A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  She didn’t understand. No one did, anymore. Not his father, or cousins, aunts and uncles. Not his teachers, who’d given up asking about plummeting grades and offering tutors and special instruction; his friends, who didn’t bother calling and inviting him to movies and parties, shunned him on the basketball court and faded into the early dusk of November afternoons rather than wait for him to walk home together. None of them understood the change that had come over him, and why he’d suddenly given up and taken refuge behind a wall built of bricks made from the word no. They all just shook their heads with disgust or disappointment, unable to jar him from the limbo of his lethargy.

  Three boys in dark, hooded sweat suits appeared suddenly and silently from around the corner and stopped in front of the candy store entrance. They looked him over, then glanced up and down the street. Todd stared ahead at the school building, avoiding any eye contact with them, and gripped his book bag firmly so he could use it as a weapon in case they came after him. But they only whispered and laughed among themselves, then went into the store. Todd relaxed his grip on the bag’s strap.

  A tall woman in a long, leather trench coat passed by holding a little girl by the hand. Her high heels clicked against the pavement, while the girl stumbled behind her and suddenly looked up to stare at Todd, as if blaming him for her missed step. The tall woman pulled the little girl along, dismissing Todd with a glance. They crossed the street and continued walking on the next block.

  Todd wondered where his mother and younger sister had found refuge.

  No one understood, he thought as he watched the woman and her daughter shrink in the distance. Ever since he’d said no to Mom when she told him to come along as she left with his baby sister, no one understood. Including himself.

  The expression of shock on his mother’s face had cut like a cold butcher’s knife through his heart. She’d pleaded with him, as best she could through a swollen mouth, and his little sister had cried. But he had refused to abandon his father, though he’d seen him beat her, watched him slap and punch her face. He had even grabbed his father’s arm that last time to try and stop him from hurting his mother. His father had turned and slapped him instead, then left the apartment. They all knew he would not be back that day.

  Mom packed a few belongings and escaped, abandoning job, apartment, and a son.

  Todd had not been able to walk away from his father. They were men, and men had to stay together. That was what Dad always said. The world was tough, a place where working folks slinked through streets controlled by crack heads and dealers, and lived in buildings dreading a knock on the door, or a scrape against their fire-escape window. They were men, and they had to stick together, because that is what men did to deny the temptations of the needle, the bottle, the little plastic vial of rock. That is what men did to survive in the predatory swamp of the ghetto, where escape routes were hidden in a maze of dead-end paths, and guarded by monsters and traps requiring secret skills and keys to overcome. Life was like a video game that was best played by father and son.

  Dad had returned two days later, stared at the ransacked closets and drawers, and asked Todd, “Why are you still here?”

  That was when Todd had allowed himself to notice what his mother had so often seen, and what had led to their frequent and violent arguments: the scent of perfume on his clothes, the smudges of lipstick and makeup on his shirt, the wrinkles and matted hair. Todd had wondered why his father bothered filling him with words and feelings and ideas for all those years, if those things didn’t mean anything when his mother was gone. Could his mother have been right when she told him his father was only trying to hurt her by drawing him away from her with his tough, man-to-man talk?

  Todd wiped his eyes. He wasn’t crying. He was only remembering the lies. He’d been saying no since then. No to the lies, to the game with its good grades and diplomas, to people who might lie to him again. But saying no didn’t seem to change anything.

  An argument erupted in the candy store. Glass crashed, wood scraped against wood, voices grunted and cursed. Todd moved away from the candy store. Suddenly, the three youths burst through the door. Todd melted into the darkness of a niche between the store and the building next door. The heel of his sneaker mashed a pile of dog shit flat. His hand grabbed a pipe, and he pulled himself closer to the walls, trying to squeeze into the small space between the pipe and the bricks where even a dog couldn’t go.

  A man came out of the store. His straight black hair stuck out in crazy angles from his skull. Blood trickled from a scar across his cheek. He held a pump action shotgun in his hands. He glanced up and down the block, focusing for a moment on each of the boys running away from him in a different direction.

