Haiku (6 page)

As my students raised their eyes to mine, I would give them a simple illustration.

“Imagine a boxer who had no punching power,” I would tell them. “He can
land
his blows easily—swiftly, and with precision—but they have no real effect on his opponent. Imagine another, with very limited skills. He rarely succeeds in landing a blow, but, when he does, it is
instantly
effective. Which would you choose as
your
teacher?”

Then I would see the truth reflected in the eyes of my students. And the subtle difference in how they bowed their heads in response to what they had just been taught.

My sin had been arrogance, not hypocrisy. So I welcomed the opportunity to become a student of those who had been judged failures, mindful that they
lived
in a world in which those who judged them would not survive a single night.

I listened as I taught my students to listen—humbly, but with discernment. I measured any offered knowledge not by how long the guide had managed to survive, but by how he had done so. I decided I would heed only the words of those who had lost all, yet still retained themselves.

“Don’t ever go in those shelters,” I had been warned, that first night by the fire. “An old man like you, they’d eat you alive.”

“And don’t go near the park at night, neither,” another said. “Those benches
look
good—keep you off the ground and all—but that’s where the kids go to hunt.”

“Hunt?” I asked.

“This here’s what you call a
bonfire,”
the first one told me, pointing at the oil drum. I could see by his manner and bearing that he was accustomed to being the spokesman for his group. “What those evil fucking kids do is what they call making a
bum
fire. And that’s us—bums.

“All they need is to catch one of us sleeping. They got these plastic squeeze bottles full of gasoline. Spray you all over, strike a match, and
whoosh!”
he said, pointedly looking down at the blazing fire.

“Could you not protect one another?” I asked. Mine was not a challenging query, it was the speech of a humble man in search of knowledge. “Perhaps by taking turns sleeping, so some could always keep watch?”

“Even if we
could
do that—and who’s going to trust their life to one of
us
staying awake?—it wouldn’t do no good,” the leader told me. “Those kids, they don’t just carry spray bottles. They got baseball bats, lead pipes, all kinds of stuff to break bones with. And they
like
doing it, fucking us up for kicks.”

I knew he spoke the truth. I had first encountered such men when I had been a soldier. They came in many uniforms.

Later that same night, I wrapped myself in a piece of discarded carpet I had found in an alley, lay down on a park bench, and closed my eyes.

They were not long in coming. Even had I actually been asleep, I would have sensed their presence—their collective spirit emitted a thick, putrid odor, like raw sewage.

Through slitted eyes, I saw three young men in identical black outfits, their faces covered with ski masks. Only the red laces on their heavy boots disturbed the total blackness of their images.

As they began their preparations, I slipped out of the carpet into the darkness. Two of them began spraying the thick, empty bundle on the bench, never noticing that their comrade behind them was already immobilized.

I left them on the ground, next to the bench. Nothing they might tell the police when they regained consciousness would represent any danger to me. The plastic bottles of gasoline would speak louder than any lie they might concoct, as would the swastika tattoo on the broken neck of the largest one.

This justice brought me no closer to Chica’s candle-point flame. Nor did I confuse it with an act of atonement.

But I did tell myself that I had truly begun my journey. In this, I was wrong.

I had sworn to renounce followers, but there are no secrets in a world where there is no place to hide them. My
encounter with the would-be torturers was known within minutes, and magnified within hours. Within days, I had become a walking myth. But this obvious parallel to the original growth of my reputation as a teacher never penetrated my arrogance-armored consciousness.

“We could find that woman,” Michael enthused. “I know we could.”

“Surveillance grid,” Ranger agreed. “Stage one. Then we set up a box tail until we locate their HQ.”

I exchanged looks with Lamont. He nodded sadly. If we allowed Michael and Ranger to pursue the elusive automobile on their own, the consequences were quite predictable. And unacceptable.

“This can be done,” I told my brothers. “But only if we do not act rashly.”

“You’re the boss, Ho,” Michael said, instantly.

