The Old Neighborhood

by Bill Hillmann

“You guys got any loot laying around?” I asked as I walked up.

  “Yeah… Mickey’s already over there bailing ’em out.” He sat back down with a defeated exhale. “Well, we hope anyways.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know if they’re gonna let him go,” he said. “He got caught with some weight all bagged up. It’s distribution.”

  “Ah, fuck. They got it?” I sighed as the shock set in. How much weight? What’s the law for a minor?

  “You fuckin’ kids,” he said in disgust. “I don’t know what Mickey was thinking puttin’ youse three to work.”

  “We were just packing up shop, and the cops rolled up.” I raised my shoulders.

  “You think they was watching you or something?” He shot me a cold look.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged.

  “Were they watching you?!” he said, leering over me.

  “We ain’t had any trouble ’til this,” I said, raising my hands, palms up.

  “Fuckin’ Mickey! Puttin’ kids out there like that.” He looked out into the street. “That fuckin’ asshole! Your old man woulda never put up wit’ shit like this!”

  “What?” I said, mystified.

  “When your dad started this shit, he never woulda even considered putting kids out there like that. Back then, kids got to be kids. The older guys dealt with the serious shit.”

  I tried to swallow what Wacker’d said. Could it be true? My old man started the TJOs? It couldn’t be, but he was so pissed, I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t believe him. Maybe that shot to the head made him nuts—who knows? We sat and waited in silence for an hour or so. I was sick to my stomach, and I gagged a few times but didn’t throw up.

  “You look like hell, kid. Go home,” he said, flicking a half-smoked cigarette. “I’m tired of lookin’ at ya.”

  I stood up and paused.

  “Go on. Everything’s gonna be alright. It’s a first offense. They’ll let him go, we’ll get him a lawyer, and he’ll be fine.” He shook his head and looked down.

  “You living here now?” I said as I started down the stairs.

  “Naw, I got my own place down on Granville with the niggers, working nights at the college. I just came by when Mickey called. My only night off, and I got to deal with this shit.”

  “What’d’they got you doing?” I asked.

  “Janitor.”

  “They make good money, right?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Yeah, lucky me. It’s this parole shit. It’s only six months though.”

  “Yeah?” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now get outta here, kid.”

  “Alright, Wacker.” I stepped off the stairs, and he got up and walked inside the house in silence.

  I walked towards home slowly. I was mad and sick, and my heart filled with hatred for the neighborhood. Every time we get past one thing, another thing that’s even worse pops up. When’s this shit ever gonna just let us be?

  •

  I FOUND MYSELF WALKING towards Hyacinth’s house. It was just past midnight, and a near perfect silence hung on Hermitage. All the parked cars were bunched up on each other like dead-locked traffic. An alley cat scampered around the corner of the hospital parking garage. Deep down, I didn’t want to bother her, wake her out of the peace of sleep. I could see her in my mind as I walked—her angelic, golden-brown face; those large eyes softly shut, flickering, dreaming. I thought about her future and what happens to pretty girls on the honor roll. She’d be going away to college. She’d end up a doctor or a lawyer, drive to work in a Beemer or an Audi, have a family, be happy and good. Then, I thought of where punk-ass drug dealers end up. I figured I was headed to jail or maybe dead. If I was lucky, I’d end up swinging a hammer like my old man my whole life. Maybe I could go to college, I don’t know. I was getting an A in physics, but with a 1.8 GPA, I wasn’t exactly college material. Ah, hell, I sighed. My chin tucked into my chest as I stepped over the cracked pavement with tiny little weeds wilted between the cracks. I ain’t on shit—can’t even get V’d into a gang I’ve been riding with for years, and now I don’t even know if I want it.

  I walked up the sidewalk to her window, pulled myself up, and tapped on it with my fingertips. She suddenly shot up straight on her bed, turned, and hurriedly pulled the window open. Her scared eyes searched mine as her chest heaved under her nightgown.

  “I had a dream about you. I was dreaming that you were drowning out on the lake, and it was the dead of winter, and there was ice, and there was… I, I just couldn’t get to you, and you slipped below the ice in-between….” She threw her arms around my shoulders and buried her face into my chest.

