by David Wright
“Full French citizenship?” Moose said, half under his breath.
“My angry son isn’t all wrong,” said Monsieur Oussekine. “When you look at the life we have here…”
He rose and went to the long window. “This place.” He pointed to the surrounding high-rises. “They name the buildings after artists: Balzac, Ravel, Debussy—our own building, Renoir. But even doctors won’t come for emergency calls. Tell me, how can you raise a boy correctly in a place like this?”
He wasn’t calling us out, but it was like he was saying, I know why you came around, but step off. Step up out my business.
But still Matt jumped in. “That’s why the Diables Rouges are so important,” he said.
Monsieur Oussekine waved him off, then locked his hands behind his back. “School is important, not things that distract from school.”
“But we need other outlets,” Matt insisted. “Kids like Moussa, they need an outlet. Especially in a place like this. That’s what the Diables Rouges provide.”
But me, I was thinking about Villeneuve and about what Monsieur Oussekine had said. “My father,” I said, “he grew up in Chicago.”
I stopped myself, trying to figure out how to explain it so they’d understand.
“The West Side, where my father grew up, it’s very much like this. Not so different. There were…” I couldn’t find the word for gangs, so I just said it in English: “Il y avait des gangs.”
Matt translated: “Des bandes rivales.”
“Il y avait des bandes rivales,” I said, then continued, “My father used to tell me that there were gangs and drugs all over, and lots of trouble with the police. Lots of racism, you see.”
Monsieur Oussekine stared at me. Moose too.
“He and my mother had me, but they weren’t married. You see? They were very young, like Moussa and Mathieu and me, and they had a child, and the one thing that saved him.”
I paused. Saved him?
“The thing he told me saved him and his new family was the military. Kind of like your father.”
“It was his ticket,” Monsieur Oussekine said.
“Yes. But he wanted better for me than he had.”
I couldn’t find the word for stationed, so I said it otherwise. “Because of the air force, we resided in San Antonio…”
“In Texas,” Matt said.
“We resided in San Antonio, and there were gangs and drugs too, a lot of trouble, and my father was often gone, on duty overseas, and my mother now had my little brother and sister too. My father insisted I play football.”
“As an outlet,” Matt said, but I said, “No, not as an outlet. For the structure. For the discipline. Because he thought it would help me make better decisions.”
Matt jumped in again, and I was glad he did that time, because Monsieur Oussekine was steady staring at me and I didn’t know what more to say.
“Maybe sometimes Moussa has made bad decisions. Who doesn’t? But the leadership he’s learned from the Diables Rouges, the loyalty…He looked out for Sidi, even though he knew it could get him into trouble. Like you yourself look out for Moussa.”
Monsieur Oussekine was still staring at me. Not angry like he might have been for me calling him out about his business, but firm all the same. “Your father sounds like a wise man,” he said. “He must be very proud.”
Proud?
“My father.” I pointed to the medal. “He was killed last fall in Iraq.” The words just came out. “My father, like your father.”
I looked at Monsieur Oussekine, and it was like he heard me saying something I wasn’t saying out loud. The thing I didn’t know how to say.
“You’re afraid he was a sort of Harki?” Monsieur Oussekine said. “That he was used by the military and thrown away?”
I didn’t know what to say.
He came to the couch, sat beside me. “Your father, my father,” he said, “they weren’t lackeys. This medal isn’t something to be ashamed of, something to hide away in a shoe box in the closet.”
He removed it from its case, put it in my hand.
“Touch it.”
I ran my fingertip along the cold grain of the metal.
He said, “This coin and ribbon, it’s my father, in all his strength. It’s the physical embodiment of him, of a man who had the courage to live his convictions.”
I returned it, looking away. Not embarrassed. Just…I don’t know.
“And Moussa too,” I heard Matt say. “He has the courage to live his convictions too.”
Matt leaned forward in his seat, and Monsieur Oussekine was listening to him, but his arm was draped over my shoulders. And me, I just looked away.
