Reed Coleman - Onion Street

At 8:16, an old, shit-brown Dugan’s Bakery truck, the company logo sloppily painted over, parked in front of the fix-it shop. Two guys about my age, dressed alike in woolen watch caps, army surplus jackets, and gloves, got out of the truck. The back door of the van swung open. When I felt it was safe, I moved four doorways to my right so I could get a better angle on what there was to see. I noticed that the white door to the upstairs apartments had been wedged open and that the two guys, neither of whom were familiar to me, were disappearing up the creaky stairs I’d navigated less than an hour before. For their sakes, I hoped they had nose plugs. The place stank badly enough before I’d deposited the contents of my digestive system on the second floor landing. I couldn’t imagine how bad it reeked in there now. I got a little sickly just thinking about it.

When the two of them came down a few minutes later, they were each carrying small, rope-handled, wooden crates that they loaded in the back of the truck. I couldn’t make out anything about the crates from where I stood, but they must have been heavy because the truck sat down on its rear tires. Either that or the truck’s springs were shot. Frick and Frack made two more round-trips, each time carrying similar crates as on their first foray. On their last trip, Frick had a small duffel bag slung over his right shoulder. Frack was empty-handed. Then when Frick threw the duffel bag onto the floor of the truck box, Frack went nuts.

“What the fuck are you doing, man? You wanna get us killed?”

“Fuck you,” said the guy who’d slammed down his duffel. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Then there was a third voice, a girl’s voice, one that cut through the night air like a straight razor. “Shut up! The Committee is the boss of us all, and they won’t be happy if these are damaged or if we get caught here. Now let’s go. We don’t have much time.”

When the owner of that third voice stepped out into the ambient street light, my heart caught in my throat. I recognized her. How could I not? I’d sat next to her in Romantic Poetry class three times a week during fall term. Her name was Susan Kasten. She’d said about five words to me during that time, four of which were “shut up” twice. But those were five more than she uttered aloud in the rest of the class. She was a petite, mouse-haired, plain-faced girl who struck me as the kind of person who longs for invisibility. And if it wasn’t for her cat-green eyes, she might have been able to disappear into the background. I squeezed my eyelids shut, combing my memory to recall if there was anything about Susan that would connect the girl from class with the one barking orders at Frick and Frack. Nothing came to mind. The sound of the truck door slamming shut broke my trance. I looked up to see the Dugan’s truck pulling away, coughing big clouds of exhaust as it went. I was half hoping that Susan had slammed the white door shut behind her so that there’d be no way for me to get back up to the third floor. She hadn’t. In fact, she’d left it wide open.

There was a fair amount of traffic in both directions on Coney Island Avenue when I stepped out of the shadows to cross the street. At least a minute passed before I could even make it halfway across. When I got stuck there on the double yellow lines, I looked up at the third floor windows. I got weak in the knees and lightheaded thinking about what I was going up there to do. But when I looked up, I saw orange light dancing in the windows of the bedroom where the body lay. Before I could take another step, flames completely engulfed the room. I was frozen in place. Then I remembered what Sue Kasten had said to her flunkies: “We don’t have much time.”

As my eyes shifted down one story, there were two loud explosions. The second and third floor windows blew out, showering the street below and the cars below with jagged glass shards, bits of plaster, and wooden shrapnel. The hallway coughed flames out onto the sidewalk. Some of the debris flew over my head. Some of it bit into the blacktop around my feet. More than just fire had caused that blast. Gas, maybe? Molotov cocktails? I couldn’t say. The explosion unfroze me and I ran. As I did, I kept thinking that I’d asked Lids to get me an address so I might find some answers. What I got instead were more questions wrapped in other questions. I’d worry about that later. First I had to get back to the car.

• • •

Bang!

This explosion was of a completely different, more personal nature. I guess I wasn’t paying careful enough attention to the world outside my head, because under most circumstances I would’ve seen it coming. Not only didn’t I see it coming, I wasn’t even sure what it was: a length of pipe, a baseball bat, a two-by-four? That was kind of beside the point as whatever it was knocked the wind so far out of me I felt like I would have go to the Bronx to retrieve it. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had already taken a shot across my midsection and was currently writhing on the sidewalk next to my brother’s car, the kick in my ribs was like the cherry on top of the icing on top of my indignity cake. It got even worse still when powerful hands grabbed the shoulders of my coat and flipped me over onto my back. Then those same hands twisted themselves around my collar and yanked me up onto my knees. A big man in a full ski mask stood over me, the knuckles on his fingers pinching off the blood to my brain.

“Listen ta me, ya fuckin’ amateur. Stay outta this shit or I’ll have ta really hurt ya. Ya understand, asshole? Don’t be playin’ on the big boys’ court no more. Ya understand?”

He could have repeated that question fifty times, but I was in no position to answer. I already couldn’t breathe, and he was pressing on my neck so hard I couldn’t speak. I suppose he finally figured out my answer when I kind of moved my head in a feeble nod.

“All right, you hippie piece a shit. Remember what I said. Stay outta this.”

Hippie! Me? I thought the ski mask was supposed to prevent me from seeing his face, not prevent him from seeing mine. My hair wasn’t that long. I was clean-shaven, and there wasn’t a peace sign anywhere to be found on my clothes. Anyway, if you came from my family you knew better than to think love was the answer for all the world’s ills. I might’ve even laughed at him if he wasn’t busy interfering with the bodily processes required to produce laughter. Then I felt his grip relax. Blood rushed back to my brain, and I could feel my lungs were once again in working order. But when he fully released his grip, I went crashing back down onto the cement. As I lay there like a dishrag on the frozen sidewalk, I realized the bruise on my shoulder would have new friends to keep it company.

It was early; early enough that I heard the Daily News being delivered by our apartment door; early enough so I could swipe the Post and the Times from in front of my neighbors’ doors without fear of getting caught; early enough so that my family was asleep and would remain so for a few more hours.

The stories about the fire in the morning papers failed to mention whether or not human remains were found in the debris at 1055 Coney Island Avenue. In fact, all the articles were stingy on details. No surprise there — according to the papers, the fire department hadn’t gotten the blaze under control until around midnight. That was less than seven hours ago. Oh, yeah, that was the other thing: the stories were very vague on whether it was just a fire or an explosion and a fire. The Post said one thing, the Daily News something else. Even the sacred New York Times gave it a few inches, but it didn’t exactly usurp the continuing coverage of the fire that had destroyed the Apollo 1 capsule in late January. Nor had it pushed aside coverage of Vietnam. The war was getting out of control, just like Bobby had warned me it would when we were seniors at Lincoln.