  Car tires screeched. One of the boys had chosen the street, trying to cross it and head back towards the school, and had run in front of a car. The bumper nicked the boy’s leg, and he fell.

  The man from the candy store cried out, then yelled at the boy in a language Todd could not understand. He braced the shotgun stock against his thigh. He fired, pumped, fired again.

  The car’s tire exploded, and the front bumper shuddered. Tiny black dots blossomed along the red metal front end. After the second shot, steam blew through the black blossoms.

  “No,” Todd said. Tears stung his eyes. His body was shaking much worse than when Dad, his breath sickly sweet, grabbed and shook him, asking why his mother had abandoned them.

  The car doors flew open. Two men rolled out and away from the car on Todd’s side of the street, while two others got out on the other side and ducked behind the car. They carried guns. Big pistols, little machine guns.

  Todd wanted to close his eyes. He thought he did. But he saw everything.

  The fallen boy scrambled to his feet, cast a wild look at the car and the men who’d jumped out. They ignored him. The candy store owner pumped the shotgun again. A shell casing sailed out of the weapon. It flew in a graceful arc through the air.

  The candy store owner fired again. The boy was pushed forward by the blast’s impact. Blood sprayed from his back like a rocket’s spume. He tripped, fell, didn’t get up, even as the men from the car fired back. Flat little detonations and rattling barks rose up from around the car, along with a thin haze of smoke.

  Blood gushed from the fallen boy. The dark sweat shirt was in tatters.

  The shell casing clattered on the cement sidewalk.

  The candy store owner leered at the fallen boy, then squawked as his body shuddered and rocked from the impact of bullets. His mouth formed an “o.” He pumped the shotgun once more and fired as he fell backwards, passing into the spot where Todd had been standing moments before. The glass pane of his storefront cracked along the line of craters that appeared across it, then shattered and collapsed to the ground in a thousand shards.

  The shell casing rolled along the sidewalk towards Todd’s hiding place.

  The storeowner slouched to the ground, the shotgun falling into his lap. His eyes stared at the car, and did not blink. He was bleeding from the holes in his body.

  The two men lying on the street’s stood up. They jammed their small machine guns underneath their jackets, ran away. One of the men from behind the car reached into the back seat, pulled out a black gym bag, and raced after the two others. The fourth never emerged from behind the car.

  There was a moment of near silence, interrupted by the metal shell casing rolling to a stop near Todd’s refuge.

  Then the school’s large windows squeaked as students opened them and pushed themselves half way out in an effort to take in the scene. Teachers cursed and hauled students back into the class, but the gaps in the audience were quickly replaced. A security guard poked his head through the steel door at one of the school’s side entrances, but he didn’t venture out into the street.

  Boys and girls cheered from the school windows. A woman wailed from inside the candy store, staggered through the doorway, and fell to her knees beside the man with the shotgun in his l
ap. She draped herself over him, wept into his hair.

  A siren echoed her keening, slowly drowning out her voice as it approached, was joined by other sirens.

  Men and women cautiously separated themselves from buildings, from the shadows between cars and trucks parked along the street, from behind lines of trashcans.

  Todd gagged from the smell of feces, hunched over, and vomited. He staggered out of the shadows and fell to his knees as bile dribbled along his jaw, and splashed against his knee. He gasped for air, and every time he exhaled, said the word “no.”

  Steps sounded to his left. He glanced in time to see a leg kick towards him. Someone knocked him aside, ran over him. When he looked up, he saw several emaciated figures ransacking the car, pulling out items from the glove compartment, seats, and trunk. Todd pushed himself off the ground and staggered towards the car. He fell against the cool metal of a door, slid around the engine, and was pushed away by one of the figures trying to work the battery free. He landed on something solid but soft sprawled on the ground.

  Rough, tweed-like material scratched his face. A heavy musk scent mingled with the stench of vomit. His hands grasped big arms, his elbows dug into a big chest. Todd looked across the body of the fourth man from the car.

