perhaps twelve inches wide and four feet high, separating the busy express lanes from the steel tracks. Twelve inches wasn't very much. Sandy tottered back and forth next to me as we fought to keep our balance. Maybe I was too concerned about her making it up to the top with me, and maybe I was a bigger klutz than she was to begin with, but I couldn't stop. I let go of her hand, but my momentum carried me over the top and I fell face-first on the grimy, sharp-edged gravel of the railroad bed.
“Eee-Yeeagh!” My hands and knees rebelled in pain.
“Uh, Talbott,” Sandy shouted a warning. “See that blue-black rail in the middle? The one next to your left hand?”
“Yeah,” I answered as I looked down. My shins rested on the brightly polished track where the train's wheels ran and my right hand was a few inches away. Next to my left hand, where I had narrowly missed landing, was an evil-looking, blue-black rail.
“That's the third rail. There's about a gazillion volts of electricity in that thing. You touch it; it'll ruin your whole day.”
“Hey, I'm from LA,” I replied. “What do I know from rails?” Carefully, very carefully, I rose to my feet and brushed the dirt and gravel off my hands, giving the third rail a wide berth. Sandy jumped down next to me and we looked up at the subway platform. The concrete slab was even higher than the divider, at my eye level, and there was no ladder or stairs to climb. To make matters worse, I saw the front headlight of a fast moving train coming up the northbound tracks, heading straight for us.
“Here,” I said as I put my hands together and bent my knees. “Give me your foot. Quick. I'll boost you up.”
“No sweat, it'll slow down as it comes in,” she announced confidently, slowly raising her left foot and placing it in my hands. As she did, I glanced past her again. The train was close enough for me to see the panicked expression on the engineer's face as he saw us standing on his tracks.
Fortunately, Sandy did not weigh very much. “One, two… three,” I yelled and flipped her upward. She soared onto the air in a tight, acrobatic flip and landed on the platform on both feet, light as a feather.
I looked left again and I could see she was dead wrong about the train. It had not slowed a bit. I was tall and in pretty good shape. Desperation and a speeding train can make great motivators, so I put my hands flat on the platform and launched myself upward, rolling over the edge just as the lead El car roared past.
“Oops. Guess that was an express,” I heard her say as I lay on the platform looking up at the concrete roof of the station, thankful I was able to look up at anything at all.
That was when I heard a loud, sarcastic, and very black male voice say, “My, my, what
“They be the Fucking Wallendas, Jamal. You know, them dudes in the circus,” a second voice added.
“Yeah, das who they be,” came a third voice, “the Fucking Wallendas.”
“Check out the mess they made back on LaSalle. Dey fucked that up good.”
“Check it out, Rashid. All them po-lice cars? Cops gonna be really pissed.”
I looked around as six young, black men closed around us in a tight circle, complete with dark sunglasses, oversized, cockeyed baseball caps – mostly White Sox and Bears — blue jeans slung below their hips, and unlaced, hi-top work boots. Harlem, Watts, or the South Side of Chicago, it was definitely your urban gang-banger-out-on- the-town outfit, complete with matching blue plaid flannel shirts hanging out at the waist and “do-rags” on their heads under the hats.
“You be right, Toothpick. You be right,” the one in the center said as he looked back toward the chaos on the expressway with a smile. “But why the Fucking Wallendas drop in on my El platform this fine morning? Das what ah wants to know.”
Toothpick was the biggest of the lot, maybe 6’ 6”, well over 300 lbs, and fat as a house. He grinned as he reached out and ran a finger slowly down Sandy's arm. “Lookey here, Jamal,” he said. “The Wallendas done brung us lunch.”
His finger didn't make it as far as her elbow. In one smooth motion, Sandy jumped four feet in the air. With a blood-curdling scream, her Reeboks lashed out in a series of lightening-quick karate kicks. She caught Toothpick at the base of his throat, in the face, and a coup-de-grace in the groin, dropping him to his knees, bug-eyed, holding his throat and his crotch and coughing, all at once. The others took a step toward her, but she had dropped back on the platform and into a defensive Karate crouch, fingers out, eyes darting back and forth. “The next one who gets smart goes to intensive care.”
Jamal defused the situation. “Nice hang time, girl,” he laughed.
I got to my feet and stood behind her, figuring my best efforts would be spent covering her back, but Jamal was more effective.
“Thas enough, Toothpick, we don't want you to hurt her no more, now do we?” he said as he raised his hand and the others immediately stopped. “Very im-pressive, very im-pressive indeed,” he said as he slowly clapped his hands. Clearly, he was their leader. He looked over at the growing line of police cars back on LaSalle Street, his eyes dancing with amusement. “But ya'll seem to have gotten seriously lost. This here ain't Oak-brook or Win-net- ka. This here be the south side —
“Look,” she said. “All we want is to get on the next train out of here, that's all.”
“Thas all?” Jamal pointed at the police cars and grinned like a malevolent shark. “What you think them pigs up on LaSalle want? You the fuckin' Tupperware Lady? They come down here to give you a po-lice escort through the projects? No, ah think they be chasin’ yo’ asses, thas what ah think.”
We stood our ground and the six gang members did the same. That was something, but I could tell Jamal wasn't finished with us. He was cagey and street-smart. Behind those Oakley sunglasses, his dark-brown eyes were studying all the angles. Down here, a man couldn't reach his eighteenth birthday alive and out of jail if he was stupid.
“’Speakin’ of chasin’,” Jamal looked across the expressway, “Ah don't know what ya'll done, but them two “suits” down there running between the cars want yo little white ass some kinda bad, girl.”
“We didn't do anything,” I told him.
“They sho think you did.”
“They're wrong.”
“Imagine that! The Chi-ca-go Po-lice chasin’ somebody on 35th Street -– a white man and a white woman at that — and they got it wrong?”
In the distance, I saw another train coming toward us. This one was on the southbound tracks heading out of the city, and I intended for us to be on it. The cops had given up and turned back toward LaSalle, but Tinkerton and his goon managed to get across the express lanes and had reached the retaining wall on the other side of the tracks, barely ten feet away. Time was running out.
“What do you want?” I asked Jamal.
“You askin' what
“Reparations, man. We want reparations.” Another homie postured.
“Yeah, some serious reparations.”
“Ya'll trespassin’ on our turf without permission, without no passports or visas.”
“And look at what she done to Toothpick, man.”
“Yeah, that was flat out rude, man.”
Sandy cocked her head and took a long look at the gang leader. “Hey, I know you. That's Jamal Sanders hiding behind those “Oaks”, isn't it?”
“Jamal don't hide, bitch!” Toothpick threatened again, but Sandy's foot twitched and Toothpick took a step back.
She came out of her crouch and pulled her camera out of her shoulder bag for Jamal to see. “Yeah, Jamal Sanders of the Black P-stone Disciples? Right?”
“We now the Disciple 35th Nation. We be franchisin’,” Jamal corrected her. “And ah
