Clarence remembered wearing his hat backwards, letting his belt buckle dangle unfastened, and walking around with his shoelaces untied, lookin’ cool but causing the occasional fall on his face. He laughed out loud as he thought about it, realizing for a moment Tyrone and the boys in this hood weren’t much different than he’d been. They just had more time, more drugs, more weapons, and fewer fathers.
But the hangin’, that’s what he remembered most. There was no identity as an individual. You were part of a group. Your life had no meaning unless you hung with someone. Your mama prayed to God that you’d hang with the right group, but you rarely did. “Who he hang wid?” was the defining question. “Man,” the answer might come, “he hang wid Bulldog Turner and Li’l Ratface, the one that pulled the piece on Capone Man over on Fourth.”
They slap boxed, like wannabe gladiators, prepping for their day on the coliseum floor. They shot hoops, “hawked ball,” they called it. At both Horner and Cabrini, full-court basketball went on all day, with Chuck Taylor All-Stars worn to a frazzle. They learned to sneak a man, shoot cuffs, blindside, and coldcock. Clarence remembered that gold-colored bullet shell he worked around his tooth so it looked like a gold cap. Until Daddy saw it one day and took him over his knee for what he called “an attitude adjustment.”
There was safety in the group. You weren’t exposed and vulnerable. When guys would double bank you—one shooting your cuffs, the other jumping on you to stomp your face—you needed comrades or you were history. It wasn’t your family you protected; it was your gang. It wasn’t your house you protected; it was your turf. Not owning much, they claimed ownership of streets that weren’t theirs. “Whatchu doin’ here? This be our corner.”
He thought about all those boys on the street without a father. He thought about peers and peer pressure and how every kid’s gonna hang with other kids. The only question is which kids, and which values, drive the group.
Clarence thought how close he’d come to an entirely different life. He’d gotten into shoplifting at a corner store owned by whites. Why should white people make profit from blacks? That’s all they’d ever done, wasn’t it? And if a black boy was lucky, the best he could do was carry their golf clubs or spread manure in their flower gardens. Telling himself this, Clarence pocketed some Butterfingers and Baby Ruths, some odds and ends. When the storekeeper called after him as he left, he and his buddies ran the maze of backyard escape routes any Green Beret strategist would envy.
But Daddy had found out and whipped him good with his belt. Afterward, that big strong man, a giant in those days, stood there crying and said to Clarence, “Son, I jus’ don’t understand. We taught you better than this. We reads you the Bible, takes you to church. I tries to be an honest man and work hard. We ain’t poor, not dirt poor anyhow, and you ain’t never gone hungry. Why would you steal? Can you just tell me why?”
Clarence still felt the lump in his throat as he heard his daddy’s voice as clearly now as then. He especially remembered how when the discipline was done, Daddy put his arms around him and ran his soothing fingers through his hair and tucked him into bed that night, even though he was a teenager.
To disappoint his father, that had to be the worst thing he could imagine. Every boy lives to hear his father say, “Well done,” and dies at the thought of his father’s disapproval. Clarence had never forgotten his father’s broken heart that day. He still thought of it every time he saw a Butterfinger or Baby Ruth bar. He couldn’t explain to Daddy that he stole not because he was hungry and poor. It was about proving something, doing something risky alongside the guys he hung with. But in the face of his daddy’s pain, no reason was good enough.
Clarence learned later it was that day his daddy determined he was losing his son and had to get him out of there. Obadiah made new sacrifices in a life that had known endless sacrifices. He took an extra job and saved up every dime. He put a strict curfew on Clarence to reel him in. He determined his boy would not get away from him, that he would not get away from God. Only years later did Clarence come to understand and appreciate what his father had done for him. Even as he thought about it, he wiped tears from his eyes.
He got up and went to Daddy’s bedroom and knocked.
“Yessuh, Grumpy’s home.” Clarence opened the door.
“It’s me, Daddy. I just wanted to see how you’re doin’.”
