X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

Just trying to help , I said.

Help yourself is more like it , she shot back, easing a needle into my arm. Suddenly the room went all soft. My tattoos felt fuzzy. The eagle on my forearm sank deeper into my skin, its talons dragging the earth down with it.

Just when you think you’ve got nothing left to give, there’s always something more for this city to take away. Even your history. I’m back at the prison camp. Gangrene’s lingering in the air. Rotten cheese. Got to keep the flies off — otherwise, they’ll lay their eggs in my wounds. Neglected men everywhere, suffering from exposure. Fingers and feet lost to frostbite. Typhoid fever. Dysentery. My miserable comrades are dying all around me as the morning shift takes over, new nurses asking the same questions — Anthem?

What’d you do to Benny?

Carefirst?

What’d you do to my friend?

Clothes are gone. My shoes are gone. Got me in this green paper gown now.

Green paper gown. Green paper gown .

I’m in a wheelchair, rolled out into the parking lot. It’s morning. Sun’s just rising. An ambulance pulls up in front of me. I’m told to hold my colostomy bag as it drops into my lap. Feels soft inside. The guy behind the wheel’s asking for an address.

Where you want to go? You got to give me an address, pal .

Only address that’s coming to mind is Freedom House. On Belvidere.

There’s no shelter on Belvidere anymore , he says as we drive off. Shut that one down a long time ago .

The ambulance stops. Back doors fan open. I’m met with the winter sun. I can see my breath fog up before me. I see the James.

I see the river.

Richmond could’ve cared less about Benny. She was just another blip of banal city bureaucracy. They dumped her along the river — up and dumped her as far away from themselves as they could, hoping the currents would carry her the rest of the way. What happened to her must happen in that hospital all the time. Because here it is, happening to me.

The driver won’t let me keep the wheelchair. All I get is my colostomy bag. He tosses a Ziploc next to me, full of photographs. None of these faces look familiar. Can’t tell if they’re my family or not. I slip the edge of the pouch between my teeth, carrying it in my mouth as I crawl across the rocks. My green paper gown softens in the water, adhering itself to my body like a second layer of skin. The river’s cold — but before long, all feeling is gone. I know I’m moving, I know I’m on my back. I can see my arms pushing through the water. My colostomy bag must be keeping me afloat, bobbing along the surface. Everything I own is inside.

A few photographs loosen themselves from the Ziploc between my teeth, floating along the water without me. Suddenly I’m surrounded by spinning pictures, swirling over the surface, moving downstream. One of them floats up in front of me. Black-and-white. Cute little brunette smiling for the camera. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Lost her in this river, long ago. Never been able to get her back. And here’s history repeating itself again. Like getting caught in a whirlpool. Sucking me under. Looking at that photograph, bobbing through the water — I’m watching my daughter swim downriver with me, the two of us drifting along together.

That’s Richmond for you. This city’s built upon bones. What isn’t buried simply washes downriver. It’s a matter of hitting the right current. Ease myself to the southern side of the James. Keep to the right and I’ll make it.

Got to make my way back to Belle Isle.

Got to head home.

Oregon Hill

It was around the hour when the sun began to sink into the James River and the lights of downtown Richmond came on and made the city look as big and grand as it wished it could be. The air was warm and thick. It made me think of maple syrup. There was a small breeze that picked up when I pushed my good foot on the accelerator. One arm hung out the window, the other with a hand on the wheel and a smoke between the knuckles. I was driving into Oregon Hill and I wasn’t happy about it.

Denby and Reggie Baker had just moved into the neighborhood. Cheaper rent, they told me. If you happened to be meandering through on a shiny afternoon you might see why. Oregon Hill was a dirty place and it was a nasty place. It was a place where stray cats could raise families. The gaunt houses were packed together and looked like the trees out in front of them: old, tired, and resentful. The porches sagged into themselves like wet cardboard, and Confederate flags hung with no wind to give them false glory. The lawns, if they had anything growing in them at all, grew wild and unkempt. Random objects stuck out from these yards, rusted machinery that had long since ceased to operate, children’s toys. There were families here, white families, that hadn’t yet moved out into the depressing alcoholic counties beyond Richmond, and they had a hell of a chip on their shoulders. The nights were deathly quiet but there was always something moving, shadow-to-shadow, and whatever it was knew when there was someone in the neighborhood who didn’t belong. It was the feeling I had every time I paid a visit. And every time it felt like I was sneaking in.

I made a right onto China Street and parked a half a block down from where the brothers lived. I got out of my beat-up burgundy Dodge slowly, with my wrapped left foot in the air. I pulled out a pair of aluminum crutches, stood up, also very slowly, locked the door, and moved onto the sidewalk.

Many of the red dusty bricks that made the sidewalk were broken or missing and in between them grass sprouted. I tried to step quickly on my crutches without looking like I was in a hurry. Denby and Reggie might have been all right in the neighborhood initially because they were white. But it was their visitors who were going to end up getting them in trouble.

As I was coming up to the brothers’ house, I could make out two people sitting on the porch of the place next door. No light illuminated the porch and I couldn’t see their faces. Two men, from the looks of them. They sat in their chairs, smoking cigarettes, as silent as the neighborhood around them. I could tell by the direction of their heads that they were staring at me. I didn’t stare back. This wasn’t anything new. My skin couldn’t help but get that crawling feeling, a feeling that made me very aware of that same skin’s color. The two men could have been a part of the house if not for the smoke twisting into the air and the rising and falling red dots of cigarettes held by invisible hands. Behind their screen door, past the darkness, I thought I could hear something growl. It was a low growl that sounded like it came from something big. Maybe it was the house. I kept going and got to the place I meant to get to.

Denby and Reggie’s house didn’t put on much of a front. A pair of beat-up sneakers sat next to the door that had no screen and the address was missing one of its golden digits. I was coming up the three steps of the porch when the door flung open, smacking against the rail of the porch. A girl came stomping out.

It was dark so I couldn’t quite make out the hue of her eye shadow but I could tell it was Ebone and she wasn’t happy. It was all the swearing that gave it away. I’d always found it amusing to hear people with British accents swear.

Her hair was short and sleek and a golden bird shook violently under each earlobe. She wore a zebra-print tank top and black hot pants, all of this showing a lot of the dark smooth skin I had found myself admiring the one night we had gone out for drinks with some mutual friends. That night, she’d been dancing on top of a bar with a drink in each hand. Now, her heels ground into the porch wood and she came down the stairs and went right past me without any word I took as directed to myself. She headed on down the block and didn’t trip once.