“The only story they’re going to do is something about how ‘gentrification’ might not work in Harlem,” Sammy said, still wearing his barbershop whites. “When you see it on the news, just remember you heard it here first.”
“You don’t think he had anything to do with that doctor being stabbed?” I asked.
“It don’t hardly matter what he did or didn’t do,” Sammy answered. “Sometimes it seems to me that all you young folks are taking numbers and getting on line to march yourself down to the graveyard. You’re either killing each other or getting killed. It gets discouraging after a while. It does.”
“And we’re all in the same shadow, and we all smell the same,” I said.
“I think I know where you’re going with that, Darius,” Sammy said. “But just seeing it don’t make a difference. We all see it, but we’re still marching. Ain’t we?”
A truck marked ATHOS FLORIST pulled up, and for a moment, I thought someone had sent flowers for DaSheen’s memorial. Then the door opened and I saw it was full of more police in SWAT gear. People started clearing the streets as the cops got out and formed a skirmish line. Two other police cars showed up on the corners and blocked off the street.
“Get off the street, Darius,” Sammy said, wiping his hands on his legs. “Just in case these fools get gun-happy.”
The police were in front of my house, so I walked as casually as I could across the street into another building. I wanted to see what was going to happen next, but I didn’t want to be too close.
It was an old walk-up, a woman from our church lived in it, and I was surprised at how clean it was. The tin was coming off some of the steps, but the halls, although dim, were swept and smelled of cleaning fluid.
The door to the roof was shut, but I saw that a piece of cardboard, folded, had been put at the top of the door to keep it closed. I pushed it open carefully. When I saw there was no one on the roof, I stepped out, put the cardboard back on top of the door, and closed it behind me.
The wind swirled around the roof and I felt goose bumps rise on my arms. Edging my way to the front of the roof, I looked down on the street below.
Fury looks down at the earth from where he flies in slow, lazy circles. He sees each movement below and interprets its meaning. The police are lining up in front of a house they plan to enter. Sharpshooters are crouched behind a police car and the florist van. They must have the name of their prey.
But they could be prey as well.
I watched as the police went cautiously into the apartment building. Then I saw more cops on the roofs across the street from where I watched.
A loudspeaker blared a warning in the street below for people to clear the area. Nobody moved. No cop wanted to confront the crowd of blade-thin dudes as they gathered to watch the action. Younger boys were already make-believe shooting at one another. From where I watched, I could see fingers pointing and kids clutching their stomachs and falling dramatically to the ground, only to get up a moment later to resume their game.
Then I saw cops coming out of the building. One, then two, then two more. Behind them, hands cuffed behind his back, was a young black man in a torn T-shirt and baggy pants. I didn’t recognize him, and in a way, I felt I wasn’t supposed to recognize him. He was just another black dude being busted.
The police put him over the hood of their patrol car and searched him carefully. The girls started talking, their voices, indistinct from the street below, sounding like the random chatter of birds.
The SWAT team, its members swaggering about in small circles, waited until the patrol cars had left before getting back into the florist van. Soon they, too, were gone, and the traffic across 145th Street resumed.
I had started to go downstairs when I thought about what I had seen from my roof, looking across the street. I glanced over to where I would have been sitting if I’d been on my own building. I saw the chimney a few feet away. From where I stood, it looked like all the other roof structures. I walked to it.
There was gray packing tape on one brick. I looked around to see if there were other eyes watching me. I pulled the packing tape, and the brick came away. I reached into the small opening and touched the gun.
Evil has a feel, a coldness. I felt sick. I walked stiffly down the stairs.
Home.
Twig called.
“I heard something went down on your block,” he said.
“Police stuff,” I said. “Fifty cops running around trying to look tough and waving all kinds of automatic weapons. It looked like Vietnam or something. They arrested somebody.”
“You don’t know who?”
“Male, white T-shirt, dark skin, either African American or Latino, didn’t finish high school but plans on taking his GED in the fall if he’s not in jail,” I said.
“Twenty-five years to life!” Twig said.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked, sensing he was down.
“Nothing much,” Twig said. “I don’t know—I hoped I’d feel different after I won in Delaware. Things slipped back to normal so quick.”
“The girls stopped pointing at you?”
“Some still do and it makes me smile, man,” Twig said. “I like that, but it doesn’t mean anything. I’m still the same Twig. The race is already history. But I’m still running it at night. In my head, I’m still tracking down that dude and wondering if I’m going to pass him.”
“He’s thinking about it too,” I said. “I bet he’s got a picture of your face in his mind.”
“You think?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, you remember Mr. Watson saying that he thought some guys hid guns on the roof?”
“Yeah?”
“I know where they hide them,” I said.
“It won’t do you any good,” Twig said. “You’re not a gun man. You’re like that bird of yours, what’s his name?”
“Fury.”
