by Jason Carney
This looks really cool.
The board is elegant, a large grid resembling a giant SOS board that we draw on paper in school. Along one edge are the letters of the alphabet with a numerical value out to the right of each.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It tells you how many of each letter there are in the game,” she explains. “More common letters have more tiles, less common letters like Q and J have only one tile.”
“That makes sense,” I say.
“You draw seven letters. The object is to create words that build off your opponent’s words using your seven letters. Each letter has a value that you total at the end of each turn.”
“Okay.”
She hands me a piece of wood from the box. “Use this to hold your tiles.” She smiles.
Over the next three minutes, she explains the rest of the rules. They seem straightforward enough; nothing about this game says little kid. I am still unsure of whether I like it or not. My mother seems very happy to be playing this with me; I am happy to have her attention.
“Draw seven tiles,” she says. “Don’t let me see them.”
Pine-colored chips; I can’t tell if the small squares are wood or imitation. Each has a black letter etched into the grain. I stack my letters in alphabetical order, separating the consonants from the vowels. I study the tiles, come up with three different three-letter words.
This does seem difficult.
The main challenge is that while my vocabulary is quite large, I do not know how to spell most of the words I know.
“You go first,” she offers. “One of your letters has to be on the black star.”
H-O-M-E. I place my tiles on the board. Her eyes light up, we smile at one another.
“Double word score,” she says. “Draw four new tiles out of the box top. Let’s take our time, enjoy our morning.”
Even at this young age, I know these moments are timeless.
3:00 A.M.—00:15
THIS IS THE LONGEST RED LIGHT IN HISTORY.
Tonight, C asked me to do him a favor. I will receive a free forty bag of dope to go with the two hundred I bought. All I have to do is take this long-nailed whore to the complex half a mile away. The early morning is dark and hollow. This is a place I avoid even in the sunlight. She carries her purse tightly to her chest, as if her life depends on her arrival.
Our destination is the shadiest of habitats on this side of Dallas. The BV apartment complex, open for business for forty years, is fifty feet off the corner of Buckner and John West, two hundred feet from where we idle, trapped at the light at Peavey.
“I don’t like having that shit in my car,” I mutter as we wait.
“You got paid, quit bugging.”
Something is not right, the street hovers at a hush. I sift over my reflection in the rearview mirror. A strain of insomnia shows in my death-mask grin. My slow demise is cruel and bitter to those who love me. I chase myself, endlessly. I trade everything I love for the greed, the gnawing compulsions of what I have grown to hate. The smudged yellow lamps silhouetting Buckner Boulevard hang over the asphalt like the bones of a half-eaten carcass. The entrance to the crack houses behind the strip mall and Burger King is a ghastly image of carnivorous and unyielding sickness.
Entering these complexes is treacherous, especially if you can’t sort which gangster to deal with among the hordes of zombies. Ignorant victims buy fake dope, slivers of almonds or soap, in tightly sealed plastic. Sometimes exiting, undercover cops pull them over. It’s easy to be stupid here, robbed of life or money before getting out. Young black males strap up with a powerless, genocidal ignorance holstering their dreams. In every direction of this stretch of Dallas, gangsters strangle false-idol affections of love through dope, guns, and money. Not even their family members escape the addictive pursuit of pay. The venerable tradition of overconsumption covers every inch of concrete, every minute of every hour. Crackheads, streetwalkers, drug dealers, and hustlers all serve different purposes in a slavish and doomed cycle of life.
This neighborhood was left for dead years ago.
The street is a silent corpse tonight, unusual.
I am a wreck more than two decades in the making.
The only thing I recognize in my reflection is the blue of my eyes, diluted to a small halo around the flowered deadness of the dark center.
What the hell am I doing?
“What you staring at? Quit bugging out!” the woman in the passenger seat says. “Muthafucka gonna get me popped!”
“This light takes so fucking long,” I say. “C’mon. C’mon, I have shit to do.”
“Hmmm,” she mutters. “Busy night smoking crack.”
“Guess that beats sucking dick for crack. Although there isn’t much difference.”
Her nails roll over the vinyl middle console in unison with her breath. A twisted hard-shell cackle punctuates the tension. A haggard scar of a person, her peroxide wig sits lopsided on her head. Her fingernails curve so steeply they look like purple claws adorned with red rhinestones and roses made of gold glitter. They are the most expensive thing about her.
“You need to take your ass back to wherever, you smell like shit.” She half laughs looking out her window as it rolls down. “Take a shower. Have some respect, sad-ass white boy.”
“You look nice too, just like the first time I saw you.”
“You don’t know me!” Old Fingernails snaps.
“It’s right there, c’mon, change, damnit,” I huff.
“Clockwork, why he calls you that?” she questions, already knowing the answer. The ill truth of the nickname means I score so frequently and with such a consistent hunger that he can pinpoint within five or ten minutes when I will call or show up. He sets his watch by me, times his middle-of-the-night deliveries accordingly. I constantly do him favors.
“Ha. White boy, you keep time around that muthafucka.”
