What readers are saying about Young Junius:
FIVE STARS "Harwood's portrayal of a day in the life of a young man searching for his brother's killer in the bleak and hopeless Rindge Towers of 1980s-era Cambridge, Mass. is soaked through with detail, color, kick-you-in-the-gut honesty, and straight up action… Harwood skillfully paints each scene for the mind's eye as if it were playing out on the big screen. Do yourself a favor. Pick up this book and give it a chance." -- Thomas J. Meyer
FIVE STARS "Harwood lifts the lid off a public housing project in Cambridge, Boston, exploring the pressure cooker environment that forces young black men into a life of drugs and violence in a 36-hours-in-the-life story of young Junius Posey. It's an impressive plate-spinning act of multiple voices and points of view, all leading to a dramatic crescendo where everything and everyone in the story come together. From Junius and his friend Elf to Junius' stouthearted mother and drunkard father to bent cops to gang leaders to crack fiends, he jams the story full of well-crafted characters and makes us believe in and empathize with them as individuals. Strong recommendation." – Mark Coggins
FIVE STARS "Seth Harwood's book brings a whole new world into stark focus. This gritty story will have you taking sides and keeping your head down, especially during one of the longest and best done gun battles in American literature." –Keith Jones
FIVE STARS "The plot moves but you will be most taken by the complexity of the large cast of characters. Harwood does not revert to type." –George Pelecanos -- writer, The Wire
FIVE STARS "Young Junius by Seth Harwood is one of those reads that sticks around in your mind a few days after you've finished. It's got tons of action and snappy dialogue but what held onto me most was the sad reality of the whole thing." –Peter Andrew Leonard
FIVE STARS "Young Junius is not your son's gangsta story. Seth Harwood tells the story of crack's impact on Cambridge's destitute Rindge Towers with Shakespeare's sophisticated sensibilities. The events might be straight out of a DMX song, but they're woven together by thoughtful plotting that summons the spirit of Hamlet." –Matt Funk
FIVE STARS "This book is amazing. If you're a gangster, a dealer, a wannabe gangster, or a librarian this book is for you. Whether you grew up on the mean streets, or just drove by one... ever, this book will knock you on your bum. A hard hitting, gritty, true to life story about the hood, 'The Game', respect, and family dedication." –Steve Dave
FIVE STARS "The age of fourteen is no time to be a vigilante. "Young Junius" tells the story of Junius Posey, a fourteen year old boy intent on finding the truth behind the death of his brothers with only fifty dollars and a few friends to his name. Meeting with the downtrodden side of Cambridge and a need to not live in hiding and find closure, "Young Junius" is an exciting read of youth crime and proves to be quite the thriller." – Midwest Book Review
FIVE STARS "I'm most impressed with Harwood's balancing truth and fiction. His depiction of drug-related violence in 1987 rings starkly true, yet Junius's quest for the truth is inevitably sidetracked by a lie. Though driven by the lie, the steps Junius takes into manhood are genuine. Highly recommended." –Gerald So
Young Junius
By Seth Harwood
Published by
TYRUS BOOKS
1213 N. Sherman Ave. #306
Madison, WI 53704
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Seth Harwood
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data has been applied for.
978-1-935562-28-3 (hardcover)
978-1-935562-27-6 (paperback)
978-1-935562-55-9 (ebook)
For my families —
Harwood and Palms
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Mrs. Varella, Mrs. Haynes, Mr. Hutch, and that whole thuggish bunch at the Longfellow School way back when. Mrs. Varella actually made me believe I could be a good English student, and Mrs. Haynes tirelessly read us The Good Earth and A Tale of Two Cities out loud every day in a class called—what else?—Reading.
Thanks to Scott Sigler for paving the way and showing me how to win an audience, then turn the publishing world on its head. Big ups to J.C. Hutchins, Evo Terra and all the other podcast novelists taking the world by storm.
Thanks to everybody at the Writers' Workshop, especially Marilynne and Jim.
Eric Campbell believed in this project early on. From him to Ben, Alison, and Ashley, the team at Tyrus has been nothing short of awesome. Thanks for letting me take it out of the box!
Shah Anderson, Tresca Behling, Drew Valderrama, Phil Riberra and a great many online fans provided me with superb information on subjects too strange and varied to include here. Needless to say, all of these improved this book by leaps and bounds.
Margot Welch, Mark Coggins, Jerry Scullion, Shaukat Ghaswala and Bob Ostrom provided artwork and photos for which I'm grateful. Shirley Bruce was first on PayPal the day the Special Edition went live. The Palms Family listened to me read this book as I wrote it, Digital Dickens style, as well as spurred me on in their desire for more about Junius Ponds.
Steven J. McDermott originally requested a short story for Storyglossia's crime edition, which later became chapter one of the novel. Thanks to him, and to Anthony Neil Smith for early encouragement and not messing with the piece.
Thanks to Stacia Decker for being the best agent I can imagine— for blasting through an early read of this novel and helping me edit it down, then supporting me through each and all of my changes and market moves. She's a fast reader and one of the best editors I've seen in action.
Thanks to my Dad for so, so much. Especially for getting me away to Tanzania when the time was right. To Jess for coming along and supporting me all the way. Thanks to my Mom for always being there. And finally, thanks to Cambridge, the city, where I was lucky to spend a part of my youth.
1
"You have to figure it out, is what it comes down to."
Junius fingered one of the long tassels of the curtain ties. In one of the funeral parlor's front rooms, his older brother lay in a coffin, not yet twenty and done with all the living he'd ever do.
Here in a side room, it was just him, Willie Stash, and a small, ugly nine.
"I try this, you put me on?"
"Shit," Willie smiled his signature smile, the one that showed the big gaps in his top and bottom rows of teeth. "You do this one, I put you in charge of Teale Square. How that sound?"
