Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 95

by Caroline M. Yoachim

  The driver didn’t look right either. DeShawn came down with the crew and asked Trayvon, “Who that, T? Ops?”

  “Naw, looks like some college nigga. Fat guy, glasses, faggoty suit.”

  The black Audi hit the bonfire, which had been built of cop cars, building lumber and gasoline, going at least eighty-five. They could hear the driver screaming from inside the car.

  “Hold back, son,” said DeShawn. “That shit gawn blow.” DeShawn began walking backwards, hands above his eyes, and the crew mimicked. Then the gas tank on the Audi exploded, sending shrapnel into the holoprojector at the corner and shorting out the ghosts.

  “Should we help him?” said Trayvon.

  “He gone. Let’s check him out before ops show.”

  The driver had smashed his own window and tried to climb out before the explosion. His dreads were still smoldering and the melted portions of his face looked bright pink against blue-black skin. He still had his ID and lanyard around his neck, the insignia of the agency visible from five feet away. “Shit, they gawn try and pin this on us,” said DeShawn. “To the winds.” At that signal, each member of the crew scattered in a different cardinal direction. Trayvon meandered south, swiping a half-burnt piece of paper off the ground. It had an address in the Northwest quadrant. He shoved it in his back jeans pocket.

  By the time five black cars came west up Pennsylvania five minutes later, Trayvon, DeShawn and the other six members of the crew were all out of sight. Ten necks as thick as their heads, mostly white but two black dudes and a Latin among them: These were ops. Different crews, with older men or harder kids, would be sending down sniper fire any minute, but these guys were Kevlared head to toe.

  Trayvon looked back at the scene from the Dumpster where he was hiding. Though the college-looking dude was one of their own, the ops looked neither surprised nor sad. He patted his rear pocket to make sure the paper was still there.

  4. The Kid

  Ordinarily a trip to Dupont Circle would be a simple matter of getting on the Metro, but things hadn’t been ordinary in a long time. The Green Line had started bypassing all Southeast stations ever since the bonfires began, and the fare was well above Trayvon’s hustle. If he had a flat map of the District in his mind he might have been able to calculate that the address was only a two-hour walk away. But the uprising and repression had warped his mental map of the city, transforming the Anacostia River into an impassable singularity. That he felt drawn to the address despite this wise caution was inexplicable through Trayvon’s conscious thought. His path did not follow a straight line, but proceeded faster than a straight line trajectory would have taken him, as he slingshotted his way around obstacles known and observed: checkpoints, cop cars, black cars, vigilante gangs of yuppies in street mufti, and the cameras. For a black kid in an ash-stained white T-shirt, the District was more hazardous than an asteroid belt for the Millennium Falcon.

  So by the time he arrived at the front door of the Gartner-Williams house, four hours had passed since the accident, agency representatives had come and gone, the duck, slightly overdone, had been sitting on the counter getting cold, Brandon’s tears had pooled in a crease of the leather sofa on which he was lying, and Trayvon was starving. No lights were on in the house, and he hesitated before ringing the bell. Hesitated, but the same drive that had brought him this far led his finger to the button. The button activated not only the bell, but also a camera at the top of the doorway. If Trayvon had noticed the lens, he would have fled, but it was too dark on the street for him to suss it out.

  Brandon hesitated before deciding to answer the door: It could, he reasoned, be the agency with more details on the circumstances of Darius’s accident. Despite his decision, the ten-foot walk from the sofa onto which he had collapsed was like swimming through the Mariana Trench: slow and bone-crushing. In that time, Trayvon had multiple opportunities to re-consider, re-re-consider, and re-re-re-consider, and he had just begun to pivot his left foot away from the door when Brandon’s voice creaked, raw, from the intercom. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  The second question confused Trayvon a bit. For four hours he had undertaken this fool’s errand contrary to his own conscious volition. “I . . . I saw something,” he said, retrieving the scrap of paper and holding it up to where, he now reasoned, the camera must be.

  Brandon couldn’t make out anything on the screen, but assumed it had something to do with Darius. His hope and trust opened the door before his fear could countermand it. “Come in. What did you see?”

