The Way Home

  “Oh, so now you’re not considering college?”

  “I’m not going. I don’t see any reason to go, because I’m not smart enough. Look, accept me like this or don’t. Either way, I’m going to be who I am.”

  This was before the final incident, which started in the lot behind the drugstore on the west side of Connecticut Avenue, up by the Avalon Theater.

  It was a midsummer night, and Chris and his friend Jason Berg, whom everyone but Jason’s parents and teachers called Country, were walking out of the drugstore with a vial of Visine they had purchased and a bunch of candy and gum packs they had stuffed in their pockets and stolen. They had been drinking beer and smoking some bud, and were laughing at something that struck them as funny because they were high.

  A pound of weed was stashed in the back of Chris’s vehicle, under a blanket. They had bought it earlier in the evening from a connection on the D.C. side of Takoma and were planning to sell most of it off to their peers and keep an ounce for themselves. Jason had an electronic scale, and their intention was to bag out the marijuana the next day at his house while his parents were at work.

  Jason was a big kid, tall and muscled up. He had a buzz cut and still wore braces. People thought he was stupid. He had the mouth-breathing, shallow-eyed look of an idiot, a lumbering walk, a stoner’s chuckle, and he was into NASCAR and professional wrestling. Because of those interests and because he was white, the black kids at school had dubbed him Country.

  Jason did nothing to discourage the impression others had formed of him. Truth was, he wasn’t stupid in the least. His grades were middling because he didn’t try during tests or turn in homework, but he had scored very high on his SATs, despite the fact that he had gotten massively baked the night before the exams. He was the son of a Jewish attorney who was a partner in one of the most prominent firms in the District, but he kept this and his intelligence hidden from the kids at school. The hard yahoo stoner was a preferable costume to him over the smart, privileged Jew.

  Chris Flynn was of Irish Catholic extraction, shorter than Jason but not by much, and broad in the chest. He too wore his blond hair close to the scalp. He was fair skinned, green eyed, and had a lazy, charming smile. His one physical flaw was the vertical scar creasing the right side of his upper lip, acquired when he walked into an elbow during a pickup game that had gotten out of hand at the Hamilton Rec in 16th Street Heights. Chris liked the scar, and so did the females. He was handsome, but the scar told anyone who suspected it that he was no pretty boy. It made him look tough.

  He was tough. He and Jason had proven it on the basketball courts and in situations involving hands. They did not hang with other white kids, the skateboarders and punk rockers and intellectuals who populated their high school, and were proud of the fact that they had earned respect, mostly, from the young black men who were bused in from the other side of town. Whether they were liked or not was beside the point to them. Everyone knew that Chris and Jason were on the edge, and that they could ball and fight.

  “I think that Chinese girl behind the counter saw us pocket this stuff,” said Chris, as he and Jason headed for Chris’s SUV.

  “What’s Ling Ho gonna do? Get up after us?”

  As they neared the Isuzu, Chris saw a group of three boys getting into a late-model Volvo station wagon parked down the row of spaces. One of them gave Chris a look, glancing at the old Trooper with the safari roof rack, and smiled in an arrogant way.

  “Is he muggin me?” said Chris.

  Jason stopped and hard-eyed the kid, who was now slipping behind the wheel of the Volvo. “I’ll drop him if he does, son.”

  “They must be private school,” said Chris. “You know those bitches can’t go.”

  Chris and Jason, public-school kids, imagined themselves to be more blue-collar than the many kids in Ward 3 who attended private high schools. For Jason Berg it was an affectation, as his father was in the top 1 percent of earners. Chris, too, was living in a financially comfortable home environment, but he’d inherited the chip on his shoulder from Thomas Flynn.

  Chris and Jason got into the SUV. Chris turned the ignition while Country messed with the radio. Despite his moniker, Country listened exclusively to hip-hop and go-go, and found something he could tolerate on KYS. It was a Destiny’s Child thing that was popular and bogus, and they talked about that for a minute, and then Chris pulled down on the transmission arm, still talking to Jason and looking at him, and reversed the SUV. Both of them were jolted by a collision. They heard and felt the impact at the same time, and Chris said, “Shit.”