  “It’s alright, baby,” I said, kissing her on her forehead as she nestled her face into my neck.

  After a few moments, she looked up.

  “What’s up? What’s going on? Why are you here?” She looked up, lip trembling.

  “It’s just…” I wished I hadn’t come. “It’s Ryan. He got arrested.”

  “He got arrested? For what? Selling weed?” she replied, shocked. And for some reason, I couldn’t lie to her then. I couldn’t lie to her anymore.

  “Naw, he was selling something else.”

  “What?”

  “Heroin….” My eyes burned.

  “Oh, my God….” She recoiled away from me with her mouth gaping open. “You, you weren’t part of that?”

  I looked away and tried to shake the guilt from my face. My throat ached.

  “Your brother, Joey… How could you get involved in that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You got to get away from it,” she said as tears welled in her eyes.

  “I know…,” I said, finally able to look her in the eyes.

  She started to cry in heavy, loud sobs, and I reached out and stroked her hair. She just kept crying. Her eyes shifted from horrified to hopeless, and I could see all I’d been doing to her—how I’d been hurting her, how I was so fucking bad for her, like a poison. She was the sweetest person I’d ever known. She loved me so much. She was my first love, and this was what I did to her? This is all I’d been doing to her for months—making her hurt, making her cry.

  I finally calmed her down enough so that I could go. We kissed one more time. I whispered I love you over and over in her face and ears. Her lips were hot and damp, but this time for another reason—the wrong reason. She shut her window, and I walked home.

  •

  I WASN’T WORRIED that the cops had called or came by. I knew better that Ryan wouldn’t talk, but then I thought, What if O’Riley walked up and just threw it all on the old man’s lap? My shit’d already be out on the lawn by now, so that’d be the answer. It wasn’t. I went in and got into bed wondering what it’d be like to face a real charge—a felony—shit that they were gonna slap years on you for. Then, I thought of Lil Pat. Thought of how he’d gotten older in there, how he’d grown up in there, really, and how hard that must be to have to fight, cut, and kill just to survive day-to-day. That’s not the life that I wanted. That’s not what I wanted to be. I saw Lil Pat years from then, as a carpenter, as a father, owning some house way far away from here. Tears welled up and burned my eyes because I didn’t know if I’d ever see my big brother again, and all for this. All for nothing.

  It took a long while, but I slept and dreamt that I was stepping through a thick, dark-green jungle. No path, only a tangle of vines and thick bamboo stalks that rose up toward the spliced blue sky. Steam rose from the black ground. I had to reach my legs up towards my shoulders, then stretch my feet way up over the entwined green before me to make any forward progress. Birds flicked up at the tips of the bamboo, and tall, bustling trees swayed above, drifting like dark-green clouds. There was a slow roar and a light trickle in the distance as flies buzzed and swarmed about my face and ears. I moved towards the roaring trickle of water that would end this t
arring oppression that was twisting tightly around me. I fought and struggled for a long, long time, until the roar was all around me. Still, no break in the slimy vines and foggy steam. Then, I reached out and split the bamboo as if it were a drape drawn closed before me. The world opened, and a light-blue river rushed and swirled past. On the far bank there was a stone shore, with a sparse forest and hills beyond. Then, a fire. Three men stooped above a carcass—a chest-high mound of mangy and knotted brown fur. The beast—head in profile with his purple, crusted tongue dangling below his snout. The men worked without words, hacking into the ribs of the beast with short blades. Then, suddenly, the smallest of the men was Ryan. His bare, pale arms slathered with deep-red blood that dripped steadily from his wrists. All three of them were bare-chested and smeared with dark, chunky blood. I knew the other was Mickey and was horrified to see Chief’s emaciated face. He stared at me. The side of his head was peeled open, and black organs pulsed through a gaping wound at his solar plexus. He stood up. Blood dropped from his fingers in heavy globs. He stared at me, long and without recognition or expression, then he burst into laughter, his torso hunching. The black organs swelled from the wound and jostled with each laugh. My chest convulsed with rage at all the disdain he’d shown us three. The disdain he’d shown the world even. When he killed, it was without hatred!

