“We may be small town, baby,” Juan said, “one hundred thousand on the pop sign, but we got our turf and we got our ways, and we did that boy good.”
“He was young, maybe about your age,” Billy said. “Age we are now. He worked at a little corner grocery, was a grocery boy.”
“What grocery?” I said.
“One around the corner, just a half block from here,” Billy said. “Or was around the corner. Ain’t no more. There’s a big burn spot where it used to be.”
Billy and Juan laughed and put their fists together.
“You mean the Clement Grocery?” I said.
“That’s it,” Billy said. “Guess it was, let me see, how long we been in the gang, Juan?”
“Three years come October,” Juan said.
“I know the place,” I said. “Course, I’m pretty new here now, but I used to live here, when I was younger, so I know the place. I didn’t live far from here.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Where?”
“I don’t remember exactly, but not far from the grocery. I used to go there. I don’t remember where I lived though, not exactly. Not far from here, though.”
“You ain’t that old, you remember the grocery, you got to remember where you lived,” Billy said.
“I could probably find the place, just don’t remember the street number. You took me around, I could find it. But, man, I don’t give a shit. This thing you did with the grocery boy. Tell me about that.”
“We should have left that grocery and the kid alone,” Juan said. “It was a good place to get stuff quick, and now we got to go way around just to buy some Cokes. But, man, what we did, it was tough. We was gonna be in the gang, you see, and the Headmaster, which is what he calls himself, ain’t that something, Headmaster? Anyway, he says we got to do something on the witchy side, so we went and got a hammer and nails, and when we got there, the kid was working in the store, and the place was empty, just goddamn perfect.”
“Perfect,” Billy said.
“So we got hold of the kid and while Billy held him under the arms, I got my knee on his foot, and got a big ole nail I had brought, and with the hammer, I drove it right through his foot and nailed him to the floor.”
“He screamed so loud I thought we was caught for sure,” Billy said. “But nobody come running. They must have not heard him, or knew it was best to pretend they didn’t.”
“Fucker kicked me with his other leg, two, three times. And I just hammered the shit out of his leg and Billy couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell over, and then I kicked him a bit and he quit struggling, but he was plenty alive.”
“That’s what makes what happened next choice,” Billy said. “We put some boxes of popcorn on him and then we set fire to the place.”
“You forget, I nailed his other foot to the floor.”
“That’s right,” Billy said. “You did.”
“He was so weak from the kicking we had given him, and all the blood that had filled up his shoe and was running out over the top of it, he didn’t know I was doing what I was doing until the nail went in.”
“He really screamed that time,” Billy said.
Juan nodded. “That’s when we got the popcorn, bunch of other stuff and started the fire. We ran out of there and across the street and in the alley. We could hear that kid screaming across the street, but nobody came. A light went on in a couple windows of buildings where people lived upstairs, but nobody came.”
“Fire took quick,” Billy said. “We were so close, and if I’m lying, I’m dying, we could hear that popcorn popping and him still screaming. And then we saw the flames licking out of the open doorway, and then we saw the kid. He had got his feet free, probably tore the nails right through them, and he was crawling out the door, but he was all on fire. Looked like that Fantastic Four guy. What’s his name, The Flame.”
“The Human torch,” Juan said. “Don’t you know nothing?”
“Yeah, him,” Billy said. “Anyway, he didn’t crawl far before that fire got him and then we finally did hear some sirens, and we got out of there.”
“Last look I got of that kid, he wasn’t nothing but a fucking charcoal stick,” Juan said.
“That’s what got us in the gang,” Billy said. “And the Headmaster, he said it was a righteous piece of witchiness, and we was in, big time. You sweating, man?”
I nodded. “A little. I got a cold coming on.”
“Well, don’t give it to me,” Juan said. “I can’t stand no cold right now. I hate those things. So stay back some.”
“This Headmaster, he got a name?” I asked.
“Everyone calls him Slick when they don’t call him Headmaster,” Billy said. “Shit, I don’t even know what his real name is, or even if he’s got one. He’s maybe nearly twenty-six, twenty-seven years old. It don’t matter none to you, though. You done done your thing to get in, and we’re witnesses.”
“Once you’re in,” Juan said, “no one much fucks with you. It’s like a license to do what you want. Even the cops are afraid of us. They know we find out who they are and where they live, we might give them or their little straight families a visit.”
“Gang is the only way to live around here,” Billy said. “Get what you want, feel protected, you got to have the gang, cause without it, man. You’re just on your own.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what that’s like, being on my own. So, I’m in. I’ve done my deed and I’m proud of it, and I want in.”
· · ·
WE WENT OUT OF THERE and around the corner and walked a few blocks to where the gang had their headquarters. I thought about the streets and how dark they were and figured that fast as the streetlights got repaired, someone shot them out. Maybe the city was never going to repair them again. Maybe they had had enough.
Dad told me once, that if people don’t care about where they live, the way they act, people they associate with, they get lost in the dark, can’t find their way back cause there’s no light left.
I had taken a pretty good step into the shadows tonight.
There was an old burnt out building at the end of the block and we went past that and turned right and there was this old bowling alley. The sign for METRO BOWLING was still there, but there was nothing metro about the place. The outside smelled like urine and there was some glass framed in the doorway and it was cracked. When we got to the doorway, Juan beat on the frame with his fist, and after a moment the door opened slightly, and a young white woman with long black hair showed her face. Juan said something I wasn’t listening for, and then we were inside. The girl turned and walked away and I saw she had an automatic in her hand, just hanging there like it was some kind of jewelry. Juan gave her a slap on the ass. She didn’t even seem to notice.
The place stank. You could hear music in the back. Rap, and there was also some good hip hop going, all of it kind of running together, and there were quite a few people in there. The floors where the bowling alley had been were still being used for bowling. Gang members, most of them dressed so you knew they were in a gang, flying their freak flags, were rolling balls down the wooden pathways, knocking down pins. The little pin machine was working just fine and it picked up the pins and carried them away and reset them. The alleys were no longer shiny and there were little nicks in the wood here and there and splinters stuck up in places as if the floor was offering tooth picks.
In front of the bowling alleys were racks for shoes, but there weren’t any shoes in them. Some of the gang members were wearing bowling shoes, and some weren’t. The clack and clatter of the balls as the machine puked them up and slammed them together made my ears hurt. Over near the far wall a big black guy had this Asian girl shoved up against the wall, so that both her palms were on it. She had her ass to him and her pants were down and so were his. What they were doing wouldn’t pass for bowling, though balls were involved.
“That there is B.G. He’s slamming him some nook,” Billy said.
“I kind of figured that’s what was going on,” I said.
We went past them and around a corner and into a back room. There was a desk there, and a guy that looked older than the others was sitting behind the table and he had a big bottle of Jack Daniels in front of him. He was a white guy with some other blood in him, maybe black, maybe all kinds of things, and he was sitting there looking at me with the coldest black eyes I’ve ever seen. They looked like the twin barrels of shotguns. He grinned
