All Worlds

Carmen, Raymond’s niece, was unsure how she dirtied her shoes with her uncle so she decided to stay and find out. After not seeing him for months, he had returned to the city, promptly commissioning her to draw a storyboard to flesh out his ideas for the gunslinger designing his online gallery. Though he didn’t invite her in, his offer softened the blow. They made arrangements, sitting on his porch and drinking perfect iced tea from tall triangle glasses. The glasses had yellow circles painted on them. Through the screen door, she saw a stack of unpacked boxes. It would be dark soon.

She filled space by asking him what he was getting her for graduation. “I’m finally through with Custer.”

“Custer,” said Raymond. “I went there until the middle of my sophomore year. What’s it like now?”

“I have a friend that just won a Jit contest.”

“Detroit kids still doing that dance?”

“In ways you can’t imagine. Youtube it.”

“It’s amazing,” he said. “That dance is older than me.”

Carmen giggled. Ray was serious.

Ray found more of what she described familiar. More than that, some of her information was unbelievably resonant, like parallel literary symbols experienced in real life; a terrifying glimpse at fate’s bone cold chuckle beneath the hood.

“You ok,” she asked, distantly interested in his faraway gaze at the orange sky. A new wall was up. The family recluse‘s conversation was normal long enough for her to forget that he was such a weirdo.

“Yeah,” said Raymond. He stood quickly to dismiss her. “We about done here. You can stay and finish the tea, but I need to check out. I’ll call you.”

No he didn’t, Carmen thought as Ray shuffled through the screen.

Raymond sat on a stack of unpacked boxes scratching a mosquito bite on his arm, typing “Custer High Arson” in the Google rectangle with his left hand. Carmen’s claims were confirmed within twenty minutes. Small arsons “rampant” during school hours…Detroit drop out rate abysmal…Budget crisis…Schools closing…Custer closing. He watched some videos of kids jitting on a whim. That they were building so much into that old dance seemed impossible.

Raymond then returned to the dim porch to grab the glasses. Lost in thought, he was startled to find Carmen still sitting at the absurd plastic table.

“Tell me,” she said.

Self-interest or concern was not in her voice - just whiny curiosity. Carmen thought he was crazy too; it was in her voice. Suddenly, the old days were back, when everybody thought he was crazy. Maybe they never went anywhere. The sun was low behind them, the sky changing colors. Why not?

Raymond sat down and lit a Kool. He knew where he would start. Same place he would end. “I can race through this,” he said. “If you don’t ask any questions.”

“Yeah, right.”

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Kid never needed an alarm clock.

At 2:30 a.m., he simply woke up and jumped into his white high tops. He couldn’t run so fast in those if he had to, but his only low tops had been outgrown for months. His likewise outgrown black jogging suit pants were already on, the matching jacket within arms reach on the dresser where it could be easily grabbed in the dark. It covered a copy of The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. There was something heavy in the pockets and the soft-cover fell on a pile of dirty clothes after he snatched the jacket. The jogging suit was embarrassingly tight, even for the fashion standards of 1986. As he eased the window open, a breeze bristled his exposed forearm under the tattered, raised screen. The backyard was frigid and tranquil and clear.

His brother stirred, but being intimately familiar with this aspect of the plan, only turned toward the wall. The window would still be up when Kid returned.

He sat on the ledge and pushed his skinny legs out. Smarter than Isaac, who had gone out this same window head first last week, laughing then moaning in pain.

The Henry Ford Medical Center dialysis clinic, a remarkably sterile chamber in neighboring Dearborn, released moms, your grandmother, early the day Isaac fell. For three months Kid was made to accompany her three days a week as she was drained of poison because his parents were experimenting with different punishments, blindly thumbing for the tumblers that would make him right.

He read in the cramped lobby and occasionally wandered among nurses or people “on the machine” the whole summer. Patients drudged up fatigue drenched cheer to greet him. Polite and tired, they were living under an undated death warrant, attached to a cold contraption that drained, cleaned, then returned their blood. While painful and tedious, the process seemed preferable to the alternative - for most. No one spoke above the whir of the machines.

His mother’s kidneys were disabled by lupus seven years earlier. On the day the punishment ended, she said, “I could die at any minute and you wouldn’t even care.“

Remembering these words, Kid sprayed Lysol frantically as Terez and Isaac escaped. He couldn’t see the smoke, but he could sure smell it. The aerosol was handy because the trio put a lighter in front of it the day before to incinerate a spider in the garage.

