by Marcus Burke
Then I heard an eruption of gunshots, and for some reason I didn’t have to run back onto Decker Street to see, to know Reggie had held his ground and shot it out with the cops. It felt so simple, so easy, finger-snap fast, that that bullet could have exploded out of Reggie’s pistol and a few seconds later everyone was running back onto Decker Street to see Reggie’s crime scene.
I stayed where I was. I’d seen him do enough.
Nina sat beside me on the curb bawling as my father pulled up to the house, drunk himself, and staggered over to us. He saw the vomit all over my shirt, all the flashing lights, and Nina crying. He kept asking us, “What happened?” Nina was so upset she couldn’t even make words and he knelt down beside her and rubbed her shoulder and she slouched over and sobbed into his chest. He hugged her and kept asking me, “What happened?” I ignored him and looked away as the ambulance pulled off with Smoke inside. I could hear that he was still trying to talk to me but something inside of myself just wouldn’t allow me to say a word to him. Some things just get left wrong.
Ma and Mr. Watson walked up to me with an EMT, and Ma told Mr. Watson she had it under control, and him and Aldrich hopped inside the Range Rover and that was the last time I saw Aldrich that summer.
The EMT took off my bandages and walked me over to an ambulance and took me down to the hospital. On the ride over, the EMT told me and Ma that whoever tried to patch up my cut had used masking tape to keep the gauze pads in place. I got stitched up and rejoined Beezy, my mother, Miss Myra, and Nina in the waiting room of the hospital because Smoke didn’t die immediately. They said he still had a pulse. They also said that even if he came out of the coma, he would’ve been a vegetable at best. We waited.
When the news came, hearing Miss Myra crying shook the tears out of all of us. Beezy hugged her and my mother hugged them and me and Nina hugged her. Death is a permanent parking spot, no coming back from it. Done is done. I don’t understand what it was between them two that made it have to be like that and I’ll never get the chance to ask Reggie why he went to jail but I believed him when he said he was never going back. I don’t know if Reggie or the cops fired first, but at this point it doesn’t matter. It was headline news:
Two dead bodies, and a whole neighborhood’s worth of traumatized children after a rare shooting in Milton leads police to use lethal force on the gunman. No obvious motives.
The pigs sniffed around the block for a few days, questioning anybody who would talk as they tried to piece some kind of story together. News camera crews hovered the block for the next couple days too and the suntan ladies were all over it, telling any camera that would listen that “this is a good neighborhood” and “Milton’s just not that kind of town” and how they knew “those boys on the corner were up to no good,” carrying on all dramatic for the cameras. Anybody that really knew anything about it stayed low and wasn’t talking about it for damn sure. The next day I called Aldrich and he answered his house phone and told me he wasn’t allowed to hang out or talk to me anymore. He told me not to worry, his father didn’t know he had been late for Bible study, so he just let him believe what he did and that I’d never made it to the barbershop and left it at that. It’s all I really wanted to know anyway.
Nina was so broken up about Smoke she just stayed in bed all day crying and listening to Mary J. Blige and Aaliyah. Between consoling her and going back and forth to Miss Myra’s house, Ma was so busy she hadn’t really gotten a chance to properly press me about what really happened that night. Me and Beezy agreed that our story was that we’d got into a fight but that Smoke and Reggie’s issues were all theirs and that’s all we knew about it. After the proper authorities arrived and cleaned up the crime scene, people came and put down teddy bears and baskets of flowers in the spot where Reggie killed Smoke and in the spot where the cops killed Reggie. I did my best to stay out of the way. Word around the block was that the cops had been calling people in for questioning, and it took a few days but I knew they’d get around to wanting to talk to me. They were calling everybody down to the station like there was anything left to solve. What and why it happened and the motives matter very little at this point. Both of them are dead, there’s no justice to be had. When the police came to the house asking for me they rang Nana and Papa Tanks’s doorbell instead of ours. They asked Papa Tanks if I was home and he told them that I wasn’t even though I was. He was so angry he didn’t even summon me himself, he told Nana Tanks and she called downstairs and told me to come up to her room.
