The Siege

It was early June, the best time of the year. Clear blue skies with sketchy bits of white clouds; the temperature was around seventy-five, a typical summer day in Detroit. Women in jeans or cotton housedresses and a few nuns in the new just-below-the-knee habits fussed round the long, narrow tables that lined both sides of Belmont Street from John R to Woodward. They draped white tablecloths or old sheets over the rough wooden tabletops and arranged paperback books, old Jet and Ebony magazines, comic books, used tools, costume jewelry, tarnished chains, and hoop earrings, lining them up in neat rows. Others had faded jeans, baby clothes, mismatched silverware, dishes, and knickknacks stacked in neat piles and groupings. The Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament was hosting its Annual Community Flea Market.

Stretching along the left side of the street and serving as the market’s backdrop was the massive brick church with its attached rectory that housed nuns and visiting priests, and the church’s community center, where the neighborhood kids played ball and practiced doo-wop. On the other side of the street, behind the tables, was a series of wide porches, sturdy brick and shingle homes that had been built at the turn of the century when the City began expanding to the North End.

Momma’s younger sister, Jamie, had rented two tables. She had a dozen kids, who took turns swarming around her and the tables and bumping into things until she shooed them off. She’d enlisted her oldest girls, Ella and Jackie, to help her out, but they kept disappearing into the community center, where a group of boys was playing basketball.

Aunt Jamie was a housewife, but she ran numbers sometimes and knew what it meant to hustle. For years she’d had to keep the house up and feed and clothe her family on what her husband brought home from his job on the line after he’d siphoned off his liquor money. That morning she’d had a steady tide of customers, and the little money tin she kept under the table was quickly filling up. She’d even given her son, Leon, who was nearly twelve, money to buy ice cream for the younger kids. Smiling, she watched as he chased the singing ice cream truck down the street, the five-dollar bill wadded in his hand.

She turned her smile on the two young men who stood in front of her table. They weren’t from the neighborhood; at least she didn’t recognize either of them. But they were young, the bigger one looked older, maybe twenty. The other was maybe a couple of years younger. They looked like brothers. The older one was picking through the baby clothes, or at least he lifted the first couple of pieces in the stack of folded sleepers, and seemed to be interested. The other one was stirring a couple of necklaces, a gold-colored chain and a piece made of cowrie shells, with his finger.

To the skinny one with his finger in the jewelry, she said, “Two for a dollar.” He looked at her, his eyes slightly hooded, but didn’t say anything. Then he looked at his brother and grinned before looking over his shoulder, first to the right and then to the left. When he stayed quiet, she gave her attention to the other one.

“Those are in good condition, freshly washed. I even pressed them with a warm iron,” Aunt Jamie said to the big guy who was looking at the onesies. “I can give you a good deal on them. Babies tend to go through two or three in a day. So, it’s always good to have a few clean ones on hand.”

He looked at her like she was a roach and then lifted his shirt to show her the gun he had tucked in the waist of his pants. “Give me all of your money or die, bitch,” he said.

She was stunned, but Jamie had always been one to think on her feet. “Are you for real?” she asked, pretending not to believe him. “How much money you think somebody gon make out here?”

“Don’t play with me, bitch,” he said the words softly, but the threat was clear.

So, Jamie reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the money she had been using for change, seven singles, a half roll of nickels, and a handful of dimes, quarters, and pennies she had tied loosely in an old handkerchief.

“Here,” she said, holding the money out to him. She wanted to throw it at him, but he did have a gun, and she didn’t want him to get mad. Her hands were sweating, and when he didn’t take the money, she set it down hard on the table in front of him. She was pissed. She’d been standing out under the sun all morning, and this young blood was trying to take her hard-earned money.

“I want that money box you got under the table,” the big guy said.

“What money box?” she asked.

“Don’t play with me, bitch,” he said.

Aunt Jamie hesitated for a minute, but her good sense got the best of her. She bent down, reached under the flap of tablecloth, and pulled the tin from its hiding place. Still, she clutched the small metal box to her chest for a few seconds before handing it over to the thief.

“Tell her to dig down in them titties and give up them bills,” the younger one said. He was grinning. “That’s where she keep the big money.”

“Dig down in them titties and gimme them bills,” the older one said. “I want all of it.”

Aunt Jamie sucked her teeth, trying to think what else she could do. Then she saw her brother Ronald coming up behind the big guy. He held a small gun low in his right hand. Aunt Jamie held her breath as she watched Ronald come closer.

“Motherfuckah you must have a death wish,” Uncle Ronald said as he stepped so close to the big guy he seemed to be fused into the thief’s left side. Then he eyed the skinny one, who stood a couple of feet over to the right of the big guy.

