The Old Neighborhood (15 page)

Never did figure out if that's how it really went down. There
'
re police records, I'm sure, and even people I coulda asked, but maybe part of me didn't want to find out. Kinda hope that it ain't how it went down, for Rich's sake. That'd be a whole lot to carry around for the rest of your life, and he already had plenty to haul.

CHAPTER 10

THE OLD MAN

MA BABYSAT LITTLE JOHNNY FOR FREE
to help out. Being a nurse, Mrs. Kerney transferred to Edgewater Hospital so she could spend her lunch break with her grandson. A couple of weeks after her regular lunchtime visits started, shit hit the fan. Ma was in the basement with the older babysitting kids cleaning up, doing laundry, and organizing the mountains of toys—new, old, broken, slobbered-on; hand-made wooden blocks; infant, three-dimensional puzzles mixed with big, plastic machine guns, Tonka trucks, and stuffed animals. You name it, Ma had accumulated it over her 20-odd-years of babysitting. Little Johnny had laid down for a late-morning nap upstairs.

When Mrs. Kerney arrived, she depressed the glowing, circular doorbell, which didn't work. Then, she knocked with her brittle, boney hands, which of course Ma couldn't hear. Down in the basement, there was the racket of the children clapping and clanking toys in toy boxes and muttering bored complaints. The vacuum hummed over it all as Ma occasionally cracked the whip on them.

Mrs. Kerney walked along the wide porch to the windows that opened into the living room. There, her deep-red, almost orange-headed, 2-year-old grandson slept atop the couch. She rapped her keys excitedly on the thin glass and little Johnny awoke. He sleepily blinked at his gramma's excited eyes, smiled, and got up scratching the belly of his Tigger shirt. When he got to the window, he spread his pale little arms out wide for her to pick him up. When the glass dividing them wouldn't allow her, sleepy little Johnny erupted into a hysterical cry. She began to fidget angrily with the window, which sent him running around the room with his arms flailing over his head, screeching. Mrs. Kerney banged on the glass with her fists, a deep bass thunder that resonated in the room. Then, she screamed, “Open the damned door!!!”

Little Johnny froze. He looked at his gramma in an appalled horror, then he ran away down the hall and out of sight. Mrs. Kerney returned to the front door and slammed into the wood. The door hopped slightly but remained shut. She turned to the neighborhood and screamed, “Someone call the police!!!”

No one called the cops. Mrs. Sanchez from across the street did call Ma, and somehow, through all the calamitous children, the vacuum, and the tussling washer and dryer, Ma heard the ringer. She rushed to the basement phone and answered it on the second ring.

“Linda, there is some crazy lady on you porch screaming for somebody to call the police.”

“What!?” Ma said, then slammed the phone down and rushed up the basement stairs. She heard little Johnny crying and the frantic pounding at the front door. She rushed over and threw it open, and Mrs. Kerney pushed past Ma with tears beading down her wrinkled cheeks. She rushed down the hall to the kitchen to find her precious little Johnny. He looked up at her barreling toward him, and turned and ran. But she was so fast that she cooped him up before he got away and squeezed him to her bony chest.

“Oh, my darling, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I let this happen to you!!!” she wailed, then walked back towards the door with him crying and writhing in her arms.

“What the heck's going on? Where are you going with him?” Ma said.

“I won't put up with this kind of neglect! I'm taking him out of here for good!”

“Are you sure you should be taking him? Aren't you going to call Karen and let her know?”

“I'll be having a very, very long conversation with my daughter about the care of my dear grandson. You can guarantee that!” She hustled out of the front door with little Johnny still in hysterics and reaching out a hand toward the only one of the three who wasn't crying.

We all knew Blake thought he was better than us—better than each of us and better than the family as a whole. He was destined for greater things—a greater, larger world of excellence. We'd felt hints of it in his comments over the years, but it was only a prelude to his final, conclusive statement.

That night, Blake showed up with Karen in his CPD sweater and turtleneck. He'd gotten bigger now—fatter from the donuts and diner food. He was stoic. His frozen scowl had a sense of duty in it, and his actions had a sense of long-sustained waiting for this day to come.