  “An accident. A black man in a black car. I found this.” Trayvon stepped across the threshold and handed the paper to the white man with red eyes. Brandon recognized it as a scrap of a receipt from Darius’ auto repair shop. “Did he live here?”

  “Yes, he did. Please, come inside.” Ordinarily, Brandon enjoyed being a host above all else. A twelve-year-old kid from the wrong side of town would not usually be on the guest list, but his instinctual hospitality overrode his mistrust and distracted him, momentarily, from his grief.

  The smell of the duck reminded Trayvon of his hunger. He hadn’t eaten anything since his sugar-cereal breakfast. “Smells good in here.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  The thought crossed his mind that this white man could be a government agent, or a child molester, but his stomach growled in response. Admitting his poverty to this white stranger was out of the question, though, so all he said was, “I can eat.”

  “Come on in. I’ll get you something to eat.”

  Trayvon followed Brandon into the kitchen. When they reached the counter, Brandon noticed that he hadn’t turned off the tablet yet. He removed it from the dock and, with the same fluidity of motion with which he had started his kitchen prep earlier in the evening, hurled it against the exposed brick. The sudden violence and the crack of the screen made Trayvon jump back. “Why you do that?”

  “I hate the news,” said Brandon. He gestured at one of the stools opposite his work area. “Sit down. I’ll cut you some duck. Do you want the leg or the breast?”

  “I never had duck. Is it like chicken?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “I’ll try the leg.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to cook any vegetables. I can make you a salad.”

  “Tha’s’a’ight. I’ll just try the duck.” Trayvon wasn’t sure if he’d ever eaten a salad, and he didn’t want to have his first here. The white man and the duck were strange enough.

  Brandon put a plate in front of him, then a fork and knife, and placed the duck leg on his plate. “What do you want to drink?”

  “You got Kool-Aid?” Brandon shook his head, so Trayvon answered, “I’ll just have some water.”

  “Sparkling or still?” Trayvon looked at him like he had grown a second head, so Brandon just ran an empty glass under the tap.

  “The man in the car, what was he to you?”

  Brandon set the glass in front of the kid and waited for him to look up into his eyes before answering. “He’s my husband.”

  “You gay?” Trayvon, remembering his grandmother’s lessons about being polite when folks offered their hospitality, had tried to suppress the hint of disgust in his voice, but he had failed.

  “Yes, we’re gay. Were gay. I am gay. Darius was my husband.” This was Brandon’s first attempt at applying past tense to Darius, and it ended in renewed tears. “Why did you come here?”

  “I saw the accident, but it didn’t look like no accident.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I live there.” Trayvon was not about to mention anything about his role in the construction and maintenance of the bonfires, comparatively minimal as it was, to this gay white dude. His husband had been with the agency, and for all Trayvon knew, so was this guy. Though he figured that if they worked at the same place they would have both been in the same car, but that didn’t mean this guy wasn’t still government. Government was all over the place.

  “What did
you mean, it didn’t look like an accident?”

  “Like, he was trying to turn the car, trying to steer the wheel, I saw him, and I’m sure he was trying to slow down, too. But the car kept going straight, and faster. Like someone had set it up that way.”

  “He wouldn’t have died if your friends hadn’t set up the bonfires.”

  “I don’t know nothing about no bonfire,” lied Trayvon. “And nobody I know, knows how to make a car do that,” he said, returning to the truth. “I just came here ‘cause I figured, if he had peoples, they might want to know what I seen.”

  Brandon sat silently, shaking his head every minute or so as a new thought occurred to him. After the first headshake, Trayvon started eating the duck. After the second, Brandon pulled a piece of crispy skin off the carcass, folded it, put it in his mouth, and started chewing, his only bite since the agency had informed him of the “accident.”

  After several minutes of silence, Trayvon had finished the duck leg. “Thanks,” he said. “That was some good shit. I’m’a go home.”

  “It’s well after curfew, kid. The cops’ll arrest you. You can stay here.”

  “Where?”

  “You can have the bed. I’ll stay out here, sleep on a couch, if I can sleep at all. I’ve been thinking so much about Darius, I realize, I’ve completely forgotten my manners. We haven’t been properly introduced. What’s your name?”

