Sins of the Fathers

by John Richmond

“YOU BREATHIN’, PUNK?”

  Johnny Calvin stared up at the man who’d just stabbed him. He couldn’t be certain, but he guessed the shiv was still in his chest. He thought about yanking it out and burying it in his attacker’s left eye, but his fingers would only twitch. He was growing very tired. Johnny felt the man paw into his old coat for his stash and got an image of a mutt going through a garbage can. Johnny knew the guy: forties, grizzled, stank of urine and various poisons, called himself Toons. Cuz I’s loony, he always said. But Johnny knew Toons wasn’t any loonier than he was, just another bum trying to get by. Johnny didn’t even take it all that personally that Toons had just punched an old taped up ice pick through his breast bone. It was the street, this was how it worked. It wasn’t like Johnny hadn’t shivved one or two himself over the last five years.

  Fuck you, Toons. Johnny tried, but succeeded only in pushing a bubble of red spit over his lips.

  Toons stopped rooting in the boy’s coat. He leaned in close, squinting into Johnny’s slack face. Johnny imagined Toons’s stench pushing in like a force field, but could not smell it. You had to be able to draw a breath for your nose to work. At the moment, the only air Johnny drew was bubbling in and out of his sucking chest wound. He could hear it, like a pin hole leak in a wet air hose.

  Toons grinned, a yellowing fence minus most of its slats. “So you still kickin’ a little?” He waved the shiv like a magic wand for Johnny to see. “Maybe I should jus’ finish your ass off. Whachoo’ think?”

  So the shiv wasn’t still stuck in his chest. Johnny hadn’t felt it when Toons had pulled it out. Shock was some strange shit. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in its grip, but this was the deepest he’d ever sunk, that was for sure. A dull heat began to spread through him from his crotch outward. Johnny realized with some humor that he had just pissed himself. He wondered if this was finally going to be his out. Jesus-H-Christ, it had taken fucking long enough. He was constantly amazed that he’d made it this long. Soon his whole body had become warm, his vision dimmed. Toons became little more than an ashy blur. Johnny could barely understand him as he said, “Nothin’ personal now, gray meat. I jus’ needs me a little...”

  “Drop it, shit-head!”

  A different voice, funny, amplified.

  Toons looked away from Johnny and down the alley at two of Detroit’s finest and their guns.

  What were cops doing here? Johnny wanted to laugh. You could always tell them by their voices. Scared shitless and arrogant at the same time.

  Toons froze, shiv in hand. He turned toward the policemen and offered an enormous grin. “Evenin’, officers. I was jus’...”

  Their guns exploded.

  Johnny watched as the bullets shredded through Toons like a swarm of metal bees. They picked him up and flew him several feet down the alley. He was dead before he hit the pavement.

  Fucking cops, Johnny thought. Didn’t even give Toons a chance to bullshit. What was left of his vision evaporated and left him in the dark. Through a strange rushing, like wind from a subway train, Johnny heard the cops trot over on blocky shoes. A radio squawked.

  “This is Daniel-Mary 12. We need an ambulance at the alley between 12th and Park.”

  As the last of his senses dissipated, Johnny wondered who it was for.

  * * *