By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Date of story: Same as other recent entries
Date of entry: Aug 12 (I haven’t written about anything else in almost two weeks.)It could be that we were in no danger; it could be that these were the last few minutes of all of our lives.
I’d never wanted to run so badly. It was all I could do to keep my legs still and my arms from trembling, shaking, vibrating. I was so dizzy and my fears and thoughts were racing at such speeds that I might have passed out before even being able to run.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was John Slater’s. “You OK?” he asked and his voice was so calm, lucid, and steady that somehow it made me feel ok, mostly ok; then a little ashamed b/c it was Mr. Straight Arrow Skulker who was so calm and steady and was able, even, to transmit that calm to me.
The terror was gone and had left something like calm, but it was more like a terror-hangover. All I wanted was to sleep, to hide my head, to cower in my bed.
Why hadn’t I just called the police? Why hadn’t I just insisted on the police. ‘Teddy, getting cars together and picking you up is stupid. This is too big for us now. Let’s call the police,’ is what I should have said, but, instead, against my better judgement I had done what he'd asked.
‘...Let’s call the police...let’s call the police...’ I repeated it to myself over and over. Not only did it seem like a good regret to have, it seemed like a good thing to do now, right now.
It was like I’d blacked out and now I’d come to again and Brenna was standing in front of me. “Maybe you should take a deep breath,” she said. She had a look of almost motherly concern on her face.
The smell of garbage drifted over me. There were so many piles of it back here. Did Teddy ever get it picked up? It made me want to gag and helped me forget about the terror.
Teddy’s back door was open and Kerran had gone inside. There was a crashing noise then Kerran’s voice. “Oh, fuck,” he said.
Jean, who was standing in the doorway, asked him what happened. “Stubbed my toe,” he said. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”
Then I heard a woman’s voice. “You should be ashamed,” the voice said. “Talking like that in front of children. Teddy, who is much too much of a gentleman to use those sorts of words, said that you were going to take us somewhere safe? And what do we get...vulgar language? If that’s the type of safety you’re gonna give us then I’d prefer to go back up to my house and risk a drive-by or whatever it is that these drug dealers do to people.”
There were no lights on inside. Teddy hadn’t wanted to do anything that might get them noticed. There was a small circle of kids in t-shirts and shorts sitting with their knees pulled up to their chins and a few adults sitting on chairs and on a small tattered love seat that Teddy had never managed to give away. The adults had backpacks and duffel bags sitting around their feet.
One of the women was knitting in the dark. the sound of the needles scratching against each other setting my teeth on edge and causing my skin to crawl.
Most of the kids were boys around 10 or 12. One or two looked like they could be teenagers, but, as I would learn later, it was the smaller younger ones who were most useful as runners, couriers, and lookouts.
A few of their younger siblings were also down here and seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. They played with small toys or napped. One small girl, who couldn’t be too much older than a toddler, slept in her father’s lap.
The circle of older kids, the ones who must have worked for the drug dealer, were docile and had a uniformly flat look in their eyes. ‘They think it’s their fault,’ I said to myself. I just didn’t precisely know what they thought was their fault. I’d have to pin Jean or Teddy down on that.
I realized that I should count them. There were 15 total, 4 adults and 11 kids. Fewer than I’d feared. Timmy was there among the other kids. His head was shaved and he was wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans. I think he had grown by about 4 inches since I’d seen him a few months ago. He didn’t look like he’d gained any weight to go with his new height. His cheekbones stuck out of his face in protrusions as smooth and rounded as old driftwood and caught the light creating hollows beneath. He looked up at me and he smiled. His white teeth glistened. His eyes looked very white and very afraid.
“Hey,” he said to me in a voice drained of enthusiasm.
“Hey,” I said. “You never did let me play baseball with you.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I could tell you wouldn’t be any good.” Suddenly, I was less excited to see Timmy.
“OK,” I said, turning my head to Teddy, “What now?”
“Where are the cars?” he asked.
I pointed in the direction we’d come from and said that we’d left them parked in the alley opposite.
“You shouldn’t have,” he said. “They’ll know. Big A’s people will know.”
“Look, what were we supposed to do? Bring helicopters? Make the cars invisible? Why don’t we load the cars up and get out of here and then it won’t matter?”
“OK...OK...you’re right. Sorry, I’m just not thinking...” he said and turned to the group. “Everyone get your stuff and get ready to go out.”
There was a low screech, in the distance, and then a stacatto, rat-a-tat-tat, like someone was testing out a snare drum, then the sound of a car peeling away.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What we were afraid of,” Teddy said. “Big A’s people doing drive-bys at the front side of street.”