“I used to live there as a kid,” I say, pointing to the BV. “Back when the Buckner Boulevard Drive-in Theater was still open.”
“You ain’t ever stay there,” she says. “This is the hood.”
“It hasn’t always been the hood. But it has always been violent . . . Where the fuck is everybody? The silence is eerie,” I change the course of conversation.
“It must be hot out,” she says, correlating the lack of activity with a strong police presence.
“I hope not. Why is this light not changing?” I glance around for any sign of squad cars. “This light needs to change, get you out of my car.”
There are no illusions here. For a quarter-mile in either direction, the night is quiet and thick. No hustles going down. The remnants of a light rain earlier glaze the roadway. The shine of the silence is almost magical. At night, fast-food outlets bustle selling two-for-a-dollar tacos to drunken carloads of bar refugees. Homeless crackheads work as lookouts for low-level dealers at the gas station parking lot where they also panhandle for change. Streetwalkers cling to their purses for balance, jockeying for position around an invisible track. The haze of oblivion paints their thoroughbred faces, searching for rich johns through rolled-down windows. Everyone who travels this three-mile stretch of road becomes infested with the gravity of the situation, even when all the characters are absent. America pours out of this neighborhood with reckless abandon and need.
“Ignore this light, man, let’s go!” she demands.
“Patience, I ain’t running shit with that in the car.”
“See there, the other side is green.”
My knuckles tighten around the steering wheel. I adjust my ass in the seat, anticipating the arrow. The opposite light pole turns yellow, then red.
“What the fuck?” I scream. “Fucking light skipped us! How the hell can it skip us? Hello? Dumb fucking light, there are no other cars on the road!”
Three minutes become five. The stiffness in my expanding jaw urges me to smoke.
“In and out in three minutes,” I whisper into the r
earview. “I roll in quick, drop her off without parking, make the U-shaped path to the exit. Takes ten minutes to get—”
“What the fuck you mumbling?”
“Planning,” I say. “Back to the hotel down Peavey to Garland Road, then left at Jupiter to the interstate. I can be smoking in seventeen minutes.”
“Tweaking-ass fiend,” she says.
“I need a hit. This fucking light needs to come on— change, you cocksucker, change! This is bullshit,” I snap, slamming my hand on the steering wheel.
She jumps. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get me out of this car. Boy, you need to run this light. Crazy-ass fool.”
“Chill,” I say. “We’re cool.”
“We’re anything but cool, you’re fucked up. You smell like shit. Going to get us busted with your bullshit craziness.”
A flash of headlight darts across the cab of the car. Something in our lane is coming up behind us quicker than my thoughts can process.
A car rushes by the open window within a few inches, a black blur. The vehicle launches off the rounded median. By the time I blink and turn to look, a cloud of dust and a jumble of debris have formed in the intersection. The vehicle flings itself end over end, bashes a light pole. A body ejects through the dust storm, slaps the asphalt. Rims with rubber shred off, fly twenty feet into the air. A bumper careens off the concrete, splits into pieces. Shards of fiberglass, glass from windows, windshields, headlights, and bits of metal shoot off in all directions. The body does not bounce. It’s a swirling violent explosion as if this is the excitement of a stock car race, where spectators pay to see the collisions more than the victories. The automobile comes to rest upside down on the median.
“Did you just see that? Jesus fucking Christ, it almost hit us!”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” she screams. “White boy, let’s go!”
DEF AND CONFUSED
2002
DON’T PLAY TO THE CAMERAS, PLAY TO THE CROWD.
The back hallway is silent. The high ceilings hold the hot air down. This space feels like a box overstuffed with Styrofoam peanuts. I find it hard to breathe. I’m nervous as hell.
Make connections with people.
The walls vibrate from the laughter of the audience, somewhere on the other side, as the comedian warming up the crowd rolls through his set. I’ve never been on television. This whole weekend is way over my head. Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry attracts some big-name celebrities: Kanye West, Mos Def, Dave Chappelle, Amiri Baraka . . . What am I doing here?
Shit. I cannot remember my poem. What is my poem?
“My Southern heritage . . .” I mumble, trying to recall the words.
The poets in the small greenroom speak in loud whispers. I hear their echoes through a cracked metal door. They seem so relaxed. Their calm conversations make me more nervous. In fifteen minutes, I will be on stage. Right now, I can only remember the first three words to this damn poem.
This taping is one of the most crammed in the shooting schedule, loaded with veteran talent. Beau Sia, one of my favorites, wears a hot-pink cashmere sweater. His performance style is in-your-face, political, and very funny. He is a Broadway cast member of Def Poetry. I figure that if I rock the crowd as hard as he will, then I should be all right. Easier said than done. We don’t have the same flare. I wear a black T-shirt with a logo from Blaze 1, a bong-making glassblower in Chico, California.
“My Southern heritage . . .” I repeat, staring at the ground. My mind constructs patterns in the porous, chipped concrete. Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics keep popping in my head: Big wheels keep on turning . . . Carry me home to see my kin . . . Singing songs about the Southland . . .
“I’m not from Alabama,” I tell myself. I light a smoke. Nerves have never been this much of a problem for me.