Aunt Jamie took a breath. The skinny kid’s eyes got big, and he took a step back and asked, “Who’s this mother?”

“You fucking with my sister?” Ronald said as he pressed his own gun into the bigger guy’s side. “Give the money tin back to her.”

Aunt Jamie said that’s when it got real crazy. The oldest would-be thief dropped the money tin on the table, whipped his gun out of his waistband, and tried to turn and aim it at Ronald, but he was too slow because Ronald never hesitates. Two shots, loud enough to make somebody go deaf, burst out. The big guy dropped his gun, clutched his side, and fell to the ground. The skinny one was all wild eyes and jitters, but he stayed put. He just stood there watching as Ronald kicked the fallen guy’s gun out of reach. The little black snub-nosed piece skittered across the pavement like a scared mouse. All the while, the skinny bandit was looking down at his brother, watching him bleed all over the sidewalk like he was wondering how this could have happened.

Then Ronald, just as cool as you please, tucked his own gun into the back of his pants and pulled his shirt over it. Showing no concern for the bleeding man, he stepped around him so that he could pull his sister into his arms. “It’s OK,” he said to Aunt Jamie as he held her, his hand making soothing circles in the center of her back. She nodded and hugged him back, tight, relieved at having been saved.

Seconds passed, a crowd gathered, and the high-pitched sound of a siren filled the air. Aunt Jamie said that must have been when the skinny thief picked up his brother’s gun and hid it. He must have thrown it into the bushes because when the cops showed up they couldn’t find it. The only gun on the scene belonged to Ronald.

The place was a mass of sirens and blinking lights as an ambulance and two police cars pulled up. The police spoke to Aunt Jamie first, and then they questioned the wounded man’s accomplice, who kept pointing at Ronald and frowning. When they were finished with him, they pulled Uncle Ronald off to the side and began questioning him. The skinny guy took that opportunity to step up right next to Jamie and hiss in her ear, “This ain’t over, bitch.” Then he darted over to where the bleeding man was being hoisted onto a stretcher. While paramedics tended to the fallen man, a couple of uniformed police interviewed the bystanders. Before the ambulance drove off, the police relieved Ronald of his gun, cuffed him, and shoved him into the back of the squad car.

Ronald was a wild card, the younger brother nobody would expect to come in and save the day. He was just as likely to start a fight at a family reunion as he was to yank the microphone from whoever was speaking and drunkenly slobber all over it about how blessed he was to be in a room with so much love.

You never knew what to expect from him. He liked the rough and tumble of street life and had been arrested a few times on minor drug charges, but nothing had ever stuck. Meanwhile, he’d earned a degree from Wayne State in fine art, and he painted large oil-on-canvas portraits, starkly vivid images of the men and women he knew from the streets. He was usually living with some loud, equally wild woman he’d picked up in a bar. Together they ran with the rhythms of the street doing or dealing drugs. He liked living the fast life, and he’d been lucky dancing the limbo just low enough to slip under and escape the police baton.

Jamie couldn’t do anything but watch as the police stuffed her handcuffed brother into the squad car. But ever Ronald, he grinned over at her just before he slid into the back seat. She shook her head and smiled back at him. His grin reminded her of the black-and-white photo she’d taken of him standing in front of the tall wooden wall that separated the house they grew up in from the railroad tracks. He must have been all of nine years old, a spindly little black boy with rusty arms and legs wearing a striped T-shirt, baggy shorts, a broad grin, and that bad-boy glint in his eyes. He had that same glint in his eye just before they slammed the door of the police car.

The flea market was forced to close after that, the priest and the nuns expressing concern for everyone’s safety as they talked quietly with individual parishioners and helped others pack up. Well before the sun went down, the people and tables had been cleared away, and Jamie, who lived up the block, was seated on her front porch watching the smallest of her children play blind man’s bluff. That’s when the car full of angry-looking boys pulled up in front of her house.

Jamie said that they looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. The older Plymouth sedan was going east on Belmont so it was on the other side of the street, but she could clearly see the five men, two in the front and three in the back. The one in the front on the passenger side was the skinny guy from the stickup.

The car idled in the middle of the street for a minute, maybe two, before it slowly pulled away. Jamie called the kids in and sent them upstairs to play while she hid behind the front room curtain, peeking out to see if they came back. They did, once more, driving slow and sneering up at the house. She called the police, but they told her they couldn’t do anything about somebody riding past and looking at her house. They told her to call them back if the lookers actually did something. So Jamie sat there keeping watch. Her oldest son, Eddie, had just graduated high school and started working at Dodge Main. When he came home from his shift at the factory, she told him about the stickup, the shooting, the threat, and the car full of boys casing the house. He called his friend Manny, who said all he had was a .22-caliber Cadet and that he’d bring it over, but they were probably going to need more than just the .22 and the two of them. So Eddie called me and asked to speak to George.

