CHAPTER 28

ELECTRON POSITRON ANNIHILATION

TO RYAN, being a hype was the ultimate show of weakness. I guess, for him, dealing it was the act of punishing his father for his frailty, brutality, and eventual failure. There was a hunger in Ryan’s method. He would not hesitate for a sliver of a second to stick a hype straight in the jaw for the slightest foul in attitude or misconduct. He took a certain pleasure in it that scared me; not fear for myself or for the junkies, but fear for Ryan’s own fucking soul. It made me want to grab him by the arms and shake him. Tell him, ’That ain’t your old man you just hit, Bro! It’s just some poor, bum-ass junky!’ And you’d think that kinda behavior would hurt business—it didn’t; it only made the junkies revere him. It made their approaches more subtle, made their money right every time—not none of that change and penny bullshit. It got to the point they didn’t even talk to Angel and me except to ask for Ryan. Even they’d demoted us to lookouts. I didn’t care. The thick wads of green that swelled in my pockets made my skin itch, and I found myself handing money out to panhandlers—sometimes $50 bucks a pop, startling them and making them stumble after me trying to give me a hug with tears in their eyes. But I knew all the while it’d find its way back to Ryan eventually.

•

ONE NIGHT, Lil Pat’s old girlfriend Angie showed up at the sills. I thought she’d crawled in some hole and died. Figured being a hooker and a junky gave her about a hundred percent chance at the HIV. There was a brisk, dry breeze that night. The temperature had settled in the teens. Angie was thin, thinner than I ever remembered her, with bleached straight-leg jeans on that only came down to her shins. Her red-striped tube socks were all bunched up in a thick wad at her ankles above her grayed tennis shoes, and she wore this heavy wool red and black flannel that was so big and old it could have been Lil Pat’s. Her hair was all crusted and tangled, and she shook in these brittle tremors that made it look like her arms were gonna crack off at the shoulders. Her face was all dried out, porous, and wrinkled. There were dark makeup smudges under her eyes like she’d been crying earlier in the day, or week even, ’cause she smelled like she hadn’t showered in at least that long.

“Aye, Joey, can I have a cigarette, honey?” she croaked in her raspy, tired tone.

I looked at Angel, and he flipped open his pack of Marlboro Lights. She rattled her thin trembling fingers around in it until she pinned one down against the thin cardboard. Then, she brought it to her chapped mouth and pulled a small black lighter from her flannel pocket and tried to strike it. The more she focused on lighting it, the more she trembled. Her head even started to wobble. Finally, the lighter clattered at her feet. The whole thing was so pathetic that I bent, scooped it up, and sparked it for her. I had to follow the cigarette tip as it bobbed and swayed with her face like a crusty leaf rattling in the breeze.

She finally pulled, and as she exhaled a thin cloud, she spoke. “Joey, I came here ’cause I’m in trouble. I’m sick. I need a hit. You can see that,” she said in her raspy hiss. “I don’t have nothin’. I got robbed today; a john beat me up and took everything.” She was lying, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t giving her a fucking thing. She was part of what took my brother from me. She could croak and die right there, and I wouldn’t so much as drag her into the ER.

“Will ya help me, Joe? Please! I loved your brother, Joey. I did. I still love him. He would want you to help me.”

“Don’tchu fuckin’ talk to me about MY BROTHER, BITCH! You didn’t fuckin’ LOVE HIM; you fuckin’ POISONED HIM!” Flecks of spit flung off my mouth and caught in her face and gray eyes.

“Please!” she seethed, blinking. She looked to Angel, who just turned his face westbound down Hollywood. Then, she stared at Ryan. “Please, I’ll suck you off… Anything!” she moaned and grabbed at his shiny leather coat sleeve.

Angel snickered, still refusing to even look at her.

Ryan stood up straight.

“Come on den,” Ryan said, grinning. “I’ll give you a hit if you slob my johnson.” He grabbed the crotch of his jeans, and they crossed the street over to the arterial alley near the stash. She knelt down in the salt-grayed snow next to a big black garbage can as he unfastened his belt.

“Can’t believe he’s letting that nasty bitch suck his dick,” Angel admonished, disgusted. “Bitch has got AIDs, let alone her lips are crusty like sand paper, man. They’re gonna be over there for half an hour.”

It took a while. The whole thing made me sick, like I had two eels slithering around in my stomach. It made me want to just step the fuck off, but I couldn’t. Then, Ryan looked over at us.

