The Old Neighborhood (27 page)

“Thanks.” I sat down on a little wooden stool near the crate of books. “You're the best.”

“Before he died, Da said you might want these books someday.” She waved her hand toward the crate. “You were his favorite, Joe. You were the one that was the most like him. The same wavelength, Joey.” She raised her dark eyebrows.

“Yeah?” I put the empty glass down and picked up the black hardcover of
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
.

“It's true, you both spoke the same language. Pick through them a little bit.” She looked at me and added, “I'm sixty-seven years old, and I've yet to see anyone eat a sandwich that fast.”

“You make good ones.”

“Harry Houdini,” she said. “I'll make you another one.”

“I'm watchin' my weight,” I grinned.

“I know, you're stuffed.” She took the glass and turned for the stairs. “Do your grandfather a favor: pick out a few books… Life is an ongoing education, Joey.”

I flipped through the glossary in back of the book I was holding.

DARK MATTER:
Matter whose existence is inferred on the basis of the orbits of stars and galaxies but which does not show up as bright objects such as stars or nebulae.

I'd never even heard of half of it.

I remembered Da always reading in the kitchen—a mound of ash and butts in the tray. He'd peer down into the pages through his black-rimmed, rectangular bifocals. His weathered, saggy face creased. The peppering of stubble on his cheeks. His shock of black hair slicked back and shiny. The ceiling light above the kitchen table emitting this hazy, orange glow on him. The silence of the room. The ceiling fan flicking slowly above. I thought of how he was adopted and raised by poor immigrants in a garage. How he had to work as a kid during the depression. How he taught himself to read. And here I was screwing around in school my whole life, never doing my homework and barely passing anything.

I finished up, headed home and up to my room to read.

Da was like that. He thought about other people. He cared about his grandkids deeply. He was a good guy, and I missed him. It was like, by reading these books, I was getting to know him on a different level—not as a kid and a grandpa, but as a young man and an old man. It was like somehow we could commune through the pages.

I was up there for hours, blazing through passages, looking up words. I'd never really liked reading. Never read a novel, let alone a whole book on astrophysics. I was finding something in them that I couldn't find in church or the Bible. It seemed like they were trying to answer something bigger. I mean, if God made the world, fine, but who made God? If the Big Bang was the beginning, then why does it say gasses condensed before the explosion? If there were already gases, then the Big Bang isn't a theory of the origins of existence. Maybe it was a big moment for us, but nothing beside the real scope.

I was looking for something. Call it what you want: symmetry, balance, peace. I figured life, human beings, were chaos. These racing emotions—love, hatred, all of it—were ugly, false, bullshit. We were animals capable of bringing our nightmares into reality. There weren't no answers there.

I was finding answers in these books.

CHAPTER 18

FUSION

YOU CAN ONLY GET CHASED
home from school so many times before you either get caught or stop running.

Life at Senn was getting worse for Ryan and Angel. T-Money, Twon, Tank, and Monteff were all full-blown Black Stones now and still bent on retaliation for what'd gone down with DeAndre. Ryan and Angel had to sneak through the halls and go into the bathroom together—one watched at the door while the other ran in and pissed. Then, at three-fifteen, they'd sneak out a side exit and jog their asses all the way back to the neighborhood. The TJOs weren't showing no love. They was on their own—blowin' in the wind.

Gordon had the day off, so I decided I'd go over and walk 'em home. I let 'em know, and they told me where to wait for 'em. I made the lonesome walk to Senn. Hollywood to Clark, past the dusty entrance to the corner store where the sunlight beat down on the chipped-tile entrance way. I passed the flower shop. All the un-bought daisies bowed and browned in the early autumn chill. I cut down Ardmore. Tall, tan-and-red brick apartment buildings lined either side of the street, and tin-sided bungalows and two-flats cowered in between 'em. I found myself looking up along the rooftops half-expecting to see some lookout catch me sneaking through. As I got to Ridge, there was this old lady in a house dress leaning out her third-story window with her hair all full of purple plastic curlers. Her weathered face scowled down at me as she peered out behind huge clear-framed glasses. There was a squad of pigeons in the center of the street near the crosswalk. They squawked as they gouged out chunks from a stale piece of bread. They tossed it up with quick shakes of their heads, and their oily, blue neck-feathers furrowed so they glistened purple in the afternoon sunlight.