  He looked over his shoulder. They had hit the Volvo, passing behind them, and the three boys were getting out of the right-side doors because the Isuzu was up against the driver’s side. Chris cut the engine and took a deep breath.

  “You hit the right car, at least,” said Jason with a grin.

  “My father’s gonna go off.”

  “What now?”

  “ ’Bout to see what the damage is,” said Chris. “You stay in here.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive. I don’t want no trouble tonight. Remember, we got some weight in the back. I’m serious.”

  “Holler if you need me.”

  “Right.” Chris left the keys in the ignition and got out of the SUV.

  He walked toward the boys, now grouped in front of the Volvo. The largest of them was wide and strong, a football player from the looks of him, bulked up in the weight room, but he had nonthreatening eyes. The driver was Chris’s size, prep school definitely from the square-hair, clean-shaved looks of him, and standing with his chest puffed out, which meant he was insecure and probably scared. The third kid, small and unformed, had pulled out a cell phone and was talking into it as he walked away. After sizing them all up quickly, the way boys and men do, Chris decided with some satisfaction that there wasn’t one of them he could not take. Knowing this chilled him some and allowed him, for the moment, to stay even and cool.

  “My bad,” said Chris, facing the driver, the boy who’d given him the look. “Guess I wasn’t payin attention.”

  “You guess,” said the driver. “Look what you did to my car.” Annoyed, not giving Chris any slack, not giving him a “That’s all right” or an “It happens.”

  Chris shrugged and his eyes were dead as he looked at the driver. “Said it was my bad.”

  Chris checked out the Volvo, saw that the left front quarter panel and the edge of the driver’s door carried a dent. He then looked at the bumper of the Isuzu, which was not scratched but showed a bit of gold paint that had come off the Volvo’s body.

  Chris thought of his old man, and the day he had brought the used SUV home and presented it to Chris. It was a corny-looking vehicle, the old, boxy Trooper, which his father said had style and looked “cool.” Nerdy was more like it, but whatever. Chris would have preferred an Impala SS or Buick Grand National, but he took it. One thing his father was right about, the Isuzu was a tank. Shoot, it had put a hurtin on a Volvo.

  “Somethin funny?” said the driver.

  “Nah. I was just… look, let me give you my insurance card.”

  “My insurance caahd,” said the small one, having rejoined the group and slipped his cell into his pocket. The football player looked down at his feet.

  Chris’s jaw tightened as he drew his wallet and found the card in his father’s name. He held it out for the driver, but the driver did not take it.

  “Show it to the police,” said the driver. “They’re on the way.”

  “That’s who your boy called on his cell?” said Chris.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wasn’t no need to do that.” Chris replaced the card in his wallet, feeling his heart tick up a beat. “We supposed to exchange information.”

  “We ’posed to,” said the small one. “Look at him. His eyes are glassy, Alex. He’s fucked up.”

  “How do I know if that card is real?” said the driver, with that same smart look he had given Chri
s when he’d mugged him and his vehicle.

  “Leave it alone, Alex,” said the football player to the driver.

  “See, why you got to say that?” said Chris, staring at the driver, regretting that he had asked the question, not wanting the boy to speak, not trusting what he would do if the boy kept pushing it.

  Adults were now standing in the lot, watching.

  You want to see some drama? I’ll give you something to look at.

  Chris felt himself move his weight to his back foot, as his father had taught him to do long ago.

  Punch with your shoulder, not your arm. Pivot your hip into the punch. Punch through your target, Chris.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, Ace,” said the driver. “Just talk to the police.”

  “Alex,” said the football player.

  “Okay,” said Chris, his face hot as fire. “I guess there’s no need for words.”

  He threw a deep punch and it connected. The driver’s nose felt spongy at the point of contact, and it shot blood as he fell to the ground.

  Chris did not look at the football player but turned to the small one who had jumped back a step. Chris almost laughed. He said, “You’re too little,” and turned and walked back to his vehicle. A couple of the adults were shouting at him but not moving to stop him, and he did not turn his head.