“Watch dis shit!” he shouted, then took a step backward clutching his dick. A steaming arc of piss gushed outward from his pale, chubby prick, and Angie reached out and grasped the thigh of his pant leg for balance. The piss struck in her gawking, upturned mouth, then splattered on her forehead. It splashed into a steamy, circular mist around the crown of her scalp. The alley lamps caught in it, and it flecked into this foggy orange aura like a halo. She unleashed a screeching hiss, then gagged. Ryan stepped back further, and her hands clapped the murky, snow-covered pavement. She retched. Piss and puke dripped slowly and thick from her lips. Ryan just kept pissing, rippling a steady bead on the top of her head so her hair fell mop-wet and hung down over her face. She continued to gargle, retch, and screech like an alley cat in heat. Ryan, finally spent, zipped up and dug his hand in his deep, 3/4 trench coat pocket. Then, he tossed the nickel of China white in the center of the small pool of piss, bile, and saliva. He walked back toward us giggling.

I can’t tell you why, even now, but I wanted to cry right then —for her, for him, for Lil Pat, for me. All of it swelled like warm balloons in my lungs, then the wires bound the balloons and they popped. Ryan grinned, but not his usual smirk. His chin was tucked and it could have been a sneer as much as a smile. His dark, oily red hair was almost black and slicked back like a dark streak running right down the center of his skull. If he woulda said anything to me as he stepped up, I woulda hit him square in the jaw, but he didn’t say nothing.

Angel was laughing—tired and wheezy. “Don’t come near me, man. You smell of piss and junky whore,” he said, squinting at Ryan and pinching his nostrils. Then, he brought the collar of his puffy Miami jacket over his nose.

“Woulda took a hour to cum like dat,” Ryan said, glancing at Angel. “She was gonna pay one way or another.”

He looked at me with his eyes bold and bloodshot. Just over his shoulder, Angie shuffled to her feet and hurried off down the alley, shivering, screeching, and clawing at her sopping wet hair. There was the smell of piss, saliva, and drenched sex. Ryan's lips spread and he bared his teeth--one eye tooth grew down on top of the other like a second skin. He was sneering, frowning, and grinning all in one, and then I understood—he’d done it for me. That was how he’d paid her back for what she’d done to me, and I knew then that he was sick beyond all help. He was gone. So far gone from what he’d been the day I met him all those years ago when we were just scared little boys. And I knew he’d never be able to get back to that, like it’d been deleted from his insides. I was sure then that there was nothing in store for him but ugliness from there on out, and he was prepared for what was to come. All of it emblazoned on that pale, acne-scarred mug. That copper fuzz dangling off his square chin. That glossy, black three-quarter trench coat.

We smoked a few more squares, then I dipped over to Hyacinth’s. She wasn’t home, and I didn’t know how I could explain it to her anyway—how that horrible act Ryan’d just done to that poor, old junky whore was an expression of love, and how it made me feel nothing but rage and disgust. I couldn’t grab hold of one single thing in all of it. Not one single person or moment to throw my broiling rage at. I just wanted to hold Hyacinth in my arms and not tell her a damn thing. Just hold her and feel all that pure love between us—all that great, giant blue lake of love there, and just be quiet with that for a while ’til it all passed or got swallowed up. But she was gone, probably at volleyball practice, or at a girlfriend’s house painting each other’s toenails. But there was a kind of solace in that, too. ’Cause at least she was far away from all of that ugliness. Far away and safe.

•

THERE WERE A COUPLE big busts higher up on the food chain, so we had to go buy a few ounces from the North Pole Moe’s connect up by Howard and Ridge. We’d held on to some loot, and Mickey decided to let us buy an ounce of our own as a reward. It was early evening. Mickey drove and Chief rode shotgun. I stared at the light glinting off the back of Chief’s blond, curly box cut. All three of us rode in back. They’d beat me to the call, so I rode bitch. We passed a spliff around as Cyprus Hill’s “Hits from the Bong” oozed from the stereo. It was a Friday night, and when we pulled onto Howard off Sheridan, there were cars backed up all the way from Paulina. The sidewalk buzzed. A tall black hooker slinked past. Her black weave had blonde streaks curled down past her shoulders, and her huge hoop earrings jostled as she clanked past in tall green heels.

“Your first ounce,” Mickey said. “Remember your first ounce, Chief?”

Chief just shook his head and smiled.

“You boys are coming up in the world. Next thing you know, you’ll be moving a key,” Mickey said, smiling.

Chief laughed.

“The way this money’s coming, who knows, Mickey?” Ryan said.

