Those of us born in the years of bounty after World War
II knew we had a different outlook than earlier
generations of Americans.Blinkered by need, they had come
of age with narrower commitments--to the glory of God, the
glee of acquisition, or the mean little business of
survival. But we took seriously the promise of the
Declaration of Independence that the birthright of America
was not merely life or liberty, but the pursuit of
happiness. Personally, as a child, I always assumed that
was the point of growing up. So I'd feel better than I did
then.
Which leaves us with the awful doomed inquiry of our
middle years, the harpy's voice that whispers in dreams,
at sunrise, at those unforeseen instants of drilling
isolation: Is this as happy as I will ever be? Do I have
the right to just a little more? Or is there nothing
better I should hope for?
-- MICHAEL FRAIN
"The Survivor's Guide,"
September 7, 1995
HARDCORE
Dawn. The air is brackish, although this place is miles
from water. The four high-rise towers hulk amid a hardened
landscape of brick, of tar and pavement broken by weeds,
of crushed Coke cups and candy wrappers, of fly-about
newspaper pages. A silvery bedding of broken glass, the
remnants of smashed bottles, glitters prettily--one more
false promise. It is a time of uncommon quiet. In the
night, there are often sounds of life at the extreme:
outcries and drunken yells, machines at volume. Sometimes
gunfire. The day brings voices, children, the many
standabouts, the species at large. Now the wind is up,
whistling in the fence links and on the bricks. At the
prospect of motion, the man walking this way looks up
abruptly, but there is only a dog huddled in a gap between
the buildings who, out of some animal instinct, has
determined, across the distance of a hundred yards, to
have no truck with him. A single used tire sits,
inexplicably, on the cracked blacktop of the play yard.
The man, Ordell, is almost thirty-six years old. He still
maintains some of his penitentiary build, buffed up, he'd
say, although he's been out again four years now. He is
dressed simply, black shirt and trousers. No gold. 'Don't
wear you no gold when you workin,' he often advises the
Unborns, the eight- and nine- and ten-year-old wannabes
who trail after him, complimenting his appearance and
offering to do him favors, when he arrives here most
afternoons. 'Hardcore,' they always goin, 'get you Co-Cola
by Ko-rea?' like he don't know they aimin to keep the
change.
This morning, Ordell Trent, gang name Hardcore, is alone.
The building he approaches, the tallest of the four which
comprise the Grace Street Projects, has come over the
years to be called by everyone 'the I.V. Power,' due
supposedly to the Roman numerals, but most suspect the
label originated with the familiar mockery of the
residents practiced by the police, who refer to the
building among themselves as the Ivory Tower. The open
structures--windows, porches, connecting walkways--are
caged in mesh of heavy gauge. Formerly, from the gangways
and balconies refuse was sometimes thrown, bricks were
tossed down on enemies as in the Middle Ages, drunks and
dopeheads stumbled to their death, and several persons
were pushed. Around three or four windows you can see the
ragged blackening marks of bygone fires and at street
level, on the bricks, in rounded letters, the initials of
Ordell's gang have been inscribed in phosphorescent colors
etched in black: "BSD." Black Saints Disciples. His set--
the branch of the gang which Ordell heads--the T-4
Rollers, is often celebrated, too, and some daring members
of Gangster Outlaws, a rival organization, have also put
their marks here, wallbanging, as it is known. Occasional
messages of personal affirmation, quickly sprayed, appear
now and then as well. "D'Ron Is Cool." "Lucifer!"
Inside, Ordell nods to security, Chuck, he named, chump
rent-a-cop from Kindle County Housing Authority, huddled
in a concrete shelter with a small window of bulletproof
glass. Chuck gettin half-a-one--fifty dollars--every month
from Ordell, and Chuck, he like to love Hardcore, man, see
him, Chuck damn well salute. In the entry, the sole
illumination is from a Pepsi machine, with a heavy
padlock. Every electrical fixture is gone, stolen to sell,
or put out by some Saint who prefers to do business in the
dark. Bare wires in twisted bunches snake from the walls.
The atmosphere is sodden with the bitter reek of hallway
filth and broken plumbing. The paint is old; the pipes,
exposed overhead, have grown rust stains and mold. The
impression is of a bunker--something built to survive the
bomb. The floor is concrete, the walls are cinder block.
