Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

“Just go,” she said.

Myles looked at Holmes, and Holmes looked up and down the street, his eyes wide and glassy.

“All right,” Myles said.

She was already turning to go when Myles leaned in to kiss her. In retrospect, it was an innocent enough thing to do. A kiss goodbye, as was their habit. But at the time it had felt like a strange moment for romance, and McGee was unprepared.

She put her hand to his chest. “Go,” she said.

She could see he was hurt, not so much because she’d refused him but because of the way she’d looked at him — past him, really — at the scene unfolding at his back. She’d made him feel stupid.

And the worst part, when she thought about this moment later, was realizing that was how she’d wanted him to feel. She’d liked leading him through the streets that day, explaining what was happening. She’d liked the way he followed her, the way he listened, the way he looked up to her. Before Myles and Holmes, she’d felt like a soldier, like someone possessing a powerful secret, even though in fact what she knew of blockades was entirely theoretical. She’d never been gassed or pepper-sprayed or shot with rubber bullets. She’d never even been arrested.

McGee left them there. A block away she got caught up in a crowd retreating before a line of riot cops. There was a fog of gas and a ripple of explosions, and she struggled to stay on her feet as people around her fell and were trampled. A canister went off by a storefront a few yards away, and the last thing she saw before the gas enveloped her was the mouth of an alley. She staggered in, crumbling against the wall, her hands involuntarily pulling at her face. Her eyes had turned to water.

Someone said, “I’ve got you,” and McGee felt hands on her hands. She kicked toward the sound of the voice.

“It’s me,” the voice said. Over the bullhorns and sirens she recognized April. McGee allowed herself to be lifted.

They were lucky. There was a building under renovation farther down the alley. April was able to pry open the plywood door. Once inside, McGee lowered herself onto a pile of broken cinder blocks.

A helicopter flew overhead, chopped into the distance, then returned and hovered there.

Lie down on your stomach with your hands behind your head.

April came back with a wet cloth. Beneath a hole in the roof on the second floor, she’d found a rusted drum full of rainwater.

It took nearly half an hour before the blurs became more concrete. After forty-five minutes, McGee could identify the features of April’s face. She was still having trouble making out their surroundings, but it appeared they were alone.

“Where’s Inez? Kirsten?”

April gestured vaguely toward the street. “What about Myles and Holmes?”

“They’re okay,” McGee said, hoping it was true.

She’d fucked up. Not just with Myles, with everything. All those people with goggles and bandannas had seen this coming, but she’d treated it like a field trip.

April sat down with her against the wall. It was nearly December. The building was unheated, and many of the windows were missing. Back home they would’ve been freezing. Here it felt more like fall than winter. But as the adrenaline left her, McGee felt a chill settling in.

“What do we do now?” April said.

The involuntary tears had drained McGee dry.

“I don’t know either,” April said.

In the silence that followed, McGee fell asleep.

By dusk, the helicopters and bullhorns had drifted away. The city was almost silent when McGee woke up and joined April at the window. April had enlarged a hole between the boards. She was keeping an eye on the passing patrols. Later they would learn the National Guard had been called in. A curfew was in effect.

“I don’t understand,” April said. “It was a peaceful protest.”

McGee’s eyes had finally stopped stinging. “That’s not something they know how to win.”

They waited until dark to crawl back out into the alley. Once they reached the street, they walked single file, clinging to the buildings, to the shadows. Twice they hit roadblocks that forced them to turn back and change directions.

Despite the curfew, there were pockets of people coming and going. Someone had thrown a trash can through the window of a bank. A Dumpster had been pushed into the street and set on fire. There were scrawls here and there of rushed graffiti. The curbs were lined with trash and tear gas canisters.

They headed west. Outside a convenience store, McGee bummed a cigarette from a woman in a rain slicker, who lit her up and quickly left. McGee and April leaned against a pair of newspaper boxes, watching helicopters sweep the streets with spotlights. McGee felt as if they’d been walking for hours. It was hard to be sure in the dark, but she thought she recognized the neighborhood.

“It’s not far,” she said. “The park.” But what were the odds that Myles and Holmes would still be waiting? She couldn’t call him. None of them yet had cell phones. Almost no one did.

April sat down next to a pyramid of windshield washer fluid. “They were arrested,” she said. “Inez and Kirsten. When I reached you in the alley, I looked back. They were getting dragged away.”

McGee flicked her butt into the parking lot, grimacing at the few feeble sparks.

“It would’ve happened either way,” April said. “They would’ve gotten me, too, if I hadn’t gone to help you.”

It had all been McGee’s idea, and she’d turned out to be the weakest one.

Myles and Holmes weren’t at the park. McGee figured they must have gone back to Kirsten’s sister’s place.

Just before dawn, McGee and April reached the house. The lights were on in the basement.

Myles was talking on the cordless, taking notes on a pad of paper. He nodded stiffly when McGee and April came in.

It seemed to take forever for Myles to finish his conversation. The whole time, he wouldn’t make eye contact. McGee couldn’t help seeing the wait as a kind of punishment.

When he finally did say goodbye and hang up the phone, McGee came forward and put her arms around him. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“We’re fine,” he said, as if he couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t be. “We’re going back out in a couple of hours.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“We’re getting everyone organized,” Myles said. “It’s going to be even bigger than yesterday.”

McGee wondered who the we was, who the everyone , how in her brief absence Myles had somehow gone from being lost to being in charge. But she could see by the way he carried himself that he preferred to pretend nothing had changed, that this was the way he’d always been. And she understood that now, and for a long time to come, this was how he’d make up for that kiss.

Myles was in no hurry to explain anything, so it was Holmes who described what had happened after they separated, how they’d been driven along a huge crowd up into Capitol Hill. The state of emergency was supposed to be only for downtown, Holmes said, but the riot cops kept coming. It was a residential neighborhood, people hanging out in bars and restaurants. It was as if they were being invaded.

“The people came out to the streets,” Holmes said. “A couple kids took over a city bus. The cops came after us with everything. Gas, sticks, grenades. We kept pushing them back. Every time they thought they’d stopped us, we came back for more.”

“I’m sorry,” McGee said. “I shouldn’t have left you.”

“It was amazing,” Myles said. “Too bad you missed it.”

Myles woke them up after just a couple of hours of sleep. He’d been making more calls. The city had gotten wind of the plans. The curfew had been swapped for a “no-protest zone” through twenty-five square blocks of downtown. Signs and leaflets were banned, and bags were getting confiscated without warrants.