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mostly, crude pieces of wood and scrap metal too rusty for crack
fiends to salvage and sell.
As we get closer to Carver Houses, the whores and junkies
thin out, afraid to get raped or robbed by project boys or cut
down by a stray shot. Because even they—already half-dead and
abandoned—aren’t asking to go before their time. No. Suicide
is a rich man’s game. Around here it’s all gang tags and murder
marks burning metal and brick—“Komik,” “CrawlRboy,” “FatZ,”
“R.I.Pr,” “KoNman,” “Peacebitch”—all funny bubbles. Cartoons
of the laughing dead. I look at the spray paint and think of Grace
and our baby in her belly. And how once it’s born we’ll watch
Looney Tunes together just like my old man did with me when
I was a kid. Back then he was still excited about me joining the
Air Force. Aint nothing like flying, he used to say. And when I
turned five or six, he showed me those cartoons in some picture
book— Bugs and Daffy and Taz and Jessica Rabbit—all painted
on the bombs we used to drop in World War II. And I remember
thinking how those Looney Tunes must’ve been the last thing the
Germans and Japs saw before they turned to ash. The laughing
dead. I look at all that graffiti—all those funny squiggles of blues,
reds and yellows—and they are all around me. All so bright and
playful they cut my eyes, as if the sun itself had enough of this
city and threw up all over its brick walls.
Another few blocks and we pull up to the Carver Projects.
Brick City, USA. We don’t talk much around here, just do our
pickup and move.
“Hey, do me a favor,” I say to the Kid. “Give your bags a
little poke, see if they feel funny.”
“How come”
“Just do it,” I say.
“Oh, I get it,” he smirks and shoves one of the bags with
his boot. “We’re checking for stiffs, aren’t we My uncle told me
about it. You and Skip ever find any”
We found two this year alone, but I don’t tell him about it.
“Just do your work,” I say.
We had to call the cops both times. They were younger
18 Writing Tomorrow Magazine