  He got behind the wheel. He turned the key in the ignition. Jason was laughing. Colored lights had begun to strobe the parking lot, and Chris looked left and saw the 2D cruiser enter the lot from Morrison Street, and then another one behind it.

  There was no right or reason. Chris’s head was a riot of energy.

  THREE

  WHERE YOU about to go, dawg?” said Jason. His face showed no fear or care, and it amped Chris further. “We blocked in behind us.”

  “Not on the right,” said Chris.

  “That’s one-way to the right, comin in. You’ll be going against traffic.”

  “I can deal with that.” Watching as a uniformed officer in the lead car stepped out of his vehicle. “Fuck this.”

  Chris pulled the console’s transmission arm toward him and locked it into drive. He cut the wheel right and gave the Trooper hard gas. The SUV went up the driveway, toward a car coming in, and Chris took the Trooper up onto the sidewalk. People shouted out behind them, and Chris swerved and drove across the sidewalk, behind the bus shelter on McKinley Street. A panicked pedestrian leaped away from their path, and then they were off the curb and straight onto the street.

  “Red light,” said Jason, indicating the signal at Connecticut.

  “I see it,” said Chris, and he blew the red. A sedan crossing north on the green braked wildly and three-sixtied, its tail end sweeping and missing them, and Chris punched the gas and blew up McKinley’s rise going east.

  “Ho, shit!” said Jason.

  “They’re comin,” said Chris.

  One of the squad cars had hit its sirens and light bar and was maneuvering through the intersection, which had been blocked by the car that had spun and stalled.

  Chris stepped on the pedal and kept it pinned to the floor. The gas flooded into the carb, and the Isuzu wound up and took the hill fast, sailing over the crest. It was a narrow street, and a boxy sedan was headed straight for them. Jason said, “Chris,” and the sedan swerved to the right and swiped a parked vehicle, sparks illuminating Chris’s side vision as they passed. He ran a four-way stop and in the rearview saw the squad car gaining on them, and the one behind it doing the same. The sirens grew louder.

  “They about to be on us,” said Jason.

  “Hold on,” said Chris.

  He made a right on Broad Branch Road, barely braking. The first squad car squealed a right and fell in behind them. As they neared the Morrison Street intersection, Chris saw a car coming in from the east and Jason gasped as they jetted through the four-way and the oncoming car braked into a ninety-degree skid. They heard a metallic explosion as the skidding car pancaked the squad car behind them, and Chris made a crazy sharp right onto Legation Street. The top-heavy Isuzu went up on two wheels, and Jason’s face turned white as milk as he raised his arm to grip the handle mounted on the headliner. Chris kept the wheel steady and put the Trooper back on four, then quickly turned into an alley that he knew elbowed off to the left. He followed the angle of the elbow and when he felt they were out of the sight line of Legation, he put the Trooper beside a wooden fence and cut the lights and engine.

  Chris and Jason laughed. They stopped and got their breath, looked at each other, and laughed some more.

  “You dusted ’em,” said Jason.

  “They don’t live here, man. They don’t know these streets like we do.”

  “The po-po gonna be angry like hornets,” said Jason.

  “Word.”

  “When you ran that red on Connecticut… shit, I thought that car was gonna do us.”

  “That car had brakes, too.”

  “We gonna be legends, son.”

  “Yeah,” said Chris.

  Colored lights faintly lit the alley as one of the squad cars slowly passed by on Legation. The boys sat there, hearing sirens that were different than police sirens, closer to those on fire trucks or ambulances, and voices coming from speakers, and they speculated on that. After a long while it was quiet and Chris decided to risk it and make their way from the alley, which had been a good hiding place but was also a trap. He did not hit the headlights until they were back on Legation.