“I am not the—” I stopped myself from repeating what had come to be my ever-ignored mantra. “Let us go to the pier,” I finished, lamely. I never ceased my attempts to persuade the others to stop viewing my proposals as commands, but I had not yet been totally successful. Perhaps not even partially so.

Two hours later, Michael walked us through what he had observed. He showed us where the white Rolls-Royce had
come to a stop, then began to pace off the short distance to the edge of the pier. I urged caution; the wooden flooring was badly decayed in many spots, and the footing was treacherous.

“Right there,” Michael said, pointing.

We all looked down at the oily black water.

“Those big ships used to pull up to offload right where we’re standing now,” Lamont said. “That means the water’s
deep
.“

“It made a hard sound when it hit,” Michael said. “Like it was real heavy.”

“But small enough to carry in her hand?”

“That’s right, Ho. In
one
hand, matter of fact.”

“A rod!” Brewster blurted out.

“A what?” Ranger demanded.

“A gat, a heater, a … a … pistol,” Brewster told him.

“A piece?” Ranger snarled. “Why didn’t you just fucking say so, man? What kind? Revolver, semi-auto, half—?”

“
I
didn’t see it,” Brewster reminded him.

“Then why did you
say
it was a—?”

“Brewster was surmising,” I said to Ranger, very gently. When I was a child, one of the exercises we practiced was to reach into a nest of tiny candles burning in the darkness and extinguish whichever one our teacher demanded, without disturbing the others.

“An educated guess,” Lamont explained, in response to Ranger’s quizzical look. “But it didn’t have to be a pistol. Could have been anything small and solid. A bundle of computer disks, videocassettes, even a book of pictures … Like
Michael said, we’re not going to try and actually find whatever it was. We don’t
need
to, okay?”

“Define the mission!” Ranger snapped out.

“Well, like we were—”

“Only the commander defines the mission,” Ranger warned Lamont, his voice on the razor edge between adamant and dangerous.

Again forced by a more immediate need, I reluctantly temporarily resumed the mantle of leadership I had renounced. “It is too late to begin our search,” I said. “But, even as we sleep tonight, we can be alert to the prospect of the car returning … perhaps with search equipment. If no one appears, tomorrow we will go about our usual business. Then, when darkness comes, perhaps we could meet in Brewster’s library?”

I made the last portion of my statement into a request, bowing when Brewster nodded his acceptance. “Are we agreed, then?” I concluded.

Only Target did not respond, for which we were all duly grateful.

I awoke the next morning mindful of the complex task I faced. For some time, it had been necessary that Michael and Ranger be kept apart as much as possible. Ranger was a few years younger than Michael, and often pointed out that while he had been fighting in some foul jungle, Michael had been living in luxury. Michael was not reluctant to defend
himself on this issue, insisting that his avoidance of conscription should be attributed to his political convictions.

Lamont seeks what he believes to be the irony inherent in all things, as if to prove that the universe consists of nothing but the random intersection of events. He took it upon himself to resolve the conflict between the two men by establishing their common ground.

Sipping from his brown-bagged bottle of wine, gesturing with his cigarette, seated on a wooden box as the rest of us watched from the ground, Lamont became a university professor, speaking from a position of authority. “Break it down, it always comes back around,” he said. “Ranger volunteers; Michael slips past the draft. On different sides of the world, body
and
mind. But that was then. Now you’re both standing on one tiny little spot on this planet. And how you got this close is exactly the same way you got so far apart. Only, this time, it was Michael who volunteered and Ranger who got drafted.”

“How did I—?”

“You gambled it all away,” Lamont cut Michael off. “Nobody made you do it. Maybe you expected it to turn out different, but it was your choice. Ranger, nobody
made
him join the Army. You were seventeen, right?”

“On my birthday,” Ranger affirmed.

“Which means you couldn’t be drafted. So you made a choice, just like Michael did. And it didn’t turn out the way
you
expected, either.”

Lamont looked from one man to the other. Seeing no resistance, he went on: “Get it? Michael, you volunteered to
be here. With us, I mean. But, Ranger, you didn’t ask for any of this, am I right?”