“Yeah, Fury, flying so high above the streets you can’t even make out the people below.”
“That’s your vision? Can you imagine a falcon flying that high?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Me too,” I said. “That Herb guy call you again?”
“He calls me every day,” Twig said. “Says he just wants to check up on me. How’s my family and stuff. I’m, like—spooked!”
“You scared of him?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Twig said. “But I don’t know what his game is. And maybe I don’t know enough about what big-time racing is all about. I don’t want to do anything stupid if I think I got a chance to do something good. That make sense?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“I thought it would make sense to you,” Twig said.
We say good-bye and hang up and I take out my story from the Salvation Army bookcase my father bought for me before he walked.
At last I am feeling what the boy felt in the water. The tide is pushing him away from the shore and the dolphins might or might not be waiting for him just beyond the edge of his endurance. But there is not one boy, there are at least two in that body struggling against the cold tide. One has faith in himself, the other faith in what he might be. If things were different. If there were other chances. If his father hadn’t walked. If the rent had been paid. If this. If that.
What had Twig said? He was happy but it was not him who was happy? The Twig who was happy was the one I had known for so many years. The one who wanted to run and to feel good about himself. That was the happy Twig. The other one, the one who Coach talked about, the one who told himself that just finishing fourth in Delaware would be enough because it was what they wanted him to do, that was a different Twig.
I looked at the story again, imagining the boy swimming away from the shore, wanting to turn back to see how far he had gone, afraid to turn back, afraid to stop and afraid not to stop his journey beyond his own abilities. I knew the difference. Now I just had to write it.
chapter twenty-eight
There is a relati
onship between the raptor and its prey. Both have a combination of instinct and survival skills and both are, in the end, resigned to their respective fates, their individual experiences. It is only when one, or both, are human, that learning happens and the balance is changed.
“What’s up, man?” Ten thirty p.m., and from the ringtone I know it’s Twig. “I thought athletes were supposed to get eight hours of sleep.”
“You hear what happened over at Rucker Park?”
“No, I’ve been home all evening,” I said. I looked over to where Brian was sleeping and saw that he had his notebook in bed with him.
“Midnight and some jerks from his posse were over there, and then some guys from the projects hit the park and started shooting,” Twig said. “You know Joleen Harris?”
“Dark girl with pretty eyes?” I asked. “You were hanging with her?”
“No, she called Vanessa, my cousin, and said that Midnight got shot in the stomach,” Twig said. “My cousin called me and told me.”
“Is he dead?”
“No, he ran out of the park, but they say he was bleeding bad,” Twig said. “Nobody knows where he is now. Some of his homeys went to his house and he wasn’t there, and they called around to hospitals and stuff like that.”
“This just happened?”
“About two hours ago, but my cousin just called me.”
“He’s probably not hurt too bad if he ran from the park,” I said.
“I don’t know. My cousin Vanessa said that Joleen, who was on the scene, said he was bleeding from his stomach,” Twig said. “There was blood on his T-shirt, and she thought he was bleeding from the mouth, too.”
“Damn!”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” Twig said. “They said the fools who lit him up were Young Disciples. They were out to send somebody to the table!”
“I hear that,” I said. The table down at the morgue was the last place a lot of dudes from the nabe reached. “I thought they were trying to clean Rucker up. You think Midnight’s really wasted?”
“I don’t know. You would think he would either head home or to a hospital, right?” Twig said.
“Was Tall Boy in the park?” I thought about seeing Midnight get slapped around by his father and thought that maybe home wasn’t the best place for him to go.
“I don’t know, but that’s where the cops went looking for him,” Twig said. “And they still didn’t find him. Maybe he’s thinking that if they wanted to kill him, they’re still looking for him.”
“And don’t know how bad they got him already,” I said.
“Something like that.”
“He’d go to a safe place. You don’t shoot somebody and then run to their turf to look for them,” I said. “Did the whole thing take place in the park?”
“Not according to what Joleen told my cousin,” Twig said. “But I don’t really know, because my cousin was all excited telling me about it.”
“She knows you and Midnight don’t cut it?”
“No, but Vanessa’s only fourteen so she got all excited and happy to run her mouth,” Twig said. “Then I got Joleen’s number and called her and she was mad at Vanessa because she called everybody and told them before she could.”
“I guess we’ll hear about it in the morning,” I said.
“Yo, Darius, do you think maybe Midnight collapsed somewhere?” Twig asked. “Maybe he panicked when he got shot and ran because he just didn’t want to lay down and get shot some more.”
“The Young Disciples stayed in the park?”
“No, Joleen said everybody was running and climbing fences and stuff,” Twig said. “I think if I had been there, I’d’ve jumped over the fence! When shots are going off, you can’t sit around and check out everything. The police are out on the street now, so there won’t be any more banging tonight.”
“You thinking Midnight just went somewhere and collapsed?”