“Ambitious motherfuckers, these three,” Mickey laughed to Chief. “You ever here Joey talk about science and his crazy ass ideas? This fuckin’ kid...Dumb as you or me, but he knows about shit you ain’t ever even dreamed of. Tell him some of that crazy fucking Einstein shit you’re always yakking about.”

“Ok….” I said, wanting to jam an icepick straight through Mickey’s fat head. “So there’s this new shit out there they just discovered called antimatter. It’s like the parts of an atom except it’s made out of all opposite parts—like, you remember learning about electrons?”

“Yeah,” Chief said, looking straight ahead.

“Well, electrons got a negative charge, right? Well there’s this new thing, it’s a kind of antimatter called a positron. It’s got the same exact mass and made of the same thing as an electron, except it’s got a positive charge…”

“Ok.”

“The tripped out thing about it all is that if a positron and a electron ever collide, they annihilate each other.

“Annihilate?”

“Yeah, they destroy each other. They just explode into energy. But you know, like nuclear power, like when they split an atom and made the A-bomb and all that shit. It’s called nuclear fusion and fission, right?” He nodded. “Well, when an electron and positron collide, the energy in that annihilation is one hundred times more powerful than an atom bomb.”

“It’s like they was meant to meet like dat,” Chief said in an empty tone. “Perfect enemies. Nemeses.”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised he’d even listened. “Something like that.”

“Told ya,” Mickey laughed. “Motherfucker thinks he’s a astrophysicist or something.” Then, he swung his head around and glanced at Angel. “Aye, Kung Fu, how’d you like dat 8-ball?”

“Loved it,” Angel replied.

“Just as good as the other shit, right?” Mickey eyed him in the rearview mirror.

“Better,” Angel said as a slick smile slid across his lips. “Had me running around the room with my underwear on my head.” We all laughed. “And it was my old He-Man underwear, too.”

“This fucker’s insane, ain’t he?” Mickey said, glancing at Chief and pointing his thumb back at Angel. “I don’t know how you guys put up with him over there.”

“We need him, that’s how,” Chief said bitterly.

“What? The GDs? Fuck ’em, they’ll be dealt with accordingly,” Mickey said, then wiped his salivating mouth.

“It’s awful hot over dere, Mickey. They say they’re coming for me,” Chief said.

“Tommy, of course they’re coming for you. They’ve been coming for you ever since I made you chief, alright,” Mickey snapped. “You signed up, now deal wit’ it. There’s plenty of young brothers who’d love to take your place.” Ryan dug his pudgy index finger into his ear and wiggled it.

“I ain’t scared, Mickey,” Chief replied, looking out the window. “You know I ain’t scared to die. But, Mickey, we got to start bringing the heat to school.”

“No. How the fuck you gonna get ’em past the metal detectors?” Mickey barked.

“The Stones get ’em in,” Ryan piped in.

“Next thing you’re gonna tell me, you’ve been bringing that BB gun to school,” Mickey said. Ryan went to speak, then rubbed the tip of his nose. Chief sighed and stared out the window.

“I told you, you ain’t bringing no heat to school. We can’t afford to lose a brother or a piece. Not right now,” Mickey spat. “I’ll pick your ass up every fucking day from now on. I’ll bring the whole fucking arsenal if it’ll make you happy.”

There was a silence.

“They ain’t never fucking shot in the school, OK?” Mickey said.

“Mickey, I don’t want to die if I don’t have to,” Chief replied.

“Waa waa waa! Maybe we’ll get rid of one on the way out. Would that make you happy?”

“Hell,” Chief replied. “Why not? They’re probably gonna rush us anyways.” Chief removed the false vent and put it on his lap.

A hot shot of fear gushed through me as I realized how right Chief was. Five white hoods in the same damn Lincoln we’d been rolling in for years now. It was so obvious to me then. Of course we’d get rushed floating through the Jungle on a Friday night. The street buzzed, and people ushered everywhere—almost all of ’em black, some young, some old, but all with that same bright hunger in their eyes.

As we neared the Red Line stop, crowds of people poured out of the station on their homebound commute. Then, this wiry, light-skinned black guy cut through the current of people. He wore a white hoodie and chomped a wad of gum. The two knots of his jaw muscles flared like the jaw of a Thoroughbred horse. I knew him from somewhere. I knew him. He never looked at the Lincoln, just stepped straight toward it as we eked along Howard. He flipped up his hood so it enveloped his trimmed scalp, and a shadow swallowed his face. He dug both his hands in the front waist pocket of his hoodie. His hands—the knuckles littered with white scars. D-Ray?