“I'm not putting up with this. You people live in a filthy, God-damned pigsty. It's a fucking zoo for Christ's sake.” He stood tall as his parents sat at the dinner table with their heads in their hands, all reason spent. “All my life I had to live in it. I won't force my son to live in it now.”

“Blake, he was up here alone for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. You've never left him alone for fifteen minutes, Karen?” Ma pleaded. Tears welled in her blue eyes. “He's never woken up fifteen minutes before you?”

“That's enough!” Blake shouted. “I'm not putting up with it! You're neglecting my son!” Blake waved Karen to her feet, and she rose sniffling into a wad of paper towel.

Blake took a deep breath, clenching his eyes closed. “You won't see him or me ever again. You're not my family anymore.” He said it with a hint of exhaustion. His shoulders slumped, and there was a sense of completion in the air.

He stomped out of the house with Karen sniffling behind him, and that was it for two long years; we didn't hear a word from them. Until one day, Blake and Karen finally decided to get married, and they needed someone to foot the bill 'cause Mrs. Kerney certainly wasn't going to. Dad coughed it up as a way to get back in his son's and grandson's lives. I guess Blake'd never forgiven Dad for what he was—a hard man.

•

HE USED TO SMACK MA
every morning when she came to wake him up for work after brewing his pot of coffee. Just spin off the mattress, back-hand her, and see how far he could send her flying across the room. Until she finally woke him with a heavy iron frying pan crack to the side of his head.

He beat Lil Pat from the time he could walk, and as Lil Pat got older, it got worse. Blake was different, though. He was so sick for so much of his childhood that Ma wouldn't let Dad near him. Blake was a preteen before Dad started to crack him, but he was so good that he rarely got in trouble, so he almost never got one. When Blake came home from Drake with a D-average the summer of his freshman year, that all changed in a split second.

Dad got the news a few weeks into summer. It was late, like two in the morning, and Blake was out drinking at some kegger. When he got home, Dad was waiting for him at the kitchen table with the grades splayed out in front of him atop the lumpy imperfections of the handmade oak tabletop.

Dad said he wasn't gonna pay for those kinda shit grades, and Blake stomped out of the brightly lit kitchen saying he didn't want to hear it with a dismissive wave. That's when he slipped up and said, “What do you know about it? You didn't even graduate high school….” Blake tossed his head back with a laugh. “Not even close!”

Dad stomped after him into the dark hallway. Blake heard him and whirled around by the stairs. He was now a good four inches taller than Dad. Blake cocked back his meaty arm, grimaced, and growled through his teeth. Dad froze mid-step and feebly raised his large, bony hands and petered backward. His whole being trembled.

Blake flashed his All-American, smug grin, raised his chin, and turned back on his path. He sighed to himself, and as the sigh died down, it trickled into a chuckle. Dad sank downward, stepped with him. Then, he swung wide and slammed his heavy fist into the base of Blake's jaw from behind. Blake froze, pole-axed. He began to turn, and his arms and legs locked up, rigid. He toppled forward. Then, Blake plummeted and flopped, belly-down, on the hardwood floor. He laid there, gulping heavy breaths, flat out with his cheek on the cool wood planks.

You could say he was a bad father, I guess. Anyone who beats their kids is wrong and all that, but that New Age, just give 'em a “time out” stuff is bullshit. But my Dad took the reins as the father of his younger brothers at the age of twelve. Imagine that. Dad's dad was gone—crumbled into alcoholism—and with six little brothers to raise, Dad had one way to get their attention. Ever try to tell a gang of wild little boys to stop doing something? To shut up? Cracking a little kid, like it or not, gets their instant, undivided attention. Considering he became a dad at twelve and a biological father at fifteen, I think the old man did pretty good—under the circumstances, that is
.

As far as Blake goes, Dad was slaving on the job site, killing himself every day, and he was still living check to check and almost losing the house anytime something unexpected came up. And all so Blake could go to some expensive school to play football when he didn't have a chance in hell of doing anything in the sport. Then Blake turns around and throws that in Dad's face? I woulda stomped him after he went down. But dat's just me.