Senn was even more menacing up close. It was a block wide and half that deep. The thick Greek-style pillars stretched three stories to the pitched roof, and the crisp cleanliness of the tan concrete gave it a chilling sense of justice and learning. Though, the maroon steel-mesh fencing over the windows hinted at the filth and horror inside its walls festering like innards of a carcass. The park that spanned out behind the school was empty. It was silent like a prison yard during a lockdown. There was the faint trickle of the city water fountain at the far-end. Traffic flicked past in gusts. The peacefulness in the park sat in stark contrast with its history. On weekend nights, its darkness was amplified by the thick-leaved trees. Endemic gunfire lit the heavy darkness like lightning flashes. Many gangbangers'd shot and stabbed each other there. There'd been more than a few horrific beatings with ball bats, fists, and chains along those twisting asphalt paths. I thought of Abraham Lincoln sitting down at the edge of the park.

What would he do?

Ridge Ave. cut through the neighborhood on a diagonal, and the intersection at Ardmore made the tan-bricked building on the corner across from Senn come to a sharp point like an arrowhead. I figured no one could sneak up on me from over there, and I'd have a good view of the side door they'd come out of. The jostling, yellow-and-brown-leafed oak trees cast a deep shadow on Ardmore where it passed beside Senn's south wing. As I crossed Ridge, the school bell let out its low buzz. Suddenly, the building came alive—vibrant, humming like a teakettle getting ready to scream. I hurried across the street and hid behind the jutting corner.

Suddenly, feet clapped the pavement. I craned my head around and looked east on Ardmore. Tank sprinted in a low hunch wearing a black Dago-T. He surged up the shadowed walkway like a fullback hitting a hole, and T-Money trotted after him, gripping the front of his blue jeans so they wouldn't fall off his ass. He had on a black Raiders cap twisted sideways to the left like a clown. I dove behind the corner and pressed my back to the bricks. My chest sputtered as my notion of a safe walk home for Ryan and Angel was shattered like a windshield bashed-in with a crowbar. I slipped my head near the edge of the bricks and peeked around the corner.

“We gon' catch dese mothafuckas today!” Tank screamed. He squeezed his fists at his sides. His heavy arms flared.

Then, Twon shot round the corner in an XL white t-shirt and red jeans. He grinned as he chased after them.

Suddenly, I couldn't breathe. It was like the wires tied up all my chest tubes in knots. I started to jog away up Ridge. My legs felt languorous. It felt like someone was pumping my stomach up with helium more and more. I bent at the waist. Vomit erupted from my mouth and nostrils. Bright orange splattered the cracked sidewalk slab. I hunched over it. My own shadow reflected in the murky pool. I wiped the slime from my lips with my trembling wrist. Goo clogged my nasal passages. My eyes teared. I stood up and took a deep breath—hollow, weak, and resolved.
There was no fuckin' way. If they're gonna stomp us again, it's gonna be together.
I turned back.

I slowed when I got to the corner and peered around it. Nothing. Everyone waited. T-Money and Twon pressed their backs to the wall around the corner from the exit. Tank stood right out front. He rocked his weight slowly, side-to-side. Tank watched the metal doors like a tiger waiting to be fed. There was a dreamy haze in his still face. His arms showed bulbous out of his Dago-T. My shoulder scraped across the gnarly bricks as a rickety Diesel box truck howled past on Ridge.

Suddenly, one of the school's doors burst open. Ryan sprang out and down the steps in his beige Dickies and a loose white t-shirt. He looked back over his shoulder into the closing door.

“Come on, man!” Ryan shouted back as he jogged forward like a guy about to walk blindly into a light pole.

Tank swoop-stepped to Ryan, then he hefted a wide punch from his waist. It thumped into the base of Ryan's jaw and deadened him. He fell clean out onto the grass beside the exit.

My knees were jumping up to my chest before I realized I was running—it was like an out of body experience. I sprinted right into it with absolutely no fucking idea what I was gonna do. T-Money and Twon ran around the corner and yanked on the door handles. I saw Angel in the little meshed-glass window. He held 'em locked. His face'd gone stone white.

Tank raised up his black and red Jordan high-top and stomped down on Ryan's head. I broke from the shade into the sunlight. Not one of 'em so much as glanced back at me. Now, I was on the sidewalk, and I figured out what I was gonna do.