Chief was cool as he reached into the stash. He pulled out the nickel-plated 9mm and cocked it quickly.

“I said on the way out, psycho,” Mickey said. “Roll that fuckin’ window up.”

“Ah, fuck,” I said with a strange calm in my voice. No one but Chief and I noticed the guy.

“Mickey!” Chief shouted.

“What!” Mickey roared back.

A gleaming, black, snub-nosed revolver emerged from the white hoodie pocket. D-Ray stepped right up to Chief’s window and squeezed a shot from the hip. Mickey floored it, swerving the Lincoln into oncoming traffic. Another pop, and a white splash washed over Ryan’s window, then the glass broke and descended. Chief twisted in his seat and shot through the gaping window. Time nearly froze. My vision focused and magnified on D-Ray’s chest. The black glob of the bullet pressed into the flat plane of D-Ray’s hoodie. It pushed deep into it without breaking the cloth, twisting the fabric into a vortex. His mouth gaped—a circular void. His head tilted down. A black hole opened as the bullet sunk into his heart. Dark-red blood burst and exploded into a globular spray. The car jolted forward. I turned and watched through the back window as D-Ray’s shoulders wilted inward. He collapsed to his knees, and his gun clattered in the gutter. I gasped a deep breath, and something tacked against the back of my mouth. It fluttered against the opening of my throat. I turned to see gray and white feathers floating in a cloud around the back seat. Hundreds of ’em slowly sauntered downward. The cold wind poured in through the gaping window, swirling and pushing them around.

“What the fuck is dis shit?” Ryan shouted.

I realized it was Ryan’s new coat. He’d turned towards me as the second shot fired. I grasped hold of his shoulder where the feathers spewed out.

“Ah, fuck, am I hit?” he squeaked. I tore his coat open—no blood, no hole.

“Naw, naw, you’re good. You’re OK,” I assured him.

“You sure?” He slid his hand inside his puffy coat.

“Yeah, it just clipped your coat,” I said. Suddenly, I realized the bullet’s trajectory must have passed right in front of our faces. Angel reached up and stuck his finger in a hole in the off-white fabric of the interior above the door he sat beside.

“You kill that motherfucker?” Mickey asked, squealing the Lincoln around the corner at Clark.

“Yeah, he’s dead,” Chief answered.

“Yeah,” I said. “He caught it in the chest. I think it was… It was D-Ray.”

“Motherfucker…,” Chief grimaced, panting. “I been trying to kill dat nigger for years.”

“You alright, Angel?” I asked.

Angel bent over so his head was near his knees. The Lincoln roared through the streets. Parked cars flew past the windows. Small jets of air slipped through the cab and jostled the feathers into the front seat.

“I felt it,” Angel said in a shaky voice. “The wind from the bullet.” He rolled down his window and retched into the cold. Gray and white feathers gusted out over him and landed in his damp black hair.

“Man, I just bought this motherfucker!” Ryan yelled, gripping the puffy duck feather coat. “A hundred’n’fifty bucks! God damnit!”

“Man, just be happy you’re alive,” I shouted.

“Uh-oh. Ryan, your boys are getting a little shaky back there,” Mickey said, grinning as the car crept though the back streets, south towards Edgewater. “Come on, boys, is that the first time you been shot at?” Ryan cracked a smirk. The rest of us were silent. Angel kept his head out of the window. “First time you been around for a little murder?” Mickey nudged Chief. He didn’t respond.

“Ahh, you guys ain’t no fun,” Mickey said, dusting off some feathers that had landed on his shoulder. “Look at dis shit, it’s like a fuckin’ snow globe.” Mickey hacked on a feather. “One last snow before summer.”

No one else laughed. Mickey let Chief out near the Morse Red Line stop and dropped us off at the sills.

“I’ll just have ’em swing through with it,” Mickey said, then pulled off down the alley. “Come by the house tomorrow.”

Ryan nodded as we stepped to the sills and collapsed in our spots. I hated the idea of Mickey with our product; who knew what he’d cut with and how much he’d cut, but I was sure he’d step on it. Then, when somebody got sick, he’d say, ’That’s what you get when you fuck with niggers.’ The Lincoln wobbled through the potholes of the side alley toward Bryn Mawr. Glass still clinked off the window frame and onto the pavement. Fuck, Mickey’s the worst nigger I know.

Angel was still sick and leaned against the wall. His head hung, and he spit now and again.

