The Sport of Kings (42 page)

Now Over-the-Rhine was indeed preparing to burn. Men and women milled in the streets, laughing and hollering along Sycamore, hurling hubcaps and old stones from the edifices of these old gray giants into glass windows, smoke rising in three directions now. There were sirens looping out of the precinct house, and they'd be here any second, noses trained to the scent of unrest. The sound of them jogged something; Allmon snapped suddenly out of a fever dream. They'd all be rounded up, or there'd be blood, or both. The thrill was gone and the dread was back.

He would have stood there paralyzed on Race if someone hadn't pushed him into the old Schroeder electronics store, where the televisions were mute with alarm and the radios could only perk their ears as they were snatched from their carpeted plinths and carried out into the wilds. He realized that somehow, somewhere, he'd lost his crew. He ran back to the front of the store with a thought to look for Aesop in the sea of looters, but he didn't; he just looked north. There was the Reverend's old house that he'd left to the church, now derelict. The sirens were mourning louder and louder. Holy shit, it was a flat-out mob, and he was in the middle of it. How the fuck could he get out of this—not just the looting but his whole stupid life? In an instant, a wild dream swooped up in him; all he had to do was get back to the hood, grab his mother and whatever cash he had, and get them both to Chicago on a bus. Abandon this fucked-up life! He wasn't a fucking dealer, he was just a fifteen-year-old kid. What kind of game had he been playing? Enough wrong turns and you run in a circle. He needed to find Mike Shaughnessy and Mike Shaughnessy would welcome him. His white father would want him—that was a given. Allmon took off running.

He was veering and leaping around the opposing team the way he did on the field. All around bricks were being thrown through plate-glass windows, so they shattered inward and great guillotine plates came slicing down, then the people streamed through in a great cascade, and the sound of their shoes on the glass made him want to scream. With a spastic crackling, the streetlights opened their accusing eyes and the faces all around were horribly exposed in the garish light. He realized that he too was recognizable.

Now Allmon sprinted up Race, already halfway up the street before he suddenly realized he was a black boy running with a gun, so he flung himself into an alleyway, crouched behind a metal trash can, and jerked the Glock out of his jeans, slid it beneath a trash can. Fear was hammering him from all sides. Aesop would kill him, but maybe he'd come back for it, whatever, he couldn't think about that now; he just needed to get out of this situation. His breathing came in drafts as he waited. And waited.

The river swung lazily back and forth a half mile south.

A wry moon sprung up with its mouth of sham alarm.

Invisible geese rowed the black sky.

A terrified hour passed. The city was only louder, the violence even rosier in the sky, so there was no point in staying; it was only going to get worse. He crept out of the protective dark just as tenebrous voices passed, five figures, and he fell in behind them, thinking he'd follow them north to Central Parkway, then walk up into the parts of the city that weren't crashing down. But a wild whooping commenced, followed by more shattering glass, and he realized with a start that he was standing in front of his grandfather's church. The front windows, long replaced by thick Plexiglas, remained opaque and untouched, but someone had smashed the old glass at the back where Jesus perched on a pearl-white cloud with his arms spread wide like the genius of water. Allmon heard intruders prowling around the interior of the church, hollering and cursing in the sanctuary where the Germans had bent their heads and prayed for God's light, a light now flickering in the dark. It licked the darkness, flirting, spreading itself, warming the night air.

The church of his youth was burning. He stood in a trance before his grandfather's face and the tawny eyes— Be not afraid! It's the principle of the thing! The fire was filled with raucous laughter, voices conspiring with all the glee of children because they were children, as was he. Then the rear of the church was engulfed in orange flame, and black silhouettes went streaking by him and even the river couldn't have put this fire out, it was so strong. And hot as the sun. He bellowed out pure, instinctive rage. The feeling of himself was suddenly enormous, and with impotent, unbearable force, he swung his arms in the dark, strangled articulations emerging from his throat, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke. You're burning the wrong fucking building! You're burning down my life! He couldn't hear the sirens over his own screaming, nor their approach as he stalked around with otherworldly energy before the burning relic, before the billowing smoke and collapsing rafters. It was only when a policeman wrenched his arms behind him and threw him chest-first onto the glass-strewn pavement that he threw out a single word like a shield. It was his grandfather's name, but it offered no protection at all, not anymore.

