The Shooting (18 page)

There is a shooting in Kentucky. Little girl playing with the family shotgun. Then there is one in New York. White guy emptying his revolver into the black kid next door just for knocking on his door. She sees the shooter's picture in the news, finally learns Lee's last name. Jenny goes off to New York. Maureen pays for the ticket.

6

THE BOY

Seem like there something crushing people like him. Boys like him get sent to fight the wars, get exploited to make the colleges money on the basketball court and football field, get murdered by cops, get put away in jail, can't get no jobs. The game seems rigged. He don't understand it but that's okay, he only fifteen, he gonna keep doing well in school and keep his head down, get into college, not one of those podunk ones advertised on the subway, he want
Harvard,
he want
Yale
—and Dr. Fallon at school tells him he's
on
that path, just gotta stay at it—and learn about how all this shit work to make America run as unfair as it do for people like him, and his mom and dad. And then once he figure out how it all work, he gonna fix it. Somehow. So boys like him coming up behind him have it better. Why not him? No one else seems interested in doing it.

His skin black. His lips thick, plum colored. Eyes: they brown, narrow, with swollen lids that make them look even narrower. Five feet eleven inches, 165 pounds. Fifteen years old but white people think he look older, they assume he gotta be twenty, twenty-one. His hair tufted. Voice loud. He walk around with his hood up and his head down. Obsessed with his Jordans. He does not necessarily step aside for you on the subway stairs. He like girls, loud music. He live in Manhattan, one of the dwindling few people of color for which that is true anymore, not counting those stuffed into the
housing project towers in the Lower East Side and Chelsea. His friends live there, Raul in the LES and Kenny in the Chelsea ones. Raul's Dominican, Kenny's Trinnie. He himself lives in the West Village, like a white dude, like some gay actor, in a rich-person building but down in the basement, door next to where they keep the trash, his dad the super there, on call 24/7 to unclog the superrich folk toilets or scrub the superrich folk dog pee out of the hallway carpet or anything else the superrich folk don't want to do for themselves.

Sneaking out tonight with Raul and Kenny, parents think he sleeping over at Kenny's and technically he is, but first they getting pizza, and then they standing in line outside the store waiting for those new Jordans to drop at three
A.M.
. Raul's giving an in-depth account of this girl who let him fingerbang her last night, this pretty Jamaican girl named Tiyah—
she was moaning all loud and I had my hand over her mouth because her grandma was right out there in the living room
—but Clayton thinking about nothing but getting those shoes on his feet. More accurately, he thinking about getting them on his feet and seeing Stacey tomorrow night. She invited him to her friend's birthday party. He gonna take the train across the river and he thinking maybe he'll get a cab from the station and pick her up in it. Like a man. Yeah, he gonna hold her hand back there while he give the driver directions. He gonna pay for it using some of that money he buying these Jordans with, scratch his dad been throwing his way out the Christmas gifts the tenants give him each year, and supplemental scratch he himself been earning delivering for the diner on Greenwich Ave. weekends, and then when they get to the birthday party he gonna get out his side, hustle around to hers, and open the door for her. He gonna help her out, close the door behind her. He gonna tell her she beautiful and offer his arm and walk her into the party.

Stacey. Stacey Magnolia. Met Stacey Magnolia at her dad's hardware store on the corner where she was working the counter. He and his pops were painting 13F and they ran out of paint, Pops sent him to the corner for more. That apartment nasty. An old rich dude name Max been living there alone forever. Max act like a
little kid, Clayton first thought he retarded or something, but Dad said that just how you get when you drink too much. Max used to make commercials, but now he just sit around his house smoking cigarettes and drinking and watching TV and telling whoever there to listen about when he used to make commercials. Dude smokes so much that the once-white walls were now brown, so Clayton's pops had to come paint them. Dirty dishes in the sink, old fuzzy-ass food up in the fridge (Clayton peeked). It was middle of the summer.
Hot. Humid.
The paint
took forever
to dry. What should have been a two-day job took three days, then four days.

—Shit, Clayton said in the middle of the third day, taking a water break and toweling off his dripping head, —this is stupid, we shouldn't be doing this.