  “What!?!?!” I screamed, but no sound escaped me. Ryan and Mickey busily drew and strung their blades through the carcass, slicing hunks of meat below the pulled-back flaps of hide. ‘What!?!?!’ I screamed, then ran out into the river and found no bottom. The water gushed up, encompassing me. I was drowning. The river was suddenly an incandescent violet with white foamy swirls surging and thrusting me downstream to the deeper roar. I fought to the surface, finding air and water. The roar rose into a rumble so powerful that it shook even the water. I saw a wide, deep canyon with a steam cloud rising up to the heavens at its center. The sun played in it like a golden haze and ignited it into water droplets that fell instantly. I descended, cascading and careening into the dismantling fog below, then I exploded into consciousness and awoke on my back, bouncing atop the mattress. The springs squeezing as if I’d just landed.

  •

  THE NEXT MORNING, I walked over to the house on Bryn Mawr. I didn’t want to have to face Ryan’s Ma, but when I turned the corner, I was shocked to see Ryan sitting on the porch steps. He still had the earring and herringbone necklace, but now he wore a big black hoodie. He scowled against the breeze with his face all dried out and chapped. I hurried up to him, but he didn’t get up—just reached his hand out, and we shook.

  “You alright?” I asked, sitting down next to him on the steps.

  “Fuck,” he said, grinning and looking away. His face was all pink and splotchy like he’d just woken. “Ma kicked me out. Said she wouldn’t go through this again.”

  “Damn.” I sat down.

  “Fuck it. I’ve been paying half the bills anyway. She’s gonna get fucking evicted.”

  “You think so?” I looked in his eyes.

  “Man, I didn’t know,” he replied. We both looked down. “She didn’t care where it was comin’ from as long as it was green. Now, all of a sudden, I’m a criminal.”

  “Damn…”

  “But I’m gonna bring Bear over here. Fuck her,” he sneered.

  “Well, with those other two, I think she’ll be alright,” I said.

  “Yeah, T-Money and dem said they’d keep an eye out for her,” he said sadly.

  “That’s good, man.” I took a pull off my cigarette. “What’d they get ya with?”

  “Only a few bags. I ditched ’em in two spots.” He smiled.

  “Good man,” I said.

  “Yeah, that fuckin’ Sonic can run, man! He chased me three blocks and caught my ass.”

  “On foot?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Hell yeah, on foot! He was talking shit about his football days when they were bringing me in.”

  “They didn’t fuck you up, it don’t look like.”

  “Naw, the fucker was so happy. He was jumping around and shit, celebrating like he scored a fucking touchdown.”

  “Dat asshole,” I laughed. “You didn’t fight or nothing?”

  “Man, I was too tired to fight, man.” He laughed. “Too many of these, man,” he added, holding up his smoke.

  “Hell yeah,” I agreed. Both of us laughed. “How much was bail?”

  “They can’t hold you, I guess, if you’re a minor, so they just set a date.”

  “What’d Mickey say?”

  “He was mad, but you know, he was just happy I didn’t talk.” Ryan flicked his cigarette. “You know how he is.”

  “Yeah.” I leaned back on the steps.

  “He’s closing down the sills though. Said we failed the test.”

  “What?”

  “I told him about Angel. I guess Wacker wants to talk to you.” He shrugged. “You better start looking for a day job.”

  “Ah… You serious? I just talked to him last night.”

  “I guess your brother’s been after him about it, so you’re back to choir boy status.” He smiled, then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He turned his head east down Bryn Mawr. The traffic moved slowly, and the sunset struck everything in a bright orange glow that hung in the air. Tiny specks of dust sifted downward, and Melon Park was all lit up. The children rushed and laughed and squealed. When he turned back to look at me, there was a scowl on his lips. His eyes were all squinted up, and he looked old—old and tired.

  “Your brother wrote me a letter…” he said.

  “He’s been writin’ me a lot, too.”