Everything--everything--is marked with gang signs: the
Saints' halo, the capped '4' which represents the T-4
Rollers, and names--"D-town," "Mike-o-Mite," "Baby
Face," "Priest"--written in school markers or, more often,
smoked into the plasterboard or paint with a cigarette
lighter.
The elevator, one of them, is working again today and
Hardcore rides to 17. The first five floors of this
building are more or less deserted now, given up by folks
who found even $38.50 a month too high a price for a life
where beds had to be placed on the floors to avoid the
gunfire, where the safest sleeping was in the bathtub.
When he lets himself in, Hardcore hears the old woman's
husky breath, clotted by the deteriorations of living,
emerging from one of the two back rooms he lets her have.
Ordell has the two front rooms. Where he watches. From up
here, he can see the entire operation. Sometimes the po-
lice--'Tic-Tac,' as the Saints call the Kindle County
Municipal Police Force Tactical Unit--the ones who won't
accept Hardcore's money and a few who do, sit down there
and watch. They're wondering, he knows. How come this
nigger so cool, how come it freeze up whenever they on the
scene? Because Ordell sees. From here. He got all them
tiny gangsters--the youngest gang members--'peepers,' as
they're called, rovin, scopin. Any po-lice, any rent-a-
cop, any limp DEA, any them mothers truck into them
towers, Hardcore gone know. On the street that cuts a
perpendicular, there are two three-flats and some tiny
gangsters down there on the steps each day, servicing the
cars that pull up. They got rock, bottles, crank, sometime
pills. Some Top Rank Gangsters, veterans in BSD, they-all
slang a couple zones--sell a couple ounces--to they homies
every week, be tight, all they need. Not Ordell. He got
him houses and ladies, he got a Blazer and a slick BMW
755, shit, he got his gold, but what be fat and all is
this thang, what he got goin here--'DJs,' so called, to
mix the stuff, and 'scramblers,' who get paid in drugs to
make the connections, 'mules' to carry it and move it two
times every day from the garages and apartments where it's
stored, and his 'artillery,' Honcho, Gorgo, and them,
armed motherfuckers so nobody think they can move up on
Ordell. Seventy-five people, sometime a hundred, and
Hardcore watchin over: Go here, mother, go there, don't
get beat by no snitch, don't deal with no narc, don't mess
with no rings or gold, see cash, man, do it! That's what
he wants, somethin happenin, man, every day.
Now, slightly past 6:00, his beeper alerts, vibrating at
his hip. Hardcore curses aloud when he inspects the
readout: Nile. More whining. "Too late for that shit," he
notes to himself. At his voice, the old woman's rasping
breath briefly ceases. Perhaps she is awake now,
listening, pressing at her grey hair, snuffling and
clearing her throat in hopes he'll leave. Here in the
front room, there is nothing. Two chairs. Old newspapers.
The concrete floor holds the sallow glimmer of the early
light. The rug was stolen long ago.
This was her apartment, raised her children here, the boy
in Rudyard, two boys, Ordell thinks, and some bitch, a
silly pipehead selling what she can out on the street. In
the pen, the boys come to Jesus and busted out, quit BSD.
So Ordell's set moved in here. The old woman was
tough. 'You-all go on, shoot and kill me, do whatever you-
all like, I ain movin out, this here's my house, I ain
givin my house to no bunch of silly-ass hoodlums.'
T-Roc, one of BSD's two heads, Vice-Lord he called--T-Roc
told Hardcore straight up, 'Do just like she say, man,
fade her.' Hardcore, he put in work for his, done whatever
for BSD, be a bar-none Saint and all, but he don't fall to
cappin no old lady. He decided leave her stay.
'And I ain gone have no dope-peddlin or whorin or any
other gangbanger whatnot in here neither,' she'd said to
Ordell.
'We ain doin nothin,' he told her.
'Hmm,' she said.
Now she sleeps. Just then, 6:15 like they been sayin, he
sees the ride, some shitbox Chevy a hundred years old,
bend the corner on the street far below. Now, Ordell
thinks, now we gone tear some shit up. He has field
glasses but he can see well enough. Bug, just folding the
flip-phone back into her jacket, approaches the car. Then
she retreats a distance, as she's supposed to do. The cell
phone in his pocket makes a throaty sound.
