The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  “And he will always remain a good boy.”

  Chapter 4

  May 18, 1981. 05:41 P.M.

  Ryatt sat at the back of a police cruiser, steel restraints digging into his wrists. Call it some sort of intervention—divine or otherwise—or good old fluke: the donut-munchers were really fat. One was an obese black woman who took a good full minute to get out of and into the passenger seat, and one a bald white man with neck bearing enough folds to remind Ryatt of Michelin Man.

  While Ryatt’s eye studied them, his hands fiddled with the back of his NBA jersey. It was a ubiquitous navy-blue color, with Detroit 16 printed in front, popular among the teens of his disintegrating metropolis; not that they loved Bob Lanier, the star player in Detroit Pistons, but the loose clothing could conceal anything, from knives and blackjacks to snubbies, and if worn correctly, even hide a sawn-off. Right now for Ryatt, it covered a white T-shirt, not as nefarious a reason but worn for a criminal purpose nonetheless.

  Ryatt lifted both shirts. Hooked to the seam of his jeans, where a belt went, was a paperclip. When frisked, the pudgy hooves of the pig groped over it twice but missed it completely as it was clipped to the inside. Horizontally.

  Ryatt’s fingertips held the curve of the clip and tugged at it. But the smooth metal slipped under his damp skin. He grabbed hold of the cloth and wiped his hands dry before going back to the clip to perform the same maneuver again.

  And voilà! This time he successfully plucked it loose.

  Getting a solid grip on it, he straightened one end out. Careful not to move his upper body, he inserted the tip into the keyhole. Then he pressed the clip down on the restraint’s flat surface, before pulling it out. The newly formed L-shaped edge was going to be his free ticket. Well, not exactly an L, it was bent probably at a 60-70 degree.

  As Ryatt scanned for any unwarranted movement in front of him, drawing air in became tough. His eardrums felt as if someone had pumped air into his mouth and ballooned his head, making it light. This must be the high his boys were talking about.

  As the adrenaline swooshed through his veins, there were a few things going through his mind. Namely failure, which was always a possibility regardless of the hours he’d been practicing with paperclips and handcuffs. There was always a chance that the makeshift key might get twisted beyond repair.

  He pinched the edge of the clip where the bend started and jammed it into the keyhole again. He turned it to the left and then to the right; up and then down; finally clockwise and then anticlockwise.

  “You feeling okay back there?” the She-Hulk asked, making him halt his actions.

  “Wha—” Ryatt cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”

  He made a conscious effort to regulate his voice, which edged on quavering; he shouldn’t cave. Ryatt learned from his mom never to fear anything. It clouded your judgement, made you stupid, and got you in trouble.

  “You feel good about selling drugs?” the lady cop asked.

  “I don’t feel good about getting caught,” Ryatt answered and let out an inconspicuous sigh of relief. The pigs hadn’t picked up on what he was up to, so he resumed his work. He needed to keep the chatter going, so that they wouldn’t hear the metallic ticks as he continued operating.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Fourteen, come summer.”

  The lady shook her head. “Shame on you children.”

  Children? Ryatt almost rolled his eyes. He was caught red-handed, selling crack to a detective in a sting operation. Did children do that?

  Whatever. Ryatt couldn’t end up in juvenile. His mom was home alone, thinking he stayed back after school playing football, his long-dead passion. Dead because when his coach had informed Ryatt that he needed to buy shoes, Iris had sold her mother’s pearl necklace, the one she loved so much, and given him the money. But when the coach said Ryatt must also buy costly protective gear, he had thrown the towel in.

  That’s when Ryatt was schooled in yet another lesson for poor people: like decent clothes, shoes, and tasty food, ambition needed funding, too. Mad skills and natural talent weren’t enough in Ryatt’s world. The next day, he had given the money to the pawn shop guy who had bought the necklace from Iris. But the cocksucker had swindled an extra $20 out of Ryatt. Interest, he had said. Ryatt, biting down the anger, paid him and reclaimed the necklace and returned it to his mom.

  However, the same night he and his two trusted lieutenants threw seven Molotovs inside the shop, converting the building into a dark skeleton of its former self.