His dad didn't answer.

—Ain't our fault dude smoked so much his damned walls turned brown.

—No, it's not.

—We could hire it out, send Dave the bill. He won't mind, we've done it before.

—We could.

—Then what we doing it for?

—I don't know.

—What you mean you don't know?

—I mean, there is reason. I just don't know what reason. It has not made itself apparent. But it will, when it wants. Now get yourself to the store before it closes, we need that paint.

His dad. Straight up batshit sometimes. Used to be a doctor, back in his home country. They won't let him be one here. Has to be a janitor instead. Who knows why he left. Things couldn't have been that bad over there to go from doctor to janitor, could they?

He bounced down to the store, feeling like a doofus in his painting clothes. He was dressed like Samuel L. Jackson in
Pulp Fiction
, after they clean up the bloody car and trash their suits, and the Wolf sprays him and John Travolta down with the garden hose and they put on random T-shirts and old gym shorts.
You guys going to a volleyball game or something?
People in this neighborhood
are fancy, dress
nice
,
always
, everyone always looks like some sexy person from the movies.

When he got to the store, instead of ugly old Hector behind the counter there was this
banging
girl. Body incredible. Face so pretty, with these big, shiny, dark eyes and juicy lips. Clayton could barely look at her, she so fine, but from what he could tell she was about his age. One thing he learn from his dad aside from how to be a doormat for the rich and the white is to never be afraid of anyone. So as she rang up his can of paint, who care if she outta his league? He chat her up, ask her about herself. —What's your life story? he said. Something else he picked up from his dad. His dad always saying that to people. She seem so sweet and nice and smart, and they were definitely vibing, you could feel that. When Clayton returned with the paint, he must have had a big dumb grin on his face because his dad looked at him all suspicious, came over and got real close and started examining his eyes and smelling him. —What did you do? Who got you high?

—I ain't high, Dad. I'm in love.

And his dad turned back to the wall he was painting and, smiling a little, said, —Aha. Now we know reason for job.

Hippie-ass dude.

That was last summer. She live across the river in New Jersey, they been talking on the phone all year, writing letters and chatting and texting. She had a boyfriend for a little while and that hurt, he was depressed for a week, but then they broke up. Every Saturday he find a reason to go in there in case she there. Went to see
Fast and Furious
together. Kissed for the first time during it. Few weekends later her parents were going to be out of town the whole day, did he want to come over? She hadn't gotten the sentence out her mouth before he was outside her house knocking on her door. Took him two hours on subways and PATH train and buses and it felt like four, but he'da gone to Mars if that's where she lived. They got naked together.
Naked.
It was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. When he left they were a couple, it was official, boyfriend and girlfriend. That journey back home felt like it took eight seconds.

—My friend, she said on the phone that night when he called, —he gonna have a birthday party end of summer. His parents are gonna be gone. It's gonna be real. And, baby? That night? I want to do it. With you.

—Do what? he say.

She laughed. —You so stupid.

Then he understood. He a real idiot sometimes. For real. He go, —Really? All excited, voice all high.

She say, —Really.

He wanted to run around outside telling everybody:
She wanna do it with me, she wanna do it with me!
Ever since then, whenever he sees them, he been grabbing handfuls of those NYC condoms they put out on counters in bodegas. He must have fifty of them stashed in a shoe box among his Jordans.

—You ever done it before? he say.

—Nuh-uh. Have you?

—Nuh-uh.

—Yeah, right.

—I'm serious. You believe me?

—Yeah, I believe you. You believe me?

—I believe you. I'm kinda nervous.

—Me too.

—It'll be all right.

—I know it will. I can't wait.

He on the phone, playing some game he addicted to. Kenny brought a lawn chair and Bluetooth speakers, playing Kendrick on repeat; Raul think Kendrick trash, he call it white-girl shit, he say street niggas don't listen to that skinny-jean motherfucker, but Kenny can't get enough of it and Clayton agree with Kenny but act like he agree with Raul. It two
A.M.
Shoes drop at three. Kenny and Raul are gonna turn around and sell theirs, already have buyers lined up online, but Clayton would never sell his—well, maybe he would if the birthday party wasn't tomorrow.

