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Fourth Of July7.6.97
Yesterday, after our trip to the Toys R' Us, where Glynn got a ball and
bat, (Barry Bonds signature) and to the WalMart where he got a batting
glove, I came inside for awhile and psyched up for a trip to Greg and
Sharon's back yard barbeque. Sharon is my age, pretty, about a hundred
pounds overweight. Greg has the shaved head, intense stare, and physique
of a light heavyweight boxer. The barbecued chicken, and ribs, the
macaroni and cheese, and jambalaya were all very good, but the two ice-cold
budweisers in the ninety-five degree (sixty percent humidified) heat hit
me hard and I found myself slipping away to lie in front of the AC at my
house. I woke a couple of hours later, groggy, so I slurped a pint of
XXX strength iced tea. Now I'm wired and groggy.
Its about 8pm now and I go outside and cross the street to Mama D's where Evelyn is sitting on the steps. Evelyn is Mama D's thirty-one year old daughter. A slightly
mannish appearance, and an apparent sexual attraction to both Mandy and
I has not completely precluded all of us from being friends. I ask
Evelyn if she wanted to go around the corner to her front porch on
Orleans and watch the fireworks that would be going off on the other side
of the Quarter by the river. She wanted to go down to the river and hear
the music and see it all up close. I'm not up to it this year, I say,
and besides, I don't want to go off having too much fun while Mandy is
suffering under the weight of a bad monthly. Evelyn doesn't want kids
going either and I remind her that it is Glynn's birthday and then she tells
me she has been fighting with her neighbor, Gambino, but what the hell,
let's go, and Glynn can come with us. Evelyn's children are Julia, 12, and Fermin, 11.
Evelyn wants me to drop her at the Joy on Canal after
the fireworks and so we drive instead of walk around the corner. Its
almost nine o'clock now and the heat still feels like little lead weights
resting on every individual pore of your body. The air is completely
still and has a density that resists you as you move through it. And the
evening sky, black, starless, and thick, rests heavily on your head.
Gambino and Evelyn have been the greatest of friends in the past,
Gambino barbecuing weekly on the little strip of side walk in front of
their double shotgun, sharing regularly with Evelyn. But a dispute over
fish cleaning and a missing porch light has escalated into a run of the
mill neighborly squabble or...
As we turn left on N. Broad the night is lit with flashing red lights.
Police cars coming from all directions, approaching what appears to be a
pretty hairy scene up by the pumping station on St. Louis. We see a
Crime Lab truck and our minds bring up visions of blood on the streets,
again. Another dot on the murder map perhaps. The Saturday Metro
section informs us it was a bad accident. Six men in the back of a
pickup with two cases of beer and a clothes dryer spilled onto the road.
All hurt, two in critical.
Evelyn, Glynn, and I, park on Orleans in front of her house. Gambino and
his wife are out on their side of the porch. Gambino pleads with Evelyn
to stop calling the police and their landlord on him. She had a box
cutter in her hand the other night when the police came. She says they
told her she had a right to defend herself. I'm not really listening.
Gambino makes a gesture of taking the bulb from his porch light and
putting it in Evelyn's. Glynn is eager to get into the bag of fireworks
I brought with me. Gambino's wife is explaining to her husband that
Evelyn is a frustrated woman. "She just loose job, she got two children
to take care of." But these words sound a little bit sinister to me.
Evelyn is not too sure so she just shakes her head and says, "yes I am
frustrated." And it is much too hot for all this. Something is not
right tonight and the hairs on my arms are bristling. Little lasers of
refracted street light bounce off the sweat pouring from Glynn's
forehead. And the voices are getting louder. This thing is escalating
too fast. Evelyn goes inside and calls the police. When she comes back
out I see this rather wicked looking filet knife inserted, blade down, in
her back pocket. I start to tell Glynn something but no words come out.
He seems to understand and goes to sit in the car. I look up and Evelyn
is standing up with her shoulders arched slightly back. The blade is in
her hand, in the sneak position--unvarnished wood handle in her clenched
fist, blade point running backwards towards her elbow and pressed tight
up against the inside of her wrist. She is standing two inches shy of
the imaginary line which separates the two porches. If she steps over it
first, its attempted murder. He steps over and she can plead
self-defense. I really don't believe Gambino or his wife ever saw the
knife. I step onto the sidewalk and cross the line so I am standing in
front of Gambino's. The porch is elevated about two and half feet from
the sidewalk. There is a wrought iron railing between us. My voice
doesn't carry that well but I yell anyway and tell Gambino that he needs
to leave my friend alone. The look of shock which comes over his face is
disproportionate to the threat. I can only guess he realized he had been
flanked, a strategic disadvantage to say the least. He mumbles some
obscenities in Spanish and quickly steps inside his front door. Surely
to get his gun my mind informs me. This night was made for it. Fifteen
police cars and two or three ambulances a block and a half away and I'm
about to become pulp. Over a light bulb and some fish guts. Gambino
comes back out and walks off towards the Shell station at Broad and
Orleans ( twenty-four hour beer and liquor).
