Darius & Twig

  The top floor, the cardboard stuck between the door and the jamb to keep it closed, the cool night air.

  “We got a plan?” Twig whispered.

  “We call out his name,” I whispered back. “So we don’t surprise him.”

  “Suppose there’s somebody else here with him?”

  Shit! I was losing my nerve again. I walked slowly toward where I had seen what I had imagined was plywood from my roof. Up close, I could see it was cardboard. I saw the foot and pointed toward it to show Twig.

  “Hey, Midnight!”

  There was a noise that sounded like a grunt, or maybe even a fart. Then the cardboard moved and I saw Midnight struggling to rise up to one elbow. He was pushing up with his left hand, the one without the gun.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Back up, bitch!” He was wheezing, inhaling sharply between each word. “I’ll blow your ass off!”

  “You need some help!” Twig said.

  “What you guys doing? You coming up here to have sex?”

  “Come up here looking for you,” I said. “How you doing?”

  “I don’t need . . .” Midnight looked around, trying to get his bearings. “You got Tall Boy’s number?”

  “You don’t need Tall Boy,” I said. “You need a doctor. You going to die up here. Everybody was looking for you. They were calling your house and calling Tall Boy’s crib.”

  “What he say?”

  “He said the same thing everybody else was running down, that you and him got into it with some dudes and the shots went off. Then he split,” I said. “Twig and I figured you might have come up here and maybe needed some help.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Whatever, I’m going to call 911!”

  “No you ain’t!” Midnight lifted the gun and pointed it at me. “Call Tall Boy!”

  “What’s he going to do if he does come up here?” I asked. “He’s not a doctor. You look like you’re about ready to check out.”

  Midnight’s head went down and the gun was pointed down at the tarred roof. He was breathing hard and trying to sit up.

  “Why don’t you just lay still and let us get some help?” Twig asked.

  “Why?”

  “So you can be alive tomorrow,” I said.

  Midnight made a noise, almost a crying noise, like a wounded animal. He was a rabbit caught somewhere in the wilds, and a raptor had him. He was helpless and he knew it.

  He looked around wildly. His face was twisted, and the blood on his lower lip made him look weird in the dim light.

  “You got to get rid of the gun,” Midnight said. “We can’t get caught with no gun.”

  “I’ll get rid of it,” Twig said. He took the gun from Midnight.

  I dialed 911 and told the operator where I was and that a teenager had been shot and needed help bad. She wanted to know who all was on the roof, and I gave her our three names. Then she asked me if there were any guns on the roof, and I said no.

  I watched as Twig took the gun, holding it with a ballpoint pen through the trigger guard, and took it to another roof, stepping over the low barriers that separated the buildings. He didn’t make any effort to hide it, and I knew we could always call in an anonymous tip later. I thought it would be okay if the police found it there.

  The rain picked up and Twig took off his hoodie and wrapped it around Midnight’s shoulders.

  “How you know about this place?” Midnight asked me.

  “Everybody knows about this place,” I lied. I wasn’t afraid anymore, but I didn’t want Midnight to think I was the only one who had seen where they hid guns.

  “Young Disciples shot my ass,” Midnight said. “They were looking for somebody named Duke. My name ain’t no damned Duke. A bunch of stupid assholes shot me and I wasn’t even who they were looking for! That’s some foul shit!”

  “Yeah.” Twig.

  “How come you guys come up here?” Midnight caught his breath and grimaced. He was hurting bad. “What time is it, anyway?”

  I waited until his breath had got back to normal before looking at my watch. “Yo, Midnight, don’t worry—it’s not midnight yet!”

  “That ain’t funny, faggot!”

  Midnight, on the roof. I could see his hand begin to shake a little and I wondered if he was going to make it. On TV cop shows, they always showed the victim being taken to the hospital and added “where he died” or something.

  We heard the sirens first. Then my cell rang and it was the police. We told them we were still on the roof. They asked again about weapons and we said we didn’t have any.

  The cops came up on the roof first. Two of them, one black and one Latino, pointed their guns at us.

  “Move that cardboard!” The Latino cop had his flashlight trained on Midnight.

  We had adjusted the cardboard so that it just about covered all of Midnight. When we moved it, we saw his shirt covered with blood. The cops told me and Twig to stand up, and they patted us down as two more cops came up on the roof. Then the EMT guys came on the roof, put on blue rubber gloves, and started working on Midnight.

  “You guys shoot him?” the black cop asked me.

  We told him we hadn’t, that we all went to the same school and we had heard he had been shot.

  “Nobody knew where he was,” I said. “I thought he might be up here.”

  “You smoke crack up here?”

  “No, I don’t smoke crack anywhere!” I said.

  They gave Midnight some kind of shot and put him on a stretcher. Two cops went down first, then the emergency guys carrying Midnight, then the other two cops, with me and Twig following.

  When we got to the street, there was a small crowd and the Latino cop asked some people some questions, pointing to me and Twig. They had already taken our IDs and addresses and said they would pick us up if necessary.

