Down

by Norah McClintock

  Lindsay snuggles up against me and slips her hand under my T-shirt. She runs her hand over my chest, then over my stomach. And I can’t help it. It feels good. Plus, I’ve been smoking weed, which is why I lean into her and put a hand on her breast and, well, let’s just say I’m glad it’s dark in the corner of the court where we are.

  It’s dark and I’m with Lindsay and her hands are all over me and my hands are all over her. And then, all of a sudden, I’m blinded by a light. It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s headlights. I hear car doors open and then slam shut again. James yells out to shut off the lights. So, of course, they stay on. For a while. Then, without warning, they go off and I’m blinking again, this time trying to adjust to the darkness.

  When I can finally see again, I make out three guys standing on the other side of the chain-link fence that goes around the basketball court. The one in the middle is Marcus. He’s smiling this weird little smile. He’s looking at me and at Lindsay. She still has her hands all over me. I shove her away and stand up. I turn to Marcus. I want to tell him that what he just saw doesn’t mean anything. I want to tell him—beg him—not to tell Asia. But I know if I do that, he’ll definitely tell her, just to get back at me. And I hate him for it. I hate Lindsay too. And I hate myself.

  James and all the rest of them, even the girls, are lined up on one side of the chain-link fence. Marcus and his bunch are on the other side. Everyone is looking at everyone else. Then one of the guys on Marcus’s side of the fence says, “Your time is up.”

  James goes nuts. He grabs the fence with both hands and jumps up on it and says, “Yeah? Is that so? You want to come over on this side and say that?”

  For a moment, nothing happens. Then everyone on Marcus’s side of the fence starts to move.

  Starts.

  And then stops again because there’s a cop car sliding up the street. It slows down. Then it stops. Everyone on both sides of the fence backs up a little. James is down from the fence now, but he’s staring hard at Marcus. Marcus is staring back. He’s delivering a message: Don’t screw with my guys. Then he nods and he and his guys get into the two cars they drove up in. They back up and turn, nice and slow. Stephen mutters that they’re chickenshit now that the cops are there. But I know that’s not it. Not exactly. They just don’t want to give the cops an excuse to hassle them. I hold my breath. I hate to admit it, but I’m hoping the cops will make them pull over. I’m hoping they’ll hassle Marcus. I’m hoping one of the cops is Dunlop.

  The cops don’t move. They watch Marcus’s car and the other one drive away, still nice and slow. Then they sit there some more, making a point that even James can’t miss.

  “Come on,” he says finally. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We leave the court. James wants to hang out somewhere else. Lindsay is at my elbow, telling me she doesn’t know what she did to make me mad, but that she’s sorry, really sorry. Which is stupid, right? How can you be sorry when you don’t even know what you did wrong? It’s kind of pathetic, if you ask me.

  I tell her and James that I have to go. I lie and say this guy I’ve been working for needs me for a job tomorrow. The whole time I’m walking home, I’m thinking about Asia. I’m wondering if Marcus is going to see her tonight. I’m wondering what they’re going to do when they’re together. I’m wondering what he’ll tell her about what he saw. And, most of all, I wonder if Asia will even care.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day I lie low. I want to tell my mother and my sister, that if anyone calls for me, to tell them I’m not here. But I know that will freak out my mother. She’ll think I’ve done something. She’ll think I’m hiding from the cops. So I just stay in my room, out of everyone’s way. After a while, my mother knocks on my door to tell me she’s going out, she’ll be back later, if I want something to eat, I’ll have to get it myself. The tone of her voice makes me think she wouldn’t care if I starved to death.

  The whole time I was away, my mother came to see me exactly once, a week after my birthday. She brought me a present—a CD that my sister must have picked out because it was crap—and a bag of candy. She didn’t say much. I think she was embarrassed to have to come there. I bet she never talked about me to her friends. My mother is like that. When my dad took off, she never mentioned him again. It was like she was trying to pretend he never existed. Sometimes I think that’s what she has against me. Everyone says I look exactly like my dad. Even I can see it. My sister looks like my mother’s side of the family.