When I walked into her room she was sitting in her comfy chair, wiping tears from her face and shaking her head. I sat down and she looked me in the eyes.
“Your grandfather tells me police just come a’yawd, saying dem have some questions to chat wit’ you.” She rubbed her hands together like she was cold and sat up in her chair and gave me a razor-sharp glare. “What type of devilment you mix up in to make police wan’ chat you?”
She blew her nose and I felt a lump swelling in my throat as I watched her cry. I didn’t know what to say to her and when I tried to speak she waved a hand in the air halting me, “Your grandfather tells me him seen you run wit’ the two boys who just get killed shooting guns … Look on the big bandage on your head and now police looking for you.”
I looked at the floor and didn’t answer.
“I thought you was a nice boy, Andre.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, “Nana loves you, but go ’way. Come out of me room, me cy-an’t look ’pun you right now.”
I didn’t argue, I just said, “Sorry,” and left. By the time I got back downstairs Ma was waiting for me in the kitchen, and she too had spoken with Papa Tanks. We wasted no time getting in the car to ride over to the station. I knew it had to do with Smoke and Reggie, but I didn’t know what exactly they wanted to know. I’d thought about that night inside and out and there wasn’t anybody other than Jasmine that could say I was with Reggie that night, and I knew she wasn’t going to tell the cops anything productive if they ever caught up with her. I had my story straight, I missed Bible study and rode the train all night until I came home and everything went down and other than that I don’t know nothing ’bout nothing.
Ma was so pissed off she didn’t say a word to me as we drove down to the police station. The cops asked me if I knew anything about the Smoke and Reggie stuff and I told them I didn’t. They asked how I cut my head and I told them I was wrestling with a friend. I generally played dumb and I could tell they knew that I knew a lot more than I was saying, but without anything to charge, or a case pending, they eventually had to let me go.
Ma waited until we pulled up to the house and parked the car out front to address me, she grabbed my shoulder and said, “I’ve been down this road with your father. Let this be the last time I ever drive you home from a police station. You understand me? You’re supposed to be a cut above the rest, now act like it.”
She rolled her eyes at me, got out of the car, and slammed the door behind her. I followed her into the house and she went into her room and I was looking forward to just having some alone time by myself until I opened my bedroom door and found Papa Tanks sitting in my room on my bed. At first I jumped back, I wasn’t expecting him to be there, and when I saw the anger and disappointment coiled up in his face I wanted to run away, but I knew better. He stood up and I took a few steps into the room but stayed back in case he tried to hit me. He took one giant step at me across the room and I jumped on my bed and then he stood in front of me and said, “I dash away everything me know and love to come a’foreign to America and I worked hard, every day, until I retired, so me family could have a better chance, not so me grandson could run wit’ the vagabonds and turn a’derelict himself. Now I soon dead and it cy-an’t work so, you mus’ turn this aroun’. I see you running wit’ the corner boys dem even if you nah’ do enough for the police dem to keep you. You head all bust up, I know somehow you mix up in it?”
He paused. I looked down and away and didn’t say anything.
“Tell me you had nothing to do wit’ it.”
I shook my head at the floor and said, “I didn’t.”
He chuckled and said, “Just ’cause you deny it don’t mek it less true. Show me your company and I’ll tell you who you are, remember, you can shake a man hand but ya cy-an’t shake him heart. Even if a hog hide unda sheep wool, him grunt always betray him. Champion, you mus’ turn this around.” And as quick as he appeared he turned around and walked out of my room and closed the door behind him and I stretched out on my bed and closed my eyes.
At the end of a fall, if there is nothing else there is relief. Even in their absence, Reggie and Smoke sent the entire town into a frenzy. When death comes around it puts a certain perspective on things. Maybe I’m sick in the head or something but I still have that gray V-neck from the night it all went down. I don’t know why I still have it, I just do.