  “You know, man,” he said, pinching his nostrils. “You shouldn’t be runnin’ around wit’ us… You got… You got more in you than this, man. You could go to college… I don’t mean it like that bullshit ‘Everybody could go to college.’ I mean, you’re smart—smarter than me and Angel and Mickey. You got a “A” in physics. I never got a “A” in anything in my whole life, even when I tried. And I tried before. The only thing I ever been good at is this.”

  “That ain’t true, man.”

  “Fuck dat, Joe. It’s true, and you know it. All I ever wanted to be was a TJO. You got something in you that’s different, and if you keep hanging around here, you gonna waste it, and that’d be some stupid ass shit that I don’t wanta have to fuckin’ watch…”

  Joy overwhelmed me in a warm haze. He was a true friend. I wanted to tell him there was so much more to him than gangbanging. How he should go be a soldier, a Marine. How great nations were built upon the backs of fierce warriors like him. The wires sliced through the joy, and I knew he’d just laugh at me. Then, I thought of Lil Pat writing Ryan those things—I never told Ryan I got an “A” in physics. I realized Lil Pat was asking Ryan to let me go. But I don’t want to let go. It’s all I know. But then again, maybe it’s time to give it a try.

  “Ah, fuck it….” I tossed my smoke down to the sidewalk. “I’m through,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, man.” I looked Ryan in his bright-green eyes. “At least for now.”

  “Ah, that’s good, ya know.” A smile crept over his face. “You’re still down though, right?”

  “Of course I am, motherfucker.” I punched him hard in the arm.

  “Just checking.” He smiled, rubbing his bicep.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said. “I’ll be down forever.”

  “For-ever?” Ryan replied in a mocking, shocked, high-pitch tone as he raised his red eyebrows.

  “Forever,” I assured him. We both laughed and went on talking like neighborhood boys do as the afternoon traffic strode past on Bryn Mawr.

  CHAPTER 30

  COLLIDER

  THEY BUMPED ME UP to honors physics, screwed my whole schedule up. Looking back, I still can’t figure out how I maintained an “A” through all
of that bullshit I was going through. I guess it was my refuge—the sterile concepts, the great expanse I could dissolve into and the chaos of my life would just evaporate.

  One day after class, Dydecky pulled Scott and I aside after all the kids had left. He shut the old oak door and turned around with his bushy eyebrows trembling in a straight line above his glasses and stark, dark-brown eyes. He waved us to sit on the desks in the front row as he eased down onto his desktop. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “They’re starting a new summer program at Fermi Lab for high school students with exceptional aptitude and interest in the field of particle physics,” he said, splicing his fingers and wrapping them snugly around his partially bent knee.

  “There’re only 20 openings, you stay at the facilities the entire time, and you’re trained to do hands-on work with the accelerator and converse with some of the top physicists in the world. It’s a three-week program starting this June, and I was asked to nominate one student for it. I decided to write a letter petitioning that I be allowed to send two. My finest student,” he nodded towards Scott, who batted his eyelashes bashfully and looked down, “and my student with the most potential.” He looked at me stone sober. His eyebrows percolated. “I just received the letter today; they’ve accepted both of you.”

  “There are no fees involved; you just need to show up June eighth at 3pm,” he continued. “If you don’t have a ride, I can drive you. These forms need to be signed by both of your parents and brought back as soon as you can, and I mean tomorrow.” He pulled two thick brochures from his cluttered desk and briskly flung them out into our waiting hands.

  “You’re going to be there with some of the finest students in the state of Illinois. Joe, I know you’re struggling with some of the math, but I wouldn’t have nominated you if I wasn’t sure you could handle it, and if I wasn’t sure you had something to offer to the program. Scott, maybe you can help him a little bringing him up to speed.”

  “Sure,” he replied.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Now, this is a great opportunity. I wish I’d had an opportunity like it when I was your age.” He rubbed his thin bottom lip with his index finger. “But at the same time, I want you to know that you’ve both earned this, and I’m proud to be sending the both of you.” His brow bent and curved slightly as a stern grin crept on his pale lips. “Any questions?” He slipped his glasses off and cleared a smudge with a silk handkerchief he’d drawn from his pants pocket.