everybody’s asking and shit, ’How’s Tank, how’s Tank?’ Man, HE’S FUCKED UP! Ya know? He’s fucked up, and he ain’t never gonna be alright. SHIT!”

  I hung my head as the reality of it sunk into me, and I remembered when they killed Sy. The horror of it rippled through my insides, but this was family for Monteff. This was different. I couldn’t even conceive of someone in my family getting shot.

  “Hey, Joe, man. But thanks, man. Thanks for listening, bro.”

  “Hey, man, you could talk as long as you want, bro,” I said. “I’m here for ya.”

  “But don’t be tellin’ nobody I was cryin’, man. I ain’t no bitch.”

  “Man, I won’t tell nobody, man. You don’t got to worry about that.”

  Ryan and Angel walked up the street. “What up, peeps?” Ryan called out.

  “Man, I don’t want these guys to see me like this,” Monteff said. He turned away from them and pulled his hood down lower.

  “Man,” I said, then took a deep breath. “Hold up.” I walked over to Ryan and Angel.

  “Man, you hear what happened?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, man,” I answered.

  “Ah, what’s up, Monteff?” Ryan said.

  “Aye, aye, aye. Look, man. He’s real, uh, worked up, man. He just wants to, you know, he don’t want to talk about nothin’,” I said quietly.

  “Ah, man, it’s cool. We won’t say nothin’,” Angel whispered.

  “Man. He don’t, you know, want youse to go over there right now.” I looked at them in the eyes.

  “Ah, man. OK,” Ryan said. “But we got some custies coming through.”

  “Shit,” I said, scratching my chin. “Well, maybe we’ll just go for a walk then.”

  I walked back to Monteff.

  “Aye, Monteff. You wanna step, man?”

  We walked in silence. These sudden, periodic fits of tears erupted in him. Grief shook his whole body. I remembered Sy. I remembered how it was when those PG3s snatched the life from his lungs. I wondered how many they’d killed, and when it would all end.

  We walked the neighborhood as dark
gloom encompassed the small patches of orange light that emanated from the streetlights leering above. It swallowed the light whole, like a ravenous beast. We walked to Bryn Mawr, cut over by the Rose Hill Cemetery, and climbed through a breach in the fence near the Metra Rail lines. Then, we ascended the heavy, blueish-purple stones and walked south a little ways along the tracks. The three sets of iron lines stretched and grew closer together until they evaporated at the gray horizon. To the west, square plots of Metra yards sat before the factories and lumber yards, and to the East, the parish sat quietly. The red-bricked buildings had the pitched roofs of the two-flats plopped between them, and the St. Greg’s steeple speared up through the yellowed trees like a gray stone beacon of hope.

  I found myself praying for the first time in a long while. I prayed for Tank. Prayed for an enemy—my fiercest of enemies over the past year. Monteff stopped, too. He bowed his head and clasped his hands with his fingers clamped and splicing each other. I prayed for Monteff, and Tank’s Ma, and everybody. I even prayed for José and his little sister. The hazy night sky gleamed purple above, and there was the slightest sprinkle of stars hanging overhead that broke through the smog like tiny pin pricks of white light.

  I closed my eyes and prayed again for José. Suddenly, I realized his body was probably just across Bryn Mawr—right there over the Rose Hill Cemetery walls that stood 30 feet high like concrete prison walls. His body buried six feet deep and rotting in his best suit—a suit his family probably got from a thrift shop or handed down through generations. Lost in this daydream, I saw him there in the darkness behind my eyelids—the bruises and lacerations remained along his emaciated face. I’m sorry for what happened to him, may he rest in peace. Then, his eyes opened and stared at me blank and awake and startled.

  I opened my eyes. Monteff stood before me. The orange light from the streetlamps below struck his face even with the large hood pulled low. His swollen lips and nose had crusted dry.

  “Let’s step, man,” he said, cold and resolved.

  I couldn’t have known then what he’d resolved himself to do, and even if I had, I couldn’t have helped him, saved him. There are some actions that are made well before they’re actually carried out. Sometimes, you’re as much a passenger as a driver, and I could see the momentum building in him heavy and leaden. All there was to do was stand by and watch.

  The next day, he walked into school with a 4-inch buck knife—one of the ones we’d been trading around and playing with for years. The gnarly, bowed oak handle with the brass ends and the fold-out blade with that cut-in at the tip like a flame. Monteff encountered six PG3 Cobras in the bustling halls between first and second period. He let ’em pass, then turned and started with the ones trailing in back. He stabbed each in the face, throat, or both. Monteff got one bad enough that they rushed him into emergency surgery at Weiss Memorial and had to bring him back from the other side. The rest of ’em just scarred for life. It took Senn’s entire in-house police department to pry the buck knife from his hand. He didn’t cry, didn’t make a peep. The guys who seen him in first period said he wouldn’t even look at ’em, let alone talk to ’em. Guess he was done talking. We thought we’d see him again on the block when he turned 18, but he hung himself a few months later with a white towel at the Audy Home over on Western and Roosevelt.

  I remember watching him walk away that night—I’d stopped at my corner at Hermitage for some reason. His black hood up, his narrow frame. The hoodie too big for his slinking blue jeans as he headed north past Edgewater Ave. He walked slowly but with so much inertia. Then, his form melded into the shadows and that was it. The last time I saw him.

  •

  WITH THE SHIT AS HOT AS IT WAS, we knew we needed a piece. Ryan asked Mickey, and he said no—said we’d end up shooting our fucking dicks off by accident. This may have seemed like a ridiculous joke, but that exact thing actually happened in the bathroom at Senn a few years before. A guy ran up to a urinal in a hurry trying to unzip and ‘POP!’ The revolver went off and so did his prick. I asked Rich if he still had the .25. I had $200 bucks saved up, and he threw in a box of rounds he had laying around. The gun was even smaller than I’d remembered it—now it fit perfectly into my 14-year-old hand. The chalk-white grip was scratched and worn smooth, and the glossy, nickel-plated barrel had a small notch at the tip for aiming, but I figured there wouldn’t be much aiming—this was close-range shit, but who knows.