Junius smiled. He had no crew, just the cheap nine on the table—if he took it—and his boy Little Elf. But the gun gave him so much more than he'd had yesterday, even with a living brother.
He picked it up. Beretta, it read along the side.
"All right."
Outside, Elf came up to Junius before he made the corner. He'd been waiting on the steps of the funeral parlor for Junius to finish with Willie. They walked a block before either of them spoke.
Then Junius stopped, turned toward his man. "This," he said, pulling up his shirt to show the Beretta tucked into the front of his jeans.
Elf nodded. "Then we find who killed Temp?"
Junius looked up the block. At the corner, two of Willie's boys stood talking to one another, trying to look as though they owned the real estate they stood on. For all purposes, they did.
A BMW stopped in front of them, and a white face stuck out the window—a college kid looking to score. Willie's boy shook his head and sent him around the corner. In the liquor store lot next to Food Master, someone else would hand him a bag and take his money.
Junius shook his head. He turned away and started walking, the hard metal pressing into his abdomen, cold against his skin. He knew the safety was on, but still it felt strange. "He wants us to make it right."
Elf looked away, toward the projects on the other side of the street. In the middle of a courtyard, five boys played twenty-one on a netless hoop with a soccer ball.
"Fuck it then. Where we start?"
"The towers."
Along Alewife Brook, they made their way toward the T station, walking opposite the big cemetery for the first few blocks, until the sidewalk ended and they had to cross four lanes to avoid the mud. Elf had on his new Forums, so he was real particular.
Junius looked below the sidewalk into the dirty brook that separated the street from the cemetery. It didn't so much flow as creep, an old bicycle and a rusted shopping cart sticking up out of the muck.
The headstones along the grass were old but in good condition. No room inside for Temple, only long-dead white people. Temple would get cremated, and then Junius didn't know what. But it was better they had the body; his mom didn't have to suffer more uncertainty or a missing persons investigation that would yield nothing after months.
The walk to the towers took them into Arlington, just a block into the dry, white Switzerland of the surrounding neighborhoods. They went up Mass Ave. and down a back street that let out on a path behind the T. In the mornings and afternoons, commuters lined this route, but in the mid-afternoon of a Sunday, the two had it all to themselves. They passed through marshland, with twin banks of reeds by their sides.
"Yo," Elf said. "Show me the gat."
Junius stopped. He was eager to look himself, to get a feel for the grip and the touch of the steel. Temple had always kept him away from guns, made him swear off their violence. Now, he pulled it out from his belt and showed Elf, holding the barrel parallel to the ground, aimed back toward where they'd come.
"Damn, yo. Let me hold it."
"No." The handle felt small in his grip, as if it were made for a boy's hand. Even at fourteen, Junius stood six foot three, the equal of many grown men he saw, and not skinny like the rest of the kids he'd come up with. His bones held man muscles; whether he'd earned them or not, he had the gait of one who had. His legs bowed and his arms rarely fell straight.
When he looked around them through the reeds, his head dipped below his shoulders and his back hunched. He was like a spring—ready to pop.
Elf backed away a step as Junius pulled the slide and chambered a round. Willie had shown him the safety, and now Junius clicked it off. He touched the trigger, testing its shape not its tension, and turned the gun over. He held it sideways, like on TV.
"Yeah."
Then in one motion, he swung the gun over his head like the arm of a clock going from nine to land at three. He straightened his elbow, aiming toward the station. As he did, he squared his shoulders. With his arm level and the gun straight, it felt real; he held it up and down, ready.
"That's how you do," Elf said. "Now let me hear you clap."
Up ahead, Junius saw nothing but reeds. He squinted, aimed, and pulled back the trigger until he felt it tense, took it just to the point where he thought it might fire. He had never shot a gun.
His breath hung in front of him in the dry, cold air.
He didn't know how it would kick, only that it did. It would be loud. He tensed his face—partly from fear and partly to aim. Then he lowered the weapon.
"Shit," he said. "We kill some commuter, we be fucked."
He took his finger off the trigger and slipped the safety on. He wanted to eject the live round but didn't know how, only that the safety was supposed to keep it from shooting.
He slipped the gun back into his pants and walked up the path. Behind him, Elf sucked his teeth in disappointment.
As they came to the big, gray parking structure of the station, Elf pointed out two of Rock's boys hanging where the commuters came out to get their rides or catch a bus. Rock did steady money from the business set like this. So if Marlene controlled two of the three towers, Rock still did well running the station and 412.
Willie ran pieces of Somerville, not much compared to the towers, but enough. If Junius found out who did Temple and took that man down, he'd have Teale Square, some of the best territory in his hood. At fourteen, that was more than even Temple had amounted to.
The two crossed toward the station and headed for Rock's boys.
2
Junius recognized Derek and Ness as they got closer. Ness used to be Eliot when he was young, but then when he started to roll, people called him Ness because of his long neck.
Elf called out, giving them the nod.
Derek shook his head. "Fuck you niggahs want?"
"We looking to find Rock. Want to see what's been going down."
"Down?" Derek stepped back and looked at the ground. He checked Ness and then stared at the others. "I don't see nothing here but rent, motherfucker. Rolling product. You want to try and take this?"
Junius stayed quiet. He watched Derek talk his shit, point his finger at Elf and tell them they should go back to their side of the border.
"We just want talk," Junius said finally. "It's about my brother."
Then Derek stopped. He wiped his mouth and shut it all down.
"Yeah," Junius said. "That's what we here on. That's why we going through to the towers."
Derek looked around. Junius could see a white guy in a suit waiting to talk to Ness, looking to buy, but Derek waved him off. "Come back later."