  Carefully, Chris crossed Connecticut Avenue and then took 39th Street south. Down near Fessenden, Jason claimed he saw a stripped-down Crown Vic, which could have been a police vehicle, creeping a nearby street, and because of this, and because they still felt invincible, Chris put the Isuzu into four-wheel drive and jumped off-road and onto a hill. They caught air going over the hilltop, and with exuberance Jason said, “Rat Patrol!” and then they were down the hill and rolling across the wide expanse of Fort Reno Park, where Chris and Jason had seen Fugazi and others perform in the summer, and where Chris’s father, Thomas Flynn, had come as a teenager in the seventies to see hard rock bands do Deep Purple and Spanish bands try to do Santana. Satisfied that they had not been followed, they dropped back down onto asphalt at Chesapeake and took it east, back across Connecticut and into the beautiful upscale neighborhood of Forest Hills.

  It was a section of Northwest whose residents were wealthy in a living-off-the-interest way. Large homes of brick and stone, deep and wide, lushly landscaped lots, Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs, many embassies, and, down Brandywine toward Rock Creek Park, towering contemporaries housing gyms and indoor movie theaters. In the past, Forest Hills had been the exclusive base for Washington’s most wealthy Jewish residents, so for many years D.C.’s less enlightened had called it Hanukkah Hills. Chris and Country knew it as a good place to get high.

  Chris pulled into their usual spot at the dead end of Albemarle, where it ran into a striped barrier at the woods of Rock Creek, and cut the engine. Their place was past the light of the last streetlamp on the road. It was dark here and very quiet. Unless they turned around, there was no exit, but they weren’t worried; they had never been hassled here before, not even by embassy police.

  Chris pulled a couple of beers from the brown paper bag resting on the floorboards behind his seat and opened them both. Jason rolled a tight joint, sealed and dried it with fire, then lit it. They passed it back and forth, drank warm beer, and listened to the radio turned low.

  “You used to come here with your mom and pops, didn’t you?” said Jason, when they had smoked the joint down. Both of their heads were up, but without the new-high joy of the first smoke of the night.

  “Once a year, in the spring,” said Chris. “Darby, too, back when he was a puppy. We’d hike that trail they got. You get onto it back up Albemarle, near Connecticut.”

  He meant the Soapstone Valley Trail, a one-mile hike up and down hills, through an arm of Rock Creek Park. It was one of those city secrets, a wonder
ful green place, old-growth trees and sun glinting off running water. Chris had thought of it as his family’s place when he was a kid, because they rarely saw anyone else on the trail, and because they had claimed ownership on a tree. There was a big oak down there, rooted in the valley floor, on whose trunk his father had carved their names with his buck knife. Thomas and Amanda in a heart when they’d been married, and then, in another heart, Chris when he was born. His father had put Darby’s name in a smaller heart as well. When they were down there, Chris and his father would throw rocks and try to skip them in the creek, and sometimes his father would pick up a stick that was shaped like a gun and Chris would find one, too, and they would play war, his father coming from behind a tree and pretending the stick was a machine pistol or some such thing, his mouth making the sound of it spitting bullets. In his mind he could see his father doing this, younger, without that disappointment on his face. But it was just a memory. It didn’t make Chris feel anything at all.

  “Chris?”

  “Huh?”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “Go home, I guess.”

  Jason stubbed out the roach in the ashtray and put it inside a matchbook, which he stowed in his jeans. “What if Johnny Law’s waitin on us?”

  “Why would they be waitin on you? No one even saw you, Country. You stayed in the car the whole time.”

  “True.”

  Chris stared out the windshield. “You think someone wrote down my plate numbers?”

  “Not the way you shot out that parking lot,” said Jason with an unconvincing smile. “I don’t see how they could.”

  Chris sat there, stoned, hoping and wishing that this were true.

  “I can’t take the weed home,” said Jason. “This funk is potent. It stinks.”

  “I’ll stash it under the deck of my house,” said Chris. “We can bag it up at your place tomorrow, after your parents go to work.”

  Chris took a circuitous route back to their neighborhood and stopped the Trooper a couple of blocks away from Jason’s house, a Dutch colonial on the corner of 38th and Kanawha. Jason and Chris shook hands and said good-bye.