  I lifted up my hoodie and slipped the barrel into the front waistband of my crisp, beige Dickies. I glanced at myself in the mirror in my closet. My hair spliced back tight to my scalp and sprayed stiff. The light-brown freckles on my cheeks. I checked to see how visible the bulge was—nothing, especially if I put my hands in my hoodie’s pockets. I stepped out of my bedroom and started down the stairs slowly, afraid it’d come loose and rattle down my pant leg. Then suddenly, I remembered the guy who’d shot his dick off.

  “Joseph, I need you to take the garbage out…” Ma’s voice rose from the kitchen.

  I froze and wanted to run back upstairs and switch the gun to my back waistband, or just hide the fucking thing under my mattress.

  “I gotta go Ma,” I said as I opened the front door. “I’ll do it when I get home.”

  Once outside, I took a deep breath of the dry, cool fall air. The gun seemed heavy and loose, and I put my hand inside my muffer pocket and pressed it against my waist. I stepped down the porch stairs slowly.

  “Hey, Joey…”

  I looked up and saw Mrs. Thompson. She sat on her porch with a button-down gray sweater over her house dress. She smiled down at me as she pulled on her cigarette.

  I waved back with my free hand, giddy with the rush of my deception. I walked on down the sidewalk towards the sills. The pistol now felt snug in my waistband, so I took my hands out of my pockets. The muscles of my cheeks froze into a wide grin. I saw Ryan and Angel down at the sills, lounging and bullshitting. I couldn’t wait to show ’em. The excitement had my heart pattering in my throat.

  An Ashland bus creaked to a halt at a red light, and an un-marked, dark-blue Caprice squad car coasted through it. Two plain-clothed white cops sat in front in ball caps and black shirts over their bulletproof vests. The one in the passenger seat must have felt my gaze ’cause he turned and locked eyes on me. His face smiled as he shook his head ’no’ like he’d heard something funny. Then, they were past the intersection and gone—not even enough time for me to get scared.

  I stepped up to Ryan and Angel. We shook, and Angel sat back in his sill disinterested and puffing a Winston. Ryan eyed me suspiciously and bare his crooked teeth.

  “What’s up with you, fucker?” Ryan said, tilting his head to the side.

  A warm swell rushed up my neck and face. I smiled so hard it almost hurt.

  “Whatcha mean?” I said and shrugged.

  “Well, you got that retarded, shit-eating grin smeared all over your face for one thing,” Angel said, looking down towards Ashland as some cars swept past.

  “Better watch how you talk to me, motherfucker, or I’ll pop your ass,” I said, then I lifted my hoodie at the waist and gripped the white handle.

  Angel shot up from his concrete ledge, stupefied. His mouth hung open in a long, quivering “O.”

  “Oh, shit!” Ryan’s said with his eyes bugging out. “Is dat real!” We huddled together. Our shoulders created a triangle that blocked any view from the street.

  “It’s Rich’s .25,” I said, holding it in my open palm. We all leered down at it. The silhouettes of our heads shadowed it from the streetlights and made the chalk-white grip look gray.

  “Let me see dat shit!” Ryan said and snatched it from my palm.

  “You got any bullets?” Angel asked.

  I started to say ’yeah, it’s loaded’ as a sudden flash ignited in the shade created by our bowed heads. It was followed by a hard ‘POP!’ and a searing burn in my abdomen. Then, the pistol clatter
ed to the sidewalk. It spun flat on its side to a rattling halt and pointed right between Angel’s black Pumas with the fat white laces. A small tuft of smoke floated up from the fabric of my muffler pocket, and I slipped my hand under and froze in scorching pain. I brought my fingertips up—no blood. Angel bent down and scooped up the gun, then jogged towards our arterial alley.

  “Come on!” he shouted to us over his shoulder. He stuffed the gun in his coat pocket, and his shiny ponytail whipped around as he went. Ryan and I chased after him.

  We hid in my garage. Angel and I panted as we slouched on the couch. Ryan scowled on a low wooden stool across the room. I pulled up my hoodie and looked down at the light-red smudge—it was the size of a thumb print, just to the side and below my belly button. It slowly fogged white. The thin film atop it wrinkled, and the cool garage air soothed the burn. I fingered through the folds of my hoodie, and sure enough, two pinky diameter-sized holes in the fabric. I looked over at Ryan.

  “You shot me, motherfucker,” I said.

  “I didn’t even touch THE FUCKING TRIGGER!” he shot back, scowling. His face glowed red.

  I had this rumble in my chest that grew, then erupted as laughter—heavy laughter. Angel took the .25 out and placed it on the mangled little table in front of us, between the screwdrivers and wrenches, then he sat back and stared at it. He turned to me with his eyes wide-open and his lips sealed shut, then his long teeth emerged between them. He cracked up with me, and I really let loose then. I bent over and brushed my hoodie against the burn and instantly squealed. Then, I shot back to my reclined posture and let the burn air out.

  “You shot me, motherfucker!” I shouted. Ryan still stared out into the darkness in the corner. His forehead folded up on itself, and his eyes turned into squinting black slits.

  “What the fuck you laughing about!?” he yelled.

  “You shot me, Ry Ry… You shot me!” I joked.

  “No, I didn’t!” he barked and flashed his eyes to mine—they were puffy, wet, and glossy, barely holding it back. Then, his forehead unfolded. His grimace morphed into a chubby grin, and his torso started to rock on the small, creaky stool.