"Who I talk to?" Junius said it slow, definite. The voice was one he didn't recognize, one he didn't hear as his own.
Derek said, "You go to the top, son. Tower two. Take your ass up in there and all the way up. You ask the Oracle."
"Marlene?"
"Shit. Oracle to you, motherfucker. Whatever she say be your fate."
Elf took two steps back. Neither of them had thought of going all the way to the top.
Junius nodded slowly at Derek and Ness. They'd been fair: no threats, no need to show the gun. "That all?" he asked.
"Ha?" Derek's mouth almost popped with the sound. "Is that all?" He shook his head and started laughing, turned to Ness and pointed at Junius. "This motherfucker," he said.
Ness laughed and they slapped palms.
"Yeah, niggah," Derek said when they finally calmed down. "That all. Just take your ass to the Oracle."
Junius turned to the towers, his hand at his belt, and listened for any fast movements behind him as he started up the sidewalk. About four steps later, Elf called peace to the others and started to follow.
The Rindge Towers stood three tall buildings, each one a city: twenty-two stories of apartments, hoods, crews and trouble; a corner on every staircase. Whoever pushed and ran these controlled much more than Teale Square, more even than the bulk of the Davis-Teale-Tufts triangle that Willie called his land. Much more than weed to the white boys and whatever they needed for parties on the weekends.
Whoever held the Rindge Towers supplied to the serious Cambridge junkies and suburban drive-thru addicts—the ones who snorted, smoked and shot up, who would bring you every dollar they could.
"Shit," Elf said when he caught up. "The top? Fuck you think be up there?"
Junius heard Ness call to the suit. He took a quick look back and, though Ness slapped a dime into Mr. Suit Man's hand, Derek still watched them. He gave Junius the nod, pointing his chin toward the towers.
"Top," Junius said, "means we go all the way."
They crossed in front of the Polynesian tiki bar and approached the highway.
"You ever been up there?"
"I been inside a couple times," Elf said. He showed the palms of his hands. "But not like this."
Across the street, the three brick towers stood tall, each one covered with hundreds of windows on a side: windows that betrayed nothing, just endless rows of lives and capped-over air-conditioners that didn't work.
The light changed and traffic stopped. Junius began to cross. Elf hesitated, then hurried to catch up. On the other side, he stopped.
"Yo, J," he said.
Junius turned.
"Yeah?"
"I think I'm a head back."
Elf was sixteen, two years older than Junius, but they'd been together almost all their lives, like brothers, even with Temple around. Junius nodded. "I hear you."
He walked ahead on his own.
3
Junius saw Lamar in front of 412. Lamar who lied about his age to play in the Rindge Ave. league games. Where Junius was the man-child lying to say he was old enough to play, Lamar was the eighteen-year-old who cheated not to leave. Junius was good enough that everyone looked the other way. With Lamar, they left it alone because he carried a Glock.
As soon as he saw Junius, Lamar headed toward him across the parking lot. He called his name out, asked what Junius was doing on the wrong side of the world.
"What you want?" Lamar asked, when they were face to face.
"I'm looking for Marlene. Come to find who shot Temp."
"Yeah?" Lamar laughed. "You going to see the Oracle?"
Junius started to pass, but the bigger man cut him off with a forearm to the chest. He pulled up Junius's shirt and looked at the nine.
"That for real? You crazy?" He pushed Junius back, and then Lamar had his hand on the gun's grip, but Junius caught his wrists and kept Lamar's fingers away from the trigger guard. Lamar pulled on the gun and pushed Junius. They both stepped closer to the highway. Junius did not let go.
"Now, motherfucker. You let this shit go, and you walk. You leave, I take your gun and don't cap your ass. You fight, I drop you like the bullshit you is."
Cars whizzed by. Junius pulled on the gun, but it didn't move. Lamar was strong. He tried to twist it. Same result.
"Go home."
"What up, niggah?" Elf stood next to Junius, shoulder to shoulder with him in front of Lamar. "My man and I going in today."
Lamar let go of the gun and stepped to Elf. He laughed. "Fucking munchkin-land. Ain't I showed you not to come up here before?"
He threw a fast elbow at Elf's head and Elf flinched back, but Junius didn't hesitate: as soon as Lamar's hands were off the gun, he pushed him back toward the towers. He'd been boxing for two years and knew the right moves, but none of them came; he reverted straight back into the streetfighter he'd always been.
Lamar stepped back shaking his head. That was when Elf caught him under his chin with an uppercut and then followed with a quick left hook to the body that came in as soon as Lamar's hands went up.
The hook was enough to double Lamar over.
Elf stood before him, his fists ready and one foot forward. "Go on," he said to Junius. "I got this."
"No you ain't." Lamar touched his chin and spit on the ground. He stretched his neck and stepped to Elf.
Junius looked at the two of them. Lamar had two years on Elf and at least fifteen pounds.
"Go!" Elf waved off Junius. "This me, niggah. That—" he angled his chin at the towers, "is you."
Junius stepped into the drive, still watching as Lamar stood tall over Elf and threw his first punch. Elf caught it on his arm and didn't hesitate; he came with a left jab to Lamar's chin that rocked his head back and then stung his cheek with a fast right. Lamar stumbled.
Elf ran at Lamar and crossed him with a left hook to the head. Lamar folded and spit blood.
It was then, while Lamar was bent, that he drew his gun.
"No—" Junius called, but it was too late.
Elf froze at the sight of the weapon, and Lamar stepped forward. He whipped Elf across the head with the barrel, then slashed the gun's butt up into Elf's mouth.
Junius saw blood.
Lamar doubled Elf with a hard left to the stomach and tried to knee him in the face.
As Elf struggled to catch his breath, Lamar raised the Glock. They were far enough from anything that wasn't towers for him to drop a body and not fear.