  Slowly, Todd lifted himself to his knees. A few books thumped as they landed on the ground, thrown by the students who continued to cheer and scream curses at the street.

  A police car, lights flickering madly, approached from the next block, in the opposite direction in which the car had been heading. On the sidewalk, half way down the block, the woman he’d seen earlier was running with the girl in her arms.

  Todd focused the fallen man. Blood pockmarked his body, splattered his thick beard and the dark skin of his face and hands. His chest was still. A gun lay not too far away from his outstretched hand.

  The beard reminded Todd of his father. He crawled towards the man’s head. He ran his hand through the man’s slick, greasy hair, and along his rough beard. There was no breath on his fingers as he placed them over the man’s mouth and nose.

  “No,” he whispered. The body twitched. Todd drew his hand away. “No,” he said, louder. The man’s arms jerked up and down. “No,” Todd shouted, as balls shriveled into icy raisin pits between his legs.

  The man opened his eyes.

  Spat out blood, coughed, rose and supported himself on one elbow. He wiped his face and looked with wide eyes at the blood on his palm. Sirens caught his attention.

  He grabbed the gun and glanced at the car, then fired a shot into the air that scattered the scavengers and drove the students back into their classrooms and everyone else back into their hiding places.

  Except for Todd, who had no place to hide.

  The man looked at Todd. With the back of his pistol hand, he stroked Todd’s forehead. His cold knuckles scratched Todd’s skin.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice sounding like bricks falling down the side of a demolished building’s funeral mound. Both his eyes bloodshot.

  The man got to his feet, hastily closed the hood and trunk to his car, got in, started the car up. He backed away from the scene, crashing into some parked cars, then turned off on a side street when he’d reached the far corner. Moments later, a police cruiser, lights flashing, siren wailing, raced after him.

  Todd walked away from the car and the school, turning the corner in the direction the youths had come from. He glanced at the next block, saw the police cruiser pass the woman carrying her child, and for a moment Todd hesitated. But then the police cruiser, pulled into the intersection, and two officers spilled out, guns held up with fingers on the trigger. Another cruiser raced by Todd and stopped in front of the candy store.

  Todd hugged the sides of the buildings, lost himself in the slowly emerging crowd gathering to catch a glimpse of the battlefield.

  He didn’t go back to school in the afternoon. He did not go back home at night. In the battle, he’d lost his book bag. The police would trace him through his school identification, and he didn’t want to be found until he knew he’d been implicated in the shooting, and if anyone had seen him touch the man who should have been dead.

  Besides, there was nothing to go home to. His father, if he was around, would not protect him.

  A slice of pizza for dinner, and a stolen candy bar for dessert. He rode the train out of his neighborhood, changed to lines running through Manhattan and the Bronx. When night came, the Fall chill made the idea of sleeping in a park seem a stupid one. Todd found a station platform on the upper East side in which several homeless men were camped and warily sat down beside them. One of the men tore a section of cardboard from the folded box he sat on and gave it to Todd, advising him to use it as a mat.

  Todd lay down and, between dull roars which shook the ground and filled his lungs with the warm breath of the subways, slept.

  Dreams touched him, carried him to distant lands. He was with his father, walking on a flat plain beneath a cloudy sky. Suddenly, his father fell into a crack in the earth, and when Todd looked down into the hole, his father lay still. A man in a hooded cloak stood over him, started turning his head, looking up. Todd backed away from the edge and ran away.

  A train squeaked to a halt in the station. A pair of booted, high-heeled feet sliced across his vision before he slipped back into sleep. He dreamed then of the woman and her daughter he had seen before and after the gun fight. She became his mother, and the daughter his sister. He chased them across a landscape cluttered with blackened tree trunks, but they managed to stay ahead of him, disappearing behind a cluster of trunks only to reappear further away, behind him or to the side. Finally, he lost sight of them, and instead saw the cloaked figure wandering through the dead forest, in the distance, as if it was looking for them also. Before the figure could turn to look in his direction, Todd fled.

