by Wes Moore
“And what are you gonna do then?” asked Money. “Assuming you can find that out, which you can’t.”
“You’ll see.” In fact, he had no idea. He didn’t know how to bring down a gang or seek justice for his friend. He was a boy trying to be a man, and he felt as though he was failing.
“So it’s like that, huh?” Money unlocked the doors.
“Guess so.”
“Then maybe you should start watching your back. Be a shame if something happened to you before you get your shot at wearing the orange.”
Elijah gritted his teeth, but one of the thugs tapped on the window, meeting his eyes with a steady glare. He shouldered his pack and got out. The long walk home took him back past the abandoned grocery carts, overflowing garbage cans, and broken forty-ounce bottles. Torn-up lottery and scratch tickets littered the sidewalks like a kind of confetti of lost hope, and the world’s oldest twenty-eight-year-old—the one from Money’s school days—peeled back his upper lip in a crooked, rotten-toothed grin.
ELIJAH COULD NOT believe his stupidity. The thought of having a gun in his house made him sick; he contemplated giving it back to Harold but in the end settled on a Dumpster behind a Dollar Store. After wiping the gun down with the checkered cloth—something he probably didn’t need to do but had seen a hundred times on TV—he lifted the black plastic lid and let the gun disappear. Then he went home and locked himself in his bedroom. He turned off his phone and willed himself not to think about Dylan anymore.
Let the past be the past.
Which meant what? Moving to Buffalo and starting up in a new school? Maybe that was better than staying. He wouldn’t have to deal with Michael anymore, or hear people talking about Blood Street Nation. Nor would he have to face Coach Walters and explain what had happened to Dylan.
In his closet he took out the orange Nike box and put it into his backpack, along with a lighter and a six-ounce bottle of his mother’s nail polish remover. He walked to the Battlegrounds parking lot, where he found an almost empty steel garbage can. The acetone in the remover smelled sweet. It splashed, clear, over the shoes but went up in a small yellow-orange fireball that continued to burn inside the can long after Elijah walked away.
—
AFTER ELIJAH SPENT two more days in his bedroom, his mother knocked on his door and said, “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who?” he called out.
“Get up out of that bed,” she said, “and go find out. You’ve been in this room long enough.”
Elijah dragged himself down the hall, muttering. He made a short mental list of people he did not want to see, in order of descending unpleasantness: Money. Bull. Michael. Banks. Kerri. He decided that the last one wasn’t fair; Kerri wasn’t at all unpleasant. On the contrary, he’d thought about her a lot. He just didn’t want to talk to her right now. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Banks stood on the opposite side of the door, looking as grave as ever. “Elijah,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“What do you want?” said Elijah.
“I didn’t know about your friend,” said Banks. “I’m sorry. I read about it in the news, but I didn’t put it together. Honestly, I’m sorry.”
Elijah nodded but said nothing.
“Still, I shouldn’t have talked that way to you. I’m terrible with people.”
It was as much of a conciliatory gesture as Elijah thought he’d ever get from someone like Banks. He decided to take it. “It’s okay.”
“Do the police have any leads?” asked Banks.
“No.” Elijah joined Banks on the stoop and sat on the top step. “I called them yesterday. They said they’ve been investigating, but none of the neighbors heard or saw anything. Except the gunshot.”
“Typical.” Banks sat next to him but looked straight ahead while he talked. “People are cowardly. They don’t ever want to get involved.”
“I guess,” said Elijah.
“I lost friends,” said Banks. “In the army. Everyone says things to try to help you with it, so you can accept it. But sometimes it’s just plain unacceptable. Especially when it’s a young person.”
Elijah glanced over at him. “How did your friends die?”
“Different ways, but all violent. Shot. Blown up. Suicide.” Banks picked distractedly at a callus on the palm of his hand. “Casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan. Tora Bora.”
“What did you do?” asked Elijah. “Afterward, I mean. How did you deal with it?”
“Same thing I do now. I drank beer, smoked cigars, and had lots of bad dreams.” Banks picked harder at his hand, and then closed it in a fist. Slowly he peeled back thumb and fingers until it was a palm again. “How are you dealing with it?”
“I’ve been sleeping a lot. And thinking. Being angry, too. My mom wants to move us to Buffalo because she thinks it’ll be safer. Some suburb called Williamsville.”
“I wish I knew what to tell you to make it better,” said Banks. “But I don’t. I’m forty-five years old, and I haven’t figured it out. Maybe moving makes sense. I don’t know.”
“You still have bad dreams?” asked Elijah.
“Every night,” said Banks.
“What did you really do in the army?”
Banks took a deep breath. “I was in Special Forces. Green Berets.”
Elijah nodded. After several moments of silence, he said, “It’s fine that you don’t want to talk about it. I won’t ask. By the way, you need a new blade on your table saw.”
“What?” asked Banks.
“The project you’re working on in your basement. The teeth on your blade are dull and covered in pitch; it’s why your wood keeps binding. You need to buy a new blade, and also lower it so the teeth are a touch higher than the board.”
Banks looked at him, puzzled. “How do you know all that?”