“Could be,” Twig said. “I don’t know. What else could he do? I don’t think he’s got a girlfriend.”
Brian stirred and sat up.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is Mama home?”
“It’s Twig on the phone,” I said. “Yeah, everything’s okay. Mama is home. Midnight got shot and they don’t know where he is.”
“Brian up?” Twig asked.
“Yeah. Look, maybe Midnight went someplace to hide,” I said. “I’ve seen Diablo and some of them on the roof across from me.”
“Across from you? Midnight don’t live there.”
“No, but I’ve seen them on one of the roofs,” I said. “Down from the supermarket.”
“I don’t think so,” Twig said. “If you were hurting bad, you wouldn’t run up on a roof. If somebody caught him up there, they could just throw him off.”
“Not if he had a gun,” I said.
“Joleen said he didn’t have a gun,” Twig went on. “She said when the Young Disciples—and yo, Darius, I don’t know if it was really the Young Disciples, because when I asked Joleen, she didn’t know the guy who was doing the shooting—but Midnight wasn’t shooting back or anything so I don’t think he had a gun.”
“There’s a gun up on the roof,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” Twig said.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Midnight might have gone up on the roof to get a gun and then couldn’t make it down again. I’m going up on my roof and see if he’s there.”
“You serious?”
“I’ll call you back,” I said.
“Yo, Darius, why you getting into this? This is some crazy shit, but you don’t want to get involved in this, right?” Twig asked.
“I don’t know, Twig,” I said. “Maybe I do.”
Twig asked me if I was serious again, and I told him I was. Then I hung up and started putting my pants on.
“Where you going?” Brian asked.
“Up on the roof.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now shut up.”
“I’m telling Mama.”
“She was drinking again,” I said. “You won’t be able to wake her. And if you do, you’ll just get her more upset. You want to do that?”
“I don’t want you to go out now.” Brian’s voice sounded even younger than it usually does.
“I just need to check on something,” I said. “I’ll be right back. You make sure the door is locked behind me. And sit near the door to open it fast if I tell you to, okay?”
“Why you got to go out, Darius?”
I laced my sneakers as fast as I could, grabbed my phone, and headed for the door. I waited a second until I heard Brian click the lock, and then I started up the two flights to the roof.
The stairs up the first flight, to the fifth floor, were the same as the steps all the way down to the lobby. The steps from the fifth floor to the roof looked older, and the linoleum was cracked and broken in spots. The door to the roof was bolted shut, and I felt good about that.
I slipped the bolt back and eased the door open. It was dark. The odors of old tar, rain, and rotting garbage rising from the alley between the buildings mixed, making me feel slightly nauseous. Easing over to the edge of the roof, I felt myself straining to be taller, so that I could see over the low wall even before I got to it.
I could feel myself breathing hard as I touched the rough concrete barrier that separated the roof of my building from the one next to it. Two buildings down, a clothesline with some light-colored clothes on it flapped in the wind, startling me. I imagined them to be shirts. The roof across the street was not quite as dark as mine. Looking where I had found the gun, I concentrated on the shadows. I didn’t see anything at first and felt relieved. Then I saw what looked, from where I sat shivering, like a sheet of plywood or an old door lying at an angle against a wall. There was something sticking out from under the door. The rain was picking up and it was hard to see. It could have been a brick. Or a bottle. Or the bottom of a shoe.
Twig on speed dial!
“How
you know it’s Midnight?” he said. “It could be a homeless guy or a crackhead.”
“Or it could be just an old shoe,” I said. “But I’m going over there to find out.”
“Why?” Up-front. To the point. Why?
“Twig, it’s something about . . . something about the best me that I can be—”
“You’re going to get yourself in a mess, Darius,” Twig said. “You got to ask yourself if Midnight—if that’s Midnight—is worth it.”
“No, I got to ask myself what I’m about,” I said.
“You sure about this?”
“No, Twig, but I gotta do it,” I said. “You don’t have to come with me.”
Downstairs. I didn’t want to stop to tell Brian what I was doing. If it was nothing, a shoe, a homeless guy, a crackhead, then I’d come back and let him know what had happened.
chapter twenty-nine
In the street, the rain was picking up. The street was less crowded than earlier. There were people going into the bodega on the corner, some standing on the corner, their bodies at odd angles under their three-dollar umbrellas, waiting for their connections to show up with whatever got them through the night. I walked to the corner and crossed, trying to look as if I weren’t scared.
Down the street I saw Twig coming toward me. He had on his hoodie from school, and I waited until he reached the corner.
“Yo, Darius, I’m thinking this is serious stupid,” Twig said.
“Maybe.” I was glad as anything to see him.
The hallway at 176 was bright. The freshly painted yellow walls were almost cheerful as Twig and I went upstairs. On the third floor, a door was open and I could hear a baby crying.