Forty-three

There is no path forward.

No dream to realize.

No hope that can be offered in good faith.

Father Grabowski, through his undocumented underground, managed to move Carlos, Catalina and their son Manny across the span of the US/Canada Bridge and into the temporary shelter of a small apartment in Windsor, Ontario. A safehouse the old priest had used for others who sought better than that from which they came only to find the flame in Lady Liberty’s torch extinguished.

It felt like a strange death, sitting on my stoop, staring across the street at the empty house where Carlos, Catalina and Manny had, less than three days ago, lived.

No lights.

No sounds.

Only a cocoon of darkness insulating this house where Carlos once found refuge and hope in the arms of his wife. Where Catalina shone like a courageous and compassionate beacon. Where Manny, his eyes and smile brighter than all the stars in all of God’s galaxies, waved to me as he ventured to school and before bounding up the steps home again.

I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to Manny.

God . . .

. . . damn.

I could have easily, angrily and with all valid justification laid blame at the cloven feet of ICE and a wayward government for the loss of my friends, my neighbors.

I mostly laid blame at my own feet.

At least Carlos and his family made it to Canada: Three bodies—a Somali man, his wife and baby—were found dead today in North Dakota just shy of Emerson, Manitoba. Police suspect the family got lost on their sojourn north; chilled at night, heat exhaustion and no water during the day. Animals dragged most of the baby off into the wilderness.

Sitting on my stoop, nursing a beer, I felt as if I was looking across the street at an empty vessel that had once been filled to overflowing with the warmth of familiar voices. Now, those voice were gone. Vanished so quickly not even the chill of ghosts remained.

Carmela and Sylvia, each carrying a glass of wine, joined me on my stoop.

They joined me without greeting.

Without quiet words of consolation or sympathetic whispers.

Sylvia sat a step below me, an arm draped over my leg. Carmela sat a step above me, an arm around my shoulders. Together, we drank and stared at the empty house across the street where beloved friends once lived.

This was our velorio—our wake—where prayers settled on the tongue like ash.

For two weeks after Carlos and his family had been spirited across the Detroit River, I did light-sleep duty throughout the night and early morning ready to meet any and all fed-plated SUVs crawling down Markham. I wasn’t sure what I would have done having spotted a patrol, but I kept my Glock loaded and a nice piece of hickory by the door.

I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed there were no patrols after two weeks. Exhausted, I found myself indulging in a well-earned afternoon nap on my sofa.

Before my sofa nap I got a Skype call on my phone from Lucy.

She was wearing an oversized hoodie, her neck wrapped with two scarfs.

“You look cold,” I said.

“Oh, gee—ya think, Sherlock?” she said. “It’s sixty-three degrees up here! And that’s today’s high!”

“People miss you,” I said. “I miss you.”

“And Jimmy?”

“And Jimmy, too.”

“Sylvia and Carmela still got my shit?”

“I’m pretty sure the old girls do—”

“Good.”

She disconnected.

My wonderfully levitating nap was interrupted when my doorbell rang.

For someone to ring my doorbell indicated I needn’t interrupt my midafternoon slumber. It simply meant later I would find one of those annoying door hangers dangling from the storm door handle announcing a new lawn fertilizing service or the opportunity to get one of two dying daily newspapers at a fantastically discounted price. Maybe a copy of Watchtower announcing Jesus’s great displeasure with how I was living my life (no news there).

I decided to let the two rings of the doorbell go unanswered.

Unfortunately, there was a third, fourth and fifth ring followed by some very insistent knocking.

Shirtless and wearing only a pair of fleece Wayne State Warrior basketball shorts, I schlepped to the living room window and discretely pulled the sheers back for a peek: Parked at the curb was a black Chrysler 300 with tinted windows and chrome wheels. A black man—maybe early thirties—wearing a white track suit, white Adidas court shoes and a white Kangol bucket hat had his ear pressed against the door.

I opened the door and said, “May I help you?”

“He here?”

“‘He’ who?”

“Aw, come on, man.” The man lifted a corner of his track suit jacket revealing the handle of a .38 short-barrel. “I ain’t playin’.”

“Ooo!” I said raising my eyes from the gun to the young man’s bloodshot eyes. “Scary.”

“Fo real, niggah,” Track Suit said. “He here?”

“I haven’t the foggiest as to whom you are referring, sir,” I said. “However, I do know this: You’ve interrupted my nap and for that alone I am justified in my rights to tie your dick in the shape of a tiny giraffe and throw you into oncoming I-75 traffic.”

Just as he was about to lift his jacket again, Jimmy mounted the steps. Seeing the man in the white track suit, Jimmy froze.

“What are you doing here?” Jimmy finally said.

“Yo, hey,” Track Suit said turning and sizing Jimmy up. “Damn! Look at you! Wearin’ a tool belt’n shit—lookin’ all gainfully employed.”

“You know this guy?” I said to Jimmy.

“Yessir,” Jimmy said quietly staring at the man. “He’s my, uh—brother.”

“Cutter,” Track Suit said to me. “Tha’s what people call me on account I cut deals when I need to and flesh when I have to.” Then he turned to Jimmy and said, “You ain’t got no hug for yo big bro?”

Jimmy took a step back and said, “What do you want?”

“Oh,” the man calling himself Cutter said. “It’s like that, huh?”

“How’d you find me? What do you want?”

“Momma been shot,” Cutter said. “She at the doctor’s office. Been axin’ for yo ass.”

“I—I don’t—”

“Jimmy,” I said. “Come up for a second.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Jimmy came up to the door. I said, “I’ll drive. Give me a minute.”