*   *   *

It didn't take long—they were processing the juveniles from the riot at the speed of light, and his adjudicatory hearing was arranged in just two weeks. Allmon was first up on the morning calendar call, his name boomed out by the PA into the hallway of the courthouse, thick with young defendants and their parents.

In that dingy courtroom, where half the windowpanes were replaced with plastic that dulled the light, they threw the book at him. But he didn't need to read it, he already knew all the words by heart. The judge sustained the petition of the prosecutor—juvenile felony arson—and at the disposition hearing, they ordered him to camp for two years of firesetter education and rehabilitation. He never had the benefit of an attorney or even the offer for one, so he couldn't pretend to be surprised when they sentenced him. They were calling the next case before he'd even risen to his feet in his borrowed dress shoes.

*   *   *

Marie came every day for two weeks following the disposition hearing. She dragged her aching, swollen body across two bus routes and five neighborhoods, using up an hour and a half and all her energy to get to the new redbrick facility on Auburn Avenue. When she finally collapsed in a plastic chair across from Allmon in the visiting room, he could smell the sweat of her exertion, her exhaustion. When she took his hands in hers, her trembling caused his hands to tremble.

She spoke with her eyes closed against the sawing agony of daylight. “They'll keep you in school?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “They got school here every day. It ain't so bad—this new building they got is pretty nice. They bring you dinner, so you ain't got to go to a cafeteria or anything.”

“So they feed you?”

“Of course they feed me, Momma. I mean, they ain't gonna let us starve.” The food was actually pretty good, much better than the white diet he'd been feeding them at home. It was damn near a relief if he was going to be honest. And that relief made him sick with guilt. He swallowed hard.

“I'm sorry,” Marie said suddenly.

He shook his head resolutely. “Nope. Nothing to be sorry about.”

“I feel like this is all my fault.”

Allmon sat back suddenly, retrieved his hands to his lap, where they fiddled with the fabric of his jeans. “Ain't nobody's fault. Especially not yours.” But he was looking above her head and far beyond her.

Marie reached forward to pull his hands back to her, but when he refused, when he drew his hands right back to his person with the flashing irritation that men are quick to master with women, her eyes became shot with lightning streaks of red and tears welled. “If I could have given you a father that you could have relied—”

He waved a hand and sighed and said, “Whatever. Don't worry.” But the small, unstill voice said, Why the fuck can't you keep a man? You should have fought harder! You should have fought for my sake!

“I know you think about Mike—”

“Fuck him,” he blurted.

“Wow,” Marie said, and sat back, but there was no anger in the word, just a kind of wonder that sounded to Allmon's ear like self-pity.

“Momma,” Allmon said suddenly, clearing his throat, “I think it's time you didn't come back and just let me do this.”

Now it was Marie's turn to sit back in offense. “What are you saying? You can't just tell me to be away from you. I'm your mother.”

Allmon held up placating hands. “Listen, I know how hard it is for you to get out here, how much it takes. And, anyway, in a month they're gonna send me out to camp. You won't even be able to get out there. I'm in this, I'm gonna do this. You need to take care of your own self.”

“No—”

“Momma—”

“No.”

“Momma!” he barked. Then with a tic of his head, calm again. He said, “Momma, if you come back here, I won't see you. That's just how it's gonna be. I want you to go home and take of yourself, get healthy, get back to working more. That's the most important thing. Don't waste none of your energy on me. Please don't come back.”

Then he looked down, because she wouldn't, and he didn't want their eyes to speak anymore.

