“Not really,” I said.
I was too busy watching the storefronts glide by as I hoped to recognize at
least a few names among the businesses.
There were none that I remembered.
Bouncer scrunched down in his seat and looked behind us.
“It’s an older woman
wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, “ he said.
“That’s nice, I
replied,” but I wasn’t really listening.
Where the hell was that ice cream shop we used to go to after school
when I was a sophomore?
At the top of the
hill, we turned left on Eagle Street and that's when I began to realize the Cornhill before my eyes in no way
resembled the Cornhill I remembered.
Half of the homes were gone, burned down I had heard, some by residents
and some by the city.
How does that happen?
An entire section of the city that once housed working men and their families,
church goers for the most part who kept regular hours, who took vacations in
the summer, bought books for their kids as well as movie tickets and tried to
raise them to be responsible adults. How did it all disappear, to be replaced
by poor families, many of whom accepted social welfare benefits as a right
rather than a loan? What rights did the current residents possess that men and
woman of our parents’ generation did not have?
What society or government had allowed it to happen? And why?
We stopped the car on Steuben Street in front of
my grandfather's small bungalow. The man
had died there in 1948 and Grandma came to live with us. A black man sat on the
front porch. I saw him reach his hand under his jacket and leave it there as
the two of us got out of the car.
"Hi, we're
religious brothers," I said unnecessarily, since we were wearing our
robes. "We stopped to look around. My grandfather lived in your house."
I waved to indicate the house.
The man on the porch
said nothing, but continued to look from one to the other of us.
"Many years
ago," I continued. "They lived here back in the 1940's. And Thirties
and Twenties ...."
No response came from
the porch. I looked up and down the street
and wondered when was the last time it was filled at mid day with children
playing. Girls drawing hopscotch
diagrams on sidewalks and boys darting in and out of driveways and down the
sidewalks on their bikes.
The man finally spoke. "What do you want?”
Under his breath
Bouncer said, “Gun, Jesse.”
"Uh huh,” I
answered. Then louder to the man on the
porch, “Nothing, Thank You." I was watching where the man’s hand had
disappeared under his jacket and I didn't plan to take my eyes off that spot.
"Well,
Thanks," I said. “We’ll be going now.”
It was then I heard
the tractor trailer engine roar to life down the street, and an air horn begin
to blast.
“Take this with you!”
screamed the man on the porch. I could see something in his hand glinting in
the sunlight that I assumed was a gun.
Bouncer and I stood frozen as the truck pulled up behind us.
The man on the porch got
up and swung his arm around behind him as if he was winding up for the greatest
baseball pitch of his life. When his arm
came down he caught his gun hand with the other and stood in the classic firing
pose, slightly crouched, arms extended out in front of him, aiming at us.
A terrible sadness
crept over me as I watched the agent of my destruction prepare my death and I
could not tear my eyes away. Behind me air exploded out of the brake cylinders
and the pads slammed down inside the wheels.
Bouncer stood slightly ahead of me and I could see he had turned to look
at the truck.
“Holy Shit,” was all
he said.
The man on the porch
fired off three shots in quick succession and I heard at least one of them
strike metal behind me.
“Oh, Jesus, Jesus,”
Bouncer was murmuring. We were both
still standing and I didn’t think either of us was hit. The man on the porch
turned and ran in the front door of the house.
The sound of a truck
door slamming behind me brought me back to earth. The tractor trailer crunched
into first gear as I turned around and watched it slowly begin to move away
down the street.
“Did you see her? Is she OK?”
I asked Bouncer.
“Was it a woman?” he asked.
“What did you see,
Bouncer?” I asked as I grabbed his arm and turned him toward
me.
“I don’t know,” was
his reply.