“I told you, I’ve taken three years of tech classes. Checking the blade is the first thing we ever learned. It’s like making sure there’s gas in a lawn mower.”
“I’ll give that a try.” He reached into his pocket and then set the Special Forces medallion on the steps between them. “I haven’t forgotten our deal, you know. You’re more than halfway through the list.”
Elijah smiled and pushed the coin back toward Banks. “Start again tomorrow?”
“Seven-thirty sharp.” Banks snatched up the coin and stood to leave. “Don’t be late.”
ELIJAH ARRIVED AT Prospect Street half an hour early and was rewarded with French toast, bacon, and coffee with Banks on the front porch.
“It’s good,” said Elijah.
“I lied about not being able to cook,” said Banks. “I can cook French toast and grilled cheese sandwiches.”
The fog was burning off with the early sun. Elijah wanted to get started on the driveway, but Banks was unusually talkative.
“The last time I was at church, your mother said something about a scholarship.”
“Maybe,” said Elijah.
“That’s good, no? I bet lots of kids your age dream of going to Syracuse to play ball.”
Elijah studied the sludge on the bottom of his ceramic mug, which reminded him of his mother and her Turkish coffee. He knew how she felt about a college scholarship to SU. It was a gift on par with winning the lottery. So how could he even consider turning it down? “I like the college part but not the basketball. I don’t feel like playing anymore. I know that must sound crazy.”
“Maybe. It looks like you were made for it,” said Banks. “But it’s no crime to not want to play ball.”
“I think my mom would disagree,” said Elijah. “In her world, passing on a scholarship is a major crime.”
“She’s a religious woman, right?” said Banks. “Just tell her, and then ask for her forgiveness. Isn’t that how it works? By the way, you’re almost done with the list. All that’s left after the driveway is to do the gutters and then power wash the house and the garage. And you might as well mow the front lawn one last time.”
“Forty-five?” said Banks. “I’m thinking you’re ready for a forty-five and a twenty-five. If you’re feeling strong, that is.”
—
IT TOOK ELIJAH the rest of the day to finish the driveway. He stopped for lunch, and again when Kerri pulled up in her red Fiat. As usual, she carried a book—The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer—and sat down cross-legged, close to where Elijah worked.
“You never called me,” she said. “I didn’t get to say how sorry I am about your friend.”
“Thanks.” He dropped to his knees and snugged the last paver into place. “I should have called, but I haven’t felt like doing much.”
“Except for working on the driveway,” said Kerri.
“Right.” He stood up and shook the sand off his T-shirt and jeans. “It’s good for me to keep busy like this.”
“I’ve been keeping busy, too. Working on that plan I never got to tell you about.”
Elijah studied her, trying to figure out where this was going, and if he could allow himself to enjoy talking with a pretty girl. A part of him felt like it was too soon, that he should still be feeling sad and guilty. But another part of him imagined what Dylan would have said: Dude, she’s pretty. Talk to her!
“I’ve got to put these tools away,” said Elijah. “But I’m listening.”
“How about we go somewhere?” Kerri closed her book and jumped to her feet. “I found a new coffee shop on Fremont. It’s loud and anonymous, so no one will pay attention to what we’re saying.”
“I don’t know.” Elijah smiled his first smile since his friend’s death. “That sounds a lot like a date, and you specifically told me you were unavailable. I think it’s important for a person to stand by her word.”
Kerri punched him in the arm. “It’s definitely not a date. More like a strategy session.”
Again, he imagined hearing Dylan’s voice, encouraging him.
“Okay.” Elijah started picking up tools and headed for the garage. “All my life I’ve been dreaming that a pretty girl would ask me out for a strategy session. But I’ve got some things to take care of first. Can it wait a couple of days?”
“Deal,” said Kerri.
HE ARRIVED AT the bus stop at five. From a distance, he watched his former best friend sitting inside the kiosk, smoking a cigarette. Michael swiped his phone on, checked it, and then put it back into the pocket of his oversized, expensive jeans. He pinched the cigarette between the C of his thumb and first finger, dragging, and then breathing out. He looked experienced, even though Elijah had never seen him smoke.
“Hey,” said Elijah, banging on the grimy plastic sheeting that made up one of the walls of the bus stop.
“Oh shit!” Michael turned around, eyes narrowed with alarm. “Damn, Elijah, don’t do that, man.”
“Who’d you think it was?”
“I don’t know, man. That’s why I freaked. I’m jumpy these days.”
“It’s just me. Since when do you smoke?”
“Since my life got filled with so much stress. Since I started feeling like I’m thirty-five years old.”
“Maybe you can get into bars now, or buy beer.”
“Yeah.” Michael forced a laugh, but they were going through the motions, going about the business of friendship mechanically, without feeling. The bus rolled to a stop with a rush of air brakes; the boys stepped in and found an empty row of seats in the far back.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” said Elijah.
“Me neither,” said Michael. “I ain’t visited a grave before.”
Elijah held a bouquet of plastic flowers and a small metal Mustang convertible. “I got this to leave on his headstone, but now it seems kind of stupid. You know he was always talking about getting a real one someday.”