I try to believe the anxious stirring my stomach is telling me that I am ready, the nervous energy storing itself up for the imminent release. Once I hit the stage, the energy will take over and carry the breath of the poem out of my body. When I’m really connected, I can’t remember what I did on stage. The tingling sensation is the same as writing. I see the act of creation as the universe giving me medicine to heal myself, while the act of performing is the universe using me to take that medicine and heal someone else. I learned a long time ago that you only get to keep what you’re willing to give away, but you can’t give away what you don’t have.
I feel like I am going to explode. I walk in small circles, going nowhere, retracing my steps; every time I pass the large green trash can, I take a drag. I try to run the lines of my poem. Again, I can’t get past the first three words. And Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics fill my head. My body aches, clenched up with energy. My mind, cluttered with nonsense, is empty to the task at hand. Everything seems surreal and out of place. I turn away from the door.
“Sweet home Alabama, Lord I’m coming home to you . . .” I mumble through the filter of smoke in my mouth.
I follow the hallway fifty feet to a small three-step concrete staircase. It’s not until I reach the stairwell that I realize I’m singing the chorus to that damn song again. My Aunt Barbra turned me on to Lynyrd Skynyrd. She loved rock music and rock stars. She died at thirty, never got to live her dreams.
I remember the last time I saw her alive, the way her eyes trapped me. In a bed, unable to move her limbs, her eyes made the only physical connection she could. When I was six, some kids chased me home, trying to beat me up. She stomped out the backdoor as they caught up with me in the unfenced yard. All four foot eleven of her barked like a rabid beast. She loved me. She was the first person to ever sit and listen to one of my poems; encouraged me to enter a silly thing in the cultural art contest at school. She would be proud of me.
Tonight, I read for her. I want to sing the song of my family.
The memories of Aunt Barbra calm me; the clutter in my head dissipates. I want to be here for the right reasons. I know I can’t fail. This is who I am. Who I was always meant to be.
3:15 A.M.—00:00
BLOOD RUNS DOWN HIS FOREARM, pooling in his palm. The skin is peeled back, exposing what appear to be the bones of his hand. I crouch at the driver’s-side window, reaching out to touch the young man on the forearm. Shirtless and tattooed, his body type is identical to the driver lying on the concrete. I cannot tell if his short hair is naturally black, or if the darkness is blood. I smell gasoline as it trickles from the tank. The possibility of a spinal injury worries me more than the car bursting into flames. His head tilts to the side, pressed against the roof, his seat belt suspending him upside down in the middle of the crumpled cab. The wheeze of his breath releases a gurgle of liquid. I do not dare release him.
“I’m right here,” I utter. “You’re not alone. You’re going to be fine.”
He does not seem to be conscious, but his labored breathing reveals his struggle. I do not know what to do. I stand up look over the wreckage. At the far sidewalk, the crowd stands watching. No one does anything. The driver of the car is still in the street, my T-shirt under his head.
“Where are the fire trucks?” I yell.
No one responds.
I squat back down to the young man. His palm is missing most of its skin. Ridges of bones track through the blood. Neither of his upper limbs appears to be broken. I am not so sure about his neck and back. The roof of the car bends inward in rounded arcs. The cabin is half of its original size. He struggles to breathe. I keep noticing the same things, one to the next, none of them change. Each second grows more desperate. I am in over my head.
“I’m right here. Ambulance is on its way,” I say.
I feel helpless. I have nothing to offer in this situation. I look at my car. I can just drive away, leave others to their own problems. Fingernails is gone.
My dope is probably gone as well.
I do not really care at this point, any minute this street will be full of firefighters and cops. They probably won’t be able to save him.
“Your family loves yo
u,” I say. “They love you more than anything.”
I do not know if this is true. Those are the words I wish my mother had heard as she fell from life. My being carries a sense of calamity, which has been following me since her death. But right now, for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel paranoid. I don’t care about the dope. Pursuing a mission of overdose and death since the funeral gives in to more of the loneliness I have embraced my whole life. I only care about going home, leaving this neighborhood where my family once lived. Here I learned faith and how to fight for what I believed, even if sometimes those things were the wrong things. This is the neighborhood where my mother died.
“Your life is a great gift to them,” I continue. “They love you very much. You are a great gift to them.”
Each of his exhales bubbles. His breath is faint and shallow. I stroke his arm as if he were my child. I feel helpless, selfish for not knowing what to do.
Do not die on me.
“Your family is proud of you, they love you very much.”
I expect him to expire, to go that place on the other side of the thin veil we cannot see. I wonder what thoughts are in his head.
Can he hear me?
My hand reaches out and holds his arm, squeezes. He doesn’t move.
Where are the fire trucks?
The station is less than a quarter-mile away at S.S. Conner Elementary School. I feel like I have been sitting next to him for hours.
“Your life is a great gift to them, they are so thankful for you and your love. Don’t give up. Fight, brother.” I am crying and praying. I can feel Ernest and his lessons stirring in my guts. “Heavenly Father, help this man. Reach out to his heart. “