“Do you believe that shit?” I said.

“Fuck yeah I do. Look at my fucking coat,” Ryan sneered in disgust and pawed at his deflated shoulder.

“Man.” I shook my head, then looked over at Angel. “You alright, man? Maybe you should just go home, bro.”

“Naw, man,” Angel said, then spit again. “I ain’t going home now.” He looked up with blood-red eyes.

“What’s the problem, bro?” Ryan asked. “We’re all OK.” He looked at me and raised his hands out at his sides. “And we got one less Flake to worry about. One a their fucking shooters, for Christ’s sake.”

“Man, it’s war again, bro, and these D’s ain’t playing around,” I replied.

“Man, you don’t even know what it’s like at school, bro. We got that shit on lock,” Ryan said. “Tell him, Angel.”

Angel looked over with the worry all lined up across his forehead.

“Both you motherfuckers are acting scary,” Ryan said, disgusted. “Man, come on.”

“We ain’t scared man. It’s just like, like you don’t even see how serious this fuckin’ shit is, man! These motherfuckers are gonna be gunnin’ for us now. They’re all killers, man,” I pleaded.

“We got a gat, man. What’s the problem?” Ryan asked, disgusted. His knees bobbed up happily as he sat, like he’d been waiting for this shit his whole life.

•

LATER THAT WEEK, I was at the dinner table eating. Ma had her little black and white TV on the counter. The volume blared over the clicks and claps of forks and knives and the steady chomping of mashed potatoes, roast beef, and peas. I’d tuned everything out when suddenly the sound of the TV locked in on me from across the room.

“Violence strikes again at Senn High School on Chicago’s far northside. Authorities say that at 1:20 this afternoon, Thomas Leaman was shot to death in the school’s gymnasium.”

They showed a picture of Chief’s face, and an electric shock gushed through me. For some reason, I thought they’d caught Chief for the shooting a few days back. Then, it all sunk in: Chief’s name was Thomas Leaman, and he was dead. It was then that I realized I was standing at the kitchen table with my palms flat on the smooth oak. My parents and sisters all stared at me. I cleared my throat and sat back down and jammed my fork into my mashed potatoes. I kept my eyes on my plate.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t Angel or Ryan. It was just some gang shooting,” Ma said.

“Ahh, yeah, it just scared me is all,” I replied quickly.

I stuffed those potatoes in my mouth and jammed huge hunks of the roast beef down my throat as fast as humanly possible. My father’s eyes beat down on me. I got up and put my plate in the sink. Then, I walked down the hall to the phone in the front room when the doorbell rang. I opened the door and Angel was there in some blue jeans and a black hoodie. He was pale. The porch light above him struck a dark, oval-shaped shadow on his forehead like a black halo. I opened the screen door and walked out onto the front porch. A chilly breeze sent goosebumps up my arms.

“What’s goin’ on, man?” I whispered.

“They got ’em,” Angel answered. His eyes and face had a strange stillness. “Shot him in the chest, then in the head when he went down.”

“Let’s walk, man. Come on.” I led him down the porch steps. He swayed down them. “Man, you been drinkin’?”

“Naw, man, I’m just high.” He straightened up. A truck down at Ashland blew its horn long and loud.

“The GDs got’ em?” I stepped down the sidewalk towards Ashland.

“Yeah, dude. Ran into the gym blastin’,” Angel said. “I heard the shots from the other side of the buildin’. At first, they said it was D-Ray.”

Suddenly, it struck me; they fucking annihilated each other. Then, I shivered that away and tried to assure myself.

“D-Ray’s dead.”

“I know, but that’s what they said. He looked exactly like D-Ray.” Angel looked hollowed out.

“Fuck, maybe it wasn’t him after all?” I sighed.

“No, it was. Everybody knows D-Ray’s dead. Hell, we were fighting all day, an’ they kept screaming, ’This for D-Ray!’”

“No shit? What the fuck was it, D-Ray’s brother?”

“I don’t fucking know, man.” He shivered.

“So you guys were fightin’ all day?”

“Man, they were chasin’ us, then we was chasin’ them. I think Ryan pulled the .25.” He sighed.

“What?! He’s been brining dat shit up there?”

“He needs it,” Angel said. “They’re gunnin’ for us.”

“So you was fightin’ all day?”

“Naw, man.” He looked away. “I took off.”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck that place.” He took a small plastic bag out of his pocket. “Fuck all this shit.” He took his school I.D. and shoveled out a bump of the powder.