4
Junius stepped toward Lamar and drew his nine.
"Stop," he called. "Hold up!" He tried to sound hard.
Lamar howled and backed off, shaking his head. "Now you fucked up two times."
As Junius stepped to the walk, he had the nine leveled at Lamar's chest.
"You pull a gun on me? Oh, now fucked yourself, young one." Lamar's lips curled into a snarl. He spit. "Think you really use that?"
"Step off."
"Yo, fuck you!" Lamar started to turn his gun on Junius. "Shoot me now, or I carve you up like my boy did your brother."
"What?"
"Think you have any choice about this now?"
"Who? Who killed Temp?" Junius jumped forward.
Lamar saying "his boy" could mean anyone in Rock's crew: Black Jesus, Roughneck, Milk, Hammer, anybody. Junius waved the gun. "Who?"
Elf fell from a bent-over position onto his ass. He spit a stream of blood onto the ground. A thin trail hung from his chin. His eyes blank, he said, "No, J."
"Listen to your man. He speaking truth. Like this you walk out." Lamar smiled. "Maybe. This shit go further, they gone carry you out on a board."
Junius traced the arc of the cold trigger with his thumb. He flicked off the safety.
"Or, maybe I be fucking with you. What you think?"
"This for real," Junius said, trying to sound steady. He knew what he had to do. Behind him, someone in the towers would have Lamar's back, and someone that person's back after that. But right now just the three of them made this scene. The February cold offered that small piece of justice.
"Yeah, niggah," Lamar said. "Shit be real now." Junius could see the black O of the Glock's barrel as Lamar raised it up. He knew Lamar's next move.
Junius fired.
The crack of the report cut the day, and Junius jumped from the sound. Lamar spun fast, his right hand shooting up to his left shoulder.
Elf's eyes went all disbelief and fear. He knew how much that shot had just changed.
"Yeah," Lamar said. He started to turn back around with his Glock when Junius fired again: three fast shots. Now that it had started, there was only one way for it to end.
Only one shot hit. Junius knew he'd fired wild, but let off two more shots as he saw Lamar's chest. The second hit him hard, knocking him back off his feet.
Derek and Ness would be coming fast now, and others too.
"Get up," Junius yelled at Elf.
He walked up on Lamar, kicked the Glock out of his hand. With labor, Lamar wheezed and spit blood on his lips. "You dumb, dead niggah."
"Who killed Temple?" Junius asked, holding the gun in Lamar's face. His voice sounded distant, not his own.
"Fuck you." Lamar reached for his gun.
Junius kicked him in the side. He pressed the gun to Lamar's cheek and asked again, "Who killed Temple?"
"Fuck him and fuck you."
Junius knew the next shot would kick. There was going to be blood—enough of it to bring a war.
"Get ready to run."
Elf scrambled to his feet. "Don't—"
Without looking down, Junius pulled the trigger one last time.
The sound was louder, and something wet hit his neck.
Junius saw it all in Elf's eyes: more than he needed. Whether he didn't look down that last time because he didn't want to—because seeing death on his brother's face was enough for one day—or because he couldn't, Junius didn't know.
And it didn't matter now.
5
They ran. Without knowing if anyone was behind them or not, they ran. Give Elf the credit: short or not, the boy could go. They took off in the direction of North Cambridge, up Rindge Ave., away from Alewife, Derek and Ness, away from the towers. They passed the cheap supermarket with drunk homeless out front, wasted in the middle of the day off cough syrup, and crossed Rindge Ave. through traffic while cars honked, Junius tucking the nine into the back of his jeans. From the front of the towers they could hear shouts and people yelling.
Into the gravel parking lot of the park, they rushed past the baseball diamond, through the outfield, and jumped the fence to the M.D.C. pool where mothers from the towers brought their kids to pee in the summer. It was closed now, black covers over the empty holes in the ground. They ran across the concrete to the fence on the other side and jumped it to the grass.
Junius looked back fast when he landed and saw no one coming—no chase, nothing to fear—but ran on. He turned in the direction of the neighborhoods and pushed Elf forward.
"Come on." They ran across the high school football field of frozen mud, out of the park and to the quiet neighborhood streets on the other side from the T. Junius knew these back streets from spending time with a girl he'd started to mess with, Adrianna, who lived a few blocks up. These were three-story, two-family houses where white people lived.
They stopped running a few blocks in, and Elf put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. He spit blood on the ground. "Damn," he said. "This what it comes down to?"
Junius pulled Elf's shoulder. "Come on. We got to tell Willie."
"Fuck you, niggah." Elf shook him off. He ran a hand across his broken lips and showed Junius the blood. "See this, yo? This my blood. We can handle that. But now? Now Lamar dead? Fuck. Look at you."
Junius looked down and saw Lamar's blood on his coat.
"What I'm a do? Niggah wanted to shoot us both. Now we got to tell Willie so he can be ready to deal."
"No." Elf shook his head. "You got to run and keep on."
"What?"
"Serious. Get ghost. Break out and don't never come back. Rock's boys know you around, they gone make serious shit for us and for Willie. They won't stop at nothing until they done."
"Done?"
"Yeah. Until shit be even."
Junius's lungs burned. He looked at the rows of quiet houses.
The idea of running to New York City came, but even that was a world so much bigger than Boston, a place he feared dealing with by himself.
"I got to talk to Willie. Shit, he gave me the gat. What he think happen?"
Elf spit again and nodded. "Niggah got a gat, he gone clap."
He straightened up and they started to move again, not running, but faster than a walk. What was the point in running? If someone wanted them gone, they'd just drive to Willie and tell the man. That was what Junius didn't like: Derek and Ness would say who killed Lamar and then—it didn't matter who—someone from Rock's crew would come asking, asking with guns.