"Yo," he answers. "'T's up, cuz?"
"Ten-two," Lovinia says. They use radio code, mix it up,
make them Tic-Tacs crazy. "Ten-two." Means trouble. Need
help. "You hear?" she adds. That Lovinia. Don't never have
no respect.
"Stall out, bitch, I hear. And I don't see no damn 10-2."
On the broad avenue, on Grace Street, there is nothing,
cars, white folks driving by fast. Not even foot trade. "I
ain't seed nothin. You standin still, bitch, and you best
be hittin the wall, man."
"Ain to see, not from where you is, and I ain talkin on
this punk-ass telephone neither. Ten. Two." She's gone
with that.
Setup, he thinks, as he often thinks. Bug--as Lovinia is
known--damn Bug be settin him up. Kan-el, T-Roc, one them,
maybe them Goobers--as the Saints call the Gangster
Outlaws--one them switched her somehow. He ponders Kan-el
and T-Roc, Commandant and Vice-Lord of BSD. They on top,
man, but they all the time trippin and shit, worryin is
Hardcore on this power thang, man, he gone bust his whole
set right out the gang or what? And him running eight
zones into the jail every week, so BSD down for theirs,
catch his black booty he be gone for-ever. Set him
up. "Mmm." He grunts aloud at the thought of it.
But he's on his way. He has a 9-millimeter pistol stored
behind the iron grating of the air return and he tucks it
in his belt and lets his black silk shirt hang out of his
trousers. In the elevator he continues rumbling with his
angry thoughts, speaking to himself and wondering if he
should have shouted out for Honcho, some of them. Scared,
he thinks, scared is what he is and old enough to know it.
All them youngsters always puttin down that shit, 'Cain't
no nigger fade me,' shit like that, make him laugh. You
always scared. Get used to it is all. Gotta be is gotta
be.
He has three sons. Dormane--Hardball he called--got two
kids of his own, he inside, doing fifteen no-parole on
some fool buy-bust, and Rakleed is on these streets, too,
and the little one, Del, still too young to know too much
of nothing. They mommas, each of them, behind Ordell's
back, told those boys the same. 'Don't you be no dope
peddler now, don't you be slangin and hangin and bangin,
I'll be whompin you backside, you ain never gone be too
big for me do you like that.' That's what they sayin. In
his own time, Ordell gave each of these boys his
answer: 'You got to be somebody. They's bad shit here.
With them bad coppers--bad motherfuckers everywhere here.
But, man,' he said, 'man, this here what you-all's--you
with the people here, you giving them what these poor
riggers need, some nickel's worth of happiness white folks
and all don't want them havin.'
Walking from the IV Tower, the first stirrings of the day,
music and voices, from some windows, wondering is he
really gone get himself gauged, Hardcore thinks, as he
often does, about his sons. He walks past one of the newer
buildings, where the concrete corner has parted, revealing
a cheap core of pink foam. In a nearby play area, only one
seesaw remains, and on that both seats were long ago
shattered by some teen in a random outbreak of destructive
will. A milky-eyed drunk is teetering down the block,
slept it off somewhere and now looking for home. He has a
tatty overcoat and his hat askew, a face of white
whiskers, and when he sees Hardcore, he wants to move, get
out the way, man, and his legs can't let him. Funny.
Hardcore calls him "Man" as he passes by. They got they
needs, he thinks, wishing he'd told his boys that,
too. 'Everybody on these streets, man, these motherfuckers
out here is just completely crazy with what they need.
This gal she need her check, and this momma be needin to
hold her baby, and that old cat need his fix.' Needing. He
sometimes thinks he doesn't walk on pavement--he is just
moving on top of what everybody needs.
He crosses the boulevard, Grace Street, and starts down
Lawrence, a block of ruined three-story apartment
buildings, stout as battlements, with flat tarred roofs
and limestone blocks placed decoratively amid the dark
bricks and as a border above the doorways and at the
cornices. The windows are gone in some, boarded up. A
raised garden area of railroad ties sits under the windows
of 338, the dirt desert dry, even the weeds struggling to
survive.
