Slow Motion Riot (36 page)

Without any further warning, Darryl
charges me like a bull and shoves me back with all his might. Instead of
letting me fall over, though, somebody catches me from behind and shoves me
back toward the center of the circle people have formed. As my trajectory
carries me forward, I stick out my arm and hit somebody standing on the side. I
think I've just smacked him in the mouth. Maybe hard enough to draw blood.

Again, I'm caught before I hit the
floor and somebody standing in front of me pushes me backward. It's like a
malicious version of the old kids' game of Trust, made even scarier by the way
the flickering TV light breaks up what you see. All you can make out is
somebody's gesture or expression, frozen in time, but not what led up to it or
what's about to follow.

Everybody's getting too frenzied
with all the shoving, breathing, and cursing in high, crazy voices. I start
thinking one of these guys is bound to have a knife, so maybe he's going to
just reach out and puncture me as I go flying by. I try to grab a hold of
something and steady myself, but my arms just flail out uselessly. With each
shove, the game is getting more out of control and violent. I feel the blood
sloshing around in my head and the dampness on my back where their sweaty palms
have been touching me. If I don't kill one of them right now, they'll kill me.

Suddenly there's a flare-up of
light from outside, and I see Darryl's face again, just a foot or two in front
of me. If I had a gun right now, I'd shoot him. But it might be easier just to
kick him in the balls and step on his head when he's down. I picture grinding
his bloody face into the rug and hearing the crunch of bones in his neck.

But just as I begin to raise my
leg, the phone starts ringing and everything else gets very quiet all of a
sudden. For what seems like an hour, the only sound is that phone. It must ring
at least a dozen times. The cops calling again. Trying to find out what's going
on. Or maybe offering one last shot at getting us all out of here alive. The
others look at Darryl expectantly, as if he knows just what to do. But he stays
rooted to the spot, not even looking over at the phone. Turning his eyes away,
like he's afraid to see it ringing. I feel a slow ache spreading across my chest.

The phone stops ringing.

With the break, everybody seems to
chill out a little. The sounds from outside have also stopped and the bright
light is gone. A different kind of tension makes its way around the room.
Everyone's thinking the same thing: I hope they don't come rushing in now and
kill us all.

"Why everybody stop
talking?" I hear LaToya, the little girl from the bathroom, asking from
somewhere behind me. "Are we apposed to be scared?"

I think about the bruise on her
face and feel a little cold inside.

On the other side of the room,
somebody lights up a crack pipe. It makes for an eerie scene, with the lights
down. The sound of the cocaine burning and crackling seems about ten times
louder than normal. Almost like twigs snapping next to your ear. This must be what
it's like being out in the woods when you know there are bears nearby. I think
about my mother and how she tried to get me to start praying when my father
wasn't around. I'm sorry it never took.

"You know that was probably
the hostage negotiator trying to call you just now," I say with a sigh
escaping from somewhere deep inside of me.

"Yeah," Darryl answers
flatly, as though I'd just said something boring about the weather. He just
doesn't give a shit.

My eyelids are heavy and my brain
feels sodden. I'm starting to realize how very, very tired I am. I don't even
know if I'd mind them finishing it off once and for all now.

"I dunno, Darryl," I tell
him, "I spent all this time trying to understand guys like you, and in the
end, I guess I don't have a clue."

"No one knows me," he
says bitterly. "Understand? No one. Not in my mentality. You wanna be me?
You wanna know how I feel? FUCK YOU! THAT'S HOW I FEEL!!"

It's useless. I tell myself I'm
dead already and it doesn't matter anymore. I don't know why I even bother
saying anything else; the words just come out. "Well, I was going to say
you could try calling the guy back," I tell him in an exhausted voice.

Darryl doesn't say anything. He
just breathes out loudly.

"You wrote down his number,
didn't you?"

There's a long silence. And in the
weak light I see Darryl give me that half hurt, half resentful look that I've
come to recognize over the years at Probation. It's the way illiterate people
look at you when you ask them if they can read.