They went up to Mass Ave. and crossed into Somerville. Junius felt safer here, but still like someone could come up behind them and start shooting.
"Hold up." Elf wiped blood off his face with his T-shirt. "Yo, do I look fucked up?"
Lamar had cut a good gash into Elf's chin with the butt of his Glock, split both lips open. The lips were puffed out and bloody, but the gash on Elf's chin looked worse.
"You look good," Junius said. "This give you some character."
"That means I look fucked up." Elf spit on the ground again, this more phlegm than blood. Junius told him to press the sleeve of his sweatshirt against his chin to stop the bleeding.
"Willie ain't gone like this. He ask us why the fuck you did it. Why you thought you had to."
"And what I'm a say?"
"Shit. Say you too young and dumb to know better. It's a truth."
Junius shrugged, rested his hands on his knees. "What if it ain't? Say I meant to kill him? That one of us had to get fucked, I decided it was him. Plus—"
Elf waited, his breath puffing out of him in short clouds.
"Plus he was fucking with me about T. Don't fuck with me about Temple. That shit ain't right."
Elf nodded and gave Junius a pound. "You right. But Willie might not like it. You know how hard Rock gone come back."
They both knew the answer involved every bit of a war that Willie could handle.
6
At Willie's office in the back of Armando's Pizza, Junius let Elf tell the story.
The nine sat unloaded on Willie's desk, clip by its side. Willie picked it up and smelled the barrel as soon as Elf started to talk.
"This best be good," he said.
Elf took his time filling things in, explaining about Derek and Ness more than he had to and describing in great detail how Lamar changed the situation by pulling his gun. The whole time, Willie stared at Junius, daring him to speak.
"I busted shots," Junius said, as Elf told Willie that he squared up with Lamar. The cuts on his face told that story—more than enough said.
Willie grimaced. On either side of the desk, Omar and Jackson stood tall.
"I pulled the gat and Lamar called me out. He had the Glock so I had to dead it, right? First to deal, first to do?"
"First to die." Willie shook his head. He shook a Kool from his pack, tapped it against the desk twice and then raised it to his lips. Jackson leaned down with the lighter. As Willie exhaled, he sat back in his chair. "What you learn?"
"He knew who killed Temp. Said one of his boys."
Willie nodded and took a long drag that showed his teeth. "Then it's not all a loss."
"But we need to go up in the towers and ask Marlene now. Right?"
"Huh uh." Willie shook his head. He asked Omar and Jackson, "You want to visit Oracle?"
They both shook their heads like they'd rather go clean an apartment.
"Exactly," Willie said, tilting all the way back and running his fingers up the cigarette. When he got to the top, he started to play with the lit cherry, touching and shaping it with the tips of his fingers. "You play with fire…"
Junius waited.
Jackson crossed his arms and stared at where Junius sat. It felt like Jackson looked right through him, as if all he could see was the chair. "You do this for Temp?" Jackson asked. "Cause that shit can't be stopped now."
"We end it when we know who did this," Junius said.
Willie sucked his teeth. "Easy, young gun. Two things we not gone do now is get up to Marlene or dead up this Temple shit. They took one of ours, now we took one of theirs. You did good." He nodded. "Now it's done."
Elf looked at Junius out of the side of his eyes. "But they gone come back now."
Willie rocked in his chair as he considered his cigarette. Then he angled his head to one side. "They might. And who you think they want?"
Elf's shoulders slumped.
Junius sat up straighter. "That's why we go to Marlene. We ask her to Oracle this shit up and speak on Temple. She tell us what needs doing and then Rock fall into line. He can't fight her judgment."
Elf looked at Junius again but stayed quiet. Willie didn't move for what seemed a long time. When he did, he looked at his boys first and then at Junius. He raised his eyebrows.
"Two things. One is how this look about Lamar. Rock's boys come to me in peace, asking about one of they own, I got to speak on it.
"Other is if you doing this still for Teale Square, I give it to you. But this get much bigger and none of us sell shit. This ain't about money then, if it is now."
Junius knew the next question as sure as he knew Lamar was dead. "What you tell Rock's crew then? When they come ask?"
If they wanted him, Teale Square or nothing it wouldn't matter. Junius wouldn't have the weight to fight back, and Willie knew it.
Willie stretched all the way forward across the desk, took a last hard drag from the cigarette and ground it out in a glass ashtray. He let the smoke out through his nose, like an angry bull, and stared Junius down.
"Only one thing I can say then. Got to say you went solo, lost it when you heard about your brother. That's the only way I can play the hand."
Junius could feel Omar and Jackson getting closer, looming above him. He wanted to look at Elf, but knew he couldn't break Willie's stare. If Willie was serious, this was his verdict; it was final. If he was kidding, waiting to see how Junius would react, to know what he'd do, he had to sit tight, hold it down while he waited for the joke to break.
It didn't.
Willie stood up. "That's it." He clapped his hands off and wiped his palms on the back of his jeans.
Junius knew he still couldn't speak, couldn't ask Willie for a second chance or protection. This was it. He either had to stand and protect himself from Rock with his own strength, go into hiding, or leave town.
Three choices and none of them good.
He picked up the nine that Willie had left on the desk and put the clip back in. "Guess I be needing this."
7
Outside, Elf wouldn't say anything until they were back at his house, up on the pitched roof above his and his brother's bedroom. His younger brother was playing Nintendo, getting way too far into Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Like they always did when they wanted to smoke a j or get away from people, Elf and Junius climbed out the window and up the fire escape to the roof. Up here they could see over the parkway and into Arlington, to the green hills in the distance. That was if they looked north. If they looked west, they could see the projects behind the Food Master, a run-down retirement residence, and, far off, the three high-rises of the Rindge Towers.