“It’s cool.” Michael held up a grocery bag. “I got him a Playboy and some X-Men comics.”
“Keep the Playboy; it’ll freak his mom out. Which X-Men?”
“The one with that hot girl he likes.”
“The Scarlet Witch?”
“Yeah, her. She is pretty fine for a cartoon, but I wish I would have told him that when I had the chance.”
“It’s a good gift. He’d like that.”
They got off at the Kensington stop and walked silently to the cemetery. The outer wall was cement topped, with wrought iron spires that formed an arch over the access road. They stood beneath it listening to the engine noise from the street, not sure what to do next.
“Are we supposed to go in?” asked Michael.
“I guess so. Dylan’s mom gave me a map.” He unfolded it and pointed at the x that marked their friend’s site. They crunched along the gravel and down a small footpath. Elijah paused to read the first gravestones, which were made of marble and were very old.
“Look at this one—died in 1863,” he said. “It says he fought in the Civil War.”
“Yeah, it’d be cool if we were coming for something else,” said Michael. “Like a school field trip or something. But this, for Dylan? It ain’t right.”
“No, it’s not.”
They were getting close; their pace slowed dramatically, as though they could stave off the inevitable by drawing out the time it might take to get there. Michael clutched the grocery bag tightly against his chest. He approached the rectangle of earth that hadn’t yet grown over with grass. “There’s a little plaque there. How come there’s no stone?”
“Because a stone takes weeks to make,” said Elijah.
“Don’t read it,” said Michael.
“Why not?” asked Elijah.
“Because as soon as you do, then it’s gonna be real and I gotta accept it. You know?”
Elijah nodded. “We have to read it, though. I think it’s time.”
“You read it to me.”
“It says, ‘Dylan James Buchanan. 1997 to 2014. Beloved son, brother, and friend.’ ” They took it in silently, and then got close enough to touch the letters and numbers that had been cut into the granite with some kind of a V-shaped bit.
“You know that he was the best of us, right?” said Elijah.
Michael dropped down on his knees in the freshly placed earth. He looked like he was someplace far away. “What?”
“I said he was better than both of us.”
“I know it.”
“I mean, he trusted us, and we were supposed to look out for him. We were supposed to keep him out of trouble.”
After a time, when the silence became unbearable, Elijah set the flowers and Mustang next to the plaque. Michael took the comics out of the brown paper bag and placed them next to the flowers. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “You know what I think?”
“What?” said Elijah.
Michael lay down on his back in the fresh dirt. “I think I’m ruined. I picked the wrong people; I should have picked you and Dylan. You guys were the good ones, not Money and them others.”
Elijah moved a step closer. “You’re not ruined.”
“No, I’m serious.” Tears and snot ran freely down the sides of Michael’s face. “You should get as far away from me as you can, ’cause you ain’t bad on the inside. You’re still good. I can see it in you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Elijah.
But Michael was no longer listening. He sat up and smoothed the pages of the comics and rearranged the plastic flowers. He struggled to his knees, and then his feet. “I wanna leave this place.”
—
THEY WALKED DOWN the path and back through the wrought iron archway. Michael’s knees and the back of his pressed white shirt were stained with dirt, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. On the way back they stopped at the Battlegrounds and sat quietly on the splintered bench. They observed the first signs of normalcy returning to the place—guys hanging out and talking trash, pickup games, even Jones spouting off his impressive-sounding bullshit under the live
oak tree.
Elijah was the first to break the silence. “You know, I almost wish they’d shut this place down. So nobody could play here anymore.”
“How come?” said Michael.
“Because I feel different inside. Like the part of me that used to come here and play ball with you and Dylan is gone. But this place doesn’t care; it just goes on like it always did.”
“What’s the word for that—indifferent?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Michael took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe I got indifferent. That’s why I don’t care no more.”
They walked past Antonio’s, but neither felt like stopping for a slice. And later, outside Elijah’s house, Michael stood stiffly, rubbing his face like a drunken man trying to wake himself up. “I’m gonna find out who did it, Elijah. I’m gonna find out who killed Dylan. You believe me?”
“I don’t know if it matters anymore, Michael. He’s dead.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? It matters.”
“I’m afraid no one cares.” Elijah closed his eyes, trying to focus enough on the idea he’d thought but not put into words. “Nothing stops just because Dylan’s dead. You know what I mean? He gets a little rectangle of land in the cemetery, and you’ll keep on doing your business, whatever that is, and I’ll move to Buffalo with my mom and finish high school there. We’ll all just keep going, and I know that’s how it’s supposed to be and I don’t have to like it, because that’s how our world works. That’s what I mean when I say it doesn’t matter.”
Elijah turned away and walked inside.
“GIVE ME A HAND WITH THESE?” Elijah’s mother was struggling to get inside with a stack of cardboard boxes that had been folded flat and taped together.
He ran to the front door to help. “What are these for?”
“So we can start packing.” She smiled when she said it, but didn’t look him in the eye.
“But we’re not moving for another month, right? You said the end of summer.”
