By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Thirty-One
August 1st
Early on, when I first knew Dani, we’d have these hyper-long conversations. We’d talk about everything, our parents, family histories, music, books I’d read. Apparently, according to Bella, everyone but ourselves (or maybe everyone but me) could see a connection between us. Anyway, back then, Dani told me a story.
It was about her grandfather who had been in the navy during World War II. He’d been stationed on a destroyer in the Pacific and been on many of the islands that America had won from the Japanese. On one of them, he’d found a green and red parrot and kept it as his pet. He taught the parrot to do tricks, to sing and repeat pieces of President Roosevelt’s speeches.
It was a good story, I’d told her, and then asked if she’d ever considered that he’d made it up? After all, I’d said, isn’t it a little weird that the navy would allow a sailor to keep a pet? How would he get food for it aboard ship and where would there be space for it?
From the startled expression on her face it was obvious that she never had considered that her grandfather might have made it up. And that now that I’d mentioned that possibility, it seemed really unlikely that this monkey story could have much truth to it at all.
Suddenly, this thing she’d always known about her grandfather seemed like just a cute story made up for gullible, hero-worshipping grandchildren and her grandfather was revealed as someone who wasn’t above bending the truth. An innocent storyteller? Yes. But, if this story, that to her, had always been a bedrock bit of fact was untrue, what about every other thing she knew about her grandfather?
At the time, I’d felt a surge of triumph. My skepticism had, potentially, cut away at this pretty story to see the possibility of ‘truth’ underneath.
Later, I realized that it was also a fairly cruel thing to do. I didn’t mean it to be, but why bother analyzing someone else’s family memories? Who am I to say what’s true or not true about them? Sure, it might have been the truth, but only in the same way that the truth is that there’s a skull beneath my face.
Maybe the truth was that he had gone ashore on a Pacific island after days of artillery bombardment. Maybe, there were no trees left, or much of anything; just blackened stumps, charred ground, corpses and body parts. Maybe, among the charred wood, he’d found the corpse of a green bird that had had the supreme bad luck of trying to live like its kind always had lived. Maybe Dani’s grandfather realized this and as solace to himself brought that little green bird back to life in a story for his granddaughter?
* * *
August 3
(cont’d from 7/27)The irony was that Jean didn’t get to finish her story, the story finished itself. We were in the house, watching TV and less than an hour later, Teddy called. His voice was shaking:
“He’s going to come for them. He’s going to come for them. He’s gonna kill them. I have to get them out of here.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” I said. For a second, I imagined Frank, having finally watched one too many Quentin Tarantino movies, running around their house with a big butcher’s knife and making sharp, arch threats towards Teddy in his best Jack Nicholson voice: “Honey, I’m home,” psycho Frank with a wild crazy look in his warm brown eyes. “Did ‘ya miss me?”
“Fuck. Fuck. Big A. What’s that damn noise?” he said and I could tell that he’d turned his head from the phone and he started talking again. “Frank...Frank...get down there and shut the kids up. Go get down there, goddamnit. What the fuck do you mean? And get the lights off. No one can think we’re home. Damnit.”
“Big A?” I asked, but my question was overlapping Teddy’s voice and his voice wasn’t talking, but rather anxiously gibbering in the way people do when they’ve had the shit scared out of them. It’s impossible to replicate the sound because it’s got words, words you know, endless repetitions of, “shits” and “fucks” and other more guttural sounds, tittertat, clucking and stuttering and half-stutters and all punctuated by a strange whistling that sounded like it was coming from somewhere hollow.
Teddy, my friend of several years, pleasantly unshockable, smoothly jaded, wise to everything, the guy who was, to us raised-in-the-suburbs white kids, Mr. Urban Streets (truth be told -- African American though he was -- he was raised in the Baltimore suburbs and his parents were both lawyers...and Republicans), had, on the other end of the phone, come unglued.
“Teddy! TEDDY!,” I said, nearly shouting, “What the fuck is going on?” And I wondered if his phone was tapped, if our phone was tapped, if the police had laid siege to his house, if FBI agents were going to come swarming in here like a bunch of black-suited, sunglass-wearing locusts. At that moment, all bad things seemed possible.
“Nathan? Nathan? Goddamnit. We’ve got to get them out of here.”
“Teddy, you are going to have to slow down. You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on. If you don’t, then I can’t help.”
“Help? Fuck, I don’t know if you can help. I think we’re beyond help.”