  Now that I’m back, I can tell she wishes I wasn’t. But until I can get something permanent, until I can make enough money, there’s nothing I can do about it except stay out of her way as much as possible.

  My mother goes out. My sister is at work all day. And the phone rings. I hesitate—what if it’s James? I told him I was working today. If I answer, he’ll know I lied.

  The phone rings again.

  What if it’s Asia?

  Stupid, I tell myself. Why would it be Asia? Especially if Marcus told her he saw me and Lindsay together with our hands all over each other.

  But I still hope she’ll call. Maybe she cares.

  So I pick up the phone.

  It isn’t Asia.

  It isn’t James, either.

  It’s the contractor I’ve been working for. He tells me where he wants me first thing Monday morning.

  I’m alone in the house, so I go to the fridge to see what there is to eat. Answer: not much. No wonder my mother told me if I wanted something, I’d have to get it myself. She hasn’t done the shopping. Maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll eat everything she buys. I remember how she used to say, You’re eating me out of house and home.

  I get dressed and walk to the closest pizza place. I buy a slice and a pop and I take them across the street to a little park. I find a bench tucked away in a corner, away from the street, under a big old tree. I sit there and eat my pizza. I wash it down with pop and look at the grass and the flowers. Everything is so peaceful that I sit there even after I’ve finished my slice and pop. It’s cool under the tree, and I like the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze over my head. Where I am, at the far end of the park, there’s a high, thick hedge that runs along the edge of the park, hiding it from an alley and the back fences of a bunch of houses.

  I’m still sitting there maybe half an hour later. I’m trying to calculate how much work I will have to do for the contractor who has been hiring me before I have enough money saved up for first and last months’ rent somewhere, plus enough left over for food and transportation. Then I start thinking about how much money I would need to buy a used car and how much insurance I would have to pay. I also think about how high gas prices have been. I’m wondering if I’ll ever be able to own a car when suddenly I hear a sound. It’s feet pounding on pavement.

  I stand up.

  I look around. Through the hedge I see a guy streak down the alley. He’s running like he’s being chased by the mother of all grizzly bears and the bear is gaining fast. A moment later, I see why.

  The guy is being chased—by two cops, both on foot. It’s Dunlop and his partner. To my surprise, Dunlop is way out in front. He’s pounding after the guy. He’s really pouring on the steam until, boom, he grabs hold of the guy and jerks him right off his feet.

  Dunlop yells at him to lie facedown on the ground and put his arms out in front of him, straight out in front of him, palms down, where Dunlop can see them. The guy must be stupid or deaf, or maybe he doesn’t speak English, you never know, because he reaches for something instead. And out comes Dunlop’s gun. He points it right at the guy. Dunlop is yelling at him. I mean, he’s really yelling, telling him to lie down flat on his belly and put his palms on the ground, glue those palms to the ground, do you hear me? He’s got his gun pointed at the guy. But the guy is still moving around instead of doing what he’s told. I look at him and I think I know why he’s still moving, but Dunlop either doesn’t see it or doesn�
��t care. He screams at the guy again and I hold my breath because it looks to me like Dunlop is going to shoot the guy.

  Then Dunlop’s partner shows up. He takes a look at what’s going on and gets it right away. He puts a hand on Dunlop. He talks to him in a quiet voice. He says, “He’s injured. The guy is injured.”

  I can see it’s true. The guy isn’t just moving. He’s writhing like a snake down there on the pavement. He’s got hold of one knee and he’s moaning. Maybe he broke it when he hit the pavement. Maybe he wrenched it. It obviously hurts like hell. Either that or the guy is one hundred percent wuss. I get the feeling he doesn’t even register Dunlop and his gun.

  Dunlop’s partner speaks to him again. He tells Dunlop again that the guy is injured. He’s got this look on his face, like he’s wondering if Dunlop is all there, if he can handle his job anymore. I remember what Asia told me.

