The city cops found Duane overdosed in an alleyway with heroin in his pocket. They chose that opportunity to unleash the slew of charges they’d been saving up. His whole family waited at the courthouse for his turn to plead in front of the judge. His whole family. All those kids lined up on one of the long benches. The benches that used to be church pews—hand-me-downs from the Baptists. Duane’s mom was in her Sunday best. All the girls had braids in their hair. All the boys had short-sleeved, hand-sewn cotton shirts. Everything was ironed and clean. Checkered and corduroyed. Their hair was combed to the side. Duane’s mother had a patient look in her eyes. She was praying. She’d been praying for so long it was a constant companion. It was like breathing. She prayed while cleaning house, cooking dinner, and picking berries. Her lips moved faithfully while tilling soil or planning lessons. At the courthouse her prayers reached a crescendo—her eyes and mouth clenched shut. Her posture tense and worried. Her oldest son slouched in handcuffs. There was no place to leave her children. No lawyer. She’d been trying to save money. She sold her wedding ring and placed the cash devotedly into her jewelry box. She was as lonely as her son had been. No friends. She was far away from courthouses and Cota kids and little girl prostitutes with wild, angry hearts.
The charges followed Duane around for a long time. Nobody wanted to buy or sell to him anymore. He was marked. He couldn’t get financial aid. Colleges didn’t want him. Businesses with benefits wouldn’t hire him. He got back on at his fast-food job. But the court system was vicious and tricky. Once he was in, he was in—for life. His schedule became one hearing after another. Sentencing, biding time, waiting around in courtrooms—the horrible, stuffy, nervousness of those places. Everyone was strained. Everyone was pissed. All the men in suits were tired of dealing with people like him. He was just another face—another number. He got yanked around. Court dates changed at the last minute. It took longer than expected. He had no choice. He waited. His fast-food job became a behind-the-scenes thing. He had to take too much time off work. His boss lost patience. People talked. He got fired.
Duane was seventeen when he started hearing voices. Maybe the pressure finally got to him. Or maybe it was going to happen anyway. Either way, he stopped going to his court dates. He ate nothing but soft, raw vegetables from the food bank. He didn’t make a lot of sense when he talked. He found God, spoke in tongues, went into trances, and quit bathing. He saw things.
He and Kat got evicted. They visited his mama who cried. They got a ride back in from the hills with two hunters who dropped them off downtown near the train tracks. Kat found some kids she knew buying cheap wine at the grocery store. She and Duane followed them home.
Duane filled a coffee cup with gasoline and lit it on fire. He woke the kids sleeping in the cheaply rented building with a spoken premonition. The flames dripped down to the floor. They crawled across the thirty-year-old carpet. Duane rambled and gestured violently. “I know God is real!”
There was a deep blackness to the night. The flames reflected in his eyeballs and metal facial piercings. The Cota kids were excited and laughing. They crawled out of their cocoons of thin blankets and clothing. They rose from their mattresses, stood up from couches, emerged from the floor. None of them had to go to work in the morning. There were no jobs. They laughed because Duane was back. The building they lived in was burning to the ground. The destruction of the old I.W.A. meetinghouse would barely be noticed. The mural of the union seal on the side was now curled and blistered paint. The tweaker neighbors in the Section 8 housing across the street were busy with their own tasks behind thin, cheap walls. The Cota kids knew they were young and fucked over. Their lives would happen without anyone noticing. They laughed and laughed. Nothing had ever been so funny. They danced in the street and watched the fire blast out windows—send licks of orange-tinted radiance into the sky.
Duane stayed downtown on random couches after that. His brain flew away like a tired bird. He started to jog. He jogged in parks and on hard pavement. He jogged during the day, and he jogged at night. Same old shoes. His hair grew into long, natural curls. A broad, swaying beard sprung from his face. His forehead and eyes peeked out from the shaggy mane. His clothes grew tattered and faded. His body ate itself—the exercise waned his strength. His frame formed even thinner lines. His eyes hollowed, and his bones were wire.
Duane was filled with a useless mixture so volatile it seethed through his pores and into the foggy David night. He proved that the news reporters and tourists and college students and police officers were right. We were just as bad as bad could be. For no reason. His actions were exhaled cigarette smoke being swept into a vent. His life was an empty milk carton rotting—a CD too scratched to play. His heart turned into a discarded coffee cup harboring enamel blistered from flames—smelling strongly of gasoline—so black from the soot left by fire no one could tell what it used to be.