CHAPTER 11

ASSASSINS

THERE'S PEOPLE OUT THERE
that'll tell you racism is a basic tribal instinct—something embedded deep in our collective unconscious. A primal urge to be with our own, to protect our village. And that may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that it's one of the ugliest partitions in the heart of man.

Over a year had passed since Sy died. Even though Spider was gone, sputtering in some home with severe brain damage, there was still a war raging inside of Rich. The violence in him was getting more and more misguided and random. A gay bar had opened up south of us on Clark. Rich drove over there with his paintball gun one night and waited out front. Two guys in neon-yellow, tight shirts drunkenly exited the bar's brightly lit front door. Rich plunked a few speeding red balls that burst on their neon shirts, then he peeled off. It only leaves bruises, but the sudden, painful sting had them screaming their lungs out thinking they'd been shot for real. It's sick, I know. Rich'd graduated from high school and was a first-year apprentice carpenter. They were riding him hard on the sites like they do everybody, but he wasn't taking it too good. With his revenge extracted from the PG3s, Rich's general malice simmered into these opportunistic bursts of hatred.

Ryan, Angel, and I were on our posts at the sills, ever-diligent and ready for what was to come. It was early summer, and school'd just let out. I sat in the center sill to keep those two from fucking killing each other. Ryan posted up at the sill nearest the alley and Ashland, which was all struck bright. The orange-yellow streetlight beams emanated above and along the faded-green poles. Angel sat in the other one nearest the thickly tree-shadowed side street. Ryan couldn't handle sitting on that side; he'd constantly mistake the sway of a low-hung tree branch for some enemy trying to get the drop on us. And then, he'd leap to his feet and shout, “Who the fuck
'
s dat!” squinting into the darkness. His temples'd flare until he was worn thin with a headache. Angel didn't see any invisible foes and probably wouldn't have minded if he did. He wasn't scared of much, plus everybody liked Angel anyhow.

I'd gotten bigger, but I was still the smallest out of the three of us. Ryan was the biggest and oldest by about six-months. He'd hit his growth spurt first and grew out and up in equal proportions. His husky arms and legs sprouted red hair.

Our individual styles had begun to form. Ryan wore his hair short, almost shaved. It was a “one” on the clippers, and he had a narrow finger of hair that protruded near the base of his skull that dangled over his collar. He rocked a fake-ass gold rope chain. His face was always knotted up in a snarl, and his eyes were forever challenging and assessing strangers until they looked down or away. Though there was a goofiness about him that came out when it was just us three. But he was easily insulted and slow on his toes with comebacks, which sunk him into his broiling temper that'd eject vicious shouts and quivering sneers. Angel was an expert at bringing out this response in Ryan. Sometimes it seemed that if it weren't for their friendship with me, the two would never hang around each other.

Angel had sprouted up tall and lanky with high cheekbones and long, jet-black hair. He wore his hair with the sides and back buzzed short, and a long, silky shock sat on top. He tied the end of the long shock in a ponytail that hung above the stubbly hair like the tail-feathers of a Blue Jay. Everything was sleek and slick about his appearance, but his temperament was completely the opposite. It didn't take much to crack him up and release his whining, wacky chortle. Then, he'd bare his long top-front teeth, all perfectly spaced and aligned and glossy white. He'd draw the humor out of anything said, goad grins from the speaker, and then send them tumbling into some sarcastic folly of meaning and almost always predictably something sexually perverse. He was one of those guys that habitually took it too far and sent the conversation down into the depths of necrophilia, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, and fecal fetishes. It got to the point where you didn't know whether to keep laughing or vomit, but that was Angel.

I'd taken to wearing my hair slicked back and sprayed stiff with Aqua Net, with the sides buzzed and sharpened into a V at the base of my neck. We'd all picked up on that West Coast style of either blue or tan Dickies work pants with old-school, low-top Nikes, Pumas, or Adidas.