“What are we doing?...Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said.
“Language,” the woman who’d cursed out Kerran said and when I looked over, I saw that it was the woman who’d been knitting, even now, while everyone around her gathered their things to go, the needles calmly furrowed through the yarn.
Teddy had them line up and we decided who would go in what car. The 4 parents would go with their children in the van. That put 9 in the van and we thought we could probably squeeze at least one more plus Teddy. That would leave 4 of the kids for the cars, leaving room for Jean, Brenna, John Slater and myself.
I wondered if Moses had had this problem. Trying to figure out who’d cross the Red Sea first, who’d have to be at the back where they might get stuck when the waters came rushing back in.
The rescuers--Jean, Brenna, John Slater, and Kerran-- had been huddled just inside the door listening to Teddy tell everyone who’d be in which cars. Teddy motioned all of us out and we finalized the plan. He seemed completely calm now, none of the panic that I’d heard in his voice hours before. Part of it had probably been the not knowing if anyone would be able to get him and the kids a way out; but we had, we’d come through.
“Can we get a move on with this?” Kerran said. “Sam’s waiting for me and we’re gonna go get shit-faced.”
OK, we’d sort of come through.
Kerran and Jean were to go get the Bleed Monkey van and pull its door even with the wooden door so that the kids wouldn’t have to run through the alley.
I watched as they moved in slow motion across the dark yard, then the wooden door opened and, still in slo-mo, they ran through. Jean grabbing the handle to shut it quietly on the other side.Watching, I couldn’t help but wince. Maybe Big A’s enforcers would be on the other side. Maybe they’d kill Jean and Kerran or beat them or kidnap them. Maybe they’d just disappear and Kerran would never get shit-faced again. Maybe they’d send him to alcohol detox and he’d have to straighten his ass out. That’d be a strange sort of punishment to be inflicted by drug dealers.
I heard the van start up, but couldn’t see it above the wooden fence. Jean popped back through the wooden door and hand-signaled to us. The line of parents and kids moved ever too slowly towards her, so slowly that it almost made me crazy with impatience and frustration. Every moment was a moment when we might be in danger, when I wanted to be gone, to be out of here, to be gone gone gone.
We lined everyone else up next to the door. Kerran had just restarted the van and the sound of it was very loud, the loudest thing I think I’d ever heard. Louder than the popping noise that Teddy had claimed was gunfire, louder even than the sound of Tiny’s arm breaking, louder even than the sound of people at the riot screaming or the helicopters that had whirred over our heads.
“Shouldn’t the police be coming in response to the gunfire?” John Slater asked. I only just noticed that his short sleeve Oxford shirt was perfectly tucked into his precisely clean chinos. Not even a speck of lint.
“No,” I said. “There shouldn’t have been gunfire. They should have been caught before this. They shouldn’t be able to have guns.”
His eyes widened like I’d struck him, like I’d accused him of giving guns to the drug dealers or abandoning the neighborhood to them.
There was a rumble. Cars were coming. I could hear them. They were coming from several directions. I felt myself shaking. I could hear little shouts from the van. A car pulled through in front of the van. Another car pulled into the alley behind the van, the one that led to V street and two more cars blocked the ends of the alley that ran perpendicular to that one. Our cars and van were cut off and could go nowhere.
I was shaking, but I was also strangely lucid. I was still in the yard with John, Brenna, Teddy and 4 of the kids. We could run into the house and down V street, but we’d be leaving everyone in the van. We could scatter, but some of us would be caught, even shot, maybe even die.
The car that had stopped in front of the van was packed full of young men and teenagers. As they started getting out, it was obvious that these were the drug dealers. All of them wearing black tracksuits and holding guns, one with a shotgun, another with some sort of automatic weapon. A few holding pistols.
I looked up at Teddy and he was crying.All of these guys walked around the van slowly, casually even, intentionally intimidating us. They could deal with us at their leisure.
The last person to get out was the only one not in a black tracksuit. He was wearing a red tracksuit. It was almost funny, like the costumes for a movie. The type of costumes that let you know exactly who the big time drug dealer was and who his small time hood followers were. Bless the egos of the power hungry and deluded for making it so easy to figure these things out.
He didn’t even have a gun in his hand. That’s how powerful he was. He didn’t need a weapon.
“Oh fuck,” Teddy said.
“Oh fuck what?” I said, thinking that his ‘oh, fuck’ must be because the big time drug dealer and his gun toting toadies were about to kill us all.
“Now it all makes sense,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Fuck me,” he said.
“Fuck me what?” I said.
“That’s the bootlegger. Big A was the bootlegger the whole time. I should have known,” he said wiping his eyes.
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three