“Teddy, are the police outside? Are you guys being raided? Just give yourselves up, Teddy. It’s not worth it.”
“What?”
“There’s a stakeout outside your house. The police have been watching you guys for weeks. They think you’re drug dealers.”
Something about me saying that seemed to calm him down, maybe it was just the indignation of having me get his situation wrong, but, whatever it was, once he started talking again, he sounded calmer:
“Hell no. Stakeout? I wish there were cops laying siege to this place. Big A is a drug dealer. He’s been getting the local kids to be runners and lookouts for him. None of their parents knew until last week. But, they took Jonas’ Dad and brother and, as I went around the street asking questions, I found this kid, Sammy, and he said that some of the other kids were working for Big A as lookouts and runners. Tonight, they came and beat up Sammy and Sammy’s in the hospital. Look, if I live through this, I’ll tell you the whole story later. The point is that I’ve got a bunch of the kids and their parents in the basement here and I’ve got to get them out.”
“Why not just walk them out?”
“Because Big A’s people shot and killed the bootlegger and his people tonight and they beat the shit out of Sammy and they said that if anything goes wrong, or any of the kids don’t show for work, that he’s gonna start killing people.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Damnit, Nathan, stop saying stupid shit. I need you to get over here with some cars and get us and take us back to your house.”
“The only car we have is Brenna’s and she’s not even here. I don’t know where her keys are. And why is it so much safer here?”
“It’s not, but at least we might get a few minutes to sort this shit out. Meanwhile, these kids could die. I could die.”
“Let me see what I can do. Can I call you back?”
“Yeah, but it better be soon.”
I hung up the phone and looked over at Jean.
“I thought you said that you hadn’t talked to Frank in weeks? Teddy said that that drug dealer crap started last week.”
“I’m weak, that’s how I plead, your honor. Nothing else I can say,” she said.
“Jean,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I have to call the police. We shouldn’t be doing this. Do we even know what we’re doing?”
I ran upstairs and got the book I write my numbers in. Back downstairs I called the station. “Officer Tytis, please?”
“I’m sorry sir, but officer Tytis is off today.”
“What about Officer Reynolds?”
“I’m sorry sir, he’s off too.”
“Can I speak to whoever handles their cases when they’re off?”
“Sir, I can get you Detective Thompson.”
I was put on hold. Two minutes later I was still on hold. Five minutes later I was still on hold. I hung up and redialed.
“Can I please talk to Detective Thompson?”
“I’m sorry sir, but Detective Thompson is on another line. Would you like his voicemail?”
“Sure.”
So I leave a rambling, nonsensical message about how a house that the police have under surveillance is my friend’s and that he isn’t a drug dealer, even though the police think he is. But, now a real drug dealer is coming after Teddy and the kids who are in Teddy’s basement hiding with their parents so they don’t get killed. And Teddy has asked me to find a way to get them out of there. At the end, I did remember to leave my number.
How many crazy people do the DC police hear from per day? He’s definitely not going to respond to that. I wouldn’t.
Next, I called Kerran at Samantha’s. I let it ring four times and no one answered. I called back and let it ring longer to see if there’d be a machine that would pick it up. Nothing. I called back a third time and a groggy voice answered: Kerran.
My curiosity got the better of me. “Are you still asleep?” I ask.
“No, asshole, you woke me up remember. It just fucking happened, you’d think you remember, huh? Now what’s going on?”
I tell him the story. He says he thinks he can get the Bleed Monkey van, but that, either way, he’ll meet us in front of Trolley’s in 15 minutes. I put the phone down.
“That’s a real problem,” someone said behind me and I turned around and there was John Slater Alcott and Brenna. I didn’t even hear them behind me. Both of them were wearing tennis outfits. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Brenna is anything but torn blue jeans or shorts made from camouflage pants she’d cut the legs off of. Where was my camera?
(All joking aside, it suddenly occurred to me that I really did need my camera.)
“Thank God, you guys are home,” I said to them. “Brenna we need your car,” and I related the parts of the story she hadn’t heard.
“You know I went to jail already, right?” she said. “You know that my parents are about 16 different kinds of pissed at me, right?”
“I know.”
“OK, just so you know...BUT, despite all that, I am coming with you guys,” she said and looked up at John Slater expectantly. John Slater looked at me and looked back at her and looked at me and back at her.
“It sounds like we’re going to have to make as few trips as possible,” he said. “I have a car too.”
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three