It felt like the whole town came out to Smoke’s funeral, and I doubt they cared about him as much as people simply despised how he died and what happened that night. Reggie’s funeral wasn’t as big as Smoke’s but a lot of people still came out to pay their final respects. I saw Jasmine during the funeral service but we didn’t speak. The sermon from the pastor focused on how no one moment can truly define a man, and he told everyone not to judge Reggie, because we’re all God’s children. Jasmine held Reece the whole service and I sat with all the Team Seven cats. Reece kept sneaking glances at me over Jasmine’s shoulder but I don’t think he recognized me. Jasmine just ignored my stares.
After the funerals and the camera crews stopped coming around it felt like something else was going to happen, but things have been pretty quiet. The next Friday came around and Ma was sure nobody would show, but it’s like everyone needed somewhere to talk that shit out because I was shocked as I saw the who’s who of the hallways packing into Papa and Nana Tanks’s living room. At first there was a tense vibe in the air, it was the first time everyone had been together since the funerals and things around the way had begun to settle down.
Ma walked into the center of the room looking around and smiling at everyone. As she thumbed through her Bible she said, “Before I fall back and give you all the floor, I’d like to give you a little Scripture to think about before we all talk.” The room was silent as she put on her reading glasses and touched her index finger to the open page of her Bible and cleared her throat, “I’m reading from the sixth chapter in the book of Luke, verses thirty-six through -eight, ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’ ”
She closed her Bible and everyone was still quiet and she continued, “There’s no avoiding the lingering feelings after the tragic loss of two of our own and I’d like to thank God you all found it in your hearts to return to Bible study tonight. I’d like to open up the dialogue, but bear in mind that right now we all need some healing, and judgment and vengeance won’t do us any good. There are times that we will disagree in here, but never is there a time that disrespect will be tolerated. Okay!”
She stared around at everybody and walked back to her seat. The room was cemetery silent. The energy turned from tense to just strong. I looked across the room at Sade Fulton as we all stewed in our own thoughts, and it almost felt like a moment of silence until a smile bounced across her face and she raised her hand and said, “So I think I sort of understand the Bible stuff you was talking, so like, every day that I don’t say nothing to ugly people, I’m getting points in heaven sort of, right?”
We all busted out laughing and Ma waved her hand laughing and said, “Child, please.”
It was a random but fitting comment from a girl so conceited, but we needed something light and the little joke switched the mood and the conversation rolled on from there. Really, Bible study’s more like group therapy for neighborhood kids than it’s actually Bible talk. Like today, Ma usually opens things up with a little parable from the Bible and a topic and sits back and gives us the floor to talk, and it turns into one big clusterfuck of a conversation, but it’s fun. It caught on like lighter fluid, and other than hanging with Chucky Taft sometimes, Friday nights have been the only day of the week that I’ve kicked it with people this summer.
Without Reggie being around with the crew, it fell apart. I’d see them dudes around sometimes and they’d be in groups of two or three but it seemed like they didn’t really run together much anymore. I at least know they stopped hanging on the corner. When all the dust settled, the only thing I hadn’t completely ruined was basketball, but with a severely sprained wrist I wasn’t allowed to travel with the team, so it’s been a lonely summer. But it’s sort of better that way. Most days I just try to keep busy. I ain’t touched or talked to Tunnetta since the night it all went down and I stopped hustling too. It feels good to finally keep some of the promises I keep making to God.
Me and Beezy are arm’s-length-cool, and I don’t give two fucks, he can have Tunnetta. After it all went down, I still had a good amount of weed at the house and about two thousand dollars in cash, and I didn’t really know what to do with it, so I signed up for a basketball camp in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. From what I heard the best players in the nation always attend this camp, at least that’s what Coach Fulton told me.
It was like the plug got pulled and the block felt stale and old, sort of like ruins. I still wake up and scramble my eggs and watch American Gladiators on ESPN Classic but nothing seems to feel the same anymore.