  “Anything you got to say, you’d better say it now!” The black cop got into my face.

  “I don’t have anything more to say,” I said.

  He mean mugged me and then got into a squad car and left.

  “My mom is going to go crazy with me out this late,” Twig said. We were finally away from the crowd and walking toward Twig’s house. “This is one of those nights you can’t explain away to your family.”

  “I think I got it though,” I said.

  “You’re shaking, man—you okay?”

  “Just cold,” I said.

  “What you got?” Twig said. “You said you got something.”

  “When we were up there on the roof, I was trying to figure out what was going on in Midnight’s mind. I imagined him doing what we do when things get bad, trying to reach inside and pull something up. You know what I mean?”

  “Whatever you got special,” Twig said.

  “Yeah. And what I figured out was that when Midnight looked inside, he didn’t find anything to pull up.”

  “So?”

  “So when he goes around saying he don’t give a fuck, it’s because the sucker doesn’t have a fuck to give!”

  “Did I know that?” Twig asked.

  “You might have known the tune, but now you got the words to it, too.”

  chapter thirty

  The falcon glides easily over the city. Enjoying the sun on his back, the warm breezes rippling through his feathers. For a moment he is caught in an updraft and allows himself to float aimlessly higher. Turning slightly, he sees a small puff of white cloud above. As he turns even more, the dark shadows of the street are a mosaic, alive, hundreds of feet below. The falcon has already had his meal for the day. Now it is time to just enjoy the flight.

  Twig and I spent the week explaining to everybody and their grandmother about finding Midnight on the roof. Mrs. Nixon was particularly upset when the Amsterdam News reported that the victim and his rescuers all went to Phoenix. I think she expected the entire police department to come down on the school in force. Nobody came. It wasn’t that big a deal to them, just another kid shot in the hood.

/>   Word had gotten around that Twig and I found him, probably through the Twittercy Express. It was also on Joleen’s Facebook page.

  When Miss Carroll heard about it, she cornered me in the hallway and said I should write about the experience.

  “People want to know about the kinds of lives they don’t have the chance to see close up,” she said.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Don’t be put off because it’s black,” she said.

  Thursday afternoon and me and Twig were at Baker Field. A few real runners were using the track, but most of the kids were just jogging or fooling around. One girl was running with a baby on her back.

  “So why did she say that?” Twig asked after I told him what Miss Carroll had said. “She’s thinking you don’t want to be black?”

  “She thinks I don’t want to write about black stuff,” I said. “But the truth is that I don’t want to write about the stuff that she thinks is black. White people are always telling you what your life is about and then saying you should write about it.”

  “You told her that?”

  “No, I didn’t want to get into a big thing about what was black and what wasn’t,” I said.

  “Maybe you should,” Twig said. “A lot of stuff that goes down with us is because you’re black and I’m Dominican. People just looking over the fence don’t see that.”

  “You would have jumped all over her?” I asked.

  “No, not if I was me.” Twig flashed that big smile again. “But if I was you, I would have been on her like amarillo en arroz!”

  “Twig, that is so stupid.”

  “Yeah, I know!”

  “Read the story,” I said.

  I had brought my story to Baker Field to show Twig. The revisions had gone well and I thought it worked, but I wanted to know what my friend thought of it. He had already read it three times, so I knew he would see all the changes.

  We were sitting on the wooden bleacher seats, and Twig picked up “The Song of a Thousand Dolphins” again. The thing was that I hadn’t changed it the way the editor had suggested. What I had done was to make the boy stronger, in a way, but not stronger by relying on the dolphins to make it back to shore. He was reinventing himself, finding the “better” person within. I didn’t think the editor was going to go for that too tough, but I wanted Twig to understand it. I wanted even more for him to like it.

  “You read slowly,” I said, noticing that he was only on the second page.

  “Run a mile,” he answered.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I read slow, you run slow,” Twig said. “You go out there and run a mile, and by the time you finish, I’ll be done reading the story.”

  He went back to the reading.

  The girl carrying the baby passed again. I was sure she was thinking that everyone was looking at her. Some people are like that. They do anything just to get you to look at them.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Twig finally move a page to the back of the manuscript.

  “You translating it into Spanish?” I asked.

  “Run a mile!”

  “I can run a mile,” I said.

  “No you can’t,” Twig said. “That’s four times around. Go!”

  I got up and walked onto the track. I could just feel Twig watching me as I did some toe touches. I did seven, and then I started off.

  The thing was I didn’t know how fast to go. I had run races against other kids, usually in gym, or sometimes against Brian in the park, but not on a track. It couldn’t be that hard. Anyway, as slowly as Twig read, I didn’t have to put myself out. It was a good day to run. The air coming off the river felt clean and good in my face. Around the first turn I got myself to relax and brought my arms down the way I saw so many runners do. The way Twig ran.

