this, he felt, was not in passivity but rather in aggression.
He fell asleep in his chair.
He was riding shotgun beside his father in the old man’s truck, a two-tone Chevy Silverado. The Van Lucas he saw was around forty, big chested, a bit overweight, with a beard and a full head of curly hair. The windows of the truck were down, and from the dash tape deck the Stones were doing “Loving Cup,” Mick singing, “I’m the man that brings you roses, when you ain’t got none.” His father was smiling, and through the windshield Lucas could see the people they knew in their neighborhood, the auto body guys and the Wanderer and the Hispanic workers standing by their 4Runners and the African barbers, waving at them as they passed. He saw his mother, also twenty years younger, walking their dog, Shilo, the animal stopping to pee in a bed of wild mint, and Lucas thought, That’s nice, Shilo’s alive. His father turned to him and asked, “ Thoolevis, Spero?” the standard Greek man’s question for his son, and Lucas said, “Yeah, I’m workin.” When Lucas looked back through the windshield they were on Lincoln Road, Northeast, and with a sense of dread he realized where they were going and he said, “ No, Dad, not yet,” and his father pulled the truck over and kept it running. Nodding at the iron gate arched over the entrance to Glenwood Cemetery, he looked at his son and said, “Wanna come in?”
Lucas opened his eyes, startled. It was dark in the room and the streetlamps outside cast a pale yellow light on the darkened landscape. He sat in his chair, staring out the window, still hearing his father’s voice. He wiped tears off his face.
Lucas stood. He felt like having a beer, but he didn’t want to drink alone. The bar up on Georgia was as good as any. He brushed his teeth, washed his face, and came back out to the living room. He reached for the keys to his Jeep but picked up only his house key instead.
It was a nice night. He decided to walk.
Lucas walked north on the Piney Branch Road that was not the same thoroughfare known by commuters but more like the urban-alley version of a country lane. He could hear cars moving to the west of him on 16th Street, but it was quiet back here tonight. A big engine moved somewhere behind him, and he turned his head and saw a flash of black vehicle on a cross street, and he kept moving his feet. He crossed Gallatin, then Hamilton, and made a right on the wide and majestic Colorado Avenue and headed northeast. Then he was in the small commercial district at 14th and Colorado. He walked by the Gold Corner Grocery, where he often bought beer, Louis’ Barber Shop, Colorado Cafe, Florescence Beauty Salon, and the Ethiopian market called Mekides. He didn’t have to look to recognize the business names because he knew them by heart. Many people, mostly black and Hispanic, were out. He walked by the beautifully maintained Longfellow apartments with their center-screened porches and iron balconies, and a man who smelled of alcohol walked toward him and said, “Hola,” and Lucas said, “Hola, como estas,” which was nearly all the Spanish he knew. At 13th Street he walked due north and crossed at the Missouri Avenue light. He approached Quackenbos Street, where he cut right as he often did and began to walk across the dark weeded field of Fort Stevens Park.
To his left were the historic fort, the trenches, ammunition bunkers, cannons, and flagpole. He stayed to the field and arrived at a gravel driveway that led up to the parking lot between the Methodist church and a four-square colonial with a wraparound porch, which was also church property and unlit behind its windows. Lucas often cut through the lot and descended the steep concrete steps that dropped down to Georgia Avenue. He passed a bucket truck and construction materials and went up a rise and came to the lot, lit faintly by a lamp hung on the side of the stone church.
In the lot stood a man.
Lucas stopped fifty feet shy of the man and studied him. His face seemed flat and his eyes were set wide. His skin was devoid of color in spots. His hair was lank. He wore jeans and a T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves to show thickly veined biceps. He was a small man, but he was strong and wired tight.
Lucas walked toward him.
The lot, empty of cars, was so greatly elevated that it was not visible from the heavily trafficked Georgia Avenue. Behind them was the darkness of the field. The man must have spied Lucas walking into the park and correctly surmised that there was but one way to the Avenue from there. He had left his vehicle down on Georgia, taken the steps up, and waited for him. He did not look like he had come to talk.