Terez, the shortest and boldest of the three, hopped through the window in an athletic crouch. Even though Isaac was six and a half feet of lanky bone, he tried to copy, beating his scrawny chest at the window; a high Tarzan impersonation. As the car door closed, Isaac's size thirteen shoes caught on the ledge, as did his giggling when he slipped and cracked his brown, naturally curly crown on the likewise brown brick wall underneath. Kid shoved upturned sneakers from the ledge and Isaac flipped, moaning to the grass. If his moms suspected anything, she didn't let on, mumbling, "Hi," and trudging up the stairs. Clinic days drained her terribly. Perhaps the tubes that slurped away her life force returned it free of more than impurity. If a little poison is necessary to keep us strong, then worry no more. Tomorrow will surely bring strength.

He skulked over the dead rubbery lawn behind the garage and grabbed an openly hidden package: a triple wrapped plastic grocery bag with five 16 oz. Faygo pop bottles, featuring those indispensable twist on caps, filled with gasoline. Opening the creaky garage door with his light sleeping mother in the house? No thank you. As he hefted the reeking sack, he reminded himself that at fifteen, Terez wasn't so short at 5'9."

Trotting down the driveway, he crossed Lahser and strode into what was arranging itself in his mind and vocabulary as "the hood." Every well-kept neighborhood on the fringes of Detroit is only a distant whistle away from such a despairing grid. On his side of Lahser, there was a golf course, nice cars, manicured lawns and a rare pocket of older white families economically rim-rocked at Detroit‘s city limits, longing to stay about as much as leave. Kid imagined them pining for days past, before he was born, when Detroit cradled a less dwindled ethnic comfort for them. Most of their people departed many years ago. His stepfather worked long hours, literally breaking his back at a freezing warehouse to earn the privilege of their somehow reasonably reluctant proximity.

On the east side of Lahser, forget it. The south side of the park was unfenced, adjacent to a cemetery. Porches were crumbling. Unleashed dogs and dealers wandered the streets. Most attractive as a route were the few working street lights. Walking down Bentler though, the only sound was the bag's swishing clatter. Then a dog barked and Kid nearly jumped from his shoes. Ten minutes later, he stomped, frustrated with his memory‘s selective inanity. His destination, Custer High School, was directly across a main street. Unfortunately, the beaming 8th precinct Grand River police station stood to his left.

"Damn," he said out loud. "That's a stupid thing to forget."

He would have to pass by the bright but snoozing station to make this appointment on time. He shrugged and crossed, his usual response to absurdity.

He hugged the shadows as he jogged behind the school. A lone battered van sporting heavily tinted windows and faded hippie rainbow stickers was in the back gravel parking lot, beginning to riot quietly in park. Kid's bony shoulders went to his ears and he rushed past the van to the high fence facing the football field. The others hadn't arrived yet and he probably still had some time to pull out. Just drop his bags, retreat and invent another lie in case they had the guts to show. I saw the police. Anything.

He swiveled to the direction of the now out of view precinct, a possible escape route. Outrage erased his desire to flee. This was not a school. It was barely contained chaos. Security guards with ugly green jackets and giant walkie-talkies were present, yet there were fights everyday. Metal detectors on the front doors. A shining police station across the street. Hell, a police mini-station in the school basement. All evidence considered, it should be pretty hard for a guy to get shot in a morning gym class the first week of school. But this one guy was so determined, he taunted the wrong boy just before nailing a very sweet, long rebound, game winning three from the corner and skipping down court, never to hit the long shot again. At least that was the early myth whispered to the beat of closing hall lockers. The admiring chatter was more disgusting than the shooting. It wasn’t on TV neither. Kid looked. Maybe it was all a translucent rumor in a smoky room.

From his jacket, Kid took out a green miniature barrel shaped glass of his stepfather’s Mickey's Malt Courage and downed it. Then he drained the one from the other pocket. Safety exists in the mind like the booger man. After days of thought, he concluded that the natural answer to contained chaos is controlled anarchy. He formed a strategy. Lies would be the ink on his blueprint for change because no one Kid’s age would believe his truth. At least good fiction was honest underneath. The lies, some intricately detailed, were absolutely outrageous. The first lie, the starter, was bait to fish for recruits who also wanted to create or visit a new world. The outsiders.