“The fucking VA said I was—”

“The fucking VA
drafted
you, brother. Right into
this
war. Yeah?”

Silence came. Then Ranger nodded, not noticing that Michael was doing the same.

Since that time, an uneasy tolerance had grown between the two men. But I knew each remained combustible in his own way, and feared any attempt they made to work together could be potentially lethal. I subordinated my desire to avoid being anyone’s “commander” to the group’s need for survival.

I was not surprised to find Lamont waiting in the doorway of a waterfront bar he knew I would pass as I ventured forth each morning. That doorway was a safe place to rest—the bar would not open for hours. Lamont held a large paper cup in both hands. I assumed that at least a portion of its contents was coffee.

As a youth, Lamont had been the leader of a warrior tribe. As he related to me one night, “I was an OG before those little ‘gangstas’ made up the word. That was when gangs
ruled
the streets, Ho. Some streets, anyway. And when you went down on another club, you did it face-up. You
walked
over to them. They
walked
over to you. The newspapers called that a ‘rumble,’ but we called it what it was—a
meet
.“

As he spoke, I saw Chica in my mind, starting her walk.

“We always duked it out. Fists first. Then chains, blades, nailed broomsticks, sawed-off baseball bats. Sometimes there’d be a zip gun, but that’s nothing but a car antenna and a rubber band—you had to be
close
to make it work. Those days, you
earned
face when you
showed
face. Man-to-man.

“Everyone
expected
the leader to be first up, not like some faggot general standing on a hill, watching his men do battle.

“You know how they do it today? Carful of punks drive past a corner, pull their nines, close their eyes, and hose everything down. And they think that chickenshit makes them
men
.“

“It does seem cowardly” was all I could offer my friend.

“I’m not talking about heart, Ho. Ever listen to Ranger when he goes off into one of his war stories? It’s like his antenna is all of a sudden picking up a clear signal, no static. But if you look at it straight, you see: no matter what people
say
a war’s about, it’s really always about the same thing—rep.”

“But you explained—”

“Explained? Man, I was just cherry-picking, Ho.”

Seeing the expression on my face, Lamont expanded my vocabulary. “I mean, I was telling you about the good parts like they was the
only
parts. You really interested in this ancient gang-fighting stuff?”

“I want to learn.”

Lamont studied my face for a long moment. I opened myself to his silent interrogation. Finally, he extended a clenched fist. I imitated his gesture. He tapped my fist with
his, as if sealing a bargain. Then he lit another cigarette, and began to guide me through a world that no longer existed.

“Any club was always about
turf
. Like, say, Fifth Street was your block, from Amsterdam to the Park, okay?”

“But that would be—”

“Up in Harlem, when we’d say Fifth, we’d mean a
Hundred
and Fifth,” in response to the confusion on my face. “Anyway, it wouldn’t matter what little block it was: if you claimed it, you had to
hold
it. Some clubs, they claimed whole pieces of the city. You couldn’t walk through their turf unless you paid tolls. Not money,” he said, again responding to my confused look, “although, if
you had
any, you could forget about holding on to it. Mostly, you’d just get your ass kicked. But if you flew your colors—like wearing your club jacket—you could get yourself seriously fucked up.”

“But none of these clubs could actually own—”

“Amen, brother! You just pulled the covers off. That was it. That was it, in spades. And spics, too,” he said, chuckling at his own joke. “We never owned
shit
. But we killed each other to keep calling it ours, anyway.”

“If you knew this—?”

“How were we
gonna
know it? Who was gonna tell us? Who was even gonna
talk
to us? Some social worker? You want to know what’s really funny, Ho? The City had these guys—college boys, white guys, all of them. They’d put them out in the street for that social-work stuff. ‘Detached workers,’ they called them. They’d hang with you, try and talk you into going back to school, giving up bopping … like fucking missionaries in Africa. But it was doomed from jump. See, the only way a club qualified for one of those workers
was behind being feared. It was like a status thing, having one of those workers. Good for your rep.”