“What is this?” said Lucas, approaching the man.
The man said nothing, and as Lucas neared him he reached his left hand into his pocket and produced a knife. With a jerk of his wrist, a six-inch serrated blade sprang from its bone hilt. He held it loosely and correctly, palm up.
Now Lucas was just a couple of yards away from the man. They stood in the center of the lot. It was like a basketball court where they had come to jump for possession. Or the center circle of a wrestling mat.
“You know your Bible?” said the man.
Lucas did not answer. He stayed focused on the man’s seemingly lidless eyes.
“John, Eleven-Ten. ‘But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.’ ”
“Not this man,” said Lucas.
They moved at the same time. The man swung the knife, and Lucas stepped out of its arc and back. The man swung again. His reach was not sufficient, and Lucas knew he would have to come in. The man flipped the knife, switching it to a down-grip, and brought it across from his right shoulder as if he were swinging a bat. He caught only air. He brought the blade back from the other direction and swung with a grunt, and it took him too far. Lucas stepped to the side, then came in quickly, grabbed the man’s wrist, and struck a hammer blow to the knife arm’s elbow. The man’s hand opened like a stunned flower, sending the knife skittering across the asphalt. Lucas pushed him away.
The man looked at the knife, ten feet from his reach. He thought about it, and Lucas said, “You had your chance.”
The man charged him. He drove his head into Lucas’s abdomen and reached for the back of Lucas’s thighs, and Lucas sprawled out in defense of the takedown. He grabbed the man’s hair with his left hand, sprang forward, and with his right shot an uppercut into his jaw. The punch stood the man up and knocked him out of Lucas’s grasp. He came in once more and threw a flurry of face and head punches that stunned Lucas and forced him to step back. He locked his eyes on the man. Lucas touched his thumbs, one after the other, to his nose. Now he knew where his hands were.
They circled each other in a slight crouch. In the man’s eyes Lucas saw that he was about to move. The man feinted with his right fist and threw a wild roundhouse left that overshot the mark. Lucas ducked and came in, sliding one of his arms under the man’s punching arm, forcing that arm up firmly, anchoring it with his hand on the back of the man’s neck. Lucas slipped behind him and hooked his free arm around the man’s neck and grabbed his own wrist and pulled tight. He had him in an air choke now.
He kicked the man’s right heel out from under him and fell back, bringing the man down with him; Lucas hit the asphalt with the man on top of his chest. He scissored his legs around the man’s waist and locked him up. Lucas violently tightened his grip on the man’s neck and arched his back as he squeezed with his legs, squeezed the life out of the man who was writhing now in panic and pain and no breath. The man’s feet kicked. He made a high- pitched, childlike sound. There was no mercy in Lucas and he squeezed with all he had. Something gave beneath the crook of his arm. He felt the snap of a bone. Lucas pushed the body off of him. He rolled away and stood.
He waited for his breath to even out. He looked down at the corpse. Urine staining the man’s jeans, his eyes half open, saliva threading down from the corner of his open mouth, hands frozen and clawed. A broken string of beads and a crucifix lying crookedly on his chest. His face mannequined in the pale yellow light.
Lucas felt nothing.
He reached into the man’s back pocket and found his wallet and opened it. He saw the driver’s license that identified Nance, studied it carefully, and left it in its slot. He removed all the cash and credit cards and shoved them into the pocket of his jeans. He wiped the wallet off with his shirttail. He dropped the wallet on Nance’s torso.
Lucas picked up the knife and pocketed it. He walked toward home and did not look back. He threw the credit cards and cash down various storm drains on side streets, and behind the Kingsbury School on 14th he broke the knife blade off on an alley floor and threw it in a stand of weed trees, then tossed the hilt into another drain.
Lucas entered his apartment, took a shower, got into bed, and fell to sleep. He had no dreams.