One day, Kid asked Terez if he might be interested in doing something about the stale order of this stinking school. A new gang. Terez was acing Geometry while incessantly goofing off with Kid during the class, but they were still mere acquaintances.

"Word," he replied. Here was a proud outsider that didn’t mind displaying his smarts any more than sporting that freshly blackened eye. “You know somebody?”

The lie‘s second lap was ran by the young cousin of revenge. Isaac had allied with Kid when he needed help in an absurd battle against a horde of eighth graders the year before. Isaac was supposed to back him up, but he just stood there.

Kid was doing ok against five guys until he bent to flip a dude off his back. The melee reduced to massacre when he hit the ground and they punched and stomped his face. Isaac disclaimed him leaning against a stop sign. He didn’t run or help. He just watched. A fight fan asked him if he‘d help his friend. Isaac said, “I don’t know him.”

A church van pulled up. Some of Jesus’ men saved Kid and dropped him off at the corner of his street. After that, Kid never questioned the existence of God. His backup was on his porch, just heading out. They could see his battered face four houses away and began laughing immediately. There were sneaker marks smeared on his face. He looked down and walked into the house, his expression equidistant between a frown and smile.

Isaac and Kid hadn’t bothered with each other much since, but the tall goof's eyes lit up with the invitation to join anything. Kid never felt guilty about his lies, but it felt good fooling Isaac. It was a new school year. Kid felt his own intentions were true. His day would come if his day was due.

New and old allegiances formed or reformed, shaky solidarity tested. Pointing to his bruised face, Terez explained getting rushed by a small crew. A rival named Mike was just deeper. To be exact, about five deep, and they were easy to find during school hours cutting along the same predictable routes. After the trio caught up to Mike’s crew in front of Jay’s Café, both groups went through the usual pre-rumble jabber. Then Isaac yanked a kitchen blade from his inside denim pocket and flapped his pointy arms. The enemy scattered after Mike yelled, “Knife!”

One could call what they did in the park a week later a sparring match except it lasted less than a full second. Terez and Kid were comparing the parallels of their proud thrashings with zealous, escalating egotism. Kid decided to fall into or beat through his place in the hierarchy.

"You think you could beat me," he asked Terez.

Terez quickly demonstrated a forked lightning kick - one aimed at the groin and one that stopped, held at Kid’s eyes, close enough for him to count waves at the bottom of Terez's sneaker. He didn‘t remember seeing the kick at his crotch, but he heard the kicker’s trousers snap twice - once before the final foot stop and one just after. Clearly, there were uncountable hours of practice behind that kick.

Kid was accustomed to beatings, sometimes preceded by the reeking toxicity of his stepfather's malt liquor breath; also, he had lost almost every physical confrontation fought, and was perhaps very cracked, but not yet broken. As a strategy, taking beatings instead of shit had two benefits. Nightmares were too tired to follow him into sleep and his eyes seldom left the sky. He was a dreamer.

“You better be sure,” Terez said, lowering his foot. He revealed that he self-taught through library books and hours of lonely training. No wonder Mike needed five guys to take him down. "Now what's up with the ‘Vigilance?’"

"It's like this," Kid said. "We do an initiation; my man Ricky lets us in."

"What,“ said Terez. “And why?"

"The Vigilance wants to run Schoolcraft out of Custer, and they building up the ranks quiet." The lies fell off his lips like a surplus of pork rinds. “But they want to make a statement and build our rep. Then we make our move on Schoolcraft."

Schoolcraft overran Custer. They wore plaid shirts and recruited south of where these boys lived on the streets near their namesake. The whole city was doing a dance named after the gang that very year. If only they had better basketball players.

"Alright, what we supposed to do," asked Isaac.

Kid said, "We're going to set the school on fire. Blow that shits right up. Start over."

They took to the idea like kids to monkey bars, as was expected. They couldn't articulate why they hated Custer as well as Kid, but they definitely hated it. Nor did they even consider how a school can be taken over which, if they were successful, would no longer be serviceable to the public. The flawed premise was instantly forgotten; the act was what mattered. Over the next few weeks, a demanding, collective hunger for fire grew in their bellies and imaginations. Kid assembled the evolving blueprint of lies over the planet through which they would journey. He wanted to recreate the real world. An honest lie can defeat dishonest fact, Kid decided. When he asked how a Christian president could kill government funded school lunches, his parents warned him of the real world and it’s blatant inconsistencies. That’s just the way it is. He shook his head. To Kid, all worlds were real worlds.