As I got up behind Tank, he twisted his thick neck. His eyes flashed at me. They trembled with rage, or maybe shock, or maybe fear. I didn't stop. I just aimed the meaty end of my forearm at his throat. He raised his arms feebly at the last second. My forearm stuck in like I'd jammed it into a mound of wet concrete. I drove my legs and pole-axed Tank. His feet flew out from under him. The collision jarred me to an absolute halt. Tank landed, traps first, on the grass beside Ryan. The soles of his Jordans appraised the sky as both his hands reached blindly for his thorax. Ryan's eyes flashed to mine from between his arms. He rolled to his side and got up.

“What de fuck!” T-Money yelled, spinning around toward me. He leapt down the steps.

Angel's eyes lit up, then his face disappeared from the window. Suddenly, the door Twon tugged on exploded open, and Angel's leg sprang out with it waist-high. Twon stumbled backward down the steps, trying to catch his balance. Angel leapt out and snagged Twon's front collar, then began to wallop his fist into Twon's shocked face. Twon reeled backward. His hands reached and grasped out at the air for balance.

I was so awestruck with the way Angel was getting down that I didn't even react when T-Money sprang at me and grabbed me in a bear hug.

“We gotchu now, white boy,” he whispered. His hot Fritos breath swirled in my face.

I dipped my chin and drove my forehead into his mouth. I felt a click and something gave. He seethed through his teeth and swung a hard punch that planted into the nub behind my ear. I went cross-eyed, and my knees wobbled. I heard a hollow thump and saw Ryan's beet-red face flash at my side. Then, Ryan reeled back again and swung high. I caught the glimmer of the metal seatpost bar we'd cut out of a bike frame. This time, it came down over the top of T-Money's head with a metallic crack, like an aluminum bat just got a good piece of a fastball. T-Money crumbled. He grasped at my shirt to keep from slipping to the concrete.

I looked out at Angel, who'd just shoved Twon out into the street, sending him rolling on his back. Twon's head cracked against the blacktop. His white Reeboks flew up in the air. A green Taurus came to a screeching stop and nearly hit him.

I kneed T-Money straight in the heart. He rocked onto his backside, gripping his chest like he'd been stabbed.

“Ahhh shit!” a voice rocketed over the chaos. Monteff and five others poured out of the main west exit of the school.

Tank got to his hands and knees and crawled out onto the sidewalk in a stupor. Ryan swung his leg back and booted Tank straight in the face. He didn't miss a stride as we all broke across Ridge. The traffic squealed to a halt as we dashed past. When we hit the mouth of Ardmore, the squad of pigeons blew up in a flutter of blue and gray. The old lady gawked from her window perch. Her bottom jaw hung open, toothless.

We ran the whole five blocks back to my alley hooting and hollering like a pack of wild dogs lumbering through the forest. No one even chased us after the first twenty feet. We finally stopped running out back of Angel's garage.

“How the fuck? How the fuck we get outta dere OK?” Ryan asked.

No one answered. All of us hunched over into a loose huddle with our hands on our knees. Our humped backs swelled and deflated. I caught eyes with Ryan, and the emerald-green looked like it'd been splashed with acid. The tiny tentacles in the splatters flared neon, and I saw all the things that made us best friends. His lips started to curl at the edges, and mine did, too, until we grinned. Then, his whole front row of teeth shone at me—all crooked like Stonehenge. Light-red blood lined the bottom row. I bared teeth right back.

“Oh my God…. Oh my God…. Oh my God…,” Angel murmured as he sat down on his backside. He laid flat in the thin rectangle of shade cast by the overhang of his garage.

T-Money'd ripped my t-shirt, so I hefted it up over my head and walked out to the center of the alley with the afternoon sun baking my damp skin. Sweat beads dripped off my shoulders, and I started to jump in a rhythm. My sneakers panged off the cracked alley pavement, and I bounded as high as I could. I raised my shirt over my head and swung it in wide circles as electric pulses flashed in my vision like fireworks were bursting inside my skull. This warm joy surged up in my chest, and I had to get it all out. My chest would explode if it wasn't unleashed—I knew that much. Squealing noises erupted from my throat—wild screeches that echoed off the narrow corridor of garages. My heart pounded so hard I could hear my own pulse throb in my ears. I'd completed my quest. I'd been re-born a warrior, righteous and true and loyal to the bone.