Elf sat down heavily on the shingles and touched his chin with his wrist. Junius was surprised to see his hand come away dry; somewhere in all this, his chin had stopped bleeding.
"We should get that fixed up," Junius said. He stayed standing, his feet on uneven parts of the roof, resting an elbow on his knee.
"I be all right."
"That shit will scar if you don't get stitches."
Elf looked up with thin red eyes. It surprised Junius to think Elf might have been crying. "Shit, you think I care about my chin now? Big Willie just put us out on our own against Rock. We either stand up or get shot down."
"I can't—"
"How we won't get shot down? How we don't die in this?"
Elf spit toward the edge of the roof but didn't make the gutter. He shook his head.
Junius crouched next to his friend, both feet on the same section of roof, his hands on his knees.
"You know I want to ask Marlene. Go up in there."
"And you think it can happen? Think it just end there?"
"I don't know. But there's only one way to find out."
"Yeah, that's right." Elf stood up and spit a big gob off the side of the roof. "Fuck's a matter with us. We just go up in there blazing with that nine, the one—how many bullets you got left in it? Five? Go past Rock's boys and Marlene just up and lets us in, gives us a free pass to get out, tells us who killed your brother, and we go kill his ass too. Then it be all square. That how you see it?"
Junius stood again. He held his hands high over his head and let the cold February wind blow through his arms. He turned toward the projects and the towers and took a deep breath.
Even without stretching, he was taller than Elf. He had the strength to hold his own against anyone in his grade, all but a few of the eleventh-graders. He liked school, too. Liked the idea of playing football next year if he could keep his grades up and didn't miss class; he had even made some Bs to keep his mom happy.
His mom, the woman he hadn't seen since his brother's funeral that morning, the woman who wailed and sobbed the whole way through the ceremony.
No way he'd give his mother another body to mourn.
"Fuck," he said. "I don't see it any other way. I'm not crazy and I don't want die, I'm just saying all this other shit has to go. It's what I have to do. You right: we stop now and Rock get to us. We keep going, maybe we get left alone."
"Or Willie let us back in out of respect."
"True."
Elf pulled a j out of his coat. "How we go up is how we come down. You can't go into the towers and make all that. How that happen?"
He put the whole j in his mouth like he wanted to hide it there, then brought it out slow between pursed lips, making sure it wasn't too dry.
He cupped one hand around it and flicked the lighter a few times. He got the flame to last only as far as the joint, if that far, and then turned to Junius. "Give a hand?"
Junius cupped both hands around the j. This time Elf brought the flame to its tip and inhaled, took a few quick puffs.
"Thanks."
He nodded with his mouth full, his cheeks puffed out, and held the j into the wind, let the breeze carry off a stray ash. When he exhaled again, he took a deeper toke and a longer inhale, pushed the smoke down into his lungs.
He held it out to Junius, and Junius shook his head. "I'm cool."
Elf's eyes narrowed. He let out the smoke. "Niggah, you not gone hit this?"
"I got to stay clear in my head now. This big."
"Just chill. Sit back and lounge. Nothing going anywhere while we up here."
Facing out over the rooftops, Junius knew it wouldn't last, that he was going to have to act.
"Let me ask you," Elf said. "What made you come back? Why you didn't just get up in them towers when we was there? Why you fuck with Lamar again?"
Junius closed his eyes, pictured the scene with Lamar standing over Elf, going for his Glock.
"Had to," he said.
Elf took another hit, swallowed as much as he could, and sat back to hold it in his lungs. He shook his head as he held it, Junius waiting.
"Nah," he finally let out the smoke in a gasp. "I can't let you do this on your own. Hit this j and then we figure out where we sleep tonight."
* * *
"Bullshit." Terrence was on the phone when Junius and Elf came in off the roof. "Nah, niggah. You can't be serious. I'm looking at him right now."
"Bitch," Elf said. "Hang up that phone." His brother looked at him with slow eyes like he was watching TV. "Now!" Elf leapt across the room and hung up the phone by hitting the cradle. "Fuck you talking about, niggah?"
Junius took a step back toward the window. The fact that even high Elf could move like that, snap on his brother so fast, stunned him.
"I—"
"Who you talking to?" Elf grabbed his younger brother by the face, squeezing his cheeks together. His brother beat at his arm with the phone handset, but Elf didn't stop. "What you talking to them about?"
Terrence tried to talk, but his words came out smush-face. Elf let him go. "Speak!"
"I was talking to Ramon. He say your boy shot Lamar." Terrence looked at Junius with an expression somewhere between fear and awe. "You did that?" he asked.
"Fuck," Elf said. "Course he didn't kill nobody. You crazy?" He smacked his brother across the temple for good measure. "How you tell people that shit?"
Junius didn't know what to say. Suddenly he felt like he was the one who'd gotten stoned on the roof.
Elf looked over at Junius. "Don't matter what you didn't do, now. This fuck told somebody your ass up in here, then this be where we can't stay."
"What? I—" Elf's brother stammered.
"Who Ramon know?" Elf asked him. "Who told his ass that Junius did something? Huh?"
Terrence shook his head.
"Exactly. Right now he telling someone else that J here, and somebody getting ready to come find us."
"Shit," Junius said. He didn't want to go back out into the cold and find another place to hide for the night, but if Elf was right, then that's what they'd have to do.
"I—" Terrence tried again.
"You stupid." Elf clapped his brother on the side of the head, almost knocking him out of his chair. "Come on, J. We out." He tilted his neck at Junius and headed for the stairs.
8
Marlene looked out at the roofs of the other two towers: the additional one she held and the one Rock's boys controlled. In both she could see flames burning in the windows, the occasional lighter brought up to a pipe filled with what they'd started calling crack.