  Dunlop’s partner finally gets Dunlop to holster his gun. The whole time, Dunlop has his eyes glued to the guy on the pavement. Dunlop’s eyes are kind of glassy and he’s breathing hard. When he finally puts his gun away, he goes over and kicks the guy, hard, in the kidneys. I know what that’s about. He’s punishing the guy. Not for running. Not for disobeying orders. But for scaring the crap out of Dunlop. Dunlop’s partner looks around, like he’s afraid someone might be watching. I duck down behind the bushes and stay there until they’re gone.

  Chapter Eight

  It was on the news and in all of the newspapers, what happened to Dunlop. Eighteen years with the police service, all of it as a patrol officer, which I think should tell you something.

  He’s out one night with his partner. Not the guy he’s with now, but another cop, a guy named Andruski. They’re patrolling. They’re doing their thing. They’re the eyes of the night. Crime watchers. Law enforcers. The thin blue line. Whatever you want to call them.

  According to the news, they had pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall somewhere in what they call an under-served part of town. Supposedly they were observing the area because there had been trouble around there—kids out breaking windows in some of the stores that had been empty for a year or more. It sounded fishy to me. Who in their right mind is going to start breaking store windows with the cops sitting right there? Or maybe that was the whole point. Maybe they were protecting those stores on a crime prevention basis. Maybe they were making a show of force so no one would dare break any more windows.

  Anyway, according to the news, which supposedly got its information mainly from Dunlop but also from a witness who arrived on the scene when the incident was almost over, a man appeared in the parking lot. The news said it looked like he was drunk or on drugs or something. He was staggering and weaving. He came right up to the cop car that Dunlop and Andruski were in and pressed his face against the window on the passenger side where Andruski was sitting. The news reports didn’t say this, but I imagine this guy with his face up against the window, like a kid looking in a store window when they’re doing all the Christmas decorations.

  Andruski and Dunlop don’t like this, of course. Cops don’t like it when people are that close to their cars. They don’t like it when people touch their cars. Then the guy smacks the windshield. Andruski and Dunlop really don’t like that. They get out of the car—Andruski on the side where the crazy guy is, Dunlop on the other side.

  The crazy guy—because he’d have to be crazy to do what he’s doing, right?—backs up a few steps and starts babbling. That’s what the paper said, quoting Dunlop. The guy was babbling. He wasn’t making any sense. He was dancing around like a clown too. Dunlop doesn’t like it. Andruski, though, he’s amused. Dunlop wants to arrest the guy, but Andruski says, Forget it, he’s harmless, let’s get out of here. He turns his back on the guy and starts to get into the car.

  Dunlop told the news, “Andruski shouldn’t have done that.” He said he shouldn’t have done what he did, either, which is that he started to turn away and walk back to the driver’s side of the patrol car. He told the news that was when he saw it out of the corner of his eye. He said it was just a flash, the metal catching the beam of a streetlight. He said it took a couple of seconds for it to register—the guy had a knife.

  A couple of seconds is also all it took for the crazy guy to swing his knife. Dunlop dove for it. He said later that he shouldn’t have bothered. He said that he should have pulled out his gun and shot the guy. But he didn’t. No, instead he dove for the knife.

  And missed.

  Dunlop said it all happened so fast that Andruski didn’t understand what was going on until the knife cut him. Some guy they interviewed on the news—I think he was a doctor—said that even if it had happened in a hospital operating room, there was nothing anyone could have done to save Andruski. The knife—and it was a big one, a sharp one—caught him in the upper thigh. It severed an artery. Blood spurted everywhere. Andruski was dead—bled out—in a couple of minutes.

  I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what Dunlop was thinking. But I can imagine what I’d be thinking if I saw someone I knew get stabbed and then have blood spurt out of them like that. I’d be in shock. And I’d be mad. Boy, I’d be mad. And I guess Dunlop was mad too, because he rushed the guy. But he didn’t draw his gun. Jeez, I thought that was the first thing cops did. But Dunlop didn’t, maybe because he was in shock. He didn’t draw his gun. He rushed the guy to try to get the knife away from him, and the guy swung at him too.

  Dunlop went down.