  He woke up, resolved not to fall asleep again. His cheeks were moist, and something was twisting in his chest, like a cloth being wrung dry. He listened to the mumbling of one of the street people, then found himself in his old neighborhood again. He thought perhaps he had taken the train back and fallen asleep on the way. He went by the local basketball courts, and found them almost abandoned. A tall, thin youth with a St. John’s sweat shirt stopped shooting to stare at Todd, and Todd walked on to the court. They played a game, and Todd surprised himself by jamming the ball through the hoop on the final point. He walked past his school and found a sheet of paper on the pavement with his name scrawled across the top. He picked it up, flipped it over, and found the word “pass” neatly typed in the middle of the paper. A sudden gust of wind snatched the paper from his hand. Then he was at the corner candy store, and there were bodies and guns laying all over the street. He went to the burnt-out skeleton of a car in the middle of the street and looked in. The bearded man lay across the charred back seat. His eyes were closed, and he was not breathing, nor were there any bullet holes and blood marks on his body. He was simply dead.

  “You know, you can’t go around saying no to things,” a husky voice said behind him.

  Todd whirled around, arms raised to block a blow.

  “Come on, now, kid. I know things are tough between your folks, and you’re left out in the middle of nowhere,” said the figure draped in a cloak and cowl.

  Todd edged along the car wreck, away from the figure. “Sort of your own fault, that,” the figure continued.

  The cowled head followed Todd as went around the front end and placed the car between himself and the stranger. Despite the daylight, the figure’s face remained hidden, as if behind a veil of night.

  “You decided; you’re the one who said no to your mom. You should have seen your old man was using you, trying to get you away from your mom just to hurt her. He didn’t really want you any more than he wanted your mother or your sister. Some fellas are just like that; don’t know what the hell they want, never happy with what they got. But that’s a mess you made, and you got to live with it. Or die wi
th it, if you want.” The figure laughed, and its shoulders heaved slightly.

  “But you shouldn’t say no to the mess. It just doesn’t work. Not in the long run. Of course, you can do what you want with your life. I’m just giving you a bit of advice, something your father should be telling you, and not the likes of me.” The figure took a step towards Todd.

  “And you can’t say no to me. Not to me. Especially not after I got a hold of somebody. That’s it, once I got him.

  “Now look, I can’t keep talking to you like this. Not many folks get a chance to see me, face to face so to speak, and then walk away. It takes a lot of energy. A lot of things don’t get done. They teach you about conservation of energy yet in that school of yours? Well, just don’t say no to me anymore, okay? I mean, you can say no like you have that habit of doing when things go bad, or when you see something you don’t like, but you can’t really mean it like you did here. See, those things just don’t happen, or maybe just once in a great long while they do, but then it stops right away. Like, you can have one wish, but once you got it, that’s it, no more. You understand? You can go ahead and say no, but you can’t really mean it. You got to say yes, inside.

  “Otherwise, well, things’ll just get out of hand, fast, and you won’t know what you should be saying no or yes to, and you won’t know what’s real and what’s not. You might get locked up, too, or hurt, or killed before your time. Okay?”

  A terrible wind blew between them, and Todd closed his eyes against the spray of dust. When he opened them up, he was back on the subway platform on his cardboard pad, a train rushing into the station filling his vision.

  He got up, and on the train. He rode back home. Bits and pieces of the dream flashed in his mind on the journey, like the train stations that appeared in bursts of light between the long hauls in dark tunnels on the express run, and Todd struggled to bring the fragments together into a coherent picture. But the meaning of images were like the names of the stations he passed as the train raced and rocked, and he could no more find the dream’s meaning than catch the names and numbers as they blinked at him from between station support pillars. Yet the dream crowded his thoughts like the train’s rumbling filled his body, and he sat with his hands in his lap and his head bowed, trembling in the grip of both forces.