  “What do your parents do, son?” Michelin Man spoke this time.

  There was a fatherly quality and care to his voice, and Ryatt took an instant liking towards him. He imagined this guy would be a cordial but stern dad, a responsible husband who probably owned a nice three-bedroom house in the suburbs which stayed free of crime, drugs, and vandals. No sirens, no gunshots, and no loud arguments like Ryatt’s neighborhood. Oh how desperately he wanted to rescue Iris from that disgusting place which festered with vermin.

  “They dead,” Ryatt said. First rule of the streets, according to him anyways, was that no one should know anything about you. Except your very best buddies, everyone was an enemy, everyone a snitch.

  “I’m sorry for that, I truly am,” Michelin said, his sympathetic eyes locked at Ryatt’s in the rearview mirror. “But crime is no way to live your life, boy. Trust me on this: money can’t buy you happiness.”

  “You don’t know what you talking about.” Ryatt scoffed and smirked, his voice carrying a mix of anger and sadness. He didn’t really need to have a heart to heart with this guy, but what he began doing to stall the pigs was quickly turning into a conversation he’d rather do without.

  Ryatt chased the thoughts away, turning his attention once again to the job at hand. The tumbler clicked and the first cuff unlocked.

  Yes! Fuck yes!

  Like fear, he didn’t allow excitement to go to his head. Calming down, he reminded himself he still had one more cuff to do, or undo rather, but not a lot of time. The precinct was just around the corner.

  “I don’t?” Michelin asked. “I’ve seen kids like you, good kids with a lot of potential gunned down in alleys and gutters, and left to die like dogs.”

  “If they have brains the size of dogs, then they deserve to die like dogs,” Ryatt retorted.

  The pig smirked. “Too tough for your age, you know that? Say, is this your first time?”

  “Yup,” Ryatt said truthfully. First time getting arrested that was. However, he had committed his very first act of crime when he was eleven. During recess at the playground, he threatened a nameless Asian kid with a sharp stone into handing over his batman lunchbox. That’s when Ryatt discovered the gratification of taking things that didn’t belong to him. The pleasure was double-fold when you yanked it right out of the possessor’s hand. It brought some kind of much-needed justice to the world. The grotesque gap between the rich and the desperate slightly filled every time the latter robbed the former. In a way, people with things to spare were fat gazelles, and the poor and needy, a pack of hyenas. No matter what the law said or ordered—or like in Ryatt’s case now, tried to reason with—nature happened. No one had the power to stop nature. Not the police, not the government, and certainly not God. If he did, why so much inequality in the world?

  “There’s hope for you, kid,” Michelin said.

  “How come?” Ryatt said, cursing inside. They had turned onto the street where the precinct was. He had one minute. The most important one minute of his life.

  “The arresting detective said you didn’t even try to run. Must mean you’re feeling guilty for selling dope, don’t it?”

  Um… no. Ryatt didn’t run because the odds were stacked against him. The pig that caught Ryatt was also black, but a lot leaner than these two. He had at least a foot on Ryatt, and his sinuous forearms and neck, and broad chest and long legs insinuated that, like Ryatt, he was also an athlete. Or he had been at some
point in his life not so long ago. Running meant Ryatt would have easily been caught, adding ‘resisting arrest’ to his charge sheet, which didn’t bother him as much as another problem: they would have taken better care of chaining Ryatt and kept a closer eye on him.

  So Ryatt bid his time. And when he saw that the police cruiser the detective pig had called in was driven by two fat pigs, he had almost laughed in happiness. He knew, one way or another, he wouldn’t see the inside of a jail cell that day.

  “I am sorry, sir,” Ryatt said, mainly to distract the pigs from the noise that the desperate paperclip was making inside the other cuff. It was not coming undone, and Ryatt believed that he’d bent the tip out of shape and got it stuck.

  Then his stupidity dawned on him.

  Ryatt could do a lot better by also employing his eye, couldn’t he? Cursing himself, he slowly brought his hands around his stomach, not letting the movement reach his upper arms, which were visible in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s alright, son,” Michelin said. “The judge’s a good lady. She’d probably let you off with a warning, if you tell us just one thing.”

