View current page
...more recent posts
New Kid On Block
I made eye contact with a Rocheblave area street kid at 6:30 a.m. because I was going for coffee and he was riding his bike right past my driveway as I put the key in the door of the truck. I double took him and burned him hard on the second take because he looked so familiar. I knew right off that he wasn't who I thought he was because the kid I was thinking of is hiding from some people who want to kill him. People around here these days say I want to kill you not as a figure of speech but as a literal promise. I guess civilization is not a static process.
But I'd already committed with this new kid, eye contact almost as powerful as a love poem to some people. I was in the truck when he wheeled up next to me. I rolled down the window and he said, "you straight?" Now some of you are going to think this is the beginning of a sexual come on but things have changed over the years and "you straight?" doesn't have sexual connotation anymore. It means, more or less, are you cool? Which means, more or less, do you have everything you need?
I said, "I'm good," which of course doesn't mean that I am but more or less means I am ok, or, I have everything I need, or want.
The kid asked me some personal questions about my drug habits and the truth is, other than alcohol, I haven't really messed with drugs for the last several months. But when he asked me if I smoke I just forgot, as I so often do, how handy it is to use the truth as a way to lie to people, and I blurted out, "sure." He told me what he could do for me but I just can't seem to find the interest for any of that right now, so I said, "no man, but thanks for asking. If I change my mind I'll look for you." He rolled by, down the street, a few days later and I can't help looking at him because he reminds me so much of this one person, or possibly two people. I tell him I have everything I need, which seems like a lie (I'm getting the hang of it now) but might be the truth. I want to tell him to be a good boy, go to church, study hard, respect his elders, look both ways before crossing, eat vegetables, and drink plenty of water, but I don't because what I want to do and what I end up doing don't always dovetail. He persists with the hard sell but I'm a busy man, a busy, busy man walking up my steps. I just shake my head and go inside.
Energetic Black Dog
More people wounded in Central City crossfire Friday, 14-year-old girl and her 51-year-old mother. And a dude in eastern NO answered the knocking of a front door and then closed it when he saw the assault rifle pointing at him. The door was insufficient to the task of saving his life, he died, and a woman in the back of the house was treated at the scene for a mild facial abrasion, otherwise known as a stray bullet wound to the head. (As of 5 p.m. Sat., 7 people have been shot in the city this weekend, two fatally, the second death a half dozen blocks from here at Bienville and Gayosa, 15-year-old boy shot dead.)
A belligerent man on the bayou yelled out at me did I have a cigarette. I just shook my head and went back to reading the morning paper's assessment of Rumsfeld. It was nice of him to warn us that there are worse images to come, even though imagining thus has become more or less the default for many of us.
An energetic black dog jumped in the bayou and retrieved a yellow tennis ball.
Over the ten years of occasional step sitting by that Dumaine bridge over the bayou there is only one person I recognize from year to year and to her I think I've only said hello once. I don't blame either one of us for our reticence. I wonder if seeing her today will be a last?
I replaced another window at the Dumaine house today. Saw an old pal, like me a former resident of the block. He was doing some work on a rental unit across the street. He shared his cold sugary juice drink with me. He told me something that I guess I already knew but had put aside so as not to feel everything at once. Sometimes I wish I could tell you the whole story but don't count on that ever happening.
We humans are so resilient and optimistic. Hoping for good things to happen even as all around us there is ample evidence to suggest those good things will never happen without a bucketful of bad to balance the scale. You get a raise, a man across town steps in dogshit; God grants you peace and understanding, four students get shot in Maryland; boogie down all day at Jazzfest, get shot in the head afterwards.
Sometimes the good and bad is such a stew you don't know whether to stir it, serve it, spit in it, or throw it out. Carol Robinson of Newhouse News Service writes, "Virgil Lamar Ware, 13, was reinterred in Birmingham this week with all the honor of a dignitary--15 white stretch limousines stood not far from his custom-designed bronzed grave ledger. A high school choir gathered on a pretty hillside to sing for him."
He was dug up and moved to a place of respect after 41 years in an unmarked grave in a makeshift cemetery, where he had rested patiently as a forgotten victim of Deep South atrocity.
"Virgil was the sixth person killed in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963, following the bombing deaths of the four girls (at the 16th Street Baptist Church) and the slaying of Johnnie Robinson, who was shot by police after he threw rocks to protest the church bombing."
That day Virgil rode on the handle bars of his brother's bicycle, around five p.m., oblivious to the day's previous murders. Two 16-year-old Eagle Scouts riding double on a red motorcycle with confederate flag decals, inspired and fired up from the segregationist rally they had just attended, came upon Virgil and his brother and fired twice a .22 caliber pistol, hitting Virgil once in the head and once in the chest. He fell off the bike, said a few parting words to brother James, and died.
The two Eagle Scouts, Larry Joe Sims and Michael Lee Farley, were punished. Sims was convicted of manslaughter and Farley pleaded guilty to second degree manslaughter. They both received the same sentence. Seven months in county jail. With probation. Which was then lifted the next year so they could attend college.