One last cigarette, one last sip of bourbon, that was the aim. A nightcap while sitting on the porch, absorbing the stillness in a long coat but no shoes because the spring air had just hit, and then the windows started vibrating like an engine reluctant to start. Thrumming helicopter rotors, circling low and directly overhead. Its searchlight swung down my street, caressed the face of the house across from me. I forgot about my smoke and watched. The spotlight swept past me, put me front and center for a millisecond, and then raced onward, spiraling, homing in.
I sat enraptured with feline curiosity,
startled when the dogs started baying, cringed when the chopper light
caught my eyes, and kept smoking. One after the other. I was waiting
to see who they caught.
Seven cars blocked the intersection of
Grant and Darlington. Uniforms meandered, seemingly without purpose,
except for when their radios crackled and then they hurried, blueish
flashbeams lighting up the windows of decrepit houses. They had
purpose then, a bad guy to catch, somewhere nearby. Somewhere near
me. I lit another Pall Mall and watched.
The news crew showed up shortly,
parking their conspicuous vans a block away, multi-antennaed white
beetles preying on the dung of our neighborhood. A smiling black man
in a red do-rag, walking a pale pitbull pup past my porch, asked if I
knew what was up. I confessed I had no facts, so he asked the YNN
reporter stationed at the end of my driveway, her camera on a tripod,
solo, nonchalantly taking it all in. She said the 7-11 down the
street, the same convenience store I'd visited earlier that night,
was robbed at gunpoint. He laughed, turned around, and hurried home.
As he strolled away, a Sheriff's car
pulled up in front of my apartment, on the opposite side of the
street, facing against traffic. The man who stepped out meant
business, strapped in Kevlar. He popped open the trunk, reached in,
and I heard something I haven't heard since Basic Training: the
unforgettable sound of a magazine being locked and a chamber being
loaded into an M-16 (or, in his case, an AR-15) assault rifle. I
stubbed out my cigarette and the Sheriff looked up at me. I tried to
sound jocular.
"Heh... guess I should head inside now, yeah?"
"Yeah. Probably." Locked and
loaded, he joined his fellow manhunters as the neighborhood glowed
blue and everyone trembled.
A half-hour later, the windows stopped
rattling. The chopper had moved on. I lit another cigarette, poured
one more finger of bourbon, and stepped back onto the porch. They'd
caught their man. Raasjuan Bloodworth, a giant of a young man, only
nineteen years old, who'd robbed the store with a sawed-off shotgun
and then met a police officer right outside the door,
had dropped the gun and a knapsack containing his ID, and then bolted
directly for my corner of the ghetto. He was found in a house on
Darlington, a stone's throw from my front porch. That's not a
colloquialism; I could hit that beige two-story from here. They bent
him in half just to fit him into the patrol car.
Everything
was quiet from there, except I double-checked my locks and wondered
where the blunt objects in my apartment were, ones I could grab in a
clutch, like a cowboy, like a fictional hero.
****
A
small, grinning face peeks over the fence at me while I'm raking up
cigarette butts and old leaves. I can't help but smile back. I'm
trying to keep my lawn clean, not for any Joneses sake, but because
Grant tends to accumulate flotsam after every rain, leaving
McDonald's cups and, strangely, entire foosball teams, in my front
yard. The kid keeps poking his head over the broken red pickets. He's
playing peek-a-boo. He reminds me of my youngest daughter, except
male, and black, but still. I want to play back, but I don't want to
risk being seen as the Creepy White Guy.
The
vacuum cleaner is heavy, and the extension cord is tangled, and I've
managed to back the car into the garage just far enough to crack the
door open but not far enough to fit the hose in. The car's upholstery
is dingy and the floor is littered with pennies and sunflower seed
shells. I'm on a mission. And then his face appears again, mischief
and dimples. I recognize him, kinda. He's the youngest of the boys
next door, the kids that never talk to us, the kids that never have
parents around that we can see. From the house that cops were at a
couple weeks ago, when their oldest brother threw a garbage can
through the back door.
I
hesitate again, because my first instinct is to point my finger at
him and yell "PEW! PEW!" Like a gun. Like it might be okay,
because it's just play, except it's not. Not on Grant. So instead I
point and say, "Gotcha!" The kid ducks, laughing, and I
reckon everything's alright. I start awkwardly vacuuming.
"...ICO!"
I shut down the vacuum and look up. The kid's practically in
my car, his cherubic face beaming.
"Whadja say, mate?"
"My name's Chico!" he yells. "Where's Naz?"
"...What?"
The
kid points at the fence behind him. There's a blur of movement, a
face, some hands over the pickets, quick movement, and then I can
clearly see another kid, a bit older, sprinting back and forth out of
sight and then into sight. He wants to be seen.
"Damn,
son! Naz is fast."
That did the trick, apparently, because Naz hops the fence and tries
climbing over it to join the party. The party being me, cleaning my
car out, while two neighbor boys decide if I'm worthy of playtime.
Except Naz gets stuck. His brown hoodie snags on a picket while he's
descending, and he looks to me -- not helpless, but wondering.
"Do
you want me to lift you up, or do you want me to unstick your
hoodie?"
"Just
get this," Naz nods at the fence, hanging by wiry brown fingers,
no indication of worry. I detangle his hoodie and he jumps down.
Naz
is nine, the same age as my son. Chico thought he was four, but Naz
corrected him and told him he was five, which means he's the same age
as my youngest daughter. I struggled to clean my car for about an
hour while these two chatted, ran around my driveway, tried to put
air in my tires with a broken basketball pump, asked about the random
detritus I'd set on the roof while vacuuming, climbed the fence and
back down again, vainly attempted a game of Hide-and-Seek, and then
got yelled at by their older brother.
"That's
Sincere," Chico confided. Sincere was walking Angel, the pale
pitbull pup they've had chained outside the red picket fence for a
few days now. Sincere can't be more than fifteen, but he's cagey. He
comes down the sidewalk and sees his two baby brothers talking to a
white man.
"How's
it goin', mate? Sincere, innit?" I smile and extend my hand. I
genuinely hope he'll take it, and I can immediately see he's going to
hesitate. Luckily for everyone, Angel the puppy hops up and licks my
hands, forearms, begging for attention.
"She...
Sorry. She does that to everyone," Sincere mutters. I don't
believe him for a second.
"It's
okay. I don't mind."