“Ain’t mulch on the flowers yet, Son.”
They talked about nothing in particular, mostly baseball. They laughed and told stories until Obadiah was too tired to keep his eyes open. Clarence helped him change his Depends, putting on fresh absorbent diapers, as Obadiah had put diapers on him forty-two years earlier. Clarence wrapped his arms around his daddy, and the old man ran his hand through his boy’s nappy hair. Clarence tucked him in, said good night, and left the room.
Clarence went back to the living-room recliner to compose himself before joining Geneva in bed. In the darkness he choked back his emotions. Without warning his mind flashed back to that afternoon at Cabrini Green twenty-eight years ago, to something his father had never known, something he could never tell him, something he’d tried to forget but never could.
He remembered that white boy on the bicycle, the one who’d wandered into the projects. He remembered, with frightening clarity, what they had done to him.
“Hear ’bout the dude who blowed his brains out playin’ Russian roulette?”
“Nah. Who dat?”
“Young kid, Rollin’ 60s tiny. Word is he learned the spin from Gangster Cool.”
“GC could spin that cylinder a hunnert times and never take a round. Never seen any dude so cool at doin’ the spin.”
“That fo’ sure.”
“The tiny not so lucky, huh?”
“Yeeeah. Guess when you gonna die, you gonna die.”
“I don’t know if this is the right place to ask this question, Jess,” Susan Farley said at the multiculturalism committee meeting. “But I’ve heard rumors lately that a few stories have been spiked from upstairs. Is that true?”
Jess Foley cleared his throat. “In the ten years I’ve been managing editor there have been only a few occasions where…the Trib management has expressed their concerns to me about…how we pursued a story.”
“So…it has happened, then?” Susan looked genuinely shocked, as did several other committee members.
“I haven’t been ordered to do anything, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you’ve been asked not to do something?”
Jess nodded. “But not very often.”
“Asked by whom? Raylon Jennings?” Susan asked.
“It’s not appropriate to say. It’s very rare that there’s a request to outright spike. Usually it’s not if we pursue a story, but how we portray it.”
“So…we’re being told what slant to take?” Susan asked.
“To a degree, yes, but only in exceptional cases.”
“I’m uneasy here, Jess,” Susan said. “Can you give an example?”
“I’m not sure I should.”
“You can’t trust us?” Susan asked. Clarence felt gratified to see someone else on the committee generating the conflict for a change.
“It’s not that, it’s just…all right, I’ll give one example, but don’t ask for specifics. One of you knows this already, but some weeks ago I went to a reporter and her editor on behalf of Mr…on behalf of someone upstairs. There was a story, not a big one, with some elements to it that would have brought needless embarrassment to a family and a minority community. We did the story, but stuck to the basic facts.”
“Meaning…you left out the embarrassing facts?” Susan asked.
“Yes.”
“And how would you distinguish this from censorship?” Susan asked.
“One, it was voluntary—it was a request, not a demand. Two, it had a redeeming purpose.”
“So, every time we could protect someone by withholding the truth, why don’t we?” Susan asked.
“We’ve always believed ordinary citizens have a greater right to privacy than public figures,” Jess said. “And that the newspaper must be sensitive to minors. And exercise compassion for the grieving and respect for diversity.”
“That all sounds great,” Susan said. “But we’re always reporting embarrassing things about people, including minors. We printed the name of the boy who accidentally shot his friend with the rifle, the name of the girl involved with that schoolteacher, the name of the high school football player who sold drugs. And even though it might have bothered her grieving parents, we told the truth about the high school girl who got killed last week, that she’d been drinking. As far as respecting diversity, we report these stories whether they happen to whites or blacks or anybody else. Don’t we?”
Jess cleared his throat again. “Okay, look, I wasn’t comfortable with it. Neither was the editor or the reporter. But we make editorial decisions all the time. This committee has spiked whole stories, remember? Maybe the brass has a right to make a judgment call once in a while. It’s their paper. We wouldn’t have jobs without them. Look, if this happened often I’d be out of here. But it doesn’t. Okay? Let’s just leave it at that.”
