I recognized the building as soon as I saw it. I’d passed it and ignored it a thousand times: my old school, the school of my father, and the school of his father.
If Booker T. Elementary was a dilapidated, second-rate public school when I was enrolled, now it was a virtual no-go zone. All manner of goblins stalked its vast grounds: the drug-addled homeless, the restless youth looking for a bad time, the desperate fugitives running to the only place in town law enforcement wouldn’t follow. And that was the state of play just during school hours. Most of the students had been transferred from other schools for misbehavior or for being black, depending on who you asked. Some parents pulled their kids out to avoid the risk of getting the whole kinship locked up for failure to comply. Others gave their kids bribe money to ward off baddies or even pocket knives and mini-Tasers, if no deal could be brokered. Schools like Booker T. were the reason Penny and I never considered submitting Nigel to the public system.
It was after dark; the streetlights were on. My son was inside.
Some of the windows had been shot out and boarded over. Bullet holes pocked the bricks. A chunk of the cornerstone was missing, as if some sea monster had risen from the depths and taken a bite out of it. The naked flagpoles on the roof gave it the profile of a three-masted whaler listing toward the Antarctic.
During Sir’s youth, the campus had been both an educational center and a hive of activity for so-called community activists. From that loading dock, they had distributed pallets of food and leaflets on healthy eating. In that dusty yard, children had gathered, Sir among them, for calisthenics. It was the anti-Reinhardt, run by Grandpa’s cohort.
By the time I was enrolled at Booker T., the community activists had all been shooed away, locked up, or killed. The fresh fruits and vegetables had been replaced with bags of processed, genetically modified corn chips and artificially colored candy, and the overeducated staff replaced with recruits new to the profession of teaching. No one was crazy enough to drink the light brown water that slurred from the water fountains. During recess, we had to sit in the auditorium and watch films about physical fitness because the gym was off limits—an inspector found the paint was full of lead.
I crossed through an area of the yard where bike frames and overturned fifty-five-gallon drums had been discarded.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when a voice called out to me as I peered into what might have been the principal’s office, or a storage area for mangled textbooks: “Yo, Dice.”
“Are you referring to me?” I expected to be robbed.
The voice came from a teenager. Older than Nigel, he wore a hoodie and slouchy jeans. The old “get your attention and chat” setup was a time-honored, traditional method of jacking someone. Score one for the old ways.
“Sorry, sir. I thought you were my friend.” The boy took off toward a nearby fence. He wiggled through a cutaway section and kept going.
The front entrance of the school was barred closed for the night, but eventually I found a way in through one of the side windows. I used my device for light but kept it pointed toward the floor, so as not to warn anyone of my presence. I was vaguely aware of people lurking in the shadowy classrooms. The stench of chemicals, familiar from Jo Jo’s house—drugs being processed—assailed me. I focused on the unwashed floors and followed the grid of tiles. I turned off the device and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. The only sound was that of my shoes crunching on discarded things: beakers, plastic rulers, pencil cases.
I opened a pair of double doors, and a cool, earthy breeze issued from within. I couldn’t see very far into the space, which seemed to expand infinitely into the darkness. It was the gym.
Like a fool, I entered.
Once, when I was small, Sir and Mama took me on a trip to Appalachia. It was Sir’s idea, I think, to have me experience the kind of expansive and beautiful nature that had been paved over in the City. We rented a cabin on a hill and took short forays into the woods, Sir with a short knife concealed in his sleeve. On the third day of the trip, we visited a historic cave, where holdout rebels had barracked until only a few years earlier.
I was afraid of the cave and, as the story goes, clung to Sir’s pant leg. In a surprise move, he carried me. I buried my face in his chest and entered an almost hypnotic state as my body rocked to the sway of his gait. For quite some time, I didn’t look up. But I smelled him: the wash detergent Mama used on our clothes, his tangy aftershave, and that jumble of musky, manly scents that all fathers carry.
Someone tugged the hem of my knee pants. “It’s sure beautiful, isn’t it?” Mama asked.
I glanced up, my eyes blurry from having been squeezed shut for such a long time. As they adjusted, shimmering lights, like falling spirits, appeared.
In the vast room at the center of Booker T., a current flushed over my head as though huge fans were churning a mile away. I dropped to one knee behind a crate and peered toward what seemed like a platform around which dozens of people gathered.
A man in an abstract African mask sat on the edge of the platform, dangling his legs. He wore a white linen suit, which I had seen before. I had seen him before. I had feared him before. He’d appeared in streamed news items and as a featured player riding astride my middaymares. But I’d also encountered him in real life without realizing it at the time.
He was the terrorist leader from the Myrtles attacks and the many other incidents of past months. Of the fifty or so people in the room, a third were children. Everyone wore those spooky, elaborate, coin-slot-eyed masks.
I shivered. This was ADZE.
They were loading small packages into the back of a moving van. A tall masked woman videotaped the scene. Somehow the energy in the room was like that of people preparing for a party. There was horsing around and laughter. The movement of their limbs was loose, arbitrary. These people liked each other. One of the children, a dark-skinned girl in a long pointed mask, carried a tray of food to the platform where the leader sat. He looked over it and nodded.
“Y’all try some of this first,” he said. The others gathered around and began to remove their masks.
The leader was about to take his off when something happened behind me. Two people entered, a masked man and a woman. “What are you doing?” the man said to me, his voice muffled by his mask.
“Nothing,” I said. I stood up.
“Who is that?” the ADZE leader yelled. “Hold on to him!”
I ran past my potential jailers and back into the hallway. Soon at least ten people crashed through the door after me. I ran full out. I ducked into the room with the purple smell. Three white kids were cooking a brew. They could have been the same kids from Jo Jo’s house.
“Hey, how are you?” I asked.
“It’s you,” one of the girls said with a smile.
“Do you have any, you know…”
“For one of Jo Jo’s boys?” one of the boys said. Movement in the hall.
“Never mind,” I said. “Help me through.”
They shoved me out the tight window. I landed awkwardly on my shoulder. It occurred to me that my pursuers were people from all over town. Cooks, hotel maids, sanitation workers. Some were kids who ran track. My point is that I wasn’t going to get very far. Even if I escaped, they would know me before I knew them. I was at the far end of the school’s parking lot when I saw that same boy in the hoodie from earlier. He was sitting on the trunk of an idling car.
“Give me a ride?”
“Ain’t my car.” My pursuers were only about twenty yards away and not very happy that I was leading them on a wild me chase.
“Help me,” I said.
“Just step on that.” He pointed at a blanket lying behind the car.
“What? I’m not crazy. I—”
“You want to get killed, man?”
I stepped on the blanket and fell through a hole in the ground. I landed in wet, stinky muck that splattered all around me. I climbed to my feet. I’d pulled something in my leg, but in my purplized state, I didn’t feel much.
I whipped out a handkerchief, wiped off my device, and lit up the tunnel. It was the sewer system. I had heard that the City’s criminal element used it for transportation and communication purposes. Cables and pipes stretched into the invisible distance. A cardboard sign even told me what street I was under.
“Why did you let him go?” a voice overhead said.
“I don’t work for you, and I don’t work for him. I’m just minding my own.” A gunshot.
There was a light at one end of the tunnel. Hobbling, I went the other way.