Ryatt went into the well-lit church with a gaping void inside his center. He paced heavy-heartedly, fingers tracing the shiny wooden pews while his eye set firmly on the centerpiece. “You have high-ticket carpentry.” He shrugged. “We have one piece of furniture. A dining stool.”
Closing his fists, he tightened his arms and brought them forward, examining the meandering blood vessels. A chuckle escaped his thin lips. “Don’t know if they are really veins and arteries, or just ramen, because thanks to you, I feel like it’s all I’m eating. It’s all I’ve ever eaten. Goddamn ramen.”
His eyes prickled.
“You have some good air conditioning?” Ryatt sucked in his lower lip and nodded, the first drop escaping his bottomless tearducts. “We either sweat in the sweltering summer or shiver in the bitter cold.”
Not really minding the torrents that began cascading down his cheeks, he sniffled.
“Smells good in here.” Ryatt made a show of looking around. “Scented candles? Room fresheners?” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “We have ourselves the smell of chicken goo and hobo piss.”
And then the penny dropped. He couldn’t contain the flooding anguish anymore.
He collapsed on all fours and bawled, his misery forming little puddles on the clean floor. The tears dotted his path as he crawled to the altar, wailing. When he finally reached it, he grabbed the edge and pulled himself onto his knees. Angling his head sideways, he stared at the smudged image of the Savior hanging on the crucifix.
“If you really hate our guts so much, why don’t you just end me and my mom right now?” He wiped his eyes. “Living ain’t supposed to hurt this much, is it? I ain’t asked to be born.”
Ryatt felt dizzy, the pressure literally building up within his head and throbbing. For a few minutes, he was in a trance, devoid of motion, and everything around him stopped. No words were needed anymore. In fact he hated himself for opening up like that. God should understand him without all this drama. Like a mother knew her child was in pain even before the child had learned to articulate it.
A gunshot somewhere in the distance echoed inside and broke his stupor. Ryatt took a long quivery breath and shook his head in disdain. “Please stop torturing us. Enough is enough.” He balanced his wet trembling palms on the landing and got up to his feet. But before he turned and walked away, he muttered, “Kill us already, you fucking coward.”
Chapter 6
May 18, 1981. 08:56 P.M.
Ryatt headed to his stomping ground in Forest Park, a seedy neighborhood at the outskirts, five miles from his house. Not that there weren’t any hangouts around 12th Street, but minority whites dominated them all, who in turn reported to Bugsy. Forest Park, though it had been influenced by Italian mobsters in the past, was not under their control anymore. Blacks ruled it, like they did most of the city. Bordered by Interstate 75 and the Detroit River, Forest Park was the remnant of an industrial town. Abandoned factories, deserted roads, and an absence of pigs combined, formed an ideal and snug retreat for many a scumbag.
Ryatt crossed the last drivable street and trod onto an unlit path, the bright full moon his only source of navigation. Potholes, made only more dangerous by lush undergrowth hiding them, were deep enough to upend even an SUV. It could easily pass for a haunted road, what with lack of traffic, thick tall trees flanking the jagged edges, and brick chimneys of old mills rubbernecking from the dark jungle.
Yawning, Ryatt trudged along. The vegetation around and under his shoes grew denser and denser, gradually merging into an imposing wall of bush that blocked the path. One might assume that nothing existed beyond it, except wilderness and wraiths. But if you waited and listened, you could hear faint music.
Covering his face with both hands, Ryatt shambled right into the thicket, the bristles scratching the back of his hand, ears, and neck. After thirty seconds of blindly pussyfooting through the bloodthirsty thorns, the flora became sparse, opening into an old basketball court. From where Ryatt stood, he could see and hear the beltway that stretched down to Ohio.
Across the ground was a building that had been white once, now washed pale yellow in the moonlight. Another automobile factory that couldn’t survive the city, leaving behind a behemoth concrete structure that perched like a jaundiced ghost on the side of I-75.
It was the lair of the YBI, aka Young Boys Inc., the gang which Ryatt was not exactly a member of, but benefitted from nonetheless. He abhorred gangs. Not because they were violent or committed crimes—Ryatt had qualms with neither—but gangs meant connections that later became trails, which could lead the pigs, or most likely criminals, to his home.
Also for the same reason, he used the unique route through the bushes, not the main entrance to the building on its other side. Ryatt always came from the woods and disappeared into the woods, like some crazy survivalist, so that no one followed him. Paranoid, true, but that was how he managed to stay out of trouble this long.
As Ryatt neared the edifice, he eyed the offhand graffiti on the walls. He got so used to the vandal art of his city that it would surprise