  Who knows what would have happened if a car hadn’t swung into the parking lot at exactly that moment. The guy who drove up said that at first he didn’t see anything except a cop car and a crazy-looking guy who turned and ran away. Then he saw someone lying on the pavement. He said he hesitated for a moment. He admitted he was scared. But when nothing happened— I guess he meant when no one shot at him—he got out of his car. He went over to Andruski first. He said he saw right away that he was dead. He couldn’t find a pulse. He said he saw another cop lying nearby and he thought he must be dead too. This guy, this passerby, was reaching for his cell phone to call 9-1-1 when Dunlop said, “Tell them there’s a police officer down.”

  They said on the news later that Dunlop was lucky to be alive. His picture was everywhere for a while. So was Andruski’s. They had one of those big cop funerals for him, the kind where cops from all over the country show up. They made a big deal when they finally caught the guy who did it. It turned out he really was crazy. He’s in some place for crazy killers now. They also made a big deal—but not as big—when Dunlop finally went back to work. If you ask me now, after seeing him with that guy in the alley, Dunlop never should have gone back to work.

  Chapter Nine

  I spend the next week with two other guys, both older than me, digging, preparing and laying down a massive stone driveway with a sun pattern in the middle of it. The house at the end of the driveway looks like some kind of mansion. It’s way out of town, so I have to take the bus to a corner near where one of the guys lives, and he drives me and the other guy there in his pickup. One of the guys, the one with the pickup, hardly ever says a word. The other guy never shuts up. He must watch CNN every minute that he isn’t out working because he updates us on every news story, every sporting event, every new movie there is. Plus he gives us his opinions on everything. I can hardly get a word in edgewise, but mostly I don’t want to, so it doesn’t matter. After a couple of hours that first day, I wish he’d just shut up. It’s like working with an all-news radio going full-blast all day. I’m ready to do a happy dance when Friday rolls around again and we get paid and the guy with the pickup drops me off.

  After I clean up, I decide to head out to the courts. I haven’t been there all week because I have to get up before six every morning, and it’s eight or nine o’clock at night when I get dropped off at the bus stop again. So usually I grab a couple of pizza slices or a burger, and then I go home, take a shower and crash. Some life, huh? Some fun summer.

  Friday night I’m tir
ed too. But I’m also bored. And you know what? I’m also wondering if Lindsay will be down at the courts. She talks too much, like the guy I’ve been working with all week. But she has great hands.

  So I grab a bite to eat. Then I go home to get cleaned up. By now my mother doesn’t bother asking me if I’m staying for supper. She knows I’m not and she doesn’t even try to hide her relief. Whatever.

  I shower. I put on the new jeans and the new shirt I bought on the way home the night before. And I go out.

  I tell myself I’m going directly to the courts, but halfway there my feet take me on a detour. I end up in front of the building where Asia lives. It’s a high-rise in a row of high-rises that tower above the street after street of crappy little houses that look even crappier after I’ve spent a week working outside a genuine mansion. Asia lives on the second floor, middle apartment, around the back, so I walk back there to see if maybe she’s out on the balcony. All last summer, when I was still home and still with Asia, she liked to sit out on that balcony, even on steamy hot days. Asia loves summer. She never cares how hot it gets. It never bothers her.

  So I go around the back, ready to look up to see if she’s there. But it turns out I don’t have to look up, because she’s right down there at ground level in one of the little courtyards that people who live on the ground floor have instead of a balcony. This courtyard is directly under Asia’s balcony. In the courtyard with her are Marcus and a couple of other guys. I watch them for a few minutes from near the corner of the building, and I figure out from who goes in and comes out again that the courtyard belongs to one of Marcus’s friends. He lives right there, one floor under Asia. I wonder if that’s how Asia met Marcus. Maybe she knows the guy who lives below her, and maybe that guy introduced the two of them.

  I feel like a ghost standing there, half-hidden, watching. They’re all sitting out on lawn chairs. Asia and Marcus are holding hands. I guess Marcus says something funny because Asia laughs. The sound reminds me of little silver bells, the kind you hear at Christmas. I tell you, everything about Asia is beautiful. Even her laugh.