I don't know whether to laugh or
cry or find a way to blow my brains out.

For the first time in his life,
Darryl King has some real power. Not just to chase some rival crack dealer off
his corner. He can bring the system to its knees, right here and now. He's got
the authorities and the media listening to him. He can demand amnesty or he can
call for justice for Jamal Perkins, or ask for safe passage for his family to
get out of here, or whatever the hell he wants. In the end, he might get only
part of what he's asking for or none of it, but he can at least get everything
to stop for a while and make his voice heard.

But none of that will happen.
Because Darryl King doesn't have what it takes to go up against the system.
Because the system never gave him the equipment to do it. He never got the
basic skills required to write down a phone number. And even if he could, he
never stood much of a chance anyway, with everything else that's happened. As
he stares toward the living room window, looking a little overwhelmed, I could
almost feel sorry for him. But I can't afford sympathy anymore. That side of me
is dead and I need it to stay dead. Darryl is ready to kill me at any time, and
I have to be ready to kill him. A man does what he does to survive, my father
said. For the first time, the words come alive to me.

From outside, I start to hear
something familiar, getting nearer. A fierce fluttering noise. A cool breeze
stirring the unbearably hot night. The curtains on the window shimmy slightly.
It's the whir of a helicopter's propeller, closing in on us. The gust of air
blows dollar bills and rolling papers all over the place.

"What'd I tell you?" says
Darryl.

For a second, I can almost believe
they've given in to his demands. But then I realize it has to be the opposite.
They're probably making a last fly-by attempt to see if they can get a shot at Darryl
or one of the others before they break down the front door. Or maybe it's just
a distraction.

"Come on, Moms," Darryl
says with a burst of boyish enthusiasm. "They gonna land it on the roof for
us."

As the searchlight sweeps through
the apartment, I see her looking more glassy-eyed than ever. "What?"
she says.

Just then, the TV picture dies and
the room gets completely dark. There's a mood of hushed anticipation, like a
surprise birthday is about to begin, but I feel dread eating away at the pit of
my stomach. I remember seeing a movie where the cops cut all the electricity in
a building just before they moved in on a hostage situation.

"Darryl, what happened to my
program?" his mother says. "I was just watching."

I hear the first explosion and see
the first flash of light through the white sheet hanging in the bedroom
doorway. I can't imagine how the cops got through the window back there without
anybody noticing. There's a second, louder explosion. The impact makes Darryl
stagger and it shakes the chair out from under me. Darryl's great-grandmother
comes out of one of the other back rooms with a teacup and saucer rattling in
her hand. Everyone gets down on hands and knees and starts screaming at the
same time.

Darryl's hoarse voice rises above
all the others. "NO ONE KNOWS ME!!"

I look up and see the bed sheet
hanging in the doorway is on fire, but there aren't any cops coming out. It's
not a raid. Somehow, something back there must've ignited and hit an ether tank
or something. Now the whole apartment is flashing over. It's like someone's
turned on a giant blowtorch. The fire from the bed sheet catches the carpet in
this room and soon there's heavy black smoke everywhere.

I feel the heat on my skin as I
roll onto my stomach. It's not quite as bad down here yet, but the flames are
racing along the paint on the walls and most of the furniture is burning.

"HELP ME PLEASE!" a
woman's voice keeps calling.

I raise my eyes and see Darryl's mother
getting consumed by fire. Her legs and her back are smoldering. Bobby Kirk
grabs a tablecloth to try to smother her, but it's already caught fire and his
hands get scorched. I start coughing and choking on the smoke as I crawl around
on my hands and knees, looking for the front door.

I see the dining room table is
still covered with guns. An idea flashes through my mind about grabbing one and
turning to look for Darryl. But then I hear my father's voice in my head,
telling me to survive again, and I keep looking for the front door. It can't be
far from here.

Something falls on the carpet in
front of me and a small fire starts in my path. I go down on my elbows and
shift direction. As I turn, I see the glass-and-wood cabinet with the old
tenants' family pictures and Bibles glowing from the heat. Soon the flames
begin to lick at the walls around it and the cabinet collapses.