Matt said, “Moussa is why I’m here, Monsieur Oussekine, in Villeneuve. He had the vision to see what an experience this would be for me. And the courage to look out for me, for Freeman and me, in this place. I, we, his friends, we come to you today because we want to do for Moussa the same that he always does for us.”
Monsieur Oussekine didn’t respond. He just sat there, his arm draped over my shoulders.
» » » »
A little bit later, we were in the hallway outside their apartment, me and Matt and Moose. Moose was excited, hugging us and all.
“Putain, les mecs. Merci,” he said. “Merci.”
Matt was all smiles too. “I didn’t think we could pull it off.”
“The things you said!” Moose said to me, but then he stopped, put a hand on my shoulder. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know why I had told them just then. But it felt public finally, Pops’s death. Like everybody knew.
It didn’t feel wrong though. Doesn’t still. Pops’s death is part of who I am. I will carry his memory like a medal and ribbon, a ticket to being my best me.
“Your father,” I told Moose. “He’s great.”
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE UNDER-20s
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
APRIL 15
MATT
And now Free and I are stranded outside the locked construction site at Villeneuve, some of our teammates arrested and hauled off in a van, Moose and Sidi and Mobylette run off into the night, police cars speeding after them. It’s the day after Free and I went to Moose’s home, and what we’d fixed the night before with Monsieur Oussekine is all of a sudden completely undone. From that high to this low, just like that.
Four days before the championship!
And where are Moose and Sidi and Mobylette now? And how do Free and I fix it?
My throwing shoulder throbs—sharp and piercing, like something is ripped—from when the police officer yanked me to my feet by my handcuffed hands. Four days before the league championship!
Freeman is saying, “Of course, we won’t tell Monsieur Oussekine what just happened…” But he says it half uncertainly, like he’s thinking aloud, working his way through something. “Of course not.” He turns toward me. “But there’ll be Yaz at the cité. Or some other grands frères. We can tell them. They’ll know what to do.”
We start toward Moose’s building. It’s about a ten-minute walk. The road is eerie between lampposts, full of shadows and creepy quiet. And Free and I are quiet too. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but all I can see in my head is Monsieur Oussekine’s face, enraged. Or disappointed. Or first one and then the other. I told him about how great the Diables Rouges were for Moose and what Moose brought to the Diables, and he confided in us about his own father and about his fears for his son, and now…here we are.
Along one stretch of street, all the lights suddenly cut out. The entire neighborhood, in fact. All the lights in all the buildings all around. Pitch-black.
“Dang!” Free says.
Both Free and I freeze. Dogs bark. I can hear a kid crying in the distance. In windows, candles appear, flashlights; here and there, faces look out into the night.
Then, just as suddenly, the streetlights, all the lights, stutter back on.
“Dang,” he repeat
s. “This has been one hell of a day.”
» » » »
At Moose’s building we come upon a group of grands-frères. No Yaz, but one is Mobylette’s actual older brother, Khalil; I’ve seen him at games. They’re standing outside, all of them looking around, talking about the blackout.
“Bonsoir,” I say. “We’re friends of Amadou and Moussa, Moussa Oussekine.”
One recognizes us. “Les ’Ricains des Diables Rouges,” he says.
The others place us too. They greet us, shake our hands.
“What’s up?” another asks.
“Amadou and Moussa, and Sidi Bourghiba—we were with them. Over by the construction site,” I explain. “There were a lot of us.”
They listen intently, but I don’t know what I’m trying to say.
“The cops came, and they took a bunch of us away,” I say.
The grands frères all look grave.
Mobylette’s brother says, “And Madou?”
“Amadou and Moussa and Sidi,” I say, “they ran off.”
“Oh, shit,” Free says. He sees him first.
We all look in the direction he’s looking.
It’s Sidi, staggering toward us across the parking lot. His shirt, his pants, everything, all shredded. His skin, great big patches—gone. And it’s, like, smoke coming off him.