“So,” Susan couldn’t resist one last question, “what makes us decide whose privacy we protect and whose we don’t?”
Clarence surveyed the room. All eyes looked at Jess. Except Mindy’s. The meeting deflated like an untied balloon.
Clarence went back to his desk to pack up his briefcase before meeting Ollie for lunch. The phone rang. He listened to the recording and prepared to tune out the voice. “Clarence? It’s Geneva. It’s about Ty. Pick up if you’re there.” She sounded agitated, as if she’d been crying.
Clarence grabbed the phone. “Hey, baby, calm down. What about Ty?”
“There was an…accident last night. They found a body.”
“Whose body?”
“Ty’s friend Jason. You know, he’s been hangin’ with him off and on. Looks like he shot himself—maybe an accident, maybe suicide. Can you imagine? Fourteen years old, Clarence. There was that twelve-year-old in Gresham, and the ten-year-old on the west side. Kids killing themselves. What’s happening any more?”
“How’s Ty?”
“He’s taking it real hard. He came home from school. He’s in his bedroom. You need to talk to him.”
Clarence sighed. “Maybe I’ll take him to Jason’s funeral. Maybe it’ll be another lesson to stay away from the wrong crowd.”
“What do the Denver Broncos and a possum have in common?”
“I don’t know, Ollie,” Clarence said.
“Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.”
Clarence grinned despite himself.
“Did you hear the Saints quarterbacks have been asked by the United Nations to move to Iraq?”
“And why’s that, Ollie?”
“So they can overthrow Saddam Hussein.”
“I’m just going to assume you’re done, okay?” Clarence said. “Something’s bugging me about the whole gang scene. Crips and Bloods are mortal enemies. But there’s a lot of in-fighting among Crips, right?”
“Well, there’s something like seven times more Crips than Bloods,” Ollie said. “Crips always used to stick up for other Crips, but with so many of them, they began to turn on each other. In the early seventies a Rollin’ 60 and a Hoover fought over some girls, somebody got killed, and boom, different Crip sets took different sides and the conflict goes on. Thousands of people have been killed since, Crips killing Crips. More Crips have been killed by Crips than by Bloods.”
“How did all this gang stuff get up to Portland anyway?” Clarence asked.
“Goes back to 1986. An L.A. Four Trey Crip got tired of all the fighting and the drug glut and came to Portland because he saw virgin territory for crack cocaine. Other bangers followed, and some mediocre gang members in South Central became overnight ghetto stars in Portland. They took on leadership roles, organized the locals. Next thing you know, kids in Portland are emulating the gang stuff, it was cool to them. The money, girls, and guns came with the drugs.”
“So, these gangsters were just opportunists?”
“Entrepreneurs. You can take a pocketful of rock cocaine that might get you a few hundred bucks in L.A. and it’ll get you maybe eight hundred in Portland. Or you can get on a Greyhound bus, take the same stuff to Nebraska, and sell it for a few thousand bucks. Anyway, once the gangsters brought in the rock, it was just a matter of time before the killings started happening here. First gang homicide in Portland was 1988. Now, we’ve got forty-three cops on gangs. Budget’s over two and a half million dollars, all to monitor gangs, follow up on gang crimes, patrol gang-dominated neighborhoods.”
“I see the gang graffiti when I ride my bike in Gresham,” Clarence said, “and I still can’t believe it’s reached out that far in the suburbs.”
“They’re everywhere. You’ve got Angelitos Sur 13 in Hermiston, Crips in Madras, Gresham gangs, Hillsboro gangs, you name it. In 1988 we had less than a thousand gang crimes in Oregon. By 1994 we had over ten thousand. I haven’t checked since then, but you get the drift. It’s not just a city problem anymore. The gangs are coming to a neighborhood near you. Used to be it was all New York, Illinois, California. My brother lives in Omaha. Now half the homicides in Omaha are gang related. We’re talking Nebraska.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Hey, look at Cabot Cove.”