"Yo," Lovinia calls, emerging like a cat from one of her
hiding places. This Lovinia, he thinks. God, look-it here
at this scrawny bitch, motherfucker are you gone believe
it? With this fuzzball stocking cap dragged down over her
whole damn head and this grey coat and twill pants. Don't
want nobody comin up on her to know she a bitch is what it
is, figure they'll shoot her ass or molest her ass or
somethin. They better not try neither, she ain't strapped--
armed--she know better than that for when Tic-Tac come by,
but you bet she got it near here, under the mailbox, or in
a hole in one them trees, you mess with her, she gone
smoke you ass. Word up. T-Roc, he think Hardcore stone
crazy using Bug, but she sharp. She strut up to the cars,
she change her whole routine now, she sort of swingin it a
lot. 'What you like, man?' Make them say. Anybody she take
for Tic-Tac, narco, when they say 'Dope,' she just
go, 'Oh, man, I ain sellin dope, man, I got somethin
sweeter 'n that, man,' like she thinkin they was here to
bone.
Now she points to the white Nova at the curb, a hundred
feet away. "I done told her, 'Lady, you in the wrong
place.'"
"Lady? What kind of motherfuckin lady?"
"Tol' you now, 10-2. He ain come. She come. She be lookin
for Or Dell." Bug smiles then, toward the walk. Lovinia,
just a kid and all--fifteen--she love to play.
"Lady," Hardcore repeats a few more times. Damn. He
advances on the car. "Lady, this the wrong place for you."
Leaning into the darkness of the car, he catches some of
her soapy smell and the humid sour scent of his own
overheated breath. "You best get out here fast."
"Mr. Trent? I'm June Eddgar." She extends her hand, and
then laboriously leaves the car to stand in the bluish
morning light. Old. She be fat, too, big and fat. Some
kind of hippie or farmer or some such, and her thighs all
mashed together in her jeans. She have a plain face and
some long lightish brown kinda hair going to grey, kind of
lopsided and knit together like it ain't really combed. "I
thought we could talk a minute."
"Lady, they ain nothin for you and me to talk about."
"Well, I thought--I'm Nile's mother."
"Told him get hisself here. Didn't tell him send nobody's
momma."
"I thought it was better if I came."
"You better go. Thass all. They's some powerful shit may
go down here. Word, now. Go on." He steps away, flitting
his hand.
"Look, I know them both. I think there's a
misunderstanding."
"Only misunderstandin is you stayin here stead of leavin
out when I say go. Thass the only misunderstanding we
got."
"I really think--"
"Lady, you gone get fucked up bad, you hear? Now jump in
you rusty-ass ride." He throws a hand again in disgust and
walks away. Lovinia has stepped toward the street, waving.
"Gorgo," she calls, signaling overhead.
"Aw, fuck me, motherfuck," Hardcore says. From the alley
across the way, Gorgo has emerged, tearing out on a sturdy
black-framed mountain bike. He has a mask on, a blue
handkerchief across his face like he some cowboy
motherfucker, but looks otherwise like he just goin home
to momma, blue pack fixed on his back, red satin jacket,
hat turned behind his ear, just a kid, if you don't notice
the gat--the gun--held low by his side. A 9. Got his Tec-
9. The semiautomatic weapon, from its sheer weight, seems
to drag behind as Gorgo rides. Bug keeps on waving,
calling out as Gorgo rushes on, but he doesn't see her. He
never will, Hardcore knows. You can see Gorgo's eyes at
sixty feet now, popped out like some pipehead's, only with
him all it is is panic. I gotta do this, Gorgo's thinking,
got to do this, man. Hardcore knows. His whole self is
shrunken down to a little pea of violent will, so there's
no room for anything to tell him no. The gun is tip,
straight this way, and for one second Ordell sees nothing
of it but the small silver o and the frightening black
space within it, at the end of the muzzle.
"Gorgo!" she calls again, and Hardcore, who has already
dropped to the pavement, catches the hem of her coat and
drags at it.
"Get yo fool self down," he says, and she comes to him,
easy as a leaf falling from a tree, just as the first
shots bolt the air. Damn guns always be louder than you
expect. The reports come at once, five or six volleys, a
rampage of sound. Just that quick. Afterwards, it is the
same as always, a moment of awful, cowering stillness--the
birds gone from the trees, radios knocked silent, folks in
the adjoining buildings stretched out flat along the cold
floors, desperate not to stir. Caught up, the pointed
scent of gunpowder embitters a sudden breath of wind. A
block off, in some silly act of jubilation and relief,
Gorgo cries out shrilly and his voice trails down the
distance like a ribbon.