“Hey, man,” Cutter said to me, “this be about family, so—”

“He is family,” Jimmy said. “He goes or I don’t.”

For a large number of Detroit’s indigent community—the homeless, beaten down and elderly—the “doctor’s office” was Detroit Receiving Hospital. In a city constantly at war with its own soul, Detroit Receiving was as close to battlefield triage as you can get: doctors and nurses running twenty-four/seven on waning hope and bad coffee.

Jimmy’s mom was in a crowded ward of the nearly dead.

Near the nurse’s station was a Detroit cop leaning against a wall, flipping through a well-worn issue of Sports Illustrated. He saw the three of us—Jimmy, his thug brother and me—emerge from the elevator, instantly assessed our threat-level, then went back to his magazine.

After fifteen minutes, Mrs. Radmon’s doctor appeared.

He was a broad-shouldered white man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair, five o’clock shadow and ruddy complexion. The name on his white coat read “Dr. Tim Seibert.”

“I know you,” Dr. Seibert said without judgment to Cutter. “Who might you gentlemen be?”

Jimmy told the doctor who he was.

I introduced myself and said I was a friend of Jimmy’s.

The doctor cut his eyes between Jimmy and Cutter. “Either of you mind my discussing your mother’s condition in front of Mr. Snow?”

“Oh, hell yes,” Cutter said.

“No,” Jimmy said glaring at his brother. “What you say, you can say to Mr. Snow.”

Cutter shrugged. “Ain’t no thang.”

“I’m going to interpret ‘ain’t no thang’ as yes, I can discuss your mother’s condition with Mr. Snow present,” Dr. Seibert said. Then he said, “There’s no way around it; she’s going to need a lot of care. The bullet passed cleanly through with minimal damage, but it’s what we found unrelated to the bullet wound that concerns us. She has what we suspect is alcoholic cardiomyopathy which is just another way of saying enlarged chambers of her heart that might eventually lead to heart failure. Complicating things even further is her history as an intravenous drug user—”

“She ain’t used in five years, man,” Cutter said.

“Five years. Fifty years. Doesn’t matter,” the doctor said. “It complicates her heart condition due to a number of collapsed veins from her intravenous drug use.”

“Just do yo damn job, mothafucka,” Cutter said taking a step into the doctor.

I started to intervene, but the doctor—apparently a veteran of too many years on the DR’s front lines—calmly looked at Cutter and said, “And I will. But you steppin’ in my square now and swear to whatever God eases and pleases you, you need to step off—you feel me?”

I was positively tickled pink by Dr. Seibert.

With Cutter shut down, the doctor said, “She’s awake—groggy, but awake. Both of you individually can have two minutes. That’s it. She needs rest. Am I understood?”

Jimmy said, “Yessir. Thank you.”

Cutter said, “Cool.”

Dr. Seibert left, presumably to check on his myriad other patients.

Jimmy went behind the curtain to see his mother. I stood guard outside the curtain.

I heard a woman’s slurred voice say, “Jimmy? Baby, tha’s you? I—you come for your momma, didn’t you, baby.”

After a silent moment, I heard Jimmy’s low, rattled voice. “I’m here to tell you don’t ever come looking for me again. Don’t send my so-called brother lookin’ for me. Maybe you gave birth to me—and I ain’t even sure about that—but you ain’t never been no momma.”

“Oh, baby—why you—why you got to be—”

Cutter took a step forward and I stepped into him.

“Can you fire a gun that’s been shoved up your chicken-and-biscuit black ass?” I said. “Frankly, I’d pay good money to see that.”

Cutter dropped back.

“You’re nothing to me,” I heard Jimmy say. “Don’t never come near me again.”

Jimmy threw the curtain aside and stormed toward the elevator.

“Show up in my neck of the woods again and Jimmy won’t have to lift a finger,” I said to Cutter, “I’ll do the killing. I will do it slow and I will do it in ways even the devil can’t imagine. So . . . I mean . . . we cool?”

I didn’t wait around for an answer.

In the car, Jimmy wept for a couple minutes then apologized.

“Nothing to apologize for,” I said. “Been kind of rough lately. For both of us.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Rough. Lucy gone. Carlos . . .”

“I know exactly what you need.”

“Ice cream?”

“Uh—no.”

“The block party tomorrow?” Jimmy guessed.

Forty minutes later, Jimmy and I were in our karate karategi—him with his blue belt, me with my fourth-degree black belt.

“Good to see you, Mr. Snow,” Kinsey Latrice—K from the Nappy Patch strip club—said.

“Job’s working out?” I said.

“Job’s workin’ out,” K said grinning.

“I heard somebody ’bout to get they butt kicked,” Brutus said, entering the upstairs dojo.

“Just stay out of the way, old man,” I said to Brutus. Then I turned to Jimmy and said, “Don’t hold back. Use what you know. Improvise. And—”

I didn’t have to opportunity to finish my thought.

Jimmy came in quick, grabbed the lapels of my karategi, shoved a boney right hip into me and flipped me.

I landed on the mat.

Hard.

Boisterous laughter from a corner of the dojo.

“Oh, God!” Jimmy said. “Mr. Snow! God, I’m sorry! I am so—”

“What?” I forced a laugh. “Like you hurt me or something?”

He’d hurt me.

“Hey!” I shouted to Brutus and K. “Go ahead and laugh! Once I’m up, I’m in everybody’s ass starting with you, old man. So y’all better start runnin’.” I held my hand up to Jimmy and quietly grunted, “Help me up, kid.”