LITMIR.BIZ

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is what it’s gonna look like.” He hovered the handle bars so they were lower than the top of the front tire.

      “That’s fuckin’ dope,” Ryan said.

      I sat on the bed and picked up a magazine beside me.

      “Damn, that’s bad ass,” I remarked and flipped through the pages.

      “Yeah, it’s big out in Cali,” Angel replied as he sat next to me.

      “Man, I gotta make a bike!” I said.

      “You’re gonna build one, huh?” Angel asked, grinning.

      “I got to, man!” I bugged my eyes and we both giggled.

      Angel let me borrow a magazine, so I brought it home and spent all night flipping through it completely entranced.

      A few days later, they tore the fort down. A couple bums’d moved in overnight and freaked the shit out of some early rising kindergartener from the block. Nothing nasty, but the cops got called, and a couple rookie firemen from the firehouse across Clark walked over with an axe and a mallet and spent the warm summer morning hacking it to pieces. By eleven, a swarm of kids stood around them fussing, but the firemen were smart enough to placate to them by letting a few of the bigger kids have a go with the axe. Then, just about the whole of Krazy Crew helped clean up the mess, throwing the mounds of busted wood into the dumpster where it’d come from. It didn’t matter much to Angel and Ryan and me. We had another project on our minds—lowrider bicycles. Those bikes would be our obsession for many years to come.

      CHAPTER 7

      BLACK AND WHITE

      COPS ENDED UP BUSTING MICKEY on a gun charge. Later that same night, someone banged hard on our front door. It was Officer O’Riley, a tubby cop in his forties that knew Dad from his repo man days. Sometimes, warrants are needed when repossessing a vehicle, and this one time, a reposessee came out shooting. Dad and O’Riley ducked behind the squad car and took fire. Dad pulls out his .45 Magnum, O’Riley unholsters his .9 millimeter, and they both come up blazing. The reposessee survived, but he was full of holes when they got him to the emergency room.

      O’Riley hadn’t come to the house to reminisce about their glory days dodging bullets. I listened from my bedroom. Silent, I strained to hear.

      “I’m sorry, Pat,” O’Riley said in a grim voice. “They said they were coming for him tonight, so I told ’em I’d go along, too, just to make sure it went as easy as it could on the family.”

      “Well, I just don’t understand. Is he being charged with something?” the old man asked, disgusted.

      “No, but we’ve got to bring in all the kids that’ve been running with the Reid boy,” O’Riley replied. “Those boys have gotten themselves quite a reputation around the neighborhood, and I hate to tell you this, Pat, but Junior is no exception.”

      “Patrick, get up here!” Dad roared.

      I got up and went to Rich’s door. He was just laying on his back in bed, listening.

      “What’s going on?” I asked.

      “Nothing, Joe. Don’t worry about it. Go back to bed.”

      I went to my room and sat on my bed. A few moments later, Lil Pat walked up the basement stairs and down the hall to the front door. There was a sudden, bursting roar and the sounds of a tussle.

      “What the fuck you been doing?” Dad yelled.

      Lil Pat cried out in pain. The tussle continued, then Officer O’Riley’s voice chimed in. “Now… Now, Pat, we can’t let you do this here!” Then handcuffs crunched. Another smack rang out. “Now that’s enough, Pat, or we’ll be bringing ya in wit’ him!” Officer O’Riley shouted.

      “You know what? All three of you get the fuck out of my house!” Dad roared. “And you, you piece of shit. When you get back, your shit’ll be out on the sidewalk!”

      The door slammed shut. Dad rumbled downstairs and tore apart Lil Pat’s room. He carried stuff up from the basement and hefted boxes and drawers out the front door, sending them tumbling down the steps. He even lobbed the small black-and-white TV off the porch, and it crashed to the sidewalk and tumbled end-over-end. Glass sprayed the concrete. Ma pleaded with him to stop but he wouldn’t. Finally, the light-blue squad car pulled away.

      I laid on my bed and sobbed quietly, staring up at the ceiling. The light from the street bled in and cast an orange haze across it.

      “I saw that one coming. Fucking junkie,” Rich sneered. He stood at my doorway. “Go to sleep, Joey. Don’t go crying for that piece of shit.”

      They questioned Lil Pat, but they couldn’t get anything to stick on him. He was in his early twenties by then, and he’d sunk more and more by the day. He even wore long-sleeved shirts on hot days. Rumors spread around the neighborhood. China white had loomed over Edgewater for years by then. Heroin is one of those drugs that’s there to stay once it sets in a neighborhood. It was right under our noses. This Greek family, the Genopolises, sold quietly for years before they ever got busted. They lived on Ravenswood Ave. across from the cemetery. Lil Pat could walk less than a block and score. It was too close and too easy. He ended up in the basement apartment across the alley.

      I made my walk that Sunday, and Lil Pat pulled up on me just as I finished. He looked sick. He had large, droopy, purplish-brown bags under both eyes, and he trembled incessantly. Ryan was already in the back seat of the Lincoln. He looked ill, too. His face was all pale and awestruck. Not only was his father in prison, but now his only uncle was locked up, too.

      “Sorry about Mickey,” I said as we pulled off from the curb.

      “It’s OK, man,” Ryan replied. “Thanks.” His eyes glistened.

      “Hey, Mickey’ll be out in no time,” Lil Pat said with a low crackle in his voice. I almost didn’t recognize it. “Plus, you got Uncle Patty right here, anyways... OK?” Lil Pat’s bloodshot eyes strained in the rearview mirror.

      “OK,” Ryan muttered weakly. He looked out the window.

      We went to Montrose Beach. We didn’t feel like skipping rocks too much that day. Lil Pat had a few Old Styles, but he could barely drink ’em because of the tremors in his hands. He gave the last two to us.

      “You know I love you boys, right?” Lil Pat asked as he looked out across the lake at the gray horizon. “You don’t ever forget that, OK?”

      “OK, Pat,” we said in unison.

      “No matter what happens, OK?”

      Lil Pat turned and looked at me. I nodded.

      Even though I was just ten, I still knew what was happening. He was sick. It didn’t matter what he was sick with. I was losing my brother.

      •

      BLAKE WAS THE GOOD SON. The smart son. The athlete. The one who was gonna get himself out of the neighborhood, and he did. Got all the way to Des Moines, Iowa—Drake University—on a five thousand dollar athletic scholarship. But all it really was was free room and board. Back then, Drake cost about 15K per year, and my parents almost had to take out a second mortgage to keep him in classes. Ma took on another eight kids babysitting, and Dad worked his way up to Superintendent for McQue Construction. Blake was a good high school wide receiver but nowhere near fast enough to be scouted by a Division I school. Drake was Division I-AA, but at the time, they happened to be on an eight-year suspension due to a recruiting scandal. As part of that suspension, they were ejected from their conference and forced to function as a Division III school. This opened the door for Blake. His giant ego most likely propelled him toward Drake for posterity’s sake, as he’d always be able to say, ‘I played for Drake, a DI-AA school,’ when in reality, he probably couldn’t have been a towel boy for Drake without the suspension in effect. Blake was like that though—hyper-interested in providing a façade rather than substance. And that attitude was contagious. Everyone revered him, myself

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