Fermin and Julia show up about ten minutes later and Evelyn tells them to
stay home for the night. I leave them some fireworks and Glynn decides
to stay with them. I drop Evelyn at the Joy for the ten o'clock showing
of Men in Black. I pick her up at midnight and drop her at her house.
All is well.
A Warm Fuzzy Blanket
"Allegedly," I said.
"What's that?" Glynn said.
"Means he's been charged with the crime, but it hasn't been proven yet."
"Oh. Can I ask you a question? Glynn said.
"As many as you like, however, answers are a dollar a piece."
"If my grandma say it all right I can spend the weekend over here?"
"You're staying with your grandma now?"
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since a week and a half ago, and until my mama get out." Nettie's in jail again? And when she get's out its just a matter of time before she going back. Glynn's thinking he staying with her is a sort of "pipe dream," because she has never taken care of those kids.
After the death of Mama D one of the better shuffles of the deck landed KaKa (16), and Glynn (13), with their actual father, Eric, and his wife. 'Lil Eric (aka., Stink, or Stank, 20), when not in jail, would live wherever he could. But for Glynn I thought this was a wonderful deal; a black boy of the inner city to be with his actual father is a rare thing indeed. What went wrong? What happened? Why were you kicked out? Why doesn't anybody love you?, I wanted to ask.
I said, "Where does she stay?"
"On the other side of the Bayou, on Roosevelt. That's why I'm over here a lot lately, 'cause them boys over there, mmm, something wrong with 'em."
"You can stay."
"Thank you."
"Does it surprise you about X. I mean, if he really did it," I said.
"No," Glynn said.
"Really? Why?"
"'Cause he would always hang with them kind."
X lives around here and for a good while before Shelton went off to California, and after he got back, X and he would pal around, and fight, and be pals, then enemies, often fighting over the attentions of the same girl. X is bigger than Shelton (although Shelton has beat him up), and a year older, and is much more polite, well mannered, and mature. And for awhile he was spending a lot of time over here, sometimes I think just to piss Shelton off, but he is always very quiet sitting at the computer playing solitaire or some other simple game. Rarely will he be engrossed in the more lively computer games offered here. There was a brief period where he discovered the Internet, and pornography. I let it slide for a few days but then I started worrying about the implications for all involved and came in one day, and said, "X, you cannot look at pornography on these computers." He went into a denial so thorough that I began to question his version of reality. But he did not surf the Internet anymore. He and Shelton will still play dominoes on occasion, the winner gloating loudly over victory. And X will still play solitaire.
Earlier this week a boy said to me, "Mr. Jim, you aren't going to believe this but they got X locked up for that shootin.'"
I did not respond to that.
"You wanna know how they found it out?"
I nodded.
"X be walkin' around after sayin' 'I got me one, I got me one, I kill a man.'"
I'm shaking my head.
"That's so stupid, huh, Mr. Jim, if you kill a man you don't go around after braggin' about it."
I have to respond to that with agreement, and although I want to explain that you don't go around killing people over trivial matters, I don't; the words in my head sound weak.
There are some things that need to happen for all this killing to stop and I'm afraid, I believe, they are not going to happen. The comfort we take in the temporary downturning of crime trends is all we're going to get, is all we have. And that's so we don't get too scared or despondent about what it is that's really going on here. For true, it is a good thing we blanket ourselves with the fuzzy comfort of denial. Clarity of vision is not in our best interests. It is important that we forget, and smile a bit.
One evening after he left the house, picking up a pear on his way out, saying, "all right Mr. Jim," X got into an argument with a young man by the name of Arthur Brown. When X removed the gun from his pocket, Arthur Brown ran around a car, and X shot him. The first bullet likely entered one of Arthur's legs, bluntly ripping his flesh, and tearing through muscle, tendons, arteries, and veins, maybe chipping some bone too. Six bullets were fired in less time than it took for X to pick up his pear in this kitchen and walk out this front door. Three more bullets were fired into Arthur Brown's legs, but it was the first bullet shot into his neck that had blood pooling blackly in the street on top of the spilt oil of so many Chevys. The second bullet in Arthur Brown's neck was put there because X knew he was supposed to go for the head, but in my mind I'm imagining him too polite, and well mannered, and at this point, even realizing its too late for that, regretful, so he puts another bullet in Arthur Brown's neck. X kill a man.
Arthur's obit is in this morning's paper; they put in a real nice picture; he got a good smile.