“Cabot Cove?”
“Yeah, Cabot Cove. You got this small town in Maine where for twelve years someone got murdered every week. It’s safer to live in a war zone than Cabot Cove. I mean, everybody Jessica Fletcher ever knew is dead. Frankly, I think she was the perp all along. Bein’ a homicide detective, you get a little suspicious when the same person’s in near proximity to three hundred homicides. Good thing that program went off the air. Cabot Cove was almost out of people.”
“Mindy, how are you?” Clarence said, dropping by her desk in the late afternoon.
“I’ve been better, I guess. What’s up?”
“I noticed how uncomfortable you seemed at the committee meeting this morning.”
“Oh?” Mindy tensed up.
“When Jess was talking about censoring that story, it seemed to hit a sore spot with you.”
“Pretty perceptive of you, Clarence. And here I thought all men were insensitive louts.”
Clarence laughed. “Louts maybe, but not always insensitive.”
“So…what do you want from me? Probably not to be my therapist.”
“If I promise not to tell anybody, would you let me in on the story that was spiked?”
She looked surprised that he’d pieced it together. “I like you, Clarence—please don’t tell anybody that; I’ve got a reputation to uphold. But you’re a lightning rod. I’m afraid you’d use anything I tell you as a wedge with the committee or the Trib.”
“Even if I promise I won’t?”
“Reporter’s honor—is that it?” Mindy laughed sarcastically. “Well, since you’re the only one asking, maybe I’ll tell you, even if it’s against my better judgment.”
“Thanks…I think.”
“There was a girl in North Portland, an African American, named Leesa Fletcher. Went to Jefferson, graduated in the spring, 4.0 student, was just starting University of Portland, full ride. Great girl, fine family. She’d been chosen for Portland’s Black Future Leaders of America, the whole deal.”
“Yeah, I remember. She died, right? A heart defect or something?”
“Right. Well, sort of. She did have a congenital heart defect. But what caused her heart to stop was a drug overdose. Crack cocaine.”
“No kidding? I never heard that.”
“Nobody heard that. The doctor ordered an autopsy, but the results weren’t released. Nobody knew anything until two weeks after the story was cold. I followed up, just to confirm cause of death, didn’t expect anything different. That’s when I
found out from the coroner’s office about the crack cocaine. I wrote the story, turned it in to Cecil, and next thing I know Jess is talking to us both, telling us to stick with the basic facts—congenital heart defect. ‘That’s the truth,’ he kept saying, and yeah it was, but not the whole truth. Of course, as you no doubt picked up today, Raylon was behind the scenes, twisting Jess’s arm.”
Clarence shook his head in amazement. “What was Raylon’s logic?”
“Well, of course I got it through Jess, but it was, Why unnecessarily hurt the family? Why feed into the racist stereotypes? Here’s a girl who’s been touted as top notch, outstanding student, the hope of black America, and she’s tarnished with drugs. The Trib has an obligation to protect the image.”
“What was Raylon’s interest in this story?”
She shrugged. “That’s what bugs me most. If we’re going to protect minority images, okay. But let’s face it: we’ve made every minority look bad one time or another, and we’ve made whites look bad—men, women, everybody. So why single this one out? It makes you wonder, is there something more to it?”
“If you can color a story one way for some supposedly legitimate reason,” Clarence said, “what keeps you from having another reason but using the legitimate one as your cover?”
“Exactly, Clarence. For once, we’re on the same wavelength.”
“It’s been more than once, Mindy.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for telling me. I won’t mess you up.”
“Thanks. I probably shouldn’t, but I feel better talking about it.”
“On the one hand I feel so fulfilled, so satisfied,” Dani said. “This is Joy—every experience of joy on earth was the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing for this place. Yet, in a strange way, I feel my desires, my yearnings, my thirst is greater than ever. How can this be?”