The grands frères, Free and me, we’re running to him.
Sidi falls to his knees, his face all blistered and wet, his eyes dark holes against the pink rawness.
Everybody is talking at once.
“What happened?”
“What happened, mon frère?”
And the smell.
“Moby…” Sidi is mumbling. “Moussa…”
» » » »
One of the grands frères stays with Sidi, telephoning for help, while the rest of us run through the dark streets over to the electrical substation, Freeman and me following Khalil and the others, and when we get there, four police cars surround the barbed-wire-topped walls, their blue lights pulsing in the night. The cops cluster in small groups near the compound entrance, a couple of the ones from earlier and others in uniform. There’s an EDF van too—Éléctricité de France, the French utilities company—but the technicians just stand there, holding their tools. The police, the EDF guys—nobody is even trying to go in.
The night air bites, but so much heat is coming from the humming substation that I break into a sweat. Skulls and crossbones cover the compound walls. Warning signs. Danger–High Voltage. Electricity—it’s stronger than you. One painted to look like a tagger wrote it: STOP! Don’t risk your life.
I don’t know what to do. I kind of want to yell out to Moose and Mobylette, to tell them to come out now, that it’s okay.
The humming of the electric compound is a loud, metallic whirring. And the crowd keeps growing, people running over from the high-rises. There are thirty or forty of us now. Mostly men, some quite old. I recognize two of the pétanque players from the cement courtyard outside the Cinq Mille. I hear “Mais allez-y! Entrez!” from over by the cemetery, and see Karim standing on its squat rock wall, yelling for someone to go in. Other hoodie boys are gathering around him.
A static voice from a police loudspeaker responds, so sudden that I jump: “Par ordre du préfet de la Seine-Saint-Denis: Dispersez-vous.”—By order of the chief constable of La Seine-Saint-Denis, you must disperse.
I lean toward Free but still have to shout to be heard over the whirring. “They say we have to disperse, but I mean, should we? At what point does this huge press of people start hindering the police from going in?”
Free looks back at me, his eyes saying, I don’t know.
Yaz has joined us and holds Khalil back from trying to jump the wall. The grand frère who had stayed behind with Sidi pushes his way through to us. He shouts to Yaz over the racket of the rest. “The ambulance arrived—they’ve taken le jeune to Hôpital Saint-Antoine.”
“And?” Yaz shouts back.
The grand drops his eyes.
Sidi looked so bad. And the smell! Like a summertime barbecue, the grease that drips from the ribs onto the coals.
“Moussa!” I scream, and Free joins in. “Moose, Mobylette! Come out, it’s okay!”
Now we all have to hold Khalil from rushing the wall.
From the rest of the crowd: “Allez-y!” and “Entrez!”
“Par ordre du préfet,” the loudspeaker booms, “dispersez-vous.”
Another police car pulls up, lights whirling, followed by a CRS van. They inch forward, pumping their sirens, but no one moves out of the way. We only clear a passage after two ambulances arrive, and then we open up an avenue.
An old man next to us, in a Muslim prayer cap, is close enough to the police to hear what they say. He says to another old man, “Did you hear that? The cop said that if the boys went in there, he wouldn’t pay much for what’s left of their hides.”
The other old man says, “But why if? The cops know good and well the boys are in there. The cops are the ones who chased them in!”
The CRS people start piling out of their van. They wear helmets and carry big plastic shields, and it riles up the crowd even more. It riles me up too, because we’re here checking on our friends, and the cops are just standing there, doing nothing but threatening us.
“Moose! Mobylette!” I scream.
“Par ordre du préfet: dispersez-vous.”
Some CRS guys spread out among the EDF guys; others take positions over by the cemetery, where Karim and the hoodie boys are. Karim doesn’t back down. He screams and points his finger in the face of a helmeted CRS officer.
My phone starts pinging with texts from teammates. Free’s too.
Where are you guys?
What’s going on?