Crack: solid cocaine rolled into a ball and mixed with shit, cutter, ammonia. Smoked. The fastest high, the worst down, the most people fucked up she'd ever seen this fast. Marlene wasn't selling rocks to people in her towers, not supplying her own with the white death that went for less than weed, fucked you up ten times worse, and left you begging for another blast.
No, she wouldn't work that way; she wouldn't take her own people to that place and make them beg. But Rock would, and now she needed to clear him out. Her people were already walking over to 412 and buying from his crew.
She ran a fingertip across her upper lip. In her hand, she clutched the remote for the lighting and shades. She'd made her penthouse by breaking out a wall and joining two of the public housing units together, and she could call it that all she wanted, but looking out the windows into North Cambridge, into a town of two-family separated houses, she knew there was more than what she had here.
She slid the blinds closed with a button. With another button, she brought the lights up, just enough to add visibility to the ambience she'd set up with her row of candles on the mantle and the two on stanchions above either end of the couch. Laid out across the tan suede, Anthony snored lightly, the candlelight shimmering in the sweat across his chest.
He looked good and she knew it, the way his chest thinned to two narrow hips and fine legs. She'd be able to get him up again, awake and aroused, and that would distract her from Rock for another half hour, maybe more, but it wouldn't solve anything. Seeing those pipes blazing in her windows, knowing that poison instead of basic, simple weed was going into the lungs of her people sent a shiver through her. All out of simple greed.
"Fuck," she said. "This can't stand."
They called her Oracle because things she said came true. These days, in most cases they did because she made them, controlled the manpower and violence to get her wishes accomplished, her plans realized. But even before all this, she had something people believed in.
* * *
Once, as a girl, she won an AM radio at a street fair by picking the right paper bag off a table filled with a hundred. People asked her for the rest of the day to do their picking. Each time she did they wound up with something they wanted—not the rubber bounce balls, or the other cheap toys from the supermarket machines, but fancy brushes and nice mirrors, little remote control cars on wires. The good stuff.
After that, at age eight, she started having dreams. When she dreamt that her uncle, her mother's brother, would be killed, she did not say a thing. Then, a week later, he was taken by a truck while driving home.
Drunk driver, the police said, but the white man behind the wheel never went to jail. Nothing happened to him.
Her mother cried for weeks.
For close to a month, she would not leave the apartment; she'd stay in her room, come out and drink coffee, an occasional beer. When she ate, it was cereal. She sent Marlene's older brother to the store for groceries and he'd come back with real food: eggs, cheese, macaroni, even hamburgers, but her mother wouldn't eat. These things sat in the refrigerator getting old until Marlene took pans out from under the counters, put things into them, and did her best to follow the instructions on the boxes, to make do when they called for ingredients she didn't have (two sticks of butter?), or guess at how to cook things like hamburgers that came without instructions at all.
Her brother laughed at the table, quietly so their mother wouldn't hear, and told Marlene they were the worst meals he had ever eaten, even as he wolfed down whatever she put out. He'd be careful at first, slow to fork into the crisp pieces of meat she scraped onto his plate, but still he ate them, every one.
For the whole time her mother cried, Marlene blamed herself for not telling her family about the dream.
Then a year later, the dreams came back. This time they featured her brother.
Malik had always been a basketball player, one of the best in the towers. He regularly stayed out late holding court up at Corcoran Park.
In her dream he played basketball for a school with uniforms and a crowd. His team was losing. They were only down a few points and Malik had done something good, something she didn't see because the crowd stood above her, cheering. And then they groaned loudly as a group, and a woman screamed. She heard someone shout Malik's name.
That was how the dream ended. She had it twice on successive nights and this was enough to make her frightened. Even with the dream of her uncle, she hadn't seen anything twice.
She told her brother, begged him not to play for the school team that year, but he'd committed himself to trying out for varsity at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the school where Patrick Ewing had played and Rumeal Robinson was a star. So what if Malik was an inconsistent student his first two years; he'd decided to try out and had been going to class. His mind couldn't be changed.
Then the tragedy began.
Malik made the team and played more and more as the season progressed. By his senior year he was averaging fifteen points a game. He was asked to play for UMass Boston. The problems started when he left Cambridge, moved out to play for Salem State.
At home was where things changed. With Malik gone, nothing remained behind but the resentment. No one liked somebody from the towers to make it, even if Malik's success was anything but guaranteed. Just that he had an option was enough for people he'd come up with—the other players and runners and even those who dropped out of school before Malik went back to class—to turn on him.
So when he did finally get hurt—in a game for Salem State when he went up for a dunk over a crowd and severed his ACL on the landing, basically fell from the rim to the floor in a terrible position and destroyed his knee—he returned to find the towers gone sour around him. People were secretly happy at his failure. Over time, when he didn't play basketball again, he grew welcomed. They accepted him as one of their own, a loser to the world but a life-long member of the Rindge Towers; as long as he had not actually made it free, the fact that he came close was a cause for respect.
This was his tragedy, as well as his greatest success.
From his return, he started taking over the drug game in his own tower, 410, and when he achieved that, he took over 411, installed Marlene and their mother in the double-unit at the top to rule its game. To their mother, this was the second tragedy of her life, the one that pushed her into the misery from which she never returned.
Seeing her son turn back to the towers and become a part of the game was more than she could handle. She retreated again to her room, crying, refusing to eat but once a day. She started to wither into a frail old woman. Her social security checks piled up on the kitchen table—she wouldn't use them and neither Malik nor Marlene needed or wanted the money.
That was when Marlene had another dream. In this one she pictured her mother in a field, the sun on her face and flowers in her hair, the wind blowing around her. She was smiling. Marlene heard a voice in the background, a woman calling to her mother from a house.
The second time she had the dream, she knew the voice was her aunt—her father's younger sister, still living in Mississippi—though they hadn't spoken to or heard from her in nearly twenty years.