Drunk white people stumble by, asking what everyone standing in line for. Smiling men, pretty women. Raul answer them with a straight face, —Gang bang, and Kenny and Clayton crack up, white
people continue on they way, not knowing if they serious or not. They a little high, taking out Kenny's one-hitter when they sure the coast is clear. This city ain't nothing but cops. Everywhere you go a cop telling you what to do, trying to ruin your life. Last spring Raul got popped with a joint and they arrested him and everything, nearly broke his wrist doing it. They put him in jail for the whole weekend. On a little weed. It was only juvie jail but Raul still said it was the scariest shit he ever been through. And Raul the biggest, hardest dude Clayton know. And now Raul supposed to get into school, supposed to get a job, with that shit on his record?

Something, man—something trying to crush boys like them.

There are things Clayton can tell Kenny that he could never tell Raul, and things he can tell Raul that he could never tell Kenny. One of the things he can tell Kenny is that he scared for tomorrow night. Another is that sometimes he stand around looking at things, like the world, for example right now, out here on the street, in the heart of New York City, watching everyone, watching cars, seeing the people and the cars in the glow of all the lights, and he can't tell where they come from, the lights, he know there are streetlights but the lights don't seem to come from just the streetlights, and he know there are lights on stores and from windows, but the lights don't seem to come from there either. Like what is supposed to be making light don't in fact make it. Like in fact it make darkness. And the darkness make light. And he don't understand it, he don't understand life, why people are how they are and do what they do, but he want to, and he just know he can, one day, he think once he do he can make things better somehow, like maybe he has something to offer all this. He want to live a big magnificent life. He got this vow he made to himself. It seem like everyone between his age and his pops's age, somewhere along the way they get so tied up doing what they think they got to do that they never do what they
really
got to do. And they get crushed. But he ain't gonna get crushed. He gonna survive. He'll be the first. Like his pops always say:
You just never know.

If he told all this to Raul, he'd just grunt and be all quiet and awkward, not knowing what the fuck he talking about. He and Raul
once got busted at Atlantic Center in Brooklyn for trying to steal Blu-rays from Target to sell for Air Jordan money. Clayton don't like to steal but Raul do, and Clayton too afraid to stop him. Raul all, —Stop acting superior, nigga, and stand here in front of me so they can't see. Clayton don't like being called
nigga
or calling other people
nigga
, but it one of those things you have to do sometime, along with standing guard while Raul peels off the plastic from copies of
Poseidon
and
Transformers 2
and
Taken 2
and shoves them down his pants to bring them back to sell around the project.

Five security guys came, white dudes in red Target polo shirts. Clayton froze, Raul ran—both were caught. Took them into some little room in back of the mall that smelled like beer and made them sit there for hours, saying how the cops were gonna lock them up for years and years and what a good thing that would be for everyone. Four of the guys lost interest after a while or their shifts just ended and they left, leaving Clayton and Raul with just the one who seemed to be in charge, old white dude in his fifties or something, clearly a cop moonlighting. Had a gun. It was in a holster on his hip. Cop sat there the whole time with his back against the door, his hand over the gun like he might pull it any second and start firing. Clayton never been so scared.

—Let us go, yo, Raul said.

The cop gestured with his chin to the door and said, —You want to go? Go for it. Please.

His hand on the gun, making no effort to move aside to give them space to pass. They weren't idiots. They stayed. Stared at his gun the whole time. Clayton started losing it, was begging forgiveness, mercy. He could tell the cop enjoyed it. Clayton even cried a little—cop
loved
that. Raul scowled at Clayton, disgusted with him. But when Clayton was done, the cop took his hand off the gun, opened the door, and said, —All right, get outta here.

On the D train back home across the river into the city, Raul was saying, —What you beg him like that for, C? I was 'bout to
fuck
a nigga up, man.
Fuck
his badge and fuck his gun, nigga. He not on duty, and think I scared of a gun? Think I ain't neva seen a gun? Think
I
can't get a gun? I can have a gun
tonight. Tonight.