“You like dat cane, huh?”

“What? Ah, yeah,” he muttered.

An old man stepped onto his front porch across the street and eyed us suspiciously.

“Man, I’m about ready to try dat shit,” I said, watching him snort the bump.

“Naw, man, don’t.” He put the bag away quickly.

“Whatever, man,” I said, shrugging. “Think we should stay off the sills tonight?”

“Naw, man, I got some people comin’ through right now.” He walked to his sill.

“Where’s the piece?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Ryan’s got it.”

“Where the fuck’s Ryan?” I growled.

He shrugged as we both took our seats in our sills. His head bobbed and nodded like he’d drank ten beers. Traffic was slow on Ashland. A woman walked past in a brown Jewel uniform hugging a paper sack against her side. The peace on the street was in bold contrast to my insides. Chief…I never liked the motherfucker, and I wasn’t pretending to then, but God damn the bastards had killed his ass in broad daylight in the center of a packed gymnasium. What the fuck was stopping them D’s from strolling over here and mopping us up? I felt like they would come at any second. I listened for it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run and hide somewhere where none of this shit could ever find me. I wanted to go back to the beginning, but I couldn’t even tell where it was. Was it me going heads up with Leroy? Was it Lil Pat killing that fucking Assyrian? His first hit of H? His first scrap? They said the old man was bad, too—as bad as they come. It was like I was locked into some rollercoaster, some spiraling acceleration propelling me towards something. Something horrifying and inescapable.

After a while, Wacker’s brown I-ROCZ with gold racing stripes pulled up. Angel swayed towards the street. There were two ladies inside. Both of them had tall New Wave hairdos and giant hoop earrings.

“Hey, cutie,” Charlene yelled in her screechy voice from the driver’s side.

“They didn’t get you today, did they?” the other girl shouted to me as she leaned across the cab with her face near Charlene’s.

“You got it?” Charlene asked Angel. He stepped up to her and leaned into the window. They whispered.

She opened the door and pulled her seat forward a little, then Angel squeezed into the back seat.

“I’ll be right back, bro,” Angel said with that same emptiness in his face. I knew he wouldn’t be back at all. I raised my hands out, palms up, in a plea for some form of sanity, but there wasn’t none. I walked through the foggy tunnel towards Ryan’s house. There was a stony quiet at the Dead-End-Docks. As I got close to Ryan’s house, T-Money appeared in front of his apartment building with his hands buried in the pockets of his black hoodie. His face was still, and his gray eyes were stone-cold. Then, he stepped back into his gangway, and for some reason, I knew he’d be dead soon, too. There was no jail cell waiting for him, no revelation and escape from the life. Nothing but a pool of blood on some sidewalk. I didn’t feel any sadness. Nothing in his being pleaded for pity. There was fortitude in him, a resolve; a simple resolve to die a real motherfucker, and that was all he was living for. A true soldier to a soulless war.

Ryan wasn’t home. His Ma opened the door in a dirty pink robe that didn’t quite close around her wide stomach and chest. Her eyes were still and bloodshot behind her large brown-framed glasses. “He’s not here,” she sneered, drunk. Her spiced rum breath was hot and sour in my face. Even the dogs were solemn, mourning. Bear laid on his belly atop the couch with his wide head resting on his paws. The white glare from the TV flashed in his face as he looked at me with his eyelids sagging.

I went home.

•

WHEN I WALKED IN, Ma called me into the living room. “Well, you better try!” she said angrily into the receiver as I walked up to her. She handed me the phone. “Your brother wants to talk with you,” she said, looking me sternly in the eyes before walking out of the room.

“What’s up, Pat? Are you ok?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, kid. I’m, I just had to talk to you. I…” He sighed. “You need to know… He needs to know…” he muttered to himself. “I shot heroin because I done things, bad things— things that haunt me every day. I have nightmares. I have anxiety attacks. My heart starts racing for no reason. I shake and tremble when I’m in a crowded room,” he whispered. I heard the occupants of the day room chattering in the background. “I’m afraid someone is gonna kill me all the time. I think of killing people, people who did very bad things to me.” His voice strained with emotion. “Drugs, they… they took all that away. Heroin, it was like nothing bad ever happened to me in my whole life. I finally felt peaceful. No pain, no hate, no fear, no anxiety. Jesus, I can’t even talk about it without itching for it all over, Joe. You can’t… You can’t end up like—” The phone muffled and clanged against something, then it clattered to the hook, and the line went dead.

“Pat… Pat, you there?”