When she woke up, she knew what they had to do. Her mother needed to go south, back to the state where she grew up, where she'd lived before her ambitious husband moved them north to try his luck in Boston, where he wound up driving a bus for the MBTA.
When the cheerful postcards started arriving from Mississippi and they knew their mother was happy, Marlene became even more important. Malik recognized her as special, possessing more knowledge than she could be explained to possess.
He had started them calling her the Oracle, and she became a big part of his new hold on the game.
Without their mother to worry, Malik grew ruthless, his hold on the towers increasing until the last two with power were Rock and himself.
Rock had 412, and Malik controlled 410 and 411 with the power of Marlene's visions and his iron fist.
9
Elf led Junius up his block into Somerville, further from the projects, toward the neighborhoods that were nothing but houses where white people lived. They passed the big hall for Jehovah's Witnesses, and Junius heard music inside and thought he saw people dancing.
Elf pulled him on.
"Fuck. What happen when Rock's crew or someone from Willie show up at my house? They gone fuck with Terrence. And if my mom answers—" Elf didn't finish the thought. Instead, he just said, "Fuck," which covered it.
Junius snapped out of whatever haze he'd entered. If Elf's mom had to deal with boys from Willie or Rock's crew, then things were bad for Elf as far as going home again. His mom had already put him on a probation.
"Where we going?"
"Shit if I know." Elf cut onto a side street and stopped by a brick wall. "I was thinking we could break into a house. Find one where no one's home and break in through the basement."
"Yeah? Or maybe we go to my mom's."
"You don't think they be waiting? Watching your moms to see everything she does?"
Junius felt the cold whip through his jeans and wrap around his legs. He knew it was too cold for them to stay out much longer. "How about we break in though my basement? Go around through the back way?"
"What if Rock's boys waiting up in there for us?"
Junius shook his head, trying to force the thought out of his mind. "Then that's where we going. I don't want my moms bothered by no fools." He got up and started for his house: up the cross street it wasn't more than a handful of blocks over and a few streets up.
"Come on," he said.
* * *
They crossed the bottom of Junius's block as quiet as they could. He pulled his hood up and walked quickly, looking for people in parked cars—a lit cigarette, a head, any sign of someone—but didn't see anything. He agreed with Elf that they worked better individually, so he crossed the street again and headed up Thompkins—one block over and in the direction of his house.
As a kid, he'd jumped yards too many times to remember, trying to outrun another crew, lose someone he'd robbed or even get away from the police. Hopping the fence at the back of his mother's small yard was an old trick. The only wrinkle this time was he'd have to break in through the back door instead of going around to the front and using his key.
He scanned the cars on Thompkins. Nothing. At the right house, number 334, he waited beside a parked Cadillac.
In five minutes, longer than the amount of time they'd agreed on, he saw Elf coming up the block.
Junius's legs were cold enough now to be itchy. Even inside the pockets of his thick jacket, his hands felt like blocks. He could see his breath cloud in front of him, like steam from a pipe.
Then Elf was beside him. "That the house, right?" Elf pointed his chin at 334.
"Yeah. You see anything by my mom's?"
"Nobody. But that don't mean they not there."
"Yeah."
Junius wanted to appear calm and in control. It was, after all, his idea to come here. If something was wrong inside, if some of Rock's boys were waiting, he owed it to his mother to fix that, to keep her safe.
He hunched over as he walked. Beyond the garbage cans, to the side of 334, was an unlocked gate. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the people who lived here knew a locked gate wouldn't stop anyone. Junius opened it and passed inside.
Walking along the side of the house was technically the point where he started trespassing, but Junius didn't care. Elf came right behind. Light shining through the windows settled on the side of 332, less than five feet from where Junius slid along the base of 334 toward its yard.
There, he took one look around, knowing where he'd see the light on the back of the house with its automatic sensor. He knew it would come on as soon as he crossed the yard, but hoped no one was watching. If they noticed the light, maybe they would think it was a raccoon or somebody's dog.
Junius tried to stay away from the house as he crossed the backyard, but when the light came on, he broke into a run across the grass. He vaulted over the fence to the frozen space behind his mother's.
10
Gail Ponds-Posey sat on the couch in the dark when the knocking started. It seemed strange to her that someone would knock, but with this old house the bell couldn't always be trusted.
She sighed.
Less than twenty minutes ago, the last of her mourners had left. These were the other women from the neighborhood who cared enough and knew how she felt. It seemed there were too many of them—women like her, in their forties, already dealing with too much loss. She knew those her age who were grandmothers raising grandkids in place of sons or daughters who'd gone off, not ready for the responsibility, or come up dead.
Now she'd lost one of her own boys in addition to her husband, a man not so unlike these kids today. He'd never been ready to raise a child, let alone two boys. Aldo had steadily drunk himself further and further into a stupor, lost too many jobs to keep track of. Finally she asked him to leave. Two boys was enough of a burden; a third, grown and old enough to know better, just couldn't be abided.
And so she did what she had to: joined the other women in being alone in this world with her children. Whether the fathers had gone to jail, run off, or gotten themselves killed, the result was the same for the women: the job of raising the children became theirs alone. They helped one another as much as they could, pitched in with small favors, remembering to call each other before making a trip to the supermarket, but they all were tired. Too tired. The nights and days of working, the lines and endless fights for state support wore them down all the same. Too many of the boys' needs either happened too fast to ask for help with or just caught her blindsided when she got off a shift and came home to a mess.
The knocks came again, louder this time. She wondered if they would decide she wasn't home, if the lights being off would help them realize she'd gone to sleep, didn't want any, or just needed to mourn on her own. She decided to wait for that realization to come to whomever it was outside, but the knocks continued.