  Trayvon hesitated, considering whether he wanted to sleep in a bed where two dudes done all kinds of nasty gay shit, or whether he wanted this one to know his name, weighing the unknown risks of each against the known risks of being a twelve-year-old black kid out after curfew. “Trayvon,” he said.

  “Are you named after . . . ?”

  “Yeah. I was born the year he died. Momma liked the name.”

  “Hi, Trayvon. I’m Brandon,” said Brandon, extending his hand. Trayvon shook. “It’s not safe for you to go back out before the morning. Please, rest here.”

  Trayvon’s legs and feet reminded him of the fatigue of his six-mile walk. “A’ight.” Brandon pointed the way to the bedroom. Once Trayvon found the bed, he fell face first into it and went directly to sleep, in t-shirt and jeans, smearing soot onto the duvet.

  5. The Wake

  It was ten o’clock in the morning, and Camilo’s lover Travis was still asleep, completely naked, and lying on top of the comforter. Camilo had been awake for two hours, and in that time had showered, made coffee, cooked breakfast, eaten breakfast, gotten dressed, and dug around in his stash for a bottle of pisco he could bring to Brandon and Darius’ house—scratch that, now it was just Brandon’s, he had to remember—as a means of comfort. He had spent the last five minutes watching the sweat pool in the curve of Travis’s lower back and his shoulders rise and fall with each breath. Now his patience was at an end. He considered rimming the young man, as a kind way to wake him, but quickly ruled it out. For no reason he could discern, he felt as though Travis’s contretemps with Darius must have had something to do with yesterday’s accident. He was angry, and it wasn’t the kind of anger that he could express through fucking. Holding the pisco bottle by its neck, he prodded Travis in the shoulder with the bottom.

  “Wake up, already! Wake up! Levantate!”

  “What the hell, C? It’s Saturday.”

  “I told Brandon we’d be there in the morning. The morning’s almost finished.”

  “I didn’t like him.”

  “Who? Brandon?”

  “Naw, Brandon’s alright.”

  “Darius isn’t even cold in the ground, and you’re talking shit about him? He was my friend. We’re going to help Brandon out.”

  Travis pulled on last night’s clothes, and they made the twenty minute walk down to Brandon’s in silence.

  The doorbell woke Trayvon. Brandon, having hardly slept, was in the kitchen brewing more coffee. When he opened the door, Camilo spoke first. “How you holding up, Bran?”

  “Not so good, Camilo. It’s good to have friends around.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” offered Travis.

  “Thank you . . . . What was your name again?”

  “Travis.”

  “Thank you, Travis. My mind’s just been . . . ”

  “Of course, Brandon,” said Camilo. “Let’s go inside. Is anyone else here yet?”

  “No, nobody at all. Bobby and Eileen are coming soon, and Susan, too, but Cassie has to work today.” As they traversed the foyer, Trayvon entered the open kitchen.

  “Is that nobody?” asked Travis.

  “Oh, my god, I forgot,” muttered Brandon. Then he called, “Trayvon, let me introduce you to my friends.” Trayvon approached hesitantly. “This is Camilo, and this is . . . ”

  “Travis,” said Travis, who remained aloof. Camilo offered his hand not in a shake, but as if to try and draw the boy’s hand up for a kiss, an offer not taken by Trayvon.

  “Trayvon saw the accident.”

  “Ay!” gasped Camilo.

  “So he’s one of the rioters, then?” said Travis.

  “I think I should be going,” said Trayvon, assuming the most proper, schoolroom tone of voice he could recall. “Thank you for letting me stay here, mister.”

  “Brandon,” insisted Brandon.

  “Thank you, Mister Brandon.”

  “No, please, stay. My friends are coming over for brunch, and I want you to tell them what you told me last night, about Darius.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Trayvon. My friends know powerful people who should know the truth. We can keep you safe.”

  “Have you ever had a pisco sour, son?” asked Camilo, brandishing the bottle.

  “He’s way too young, Camilo. Twelve.”

