breezes rarely stirred. When his mom was home—she worked all the time—she’d pick up some groceries and maybe even cook a real dinner. Most of the time, though, he’d be stuck picking through whatever was left in the cupboards. This morning, he’d boiled himself some macaroni for breakfast. It would have tasted better with some tomato sauce or some butter, but hey, you had to make do with what you had.
The very worst part, though, was the loneliness. At ten, Billy was the youngest kid in his building by about six years, and the only one who wasn’t a doper or a crackhead. The people who lived in his neighborhood scared the hell out of him. Fights and shootings were the routine. Billy couldn’t remember a weekend when there weren’t cop cars or ambulances out front.
In the two years that they’d been living in the Vista Plains Apartments, he’d been nearly shot twice, beaten up five times, robbed of every dime he’d ever put into his pocket, and was even tossed down the fire escape stairs once. That one required a trip to the hospital in an ambulance, and got him six stitches in his forehead. Eight months later, his mom had yet to notice the scar.
Billy knew that his life sucked, and he figured that sooner or later he was going to become a loser just like all the others, but for the time being, he liked to pretend that maybe it would be different for him. If he actually learned all that crap they were teaching him in school, and if he just stayed away from the other kids from his neighborhood, maybe, just maybe, he could be different. Black folks had done it before. Colin Powell had done it, and Colin Powell was his hero.
So summertime was something he had to endure. He had his books and he had his television, and it wasn’t like he was starving to death or anything. Most important, he had his best friend Barney, a golden retriever-and- god-knows-what-else mix that Billy had found in an alley, trying to make a meal out of a tipped-over trash can. For both boy and dog, it had been love at first sight, and they’d been inseparable for nearly three months now. Billy noticed with some interest that even people who had no respect for a kid showed respect to a kid with a big dog.
At the moment, Billy was doing the one chore that he hated above all others: taking the trash downstairs. The basement of his apartment building was a dark, damp, stinky place where people who had no homes would go to camp out, or shoot up, or sometimes die. He’d never seen anything particularly scary down there himself, but he’d heard stories.
As always, he let Barney go down first, to flush out whatever bad guys might be lurking. Dutifully, the beast trotted on down, then paused at the bottom, staring back up at his master. The stupid, expectant look on the dog’s face made Billy laugh.
“You haven’t figured out that you’re the bait, have you boy?” Billy said as he negotiated the stairs. Barney’s wagging tail was unbalancing the dog’s back end, causing him to do a silly little dance with his hind legs just to keep from falling over.
Billy wasted no time doing his duty. Lifting the lid of the galvanized trash can with his left hand, he slung the three plastic trash bags—they’d been grocery bags in their past lives—into the opening.
He’d just turned to go back up the stairs when he heard it. Some boxes in the corner moved. Barney heard it, too. The dog braced his legs and lowered his head, the fur along his spine rising like porcupine quills. The ferocious noise that issued from the dog’s throat was unlike anything Billy had ever heard.
“W-who’s there?” Billy called out to the shadows near the furnace. Barney seemed confused, not knowing whether to attack or to stay back and defend his master.
“W-whoever you are, you better come out before my dog kills you.” Despite the fear in his belly, Billy’s voice carried the firm conviction of one who was stating the obvious.
First one, and then two- and then three-at-a-time, boxes and trash bags fell away from the stack in the corner and tumbled to the floor. Like peeling away a banana, the falling boxes revealed a terrified white boy, who slowly rose to his feet, his hands outstretched in front of him to ward off Barney’s threatening moves.
Billy had watched the news that morning. It took him five seconds to put it all together.
“You’re Nathan, aren’t you?” Billy said.
Nathan nodded and swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving the angry beast. “I-I w-won’t hurt anybody,” Nathan declared.
“What are you doing—”
The dog…”
“You killed those guys.”
Nathan shook his head frantically, never moving his eyes from the snarling mutt. “No. No, I didn’t, honest. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m not the one.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Nathan swallowed again and jumped when Barney moved his head. “Cops. Th-they’re looking for me.”
Billy studied the other boy for a long moment. “So I hear,” he said.
“Could you… The dog…”
Billy hesitated for a few seconds, then stooped down to rub Barney’s ears. “Be cool, Barney. Let’s hear what the dude has to say for himself?’
“How come you know who I am?” asked Nathan.
Billy snorted out a chuckle. “You’re in deep shit, man. Everybody knows who you are. You were on Nightline last night.”
Nathan’s eyebrows shot up as he felt a rush of pride. You had to be somebody to get on Nightline. Hell, the president had been on Nightline! Then again, so had Charles Manson.
“What’d they say about me?”
Billy shrugged. “Half the world thinks you’re a murderer and the other half thinks you’re some kind of hero.”
“I’m no hero,” Nathan said, shaking his head. “But I’m no murderer either.”
For the first time, Billy made long eye contact with Nathan. Billy had adult’s eyes, Nathan saw. They were the eyes of someone who’d seen his own share of adversity; hard and warm at the same time.
“Until this morning I might have agreed with you, bro. But those dead cops they found last night didn’t keel over from heart attacks. How do you explain that?”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Nathan declared, missing Billy’s use of the plural. “A cop killed that cop. Then he tried to kill me.” It took a few minutes to tell the story. Billy seemed to accept it as fact.
“So, who killed the second cop?” Billy asked at the end. Nathan scowled. “What second cop?”
Billy explained.
Nathan gasped and sank slowly to the floor. He ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Oh, shit, they think I did all that?”
Billy nodded. “Yep. And they’re talking serious shit about not letting you get away with it.” Then he laughed. “Like they were just gonna let you get away with killing the guy in Virginia. You did kill that one, right?”
“Yeah… well, not until he tried to kill me.”
Billy’s attitude turned suddenly skeptical. “So how come everybody’s trying to kill you?”
Nathan tossed his hands in the air. “Damned if I know. It’s worse than that. Not everybody is trying to kill me, only cops.” “Who’d you piss off?”
“I don’t know! But I sure did a good job of it.”
Another long silence followed. “What are you gonna do next?” Billy finally asked.
Nathan studied the other boy before answering. “I don’t know. What are you gonna do?”
“Well, I ain’t gonna call the heat, if that’s what you mean. Too many of them suckers around here as it is.”
Nathan considered his next question for a long time before asking it. “Can I hide in your place for the day?”
Billy’s answer came easily, as though he’d been anticipating the request. “Sure, why not?” he said. “Don’t got much to eat, but we got a TV and I got some games and stuff?”
Nathan winced. “Watching TV’s gotten pretty depressing for me recently?”
Billy laughed again. “I bet.”
“What time is it?” asked Nathan.
Billy shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. It was about eight-fifteen when I came downstairs. Why? You got an appointment?”