George was my man and had known our family forever. He’d been drafted into the service nearly two years before and was an active Army Ranger squad leader, but he was home on leave. He’d grown up in the neighborhood, and he knew how things were so he treated the threat like any other wartime situation. When he headed over to Aunt Jamie’s house, he tried to make me stay home, but they were my family so I went with him.

He called a couple of his buddies, and they came, bringing three rifles and another handgun. They were dressed like anybody else on the streets, T-shirts and jeans, but they held themselves like soldiers. After they sent Jamie upstairs to make sure the kids pulled the mattresses off the beds so they’d be low and away from the windows, the men gathered in the front room to show Eddie and his friend Manny how to use the rifles and to set up a watch schedule. I asked Eddie where he’d found the Puerto Rican kid, and he scoffed because he and Manny were around the same age, but he just said, “Round the way.” But wherever he’d found him, Manny was game; he’d come strapped, knew how to use his own piece, and he paid attention when George spoke.

With two men posted in front and two in back while George rotated, keeping an eye on the side windows and doors, they kept up the vigil throughout the night. Armed and ready, they held their positions to the left or right of the windows and doors, peering periodically through the curtains. Jamie and I made coffee and sandwiches for them, and after we served them, we sat in the kitchen, where there were no windows, while we waited for the night to end.

Dawn came, and all remained quiet. Relieved and maybe a little disappointed, the warriors relaxed, and after some discussion they decided that if there had been no action that night when heads had been hottest, things would probably blow over. But just the same, George restricted the kids to the backyard and posted one guy at the alley, just in case. They kept up the vigil throughout the day and the rest of the night. But the following morning, George’s buddies shook hands with him, Eddie, and Manny and went home. That evening Manny left because he had to go to work. George stayed through the next night, but nothing happened, and eventually he had to head home because his brief leave was ending.

The Plymouth didn’t come back, but a couple of months later when the trial was held, all of the boys who’d been in the car showed up. They sat on the prosecutor’s side of the courtroom, and Aunt Jamie, Momma, and me sat on the defendant’s side, like it was a wedding. Uncle Ronald was charged with attempted murder and carrying a concealed unregistered weapon. He’d been held in the county jail for a few weeks before the family raised enough money for him to make bail so he’d only been out a month or so before he had to come back for the trial.

The boy’s family filled the left side of the courtroom. An elderly grandmother and a top-heavy middle-aged mother sat in the front row crying, a damp hanky forever crumpled in her dark fist. The wounded man, who was bandaged to within an inch of his life, leaned heavily on a crutch as he took the stand. He swore he couldn’t understand why he’d been shot.

“I didn’t even know him. Maybe I bumped into him or something. Said something he didn’t like,” he admitted. “Hell, I didn’t know the man was crazy or that he had a gun until he shot me.”

The State-appointed defense attorney had done a little homework. She pointed out that he and his brother had previously been charged with assault and armed robbery and had only been released because the victims had suddenly dropped the charges.

When the skinny guy took the stand, he swore that they’d just come over to look at the baby clothes because his brother’s girlfriend had just had a baby, “a little girl named Candy,” he added with a smile as he pointed to a girl who sat next to the crying matriarchs. The young woman, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, hugged the sleeping baby, who was swathed in a bundle of pink flannel, to her chest.

Aunt Jamie testified, but the prosecutor pointed out that no gun was found and no money was taken. He accused her of making up the story to protect her brother. And Ronald didn’t make it any better because he was angry, angry that he was the one on trial when he’d been protecting his family, angry that the court seemed to be believing the innocent act that the real criminals were putting on.

They found him guilty of the lesser charge. And although the judge didn’t seem to believe the fake innocence of the accusers, he sentenced Ronald to two years. He was out in one.

As the deputies cuffed and prepared to take him away, Uncle Ronald turned, winked at Aunt Jamie, who sat in the row of seats just behind him. “No good deed goes unpunished,” he said, “but I’d do it again, regardless.”

When he got out, and we were all sitting at Aunt Jamie’s dining table eating the fried chicken, greens, spaghetti, and pineapple upside-down cake she’d made to celebrate his release, Ronald reared back in his chair, shook his head, and said, “It was bound to happen sometime. Shit just caught up with me.” Then he tossed a shot of J&B back, slammed his glass down on the table, and gestured at Eddie to pour him another.