  “What?” Ryatt asked, almost too hastily. He should hurry.

  “Who supplied you with drugs?”

  Yeah, right. That would be the fastest way to meet your maker, but also the ugliest. If Ryatt pointed his finger up the food chain, he’d most certainly be made an example of. Either Michelin didn’t have any brain cells or he didn’t care about Ryatt. Both irked him because he liked the man.

  As Ryatt watched the pigs, he rested his hands on his lap. He shook the paper clip free and tried to straighten the twisted mess on its end, but the result was it became too flimsy. Even if he made another L-shape with the same end, it wouldn’t be firm enough to work.

  Hold on a sec…

  Out of the blue, an idea popped up.

  He quickly whipped out the other end of the paperclip and inserted it into the keyhole, starting the process all over again.

  But they had already entered the precinct’s parking lot, now reversing between two other cruisers. Ryatt looked around. On the wall behind them, he found something peculiar. A vivid graffiti of the American Flag but with forty-five stars missing. He also found two pigs standing akimbo at the doorway, one of them lean and young.

  Shit.

  Michelin got down and walked to the rear while the lady cop began her one-minute struggle to get out, jerking the cruiser while at it. Just as Michelin opened the back door, the other cuff came loose. Ryatt put his hands behind and bundled the chains and the cuffs together into a steely lump.

  “Come on out, kid.” Michelin extended his arm. “I pray this is the last time I see you here in this godforsaken place.”

  “Oh, that I can promise you, sir.” Ryatt put his legs out. One of his shoes had a hole, exposing his toe. He slightly leaned forward and balanced the weight on his calves, accumulating the tension like a depressed spring. “This’ll be the very last time you’ll see me here.”

  The lady pig now successfully dislodged herself from the car. As Michelin tried to grab Ryatt’s arms, he jumped forward like a rattlesnake, head-butting the pig in the nose.

  “Son of a…” Michelin’s hands shot up to his face as he stumbled back. Ryatt took aim and pelted the handcuffs at the woman pig’s face. It caught her square on the bridge of the nose, and she held her face, too, and doubled over. Ryatt slid across the hood of the other cruiser and took off like a bat out of hell.

  Unsurprisingly, he heard someone shout, “Hey, stop.” It was followed by the thundering and disheartening sound of shoes on tarmac.

  So the chase began.

  Since Ryatt could see only through his left eye, he tended to choose escape routes on that side. As he reached the entrance, another cruiser drove into the parking lot, blocking his way. It braked when the driver saw Ryatt, who climbed onto the hood and ran over the top of the car, leaping the strobe lights, finally sliding down the back windshield.

  As Ryatt sprinted and built up to his full speed, he glanced back. To his dismay, the young pig had performed the same trick on the cruiser and continued to chase Ryatt. And worse still, the cruiser had reversed and turned on its sirens.

  Shit! Shit! Sh— wait a minute!

  The end of the street merged into a main road, and Ryatt decided to improvise. He threw his body forward, swinging his arms, and put himself into it. As he reached the busy road, he took a left. Police cruisers would never chase him in on-coming traffic.

  Ryatt ran a good two-hundred meters, and the sound of sirens was slowly taken over by one of screeching tires and angry horns. He took a road not unlike the one the precinct was located in. This street was familiar to Ryatt. He zoomed past ‘Love Juice’, a pulp store his seniors bought porn magazines from. Beside it stood a VHS shop where Iris used to take Ryatt to buy cartoons. Not anymore, and not because Ryatt was older—he still preferred animated creatures over real people—but they didn’t own a TV or a video cassette player anymore. Only childhood nostalgia remained.

  Ryatt glanced over his shoulder to find the pig was still running after him. He needed to do something. And quick. He scampered into a seedy alley that led into a shadier part of the neighborhood. Sure enough, he heard the unmistakable click clack of a pair of boots echoing behind him.