  Camilo looked down at his shoes, reassuring himself that the boy looked mature for his age, then offered: “I’ll make you one, Bran.”

  “Too early, Camilo. But let’s go in, and you can be a dear and put a splash into my coffee.”

  6. The Bridge

  The surveillance cameras on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge across the Anacostia River were knocked out by a power outage just after six p.m. on Saturday. The cause of the outage did not need to be investigated, since everyone whose responsibility it would be to investigate it was already disposed to attribute it to a nearby bonfire.

  When the body of Trayvon Allen was discovered the following day in Fort Hunt, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, anyone who was in a position to investigate his cause of death saw plainly that it was due to a fall from a great height. If he was taking a circuitous route from the Dupont Circle area to his home in Congress Heights, he might very well have been crossing the Douglass bridge during the time when its surveillance cameras were out.

  No bullets were recovered from his body. We repeat: No bullets were recovered from his body. Anyone who says otherwise is engaging in irresponsible speculation.

  About the Author

  Joseph Tomaras now lives in a small town in southern Maine, following sojourns of varying length in New York City, Washington DC, Durham, Nashville, Urbana-Champaign, Binghamton, Albany, Great Barrington, Lake Placid, the indistinguishable suburban expanses of Palm Beach County (Florida), Athens (Greece) and Los Angeles. His fiction has appeared in The Big Click and FLAPPERHOUSE, with other pieces soon to appear in Phantasm Japan (Haikasoru) and M (Big Pulp). His opinions on the precise shape and trajectory of our present handbasket can be found at skinseller.blogspot.com, and he masochistically encourages strangers to yell at him on Twitter (@epateur).

  The Saint of the Sidewalks

  Kat Howard

  Joan wrote her prayer with a half-used tube of Chanel Vamp that she had found discarded at the 34th St. subway stop. It glided across the cardboard—the flip side of a Stoli box, torn and bent—and left her words in a glossy slick the color of dried blood: “I need a miracle.”

  You were supposed to be specific when asking the Saint of the Sidewalks for an int
ervention, but everything in her life was such a fucking disaster, Joan didn’t know where to start. So, she asked for a miracle, non-specific variety.

  She set her cardboard on the sidewalk, prayer-side up. Then lit the required cigarette—stolen out of the pack of some guy who had been hitting on her at a bar—with the almost empty lighter she had fished out of the trash. You couldn’t use anything new, anything you had previously owned, in your prayer. That was the way the devotion worked: found objects. Discards. Detritus made holy by the power of the saint.

  Joan took a drag off the cigarette, then coughed. She hadn’t smoked since her senior year of high school, and she’d mostly forgotten how. Thankfully, she didn’t have to actually smoke the thing. Cigarette burning, she walked three times around her prayer, then dropped the butt to the sidewalk, and ground it out beneath her shoe.

  Then she waited to see if her prayer would be answered.

  Other people waited too, scattered along the sidewalk where the saint’s first miracle occurred, with their altars of refuse and found objects, prayers graffitied on walls, or spelled out with the noodles from last night’s lo mein.

  The rising sunlight arrowed between the buildings, and began to make its progress down sidewalks lined with prayers. This was how it worked: if the sun covered your prayer, illuminating it, the saint had heard you. There was no guarantee of an answer, but at least you would know you had been heard. For some people, that was enough.

  If your prayer caught fire, if holy smoke curled up from its surface as the sun shone down on it, that was a sure sign you had been blessed. Heard and answered, and your intention would be granted. A miracle. If she just had a miracle, things would be better.

  Joan didn’t need to watch to follow the progression of the sun. Cries of disappointment and frustration were common. Gasps of joy and gratitude much rarer.

  Everyone had theories about how the saint chose to grant prayers. Some said it was whether she liked the altar, or the things you used to make your prayer. Others said she could feel the need in your heart, and mend your broken life that way. Joan hoped it was the latter, since it wasn’t like her hasty scrawl and filthy cardboard was that impressive. Certainly not compared to what was next to her—a salvaged player piano, painted with neon daisies, tinkling through a double time version of “Music Box Dancer.” Though really, Joan hoped the saint had better taste than to pick that one.