Terez said, "Before we kick this off, I want to meet Ricky."

"Me too," Isaac aped.

Kid said, "I'll set up a three-way tonight on the phone. Isaac got three-way too. He'll call you and we can all build."

Ricky had known Kid practically since birth. He was to act like a warlord and put these two defectors through the paces, promise them some pie in the sky; act rude and shit. On the phone that night as had been rehearsed, Ricky asked Isaac, "You down to kill a nigga?"

"Hell yeah," Isaac said unconvincingly.

Kid stifled his laughter when Ricky said, "Don't lie to me man." Gentle ad-libbing. The script read, “Don’t lie to me bitch.” Still, it was all set up for two weeks later: Sunday morning, October 12th.

Isaac appeared on the dark football field carrying his own bag of Faygo Redpop bottles, his flushed, high-toned face gradually contrasting the darkness as he loped nearer. He lived across Grand River too, but Isaac approached from Trinity, following a line outside the organized levity of the 8th precinct‘s view. The entrance near the north corner of the field at Trinity was shadowy. Smarter than Kid.

"You seen Terez?" Isaac asked.

"Nope."

Suddenly, Terez appeared from the side of a dumpster, his eyes smoldering. Slick had beaten them all here. Watching, waiting, ruminating, raging.

Isaac said, "Tee always come on some dramatic ninja shit."

They inspected the blue van because it began shaking side to side again. "Hey," Terez shouted, booting the fender. “Roll out!”

The sideways rumbling stopped and the van spit gravel backing out and retreating. Ejecting the van unveiled some fatefully symbolic tone to Kid, though forming it into words was too difficult right then; it was the sacrifice of spontaneous sex for well-planned violence.

They walked to a seldom used teacher's lounge/woman's room window that Kid had unlocked the Friday before. It was about a floor and a half high and the bricks in the wall were set in staggers about one full inch in and out. Slim niches that were easily scalable for Terez. He scrambled through the window. The other two boys assumed that they could climb the wall too, but they lacked Terez's dexterity. Kid bent his knees and Isaac stood his long frame on Kid’s shoulders as they rose against the wall. Kid handed the bags up to Isaac while he laid them down on the ancient green couch inside. Terez, already inside, put them on the floor. That left Kid on the ground standing with his hands on his hips waiting for something to happen. He figured he could climb too. If one guy can do it...

When he fell from halfway up, Terez leaned over. "You alright?"

From his back Kid said, "I'm always alright. No matter what."

He made it eventually, Terez scraping him up the by the back of his tight jacket. Isaac had the door open and the bright shining hallway completely erased the momentum of the shivery fear left outside. Isaac stepped aside.

The police mini-station was almost directly underneath the women’s lounge.

Ultimately, the plan was to hit the boiler room and cause an explosion. But first they went to the third floor to blaze up the chemistry lab as a sort of dry run.

Grinning maniacally in the middle of the largest classroom in the building - the floor, desks and shades drenched with gasoline and broken bottles, Isaac lit and threw a match, then the whole room went up. Isaac’s expression was so solemn and stuck and...gone. He looked unsurprised. Only the dancing fire in Isaac's unblinking eyes offered movement. That blank look on his face hooded some epiphany escorted him out, knocked him from himself completely.

Terez, a living Cineplex of action movie heroism, took off his jacket, ran in as Kid retreated, covered Isaac and dragged him from the giant fire box.

Isaac’s grey eyes had changed. Not from the smoke (his eyeballs were cracked with red striplings), but from the fire. They were somehow sharpened by heat. He looked so awake, but they would never change back.

On the second floor, when they couldn't get through the metal door of the computer lab, Kid used his fist to make a runny gasoline "V" and initialed it with fire. Terez was poised to attack the boiler room.

Finally, they descended to the first floor. Isaac stopped for a drink from the water fountain near the administrative offices. He had escaped death, but the flames still flickered in his eyes. Isaac was more at ease than either Terez or Kid at this point, yet more intense as well.

"Niggas," Terez said. This was his trademark phrase for admirable stupidity. “Let’s just stay together, and keep it together.”