  Ryatt rounded the corner, and his eye quickly scanned the vicinity. Like he expected, several small groups of rowdies stood haphazardly on the street. Ryatt narrowed his options by picking three groups with at least one guy or girl wearing the same jersey as his. He selected a gaggle loafing at the corner of an intersection as two among that group wore the same jersey. He decided on this group because a few of them were of a similar height to himself.

  He knew for a fact that almost all of them would have weed or crack, and at least one would be carrying.

  Ryatt risked one last look behind. The cop hadn’t come out of the alley yet, but he would shoot out of it any second now.

  Ryatt faced the gang again. As he darted towards them, he crossed his arms and grabbed the hem of his jersey.

  When the gang saw the fastly approaching Ryatt, their faces expressed confusion and anxiety. Ryatt ran through them, shouting, “Pigs!”

  The rule of thumb in the streets was, in scenarios like these, everyone must take off in a different direction. Like how a triangle of colored balls scurry because of one white ball.

  In the resulting jostling and clamor, Ryatt pulled the jersey over his head and dropped it on the curb. When he neared a parked hippie van, he crouched and hid behind it. The pig had exited the alley and stood on the road, scratching under his chin. Then he pointed in a totally different direction, not even close to where Ryatt was hiding, and shouted, “You there! Stop!” and resumed running.

  Now that Ryatt had defeated one enemy, his nemesis within showed up: acid reflux. Ryatt’s hand shot towards his mouth and cupped it. From his jeans pocket, he pulled out a lollipop with a yellow wrapper. He quickly removed the cover and put it in his mouth; seconds later, the heartburn subsided.

  Acidity troubled Ryatt only after he had a meal, or whenever he performed activities that rattled his body, disturbing his stomach, or when he did something that pumped adrenaline into his bloodstream and raised his heartbeat. Given that he was a thug, who loved food, who ran a lot, and who also committed petty crimes for a living, he always kept a few lollipops handy.

  Ryatt took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead on his sleeves. Just another day on the grind. Sighing, he went to pick up his jersey before walking home.

  Chapter 5

  May 18, 1981. 07:06 P.M.

  Leg muscles burning, Ryatt traipsed along the remaining three-and-a-half-mile detour to his home. As his mind stopped thinking about his little stunt, it settled back into default mode.

  Envy.

  Ryatt had only three pairs of jeans, all peppered with tiny holes. He did not even have money to spare for a barber. So his shoulder length straggly dreadl
ocks weren’t the outcome of trend but inability.

  He crossed another main road and cut through the city center, which was lined with a gazillion stores. Out of habit, he window-shopped items he craved to own. Nothing for himself, though. Long-term poverty had that effect on you. It numbed your desires and expectations. Gone were the days when Ryatt stood outside a shop or a restaurant and fantasized about eating tasty food or donning trendy clothes. Now all he imagined was to buy a TV or a washing machine or a refrigerator; he wanted to make his mom’s life better.

  Rich folks didn’t really think about the cost of things before buying them, but people on the less fortunate side of the spectrum always did. A dirt-poor kid like Ryatt had developed a nasty quirk of attaching price tags to anything he wanted, just to remind himself he couldn’t afford it. When you saw a cheap pair of jeans or shoes, which in all probability could be knock-offs, and accepted the fact that you couldn’t even afford that shit, it kind of showed you your place in the world.

  Like all desperate people, Ryatt didn’t compare himself to others. Nope. He was a man, and no responsible man acted selfish. He thought about other kids’ moms and compared Iris with them. While middle-class moms wore silk shirts, jewels, and perfumes, Iris didn’t own such fashionable apparels. Simple and functional, she had always been lower than them. Seeing his mom like that, which only became worse when she acted like nothing was wrong, agonized Ryatt. It pierced what was left of his heart and killed him.

  He exited the city center, and eventually the neighborhoods transformed from good to bad and finally to worse. He let the painful change of scenery daunt him as he entered the ghetto. The buildings became shorter and shorter, the shiny glass façades replaced with cardboards, Nissans and Toyotas turned into lowriders blasting bass. The volume of trash strewn about on the streets and potholes increased, dumpsters overflowed, and strays prowled for pickings. Denizens changed too, becoming louder and more obnoxious, scantily dressed in vivid colors.