  When Twig was at his best, when he was in a race and depending on his own inner strengths, his ability to take the pain and fatigue and to dig inside and pull up the determination to finish strong, he wasn’t the same Twig who sat in front of Midnight not daring to turn around. He wasn’t the same Twig his uncle could put down, either. The Twig he became when he ran was too much to fit into the neat frame of somebody else’s life.

  I was making the first turn, and I looked over to where the finish line was.

  “If they look over to see where the race finishes, it means they’re tired!” Twig had said.

  I really wasn’t that tired. A little tired. Maybe I would start jogging more.

  It didn’t matter if the editor didn’t like my changes. No, it mattered in a way. If he didn’t like my story, if he didn’t publish it, then my chances of getting a scholarship went way down. But I couldn’t let what he thought define my life. It would be as if a chalk mark around a body were all there was to define the life within. The editor had his taste, and his background and his smarts, and that was all good. But I couldn’t give up my abilities because they didn’t match his taste. No, that wasn’t right. Of all the people I was—the guy who didn’t want to confront Midnight, the one who felt helpless when his mother drank too much, or the one who panicked when he saw his father on the streets, tightroping his way down some nightmare in his head—I had to pick the best me there was.

  I didn’t want to speed up when I passed Twig, but I did. A little.

  I was tired. The second lap was a lot worse than the first one. Little waves of nausea came over me. Checking my watch, I saw it was twenty minutes to seven. I didn’t know when I had started, but I thought I was probably doing about a 1:10 quarter. Already part of the way through the second lap, it was too late to time the whole quarter, but I thought I’d check it when I passed the start line again.

  When me and Twig went up on the roof to find Midnight, I thought that was a best me, and a best Twig. Maybe it wasn’t. That was an okay me, yes, but I thought that the best me was somewhere in my words, in my thinking.

  Dear God, don’t let me throw up.

  I crossed the start line. It was eighteen minutes to seven. I was doing more than two minutes a friggin’ lap. I ran a little past Twig and sat down on the infield grass. The world was spinning around me, and soon I was telling myself how much I was going to exercise in the future.

  I lay there for another ten minutes before Twig came over.

  “Yo, Darius, you dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  He sat next to me. I felt something pressing down on my back and realized it was Twig’s head. Then he moved and told me my heart wasn’t beating that fast.

  “You’re just out of shape, dude.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t noticed that,” I said. “I just thought somebody ran off with all the oxygen.”

  “I like your story better now,” Twig said. “Before, it was good, but there were parts I didn’t get. Like why the kid was swimming with a bad leg. And I liked the dolphins—they’re like a metaphor, right?”

  “Yeah, sort of,” I answered. “Only I don’t think in terms of metaphors.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Twig said. “You got dolphins and falcons and stuff in all your stories. You can’t fly and you—can you swim?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  “Could be.”

  “But now the story is clearer because the kid is looking for something inside of himself, and that’s what it’s all about. And you know what else I like about the story? I like the fact that at the end, he still has a bad leg and stuff isn’t just wonderful. He’s still got all the problems in his life and he’s still got to deal with them. Shit doesn’t go away easy.”

  “Like we still have to deal with the stuff in our lives?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Twig said. “I break my leg or lose a couple of races and where am I? Maybe stacking boxes in a bodega.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said as I rolled over and sat up. “If you get over once, I mean if you really get over the way you did in Delaware, and the way you did against Jameson, you have to know that there’s a best Twig so
mewhere in you, and you just got to find a chance for him to do his thing. It doesn’t have to always be about running.”

  “Maybe it’s about having somebody like your nonrunning, nonflying, and nondancing butt around to keep reminding me about a best Twig.”

  “Could be,” I said, standing.

  “So when are you going to send your story off?” Twig asked.

  “I already did,” I said. “This morning.”

  “Before I read it?”

  “I was afraid you weren’t going to like it,” I said.

  “If I’m going to be your agent, you always—I repeat, always—have to send me the story first,” Twig said. “You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right!”

  epilogue

  In the end, things worked out well for me and Twig. He got two scholarship offers, one from the University of North Carolina and one from Texas Christian. He took the one from Texas Christian because it was a full ride without a loan.

  The Delta Review took my story and published it. I was excited when I got the acceptance letter but disappointed with the magazine. The copy I had seen of the Canadian publication was printed on slick paper and had nice illustrations. The two copies they sent me were smaller and on cheap paper. Mr. Ramey wasn’t impressed and said there wasn’t much he could do with it. Miss Carroll was happy with it, though, and sent out both of my copies to friends. The one that she sent to a friend at the English department at Amherst College in Massachusetts resulted in a scholarship offer. It involved a job at the school, some student loans, and a reduced tuition plan.

  Midnight only partially recovered from being shot up. He’s in a wheelchair, but he did get to move to handicapped housing with his mom and little sister.

  I’m going to spend the rest of the year working with Brian. His grades are good and I hope he can keep them up. He’s not going to get any help from Mom, I know, but what I’m hoping is that he doesn’t get discouraged. As Twig said, the shit in your life doesn’t go away easy.