approached Ridge, you saw a long line of leather coat-clad city police officers with their powder-blue chests peeking out near their collars. The cops’d taken one of the southwest-bound lanes and surrounded a parade of over a hundred black teenagers. Traffic skirted slowly around them. An awestruck young mother eked past in a brown four-door Buick. Her young boys’ faces were glued to the window in back.
At first, you could only see the black boys’ faces, which were stoic and resolved. Their feet slipped on the thin films of ice. They were twisted at the waist with their arms locked elbow-in-elbow to create an intertwined shield of bodies. A black kid with a fuzzy gray skull cap and a black quarter-length pea coat bugged his eyes out at the faction of white hoodlums across the street who stalked them from across the way. They were just a few feet up the sidewalk from you. The black boy muttered, “Mothafuckas,” quietly.
Then, you saw the girls inside the arm chain. One thick-boned, dark-skinned girl pressed her school books tightly to her chest. Her full lips pursed. Her eyes darted from her snow boots across Ridge to the gang of white thugs that bellowed cat calls at her. All the white hoods were clad in tight jeans and tan construction boots. Their hair was either buzz-short or slicked back tightly to their scalps. One of them was a head taller than the rest. His hair was swirled back in a ducktail, and his dark-brown jean coat read “T.J.O.” in black, block-shaped letters high across the back. He had a jagged, angular face and wild eyes. His large Adam’s apple yo-yoed along his narrow throat as he cackled. You knew him as little Kellas. You’d kicked his ass a hundred times while he was growing up, and you got him hired on as a laborer at a high-rise job a few months back when he dropped out of school. He showed up until the first payday, cashed the check, and vanished. He was like another little brother to you.
Kellas craned his head back like a rooster. His scratchy voice careened over the others: “Come on, baby! Don’t be shy! Bring that big, nasty fanny on over an’ sit it down right here.” He yanked at the crotch of his black jeans, and the gang erupted into laughter. A smirk slithered across the lips of a young, pudgy copper in an ankle-length trench coat. The cop looked down. His polished black boots stomped atop the salt-faded, yellow dotted line while his maple billy club swung in circles from the strap around his wrist.
You followed behind this group of rambling roughnecks, keeping your distance. Your wide hands flexed and gesticulated with the burning sensation there in your palms that always appeared when you itched to give somebody a smack—the kind of slap that leaves the recipient snoring on the sidewalk. The teen ran up to Kellas and yanked at his coat sleeve, then pointed back at you. Kellas turned and grinned maniacally. He raised his palm towards the marching students. His eyebrows hiked upward. You grimaced and your face flushed red.
“Who’s dat?” someone asked.
“Dat’s the leader of Bryn Mawr,” Kellas replied.
You walked on—your jutting chin tucked into your throat. The procession reached the three-street intersection at Bryn Mawr, Broadway, and Ridge. The white gang halted at the sharp peninsula where Ridge and Bryn Mawr touch. There were fifty or more now. They spilt out into the streets. A short, stout guy with acne bubbled across his cheeks stumbled out into the street and puffed his chest out.
“WHAT’D MARTIN LUTHER KING EVER DO FOR ME?” he yelled, his vicious tone piercing the bedlam.
You walked up beside Kellas, but he didn’t turn. He kept his gaze on the mob of black and blue that encompassed the high-schoolers.
“You told me there was gonna be a fight,” you said, baring your teeth. “They look like they just want to go home.”
“And we’re seeing ’em off,” Kellas replied, smiling. Then, he cupped his hands around his mouth, leaned back, and rocked up on his tip-toes to yell, “GOOD RIDDENS, NIGGERS!” The wind whirled and frayed his greasy, dark-brown hair, and it wimpled up in thin strands like tentacles.
The procession stopped traffic in all directions. The honks of car horns rose in a steady, long, mournful chorus that encircled the procession in the melodic agony of the city. The police and students crossed Broadway—a slow, sad parade. They sifted up toward the Bryn Mawr “L” stop.
You watched them for a while. Thin trails of steam rose from their mouths and nostrils and accumulated and congealed into one misty haze above the procession. The hoods roared at your sides. Their laughter felt like pinpricks in your earlobes.
“Fuck this,” you spat. You turned away down Bryn Mawr and walked home.
PART ONE
CHILDHOOD
CHAPTER 1
THE LAST EXIT ON LAKESHORE
IT BEGAN AT THE CARNIVAL.
Those magic nights—the whole of St. Greg’s Parish strolling over from the bungalows and two flats and apartments mix-matched throughout the neighborhood. There were the games, the shouts of the carnies, the swirling thunder of the Tilt-A-Whirl, lights flashing, pulsing; the colors of yellow, red, green, and blue exploding like fireworks against the walls of the church; the old nunnery; the high school; and the grammar school that encircled it all like a towering red-brick fortress. The structures trapped the cacophonous noises so they echoed with booms that bounced from wall to wall. And there was the crying joy of the children and the wild in their eyes and the running and no knowledge of anything else.
The carnival sat on top of the school parking lot. The exits were the alley to the east behind the priest’s house, the tunnel that cut through the school and led out onto Bryn Mawr, and the narrow opening between the church and the nunnery.
I was nine years old and hanging out amongst the big metal rides near the beer tent with some kids from the block. Lil Pat was drinking with the other hoods in the beer garden behind the rectory—something he’d been doing for years even though almost none of them were of age. Father McHale loomed near them in his black priest suit. Beads of sweat rolled down his huge bald head. He kept an uneasy eye on the youngsters guzzling back beers from clear plastic cups.
Lil Pat was the tallest of ’em. His shoulders were set close, and only his profile revealed his large, low-hung pot-belly. They were somewhere between greasers, cholos, and jocks. Some wore shirts with sports logos, or sweatpants and Dago T’s, and some wore oil-stained Dickies. Some had buzzed heads, and others had slicked back hair with the sides almost shaved. Their voices rose and fell in that squeaky Chicago slang. They were a dying breed. The great white flight was siphoning their numbers. The neighborhood was changing.
“Aye, Joey,” Lil Pat yelled. “C’mere,” he said, waving his hairy knuckled hand. He’d walked up to an older woman and a redheaded kid my age. I jogged over.
“Hey, did you ever meet Ryan?” Lil Pat asked.
I shook my head no.
“Well, he’s Mickey’s nephew,” he said, nodding towards where Mickey stood. Mickey’s stout build poured out of his Dago T. His face flexed as he spoke to the hood next to him.
I looked at the kid in front of me—Ryan. He was like a mini-Mickey. His hair was in a short buzz cut, and he had the same pit bull face, but softer, rounder, and covered with a spattering of dark-brown freckles. He wore old, grayed Adidas with thick blue laces that made me wonder if he was very poor.
“Well, shake hands or somethin’. Jesus,” Lil Pat said, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. “What’s wrong wit you?” He slid his palm the wrong way through my slicked back hair, so I had to fix it.
“What’s
