I took off my hoodie and threw it across the same bench. I rubbed my hands for warmth. I emptied my pockets: keys, pager, and bus pass. On the back of the pass, I’d scribbled a bunch of numbers. Half belonged to 3F members. One belonged to a girl I’d spent hours talking to but had yet to meet. I also had Willie’s number on there, unlabeled, the only number written in blue ink. I used it as little as possible.
I pulled out my marker from the waistband of my drawers. It was the size of a small remote control. I’d wrapped it in black electrical tape for a better grip. It was comforting how it pressed against my belly throughout the day, a constant reminder of who I was. At the bottom of its base, there was a recess exactly the length of two pennies. I’d fitted two snugly side by side, one minted in my birth year, the other, the current year.
Someone slapped me lightly on the crown of my head. “Keep your hands up, boy,” Hollywood said. He stood in a southpaw stance and bobbed and weaved. The rest converged around us.
I went on the offensive, swinging away. I imagined his head was a basketball. I had quick hands on the court. Blocking shots and stripping the ball came easily. I landed a blow across Wood’s cheek. He smiled, surprised, and backpedaled. I pressed forward, throwing jabs and crosses, scared he’d get closer.
CLUE jumped in front of Wood, handed someone his coat and pulled up his pants, but CLUE had no belt. His jeans dropped below his waist. He had a slim frame. His fists were up, elbows out.
I couldn’t connect. He used his longer reach to keep me at bay, circling around me and snapping out jabs, but then he stumbled on the grass, and I was all over him.
“Oooh! Fucked him up,” someone said.
“Let’s see you do that shit against me,” SIKE said.
“You gonna tae kwon do my ass,” I said. I’d heard he won a martial arts tournament. I wanted to quit while I was ahead. I folded my hands on top of my head and tried to catch my breath.
TYMER and SIKE conferred again together. TYMER counted to three with his fingers, slow, as though to accentuate each number.
“We’ve been letting too many motherfuckers in,” TYMER addressed the group, pacing back and forth with deliberate strides. “From now on, this is how you get in 3F: Pull a lick. Pull a runner. Fade on a blunt.”
“Start with pulling a lick,” SIKE said to me and SHIM.
The dramatic tension was reversed, the toughest task first. The other two would be easy. Pulling a runner was amateurish. Any idiot could grab something and bolt out of a store, and forking over cash to buy weed was no test, but the first challenge, robbing someone, wasn’t my kind of thing. I didn’t aspire to bully. I’d been on the receiving end enough to know better. That’s what I told myself when I wanted to feel self-righteous, but this masked my fear of fighting. It wasn’t the physical pain I feared the most. Bruises heal. It was the public nature of it, the potential of being humiliated, branded as a joke.
“All right,” I said, “but me and SHIM get to pick the mark.”
“This ain’t a negotiation,” TYMER said.
“Bus!” someone shouted. A streetcar had emerged from the
Duboce Tunnel.
We raced across the park to the bus stop. SHIM broke ahead of the pack, and I hustled to catch up. The streetcar pulled alongside us and slowed to a stop. Its back door glided open. We jumped on and held the door, waving in the rest of the crew. They had one hand at the waistband of their jeans, holding up their sagging pants, as graceful as competitors in a three-legged race.
Hercules completed twelve tasks as penance. His sin—slaughtering his wife and kids, a result of his evil stepmother casting a spell of madness on him. When he snapped out of it, he became distraught, suicidal. The only path toward redemption, the oracle at Delphi advised him, was to serve his archenemy, King Eurytheus, who was also his cousin.
Many of the twelve labors Hercules was given sound heroic: capture the Erymanthian Boar, the Cretan Bull, the Golden Hind of Artemis. Slay the Nemean Lion, the Stymphalian Birds, the Lernaean Hydra. Other labors reduce the son of Zeus to a glorified thief: steal the Mares of Diomedes, the girdle of Hippolyta, the cattle of Geryon, the apples of Hesperides. The most humiliating labor: clean the Augean stables, shoveling the shit of over a thousand cattle, immortal cattle, their dung gigantic. His final and most difficult labor: enter the underworld and kidnap Cerberus.
I wrote about this in sixth grade, a report on Hercules, part of a packet of makeup work I had to complete. I’d caught the flu weeks into the start of middle school, staying home for an entire month. I’d lie on the couch during the day with a stuffy nose, rereading the story of Hercules during commercials of sitcom reruns, Good Times, What’s Happening!!, Diff’rent Strokes, the protagonists of these shows, sons without their fathers. J.J. lost his in a car accident. Roger’s dad was MIA so long that when he returned for a visit, he mistook Rerun for his son. Arnold lived with a father, but Mr. D didn’t count to me. Not because he was white but because he was a replacement, the original elsewhere.
My mother brought me from doctor to doctor, herbalist to herbalist, all Chinese men. Their medicine had little effect on me, a kid whose father had just moved halfway across the country.
Hercules spent his mortal life apart from his father. His demise occurred when he was tricked into wearing a poisonous cloak. The poison ate through his skin to his bones. Before Hercules died, he built a funeral pyre and lay