I finally got my cast off my right hand and it feels weak as hell and my jump shot’s pretty sorry, but it’ll all come back slow. At least I got my body back in shape. I make layups in my sleep—it’s like riding a bike. I can still hoop. I work out late at night, two or three in the morning when the whole town’s asleep, seven days a week. I sprint between the telephone poles and dribble around the sewer caps, even after Bible study.
I’m slowly starting to accept the block’s new version of normal, but I know I have to get outta here. Sometimes I sit on the front porch half expecting to hear bass thumping out of the trunk of Reggie’s Jeep or to look up the street and see Smoke and his boys blazing up, posted on top of the hill, playing music of their own, but I don’t and never will again. The suntan ladies still oil-fry under the sun, sipping their liquor-mugs, gossiping about each other to each other, and the old folks still perch on their high porches reading books or magazines, slowly watching the days passing them by. Now the crows line up single file across the telephone wires, cackling cries that echo out bouncing around the block and ruining the other birds’ songs.
These days the only thumping on the block is my basketball against the concrete. The neighborhood feels so empty now, the stillness is a silent reverence, the block’s testament to the fact that the streets can turn a cool cat into a killer in a matter of seconds, and what’s done is done. It’s hard to know what’s on someone else’s mind or what the next man is willing to do to silence the voice that gnaws away and hammers at the back of his head.
Knowing what I know now, I realize I understood very little about both of them cats and it’s not about the wrong and the right or the good or the bad of the situation. I fired no shots but I know my role facilitated things. I got caught up and didn’t realize the gravity of the moment. Reggie always told me to stop fucking around and now I see what he meant. Regardless of my intentions, some things just can’t be taken back, and nothing can be done against the truth, regardless of how long it takes to see through the initial onsets of denial. It went down how it did and bottom line I learned from both of them.
So now that I’ve finished packing my bags, I’m leaving. I told Ma that I was going to a basketball tournament in New York and she didn’t question me too hard about it. Before Ma can wake up an
d prod me any further about it, I’m going.
As I tiptoe out of the house with my backpack on and my duffel bag in my hands, Papa Tanks is outside bright and early, his whole upper half under his red Dodge Neon. He slides out from under the car and looks at me with confusion in his face, “Champion, where you going wit’ bags all packed up?”
“To a basketball camp, Pa-Paw. I’m taking a bus, it stops in New York first.”
“I sure hope you’re going where you say.” He fixes me with a serious look and sort of shakes his head at me.
“I am, I promise.”
He shrugs his shoulders and slides back under the car and I start walking toward Mattapan station. I signed myself up for the camp and paid for it with my own money too. I got a pair of new basketball sneakers, and after spreading the money around a little bit I’m leaving town with fifteen hundred dollars in my pocket.
As I walk away from town, I start thinking about Jasmine and Reece. Since the night I first met them, I’ve wanted to reach out and visit little Reece, but I didn’t really think Jasmine would have cared to hear from me. As I cross the bridge carrying my bags into Mattapan, I walk down River Street and ring Jasmine’s bell. She answers the door in sweatpants and a mesh head wrap.
“Yes?” She blinks at me all fast like I’m stupid or something.
“Well, I—I … I know that there’s nothing I can say that could really help change what happened. I just been wondering if you two were okay, and so I know Reggie was close to my mother and I know you’re a mother and I just thought maybe this could help toward something someway somehow.” I hand her a stack Reggie-style, ten hundred-dollar bills, leaving myself with five hundred. Jasmine takes the money out of my hand and drops it on the floor.
“What did you have to do to get this money? Bet I wouldn’t wanna know. All of your kind make me sick.” I kneel down and start picking up the bills off the floor when I hear a man’s voice coming from inside the apartment. I can’t make out what he is saying but she calls back, “It’s nothing, babe.” She steps to the side and slides her body half behind the door. “That’s got to be dirty money in your hands—is it burning a hole in your pockets? You watched that man self-destruct in this place and you just rode along for the ride. Reggie didn’t need people like you yes-men in his life. Get the hell from ’round here, lil’ nigga.” She slams the door.