One from Adar: Cops just let J-M and me go. 4 or 5 cop cars sped off. Are Moose/Sidi/Moby with you?
I see Free turn off his phone, and I do too. What would I say?
That’s when I spot him. Lieutenant Petit, the cop who stopped us outside the RER station after practice a few months ago, whose brother lives in Montreal. He’s in civilian clothes, but even though he’s out of uniform, I recognize his crab-apple cheeks and red hair. He’s speaking with the old man in the prayer cap.
“S’il vous plaît, Monsieur,” he says, “you have to understand, we’re doing all we can right now.” His voice is gentle, pleading almost.
“But the EDF,” the old man says, “they just stand there!”
“They can’t breach the facility yet,” the lieutenant says.
“But why?” I jump in, like I have some clout because he and I have bantered before and I’ve got the upper hand, as if my being clever and white and from Montreal will spur him to action. “What are you waiting for?”
I can see he recognizes me too. He remains calm.
“Because it’s totally unsafe,” he explains. “There are twenty-thousand-volt transformers inside those walls. We can’t do anything until the central service shuts the station down.” He looks directly at me. “None of you is doing those boys any good crowding around, threatening the technicians.”
And as if on cue, the loud whirring slows, like jet engines turning off. The transformers power down.
The crowd stills too. Shifts. The loudspeaker continues—“Dispersez-vous”—but the rest is silence. The dark night enrobes the high-rises, their windows lit up. Paris proper, someplace in the unseeable distance.
The old man next to us voices what we’re all feeling.
“There,” he says to Lieutenant Petit. “Now go.”
FREE
The technicians go in first. They wear tool belts and carry these big wrench-like things, and they have walkie-talkies. Summer-afternoon heat throbs off the compound, and one of the technicians takes off his jacket. The cop we know from before, Petit, goes to his car, gets behind the wheel and shuts the door. He just sits there.
It’s not long before he raises his walkie-talkie to his mouth and speaks in
to it. We all see him do this, and the crowd shifts again. He gets out of the car and goes to the first ambulance, but not pressed, not in a hurry, more like he’s lost in thought. The EMTs rush two gurneys into the compound entrance, and I’m thinking the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought. Seeing them gurneys, I’m thinking, What’s going to happen with the game? Only four days left. If Moose is hurt, how will we replace him?
There’s a collective gasp, then one huge sigh when a few minutes later the EMTs roll the first gurney out. On it, a body bag, zipped closed, bottom to top.
Right behind is the second gurney: another body bag.
The EMTs wheel the gurneys to the ambulances and slide them into the back. They close the ambulance doors—a loud clack!—and get in front.
The whole night pulses with light, like a disco ball on a dance floor, but all the dancers are still. Matt’s face throbs blue then dark, blue then dark. Yaz, Khalil, stone still. I look back at Karim, the hoodie boys. Even the loudspeaker is silent.
The old man next to us moves first. He removes his prayer cap, his head collapsing forward onto his chest, his wrinkled hands wrenching and twisting the knit cloth.
A grand frère holds Khalil. Yaz says, as if to no one, “I have to tell Monsieur Oussekine.” He turns, his face dazed, arms limp at his sides, working his way through all these people. I follow Matt, who follows him.
None of us says anything on the walk to the Cinq Mille. Behind us, we can still hear the police loudspeaker. “Dispersez-vous.” I look back, and even more cops have arrived, all blue-lit, but none of the crowd is leaving. No one is doing anything. Most folks just stand there, looking at the substation or at the cops or at the CRS guys behind their plastic shields.
In the foyer of Moose’s building, Yaz heads toward the stairs. Me and Matt follow. One flight. Two. Three. The dank smell of piss. French hip-hop filtering from somewhere down a hallway. When we get to their floor, the apartment door is open, Monsieur Oussekine in his djellaba already standing there. There’s puzzlement in his expression.
We all stop.
Over his shoulder, I can see the little girl who greeted us and the other little ones, crowding the window, trying to make out whatever can be made out below.