Tears are forming in my eyes and my
contact lenses are starting to dry up and crinkle under my eyelids. I'm getting
confused and disoriented. I spin around several more times, trying to find the
front door, and put my hand in a pile of bobby pins and toothpicks. In a
momentary clearing, I see Aaron yanking open what I know to be a closet door
and jumping in.

The smoke is beginning to blind me.
There's no thing or landmark to tell me where I am in the room, but I try not
to panic. I spin around again and crawl along for a few more steps before I run
into somebody. A living body. I reach out and touch a frail bony arm and a weak
shoulder. It's impossible to see a face with all this smoke. Whoever it is
feels down my arm and then takes my hand, like we're going to try to make it to
the door together. The grip is warm and reassuring, what you'd expect from
someone who's raised children.

"All right," I say
hoarsely. "Let's do it."

We begin to move in the same
direction, away from the main source of heat. The smoke starts to change
direction and a little clearing forms ahead of us. My hand is released and I
look up for the first time to see Darryl King has been the one holding it.

He just stares at me for a long
while as we face each other on our hands and knees. There's something oddly
pacific in his eyes. Like he's going to ask me to join him in a silent act of
communion. But I've already been through all that and my mind is made up that I
will try to kill him, even if it means using my bare hands to strangle him.

I reach for him, and at the same
moment his hand comes shooting out at me. My heart stops. But instead of
grabbing my throat, his hand lands on my shoulder and roughly shoves me out of
the way. Without giving me another look, he turns and starts to crawl off, like
he's trying to find another way to the door. I notice flames riding up his back
and climbing his neck, on their way to his brains. I think for a second about
going after him, but my skin is starting to prickle, and if I don't get out
soon, it'll bubble off my bones. There's a constant deep rumbling everywhere,
like the sound of a fireplace amplified ten times over. I keep plunging ahead.

As I go to my left, I become aware
of a loud, piercing shriek. Someone else is burning to death very nearby.

I open my eyes wide and the
stinging is almost more than I can bear. At last I focus. LaToya, the little
girl I'd seen in the bathroom before, is lying on her back about three yards
away. What looks like a small bonfire is burning on her stomach and she's
trying to beat it out with her bare hands.

A smell like hair frying fills my
nostrils and I see the little girl giving me a pleading look. She opens her
mouth as though she's going to say something to me, but nothing comes out.

I put my hand out and realize I'm
touching the front door. The knob is surprisingly cool to the touch. I turn it,
but the door doesn't open. That's when I notice a smaller knob for the lock
underneath and a chain about a foot above it. In the seconds it takes to undo
them, my lungs fill up with more poison and my chest feels like it's about to burst.

I finally get the door open and go
lunging out into the hall, landing at a funny angle. It feels like I've broken
my ankle, but somehow I'm managing to keep the door open with it. I'm lying
there, looking back into the apartment. I hear people screaming and the
crackling sound of fire eating more of the paint off the walls. But all I can
see is more heavy toxic smoke coming out, choking me and burning my eyes. It's
like staring into the abyss. I'm about to pass out at any minute from the
fumes. This must be what hell smells like.

The little girl's voice cries out
and I hear someone who sounds like Darryl shouting. Just then there's a
powerful blast of air and the door starts to close, pushing my foot out of the
way. The set of muscles that I was sure would have kept it there, propping the
door open, don't respond anymore. Something over the past few minutes, hours,
days, weeks, and years has worn them down. My foot moves just a little more out
of the way and the door slams shut.

Everything goes black for a moment
and my head hits the floor. The roar I've had in my ears is muffled. When I
open my eyes again, the hall is filled with smoke and more is starting to seep
out from under the front door.

I look over and see a bunch of
Emergency Service Unit cops coming through the stairwell door, followed by a
couple of firemen in black turn-out coats and helmets. They look like huge dark
moths hovering there.