*   *   *

So, there was school. In two years, he learned:

  1. A black line extends infinitely in white space. Put a point on a line and you can name it anything you want.

  2. You are a threat to the safety of others.

  3.
Not exactly a part of the talented tenth, or you wouldn't be in here, now, would you?

  4. The lights on the dock are a symbol. The lights are a symbol!
Do you know what a symbol is, Allmon?

  5. Yours was a maladaptive and antisocial crime, its causes multidimensional. Family dysfunction factors were paramount.

  6. A symbol is a metaphor. A symbol is when you stand for something.

  7.
I'm sick of you all thinking you can speak improper English in my class. You think the Oakland School Board's given you permission to be ignorant? Not in my class, they haven't! Not under my watch!

  8. You can get a .38 revolver for like a hundred bucks on the street if you know where to go and who to talk to.

  9.
Race is a social construct and you kids just want to keep it constructed so you can whine and complain and play the victim. I'm here to make you functional in society, so you won't grow up to be parasites on the system. But you have to choose to move beyond race. It's your choice. You want to be a victim forever?

10. The fact you're not a murderer right now is just dumb luck. But luck runs out.

11. Firesetter as sociological type: poor, black, broken family, unsupervised. Significant problem with aggression.

12. I am a victim. I am not a victim, a victim, not a victim. I am black. Not really, though—my dad is white!

13. Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar;

And in the spirit of men there is no blood:

O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,

And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,

Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,

Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

14. It's possible to jump a car in forty-five seconds if you practice.

15.
You made your choices; now you need to face the consequences.

16.
Allmon, what do you want to be when you grow up—a hoodlum? A thug? No. Well, what then?

17. Sleep. School. Basketball. Eat. Homework. Sleep. Repeat.

18. The firesetter responds maladaptively to ongoing stress, begins ideation during crisis, makes decision, gathers tools, sets fire. Elation then replaces anger.

19. When I get out of here, things are going to be fucking different. I'm going to make a new life for myself. The power is mine. All I have to do is choose.

20. You know why they killed Caesar? Because he wanted to be king.

*   *   *

You haven't seen the Queen City in two years, you've been stuck out in the sticks at camp, so this Metro bus, it's like a boat ferrying you from hell back to life. In your mind, the ashen neighborhood has turned in two years' time from the dank, grimy Helltown into a shimmering Atlantis all paved in gold, yellow as a lemon diamond, where your mother is wearing a polka-dotted apron with a quarter sheet of cookies in her hand, saying: You're a man now. And you say: I was adjudicated delinquent but have turned my life around, I was dissociated but now I feel, I do not have a father, but I do not need one to become my own man, I know there is dignity in poverty, I am not a product of my environment, I am responsible for my choices, I get to choose who I will be and now I choose to walk a straight line, I will stay away from the streets and gangs and report to my PO, because I have a future as bright as these city lights.

He wondered whether his father had visited during his absence.

When he slipped off the bus with his duffel at Knowlton's Corner, the wind battered him. Unseasonably warm, with the force of a train, it slung a mad cesspool of flyers and candy wrappers, it turned leaves to razors and branches to spears. The neighborhood was still the color of ashes. Jesus. He tried not to think: everything looks the fucking same.

No, I'm changed, I'm grown, I'm seventeen.

Bent into a headwind, he pressed past the old church, past the gas station where two men were hollering at each other across their cars with gruff voices, past the furniture shops filled with cast-offs no one would ever buy, past a restaurant that hadn't been there before, and down along the row houses, stunted like children who didn't get enough to eat, starved of sun in the shadow of the overpass. And there was the shotgun. It too was unchanged, its gray paint peeling, its wrought-iron gate swinging by an ancient hinge, but that was all right, who really cares, because he was all right and his mother was all right, everything was going to be all right. He was clinging to the new person he was implementing in his mind, and as he approached, his feet hurried him forward without direct orders.