The opening of the T corridor that led to the gym was ahead to their right. Isaac walked ahead by ten paces, gliding past the connecting corridor, his new eyes never veering from the red boiler room door at the end of the hall. Terez didn‘t immediately look to the right, but he sensed Kid’s paralysis as they passed the corridor. Only Kid looked down the long T. Cops were crowding the other end of the hallway wall to wall.

Kid experienced a moment that froze into eons of clear ice. Everything is clear, super slow just before a horrible impact. The screen goes silent, the actors move in slow motion and then the explosion.

Outside of time, Kid counted nine police officers, three in plain clothes, huddled near the opposite corner of the T. One of them aimed a black cannon that looked mythical. This lead cop wore a tight, open leather jacket, a furry black Kangol derby and oversized metal sunglasses. A fat female officer in uniform was beside him. Kid had never seen so many black police together in his life.

The lead cop had his left arm out holding the others back. Once Kid glanced their way, the horror spread instantly to Terez. The cop bellowed, "Freeze!" Well, not quite. He screamed something, but then a fraction of a second later, he said, "Catch that black ass nigga!"

"Freeze," amazingly, was too long a word. This customary, one syllable order was cut short by Terez’s speedy reaction, who had dropped his bag and reversed down the bright hall. Kid shook from his two second coma, when everything but those dark officers was in a vacuum; he didn't even hear Terez’s bag crash. He remembered their harsh cop faces vividly. For the rest of his life, whenever he thought back to that moment, the lead one said, "Fur...Catch that black ass nigga!"

Isaac began running in the opposite direction as the gang of officers made their move from the other side of the long T. Of course, Kid followed Terez. All of his thinking self had been drained of words. No sentences or fragmented monosyllables cluttered his mind; no fear or doubt. Later, he would think that was very strange, to be fleeing for his life and be empty and unafraid for the first time. All that mattered was the chance at escape.

They leapt the five stairs to the basement, swooshed by the closed mini-station, and back up a double flight of stairs with the hungry pace of police behind them still a good ways. Back at the teacher's lounge, Kid had the presence of mind to slide the door closed as if there was an insomniac baby in the departed hallway that finally fell asleep.

"What now? We trapped," said Kid.

Without acknowledging the question, Terez opened the window, swung his right leg out, and jumped. Kid looked out the window and saw Terez before he landed. He giggled. Terez seemed to be running before touching asphalt. He landed in a crouch and torpedoed toward the football field.

Kid followed. Without feeling the landing, he took off. They sprinted to the dark right corner of the field. Busy streets guarded the exits, the beaming police station to the left, but where they were headed was a cage of twenty foot high metal. Terez ran through the fence like Walter Payton through the Bear's offensive line. At least it seemed that way to Kid. He heard the metal of the fence pop as Terez fought through the metal, arms cradling his stomach. Kid hit the slit and came out the other side.

He stopped and put his hands on his knees, laughing, surrendering the few breaths spared to say, "You…just ran…through the fence! DOG! YOU RAN THROUGH THE FENCE!"

Kid almost fell down. Looking back at the school, Terez came back for him. Their pursuers hadn’t discovered how they escaped. They weren't being followed. Terez lifted his shirt to reveal the handles of heavy bolt cutters, duct taped to his torso. “You stupid.”

They dodged down some dark side streets. Kid kept laughing.

Terez calmed down. He said, "You think he got away?"

"I sure hope so,” Kid said, grinning.

That summed up the whole thing. Terez did his catch phrase and they split up, each making it home without further incident. After closing the window, Kid climbed into his bed and ignored his brother's whispering. He fell asleep stinking of gasoline fumes, remembering what it was like to be unafraid, running away.

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“What happened to Isaac?”

Raymond opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Not once during the story did he look away from the sky, even when she interrupted with a question. The horizon strolled along, observing his hand gestures and eye rolls as he dragged down, unpacked and arranged this other world. He never turned on the porch light. Never thought to.

Carmen said, “You don’t think that you started…”

“I don’t know. Could be.”

Carmen made sure to stand up first this time, snatching her car keys for emphasis to snap him awake. She offered a hug. “Doing business is a stranger thing than I thought it would be, Uncle Raymond.”

He thought about that as he stood. Carmen was tough and composed. Custer had to be much worse now. “Everything is.”

They embraced. She reminded him about her graduation present and said goodnight.