Drama City

Thicket, back in seventy-three. A Zippo lighter and some firecrackers and shit. You know, boys' stuff. There's this badge in there too, like a sheriff's badge. I used to pin it on my shirt when I was a boy.'

A man chuckled. He stopped abruptly when Sarge gave him a cool look.

'So I was lookin' for this knife,' said Sarge. 'Not to cut no one or nothin' like that. I had some dirt under my fingernails, and I wanted to clean 'em out, see? I remembered I had this pocketknife, with a pretty pearl handle and a sharp little blade that could do the trick. But I couldn't find it. I guess I lost it somewhere or it got took. What I did find, though, inside this cuff link box, was a joint of weed I forgot I had. I mean, it could have been five years old, sumshit like that. I musta hid it in that box, either from someone I was stayin' with at the time or from my own self.

'So I'm standin' there, staring at this old joint. I had some music playin' in the room at the time, comin' out this box I have. That song 'Rock Creek Park,' by the Blackbyrds. Donald Byrd and them? 'Doin' it in the park, doin' it after dark' … Y'all remember that one. It just reminded me of, you know, summer and shit. Bein' with this one girl I knew, the way the park smelled all green and nice, and how this girl smelled nice too. Kids ridin' their bikes in packs down Beach Drive, blowin' on them whistles like they used to do. Cookin' some chicken or whatever on the grill, having a cold beer. Gettin' your head up good.'

'Yes,' said a man in a far corner of the room.

'I needed to speak to someone,' said Sarge, 'before I went ahead and put some fire to that stale-ass joint.' Sarge made a head motion toward Shirley but did not look in her direction. 'And I remembered that young lady over there, she said at yesterday's meeting it would be all right to call her. So I did. We talked for a long while. And by the time we was done talkin', I had decided to flush that weed down the toilet. It hurt me to do it, but that's what I did.'

'You did right,' said the dark-skinned woman in Shirley's row.

'Understand, I didn't call that woman up because she was female,' said Sarge. 'I don't want to get with no females right now, anyway. I don't act right with 'em when I do.'

'Hmph,' said a man.

'But I just wanted to tell y'all about my experience,' said Sarge. 'It don't mean nothin', really. It's just a story.'

'We all in the same lifeboat,' said Shirley. 'Ain't no one here deserve to get throwed out before no one else.'

Sarge tightened his hat over his graying hair and lowered his voice to a mumble. 'So thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

Lorenzo Brown raised his hand. Rachel looked down the row to where Lorenzo sat, at the far end of the horseshoe-shaped aisle. She had seen him enter the meeting room at the same time she had but had not approached him. She wanted to respect his privacy and leave him to his spiritual time. He was under no obligation to talk to her, after all.

The host nodded in Lorenzo's direction. 'Go ahead.'

'My name is Lorenzo…'

'Hey, Lorenzo.'

'… and I'm a substance abuser. Something happened to me today, on my job.'

'You some kind of police?' said Shirley, looking him up and down with interest.

'Dog police,' said Lorenzo. 'This morning, some man got up in my face over an animal he'd been abusing. I retaliated in a physical way, which I shouldn't have done. But the thing is, it felt good. I get these headaches most all the time now. After this man tried to take me for bad and I went right back at him, my headache went away. But something else came over me too. I wanted to get high. Doin' violence, getting my head up… it's all part of the same package for me, I guess.'

Lorenzo glanced around the room. 'Most of y'all, you made a decision to try and stop what you was doin' on your own. Me, I had it decided for me. I'm comin' off an incarceration, see? I caught a charge for dealing drugs.'

'You ain't alone,' said a man.

'All respect,' said Lorenzo, 'that don't make it any easier. You can't always be at these meetings or get someone on the phone. One thing I learned, this here's not a team sport. It also ain't no sprint. The more you walk this road, the longer the road seems to be.'

'I heard that,' said the same man.

'Long road,' said Lorenzo. 'Shoot, I started sellin' marijuana when I was twelve years old. Started smokin' it around that time too. By then, I had already lost my mother to drugs. She got to the point, she was selling herself for money. Later, she did this grand-larceny thing and got put away. She came out eventually, but she couldn't make it. She had to violate herself to save her life. My mother's behind walls to this day.'

Lorenzo shifted in his seat. 'I never did have a father. I ain't cryin' about it. That's just the way it was.

'I moved in with my grandmother early on. I loved her, but she couldn't contain me. Y'all know how that is. I ran with some boys, one in particular, and when those boys and my main boy went down to the corner, I went with 'em. They were my people, the closest thing I ever had to male kin. I dropped out of high school and moved up to dealin' heroin and cocaine. I was arrested for it and did a couple of stays in juvenile. It didn't teach me a thing. Matter of fact, I was further down the hole when I came out. I impregnated a girl. I did other bad things. Finally, when I was an adult, the jump-out squad got me on a corner in my own neighborhood, doin' hand-to-hands. I was up on some good hydro when they did. I had a whole rack of foil in my pocket, and I took a felony charge. They wanted me to flip on my number one boy. I wouldn't do it. I was just arrogant, the way I handled it. Between my priors and me showin' no kind of remorse, the judge came down hard on me. I did eight on a six-to-eighteen.

'Prison was prison; y'all know what that's about. When the time came, I didn't even show for my first probation hearing, 'cause I knew I wasn't ready to come uptown. Thing of it is, you never are ready. It's harder in some ways to do your straight time than it is to jail.