Breathe, Ordell thinks, breathe now, nigger. He's amped:
his heart is hard with panic. You okay. He talks to
himself. You not hurt, stay cool, stay movin. Then he sees
the blood spread darkly on the sidewalk.
He has been shot twice before, once when he was sixteen,
that was some serious shit, sort of giving face to some
dude, and the mother pulled out a .38 and boom, just like
it was but a little more downtalk. Now he cool. He's
checked his body twice, felt everything. He damn well
knowed he was gone get hisself popped and he didn't. But
Lovinia has hold of her knee, and she is moaning.
"Happenin, Bug?"
She's crying. Tears well across her smooth face and curl
in silvery traces about her mouth.
"It hurt, Hardcore. Man, it hurt real bad."
"We gone help you, girlfriend." He crawls closer to her.
She is lying on her side, with her knee drawn up halfway.
Her hands are covered with blood and it has turned most of
the right leg of her twills brown; this close, he can
detect the strange animal smell of it. He isn't going to
get her to move, he can see that. How'd she go get shot in
the damn leg of all places? Ricochet, or some such. Dudes
shot in the leg died, too. He'd seen that. Severed femoral
artery. Leg might be broke. There was no use shoutin out
for any of his people, tiny gangsters or them. Soon as the
guns rang out, they sprung.
"That Gorgo. I'm gone fuck that motherfucker up bad."
Gorgo is long gone--between the buildings, up an alley,
down one more gangway. Somewhere along, the Tec-9 went
into the backpack. Now he's just some skinny kid out on
his ride. Up above, somewhere, a window screams as it's
opened.
"I hope all you goddamn gangbangers be dead, what I hope."
The woman's voice carries clearly in the thin morning. "I
hope you dead. Look at what you-all done."
"Call the 'mergency, bitch," he shouts.
"I already done that. Po-lice comin. They gone take yo
sorry ass down to the jail where it belong, Hardcore."
At his name, he wheels and the window is slammed to, that
fast, before he can see. Lovinia is still moaning.
"Gone help you, homegirl," he repeats. The white lady, he
sees now, Nile's momma, she layin there, too. They's just
blood, blood, all over her head. Half her brownish hair
gone and she ain't moving none. Smoked, he thinks. He's
seen dead before and knows it for sure.
Bug is all gone to pieces. Some is like that. Them po-
lices, Tic-Tacs, they done her like they do, took her,
handcuffed her arm over her head all day, walk by her
smacking them nightsticks in they palms, she be tight,
like it don't bother her none. But now she cryin like a
baby, she like something what got broke. She wasn't gonna
hold. Nile neither. Specially Nile. His daddy gone be goin
on now, in his shit. When them Tic-Tacs start in with
questions, wasn't nobody gone ride this beef. Gone be all
fucked up.
"Po-lice comin," he tells Bug. He's going to have to
figure something. That damn woman know his name. Tic-Tac
be knocking on his door. Call the attorney. Call Attorney
Aires, he thinks. Gone have to look after hisself. How it
always be.
He stands. The white Nova is messed up. The windows,
except the one which was open, are shot through, jagged
pieces gone and the remainder a map of silver crazes; the
tires on the side that faced Gorgo's onslaught are
flattened, causing the car to list. Through one of the
steel window supports, there is a single bullet hole, the
white paint burned grey about it. Damn him anyway,
Hardcore thinks. Damn Nile, fuck everything up.
"Best gimme that shit, girlfriend. You got trouble
enough."
She opens her mouth, but cries out as she turns herself to
reach.
"Here?" he asks and slips his finger quickly between her
tooth and gum to pull out the little foil packet. Goddamn,
what he gone catch from her mouth anyway? "This here just
some damn drive-by," he tells her. "You hear? Outlaws
ridin down. Po-lice gone be askin. Thass what you say.
Same as we done said. Just Goobers ridin down on you." He
touches her cheek. She wasn't never gone stand up to Tic-
Tac. "Posse out," he says. Bye-bye.
"P.O.," she repeats.
He hates it most when he has to run.