Michael Harvey - We All Fall Down

Marcus Robinson circled through Garfield Park before heading home. His ribs were sore, and the police car had banged up the side of his hip, but Marcus was moving all right. He found a seat on a bench near the conservatory and watched as a white woman wearing a pink-and-blue hat dragged a boy and a girl toward a sign for the azalea and hydrangea exhibit. The boy caught Marcus’s eye as they went past and looked away. Good idea. Marcus pulled out his notebook and pencils. He’d been inside the conservatory once, but it was hot and he’d felt eyes on him the whole time. So he’d started sitting outside, drawing the gardens. Bursts of color in the spring and summer. Long rectangles of grass and dead squares of dirt in the fall. Heavy snow covering white statues in the winter. His own private art gallery.

Today, however, Marcus ignored the beauty around him and focused on the ugly within. A few harsh strokes with his pencil and the cop’s face surfaced-lips split, lower body dissolving into cracks between black paving stones. Bugs, thick ones, covered the cop’s upper body. A snake, rising from the earth, wrapped its heavy coils around his legs. The cop’s mouth hollowed into a silent scream; his hands reached up off the page. Marcus’s pencil scratched to a halt. He looked at the image and turned it sideways. Then he flipped the notebook shut.

The gardens were quiet. Sunlight bled through a gray gauze of clouds. Someone was inside the conservatory, washing the large windows with a long-handled mop. A young white woman came around a turn in the walking path. She was heavy with child and moved her stomach with her hands as she found a seat on the bench.

“What you doing?” she said.

“Nothing.” Marcus opened his notebook and began to draw again. The woman was watching his hands. She was a doper, drifting between gangs on the West Side, spending some fool’s money when he let her, turning out on the street when she got kicked to the curb. Marcus had heard about her. Heard she was going to sell the baby once it was born.

“What you drawing?” the woman said, eyes creeping across the small space between them.

“Nothing.”

“I know you?”

He looked. A thin sweater stretched over her belly, and she had a yellow-and-red rose carved into her neck.

“No.”

“You with the Fours?”

Marcus shook his head and flattened his eyes back onto the notebook. The boy felt a slow, tight churn in his stomach and slashed with the pencil. She inched closer, her breathing labored with the effort.

“You want a suck?”

He looked up again. She was shivering, but not from the chill. Marcus hated dopers. And hated the baby inside her.

“No.”

“Give you a suck if you want it.” Her eyes directed him to a row of threadbare rosebushes.

Marcus thought about a knife. Then he flipped his notebook shut and got up from the bench.

“Maybe you don’t like pussy?” The woman’s laugh wormed a little farther into his brain. Marcus limped down the path. After a few yards, his hip loosened, and he began to jog.

Home was an abandoned building on a hacked-off piece of street just west of Garfield. Marcus didn’t know the name of the street, but they’d been there three months. Marcus liked it, mostly because the buildings on either side were empty. Really empty. The Fours had cleaned them out and kept them that way. Marcus’s older brother, James, told him it was because that was where they stashed money and product. Marcus didn’t care. It was quiet. And quiet was good.

He ducked through the crosshatch of boards nailed up across a door and stepped into a large room sectioned off by sheets and crooked shadows. A couple of dope heads dozed against a wall streaked in dirty sunlight. Another drank from a bottle of malt and shivered in his blanket. A third held his fingers to his lips and studied the boy as he passed. One of the bedsheets moved, and a twelve-year-old named Twist stuck his head out. He’d been on the corner when the cop came by.

“Marcus, you get away?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?”

Twist smiled, and Marcus slapped his hand.

“I’m going down to the shop,” Twist said. “You want somethin’?”

“I’m good.”

“Cecil be looking for you.”

Another bedsheet moved. Cecil stepped out. James was beside him.

“Where the fuck you been?” Cecil was the lieutenant for their block. Marcus fucked up, it came down on Cecil. Least that’s how Cecil played it.

“Popo grabbed me.”

“They talk to you?”

Marcus nodded. Cecil stepped closer. He wore his hair in long dreads with white beads that clicked when he shook his head. “Well, what the motherfucker want?”

“Need to take it to the boss.”

Cecil crashed a fist into the side of Marcus’s face. The dopers perked up. Something to watch.

“You tell me, nigger.”

Marcus picked himself up off the floor and spit a touch of blood out of his mouth. He’d been hit by Cecil before. Boy just couldn’t punch, but there was no percentage in letting him know.

“Tell him,” James said, eyes pleading with Marcus not to fuck with things. Marcus considered Cecil, opening and closing his fists. Marcus hoped the nigger enjoyed today, ’cuz someday Marcus was going to shoot him in the head. And that was no joke.

“Po said Korean’s out. We gonna be dealing with him now.”

Cecil hit him again, open hand this time. “Sorry-ass fool. What kind of shit you talking?”

“That’s what he say. Korean’s last shipment comes in today. After that, he gone. Popo said he wasn’t worried ’bout no Korean muscle.”

Cecil looked at James, who looked at Marcus and shook his head. Cecil grabbed Marcus by the arm and dragged him across the floor.

“We goin’ to see Ray Ray.”

Ray Ray Sampson didn’t talk much. Didn’t have to. He came up a shooter. Still had the swagger. And brains to go with it. They found him in a stash house a block and a half from where Marcus lived. Ray Ray was sitting on a green-and-white couch, surrounded by three men with guns. Marcus didn’t know two of them. The third was a lean shooter with eyes like coals named Jace. Ray Ray was slipping rubber bands around stacks of cash as he spoke.

“What is it?”

Cecil pushed Marcus forward. “Nigger got something to tell you.”

Ray Ray cocked his head and looked at Marcus, who didn’t look away.

“What’s your name, Little Man?”

“Marcus.”

Ray Ray nodded at James. “And you?”

“James Robinson. Marcus is my brother.”

Ray Ray tossed a packet of cash on top of a pile on the table. “You a baller?”

James nodded. He was sixteen and already well over six feet.

“Where you play?”

“Orr.”

“Shit.” Ray Ray looked around. His men laughed. All except Jace, who unwrapped a stick of gum, folded it up, and put it in his mouth.

“You gonna play college?” Ray Ray said.

James was scared. Like he always was anytime he wasn’t playing ball. Marcus could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he mouthed the word “DePaul.”

“He gettin’ a scholarship,” Marcus said, and felt the weight as the room turned.

“How old are you?” Ray Ray said.

“Thirteen,” Marcus said.

“You look older.” Ray Ray smiled at the lie. Marcus smiled at the smile. His eyes moved to the black gun on the table. Ray Ray picked it up.

“Ever handle one of these?”

Marcus shook his head. His own lie. Ray Ray laid the gun back down, butt facing toward Marcus.

“Pick it up, child. Get a feel.”

Marcus took up the gun. The weight of it caused his hand to drop. Cecil laughed.

“Sorry-ass nigger can’t hold a fucking gat.”