SIX FROM THE STREET by KEVIN MICHAELS THE STEPS YOU TAKE HUSTLE AND GRIND THE EDGE OF HEAVEN INSIDE CATCHING PARADISE FADE IT OUT
THE STEPS YOU TAKE
The kid is just a punk corner boy from somebody’s crew who doesn’t know better, full of attitude and tough cool in a red Phillies’ baseball cap twisted sideways on his head, gold chains, and Ecko jacket, with a jagged scar that starts underneath his right eye and curls down his cheek past his chin. Most days Bone wouldn’t even bother with somebody like him, but the look that passed between them when their eyes met and the way he had sneered at Bone across the PATH train aisle sticks with him now; things like that matter in ways he can’t explain and Bone can’t just let it go. The Nine is pressed against the small of his back, the metal cold and hard as it digs into his skin; he can feel it every time he twists in his seat to look at the kid and there is comfort as well as familiarity in that pain. He thinks about what he could say that would get through to the kid – maybe explaining that the way you let yourself be treated is all a man has, and Bone wonders if the corner boy will understand how that has to do with respect and colors, as well as how you carry yourself on the street. When the train pulls into Newark station the
kid quickly shoulders in front of Bone on his way out the door, and Bone slides into step a few feet behind him. He reaches for the Nine and eases it inside his jacket, deciding that words only go so far.
HUSTLE AND GRIND
Sunshine took a drag on the Camel Light and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as the cigarette smoke curled slowly towards the ceiling. The guy was sprawled naked across the bed in the other room, saying something she couldn’t make out; whatever it was got lost in the sounds of Deal or No Deal on TV and the traffic on the street below. He was nobody important – a nickel and dime gambler from some town on Long Island who got lucky enough at the Atlantic City blackjack tables to stretch his weekend into a few extra days and a $300 half and half with Sunshine back in his hotel room. For a slow, rainy Monday night this was probably as good as it was going to get, she thought; it beat standing in the shadows of the Tropicana, watching tail lights up and down Pacific Avenue while waiting for somebody to show her more than passing interest. She looked again in the mirror; eighteen had turned thirty too quickly and the years had taken from her everything that ever mattered – it was hard recognizing that face any more or the dark, lifeless eyes that returned her stare. Sunshine took one final
drag on the cigarette then flicked the butt into the toilet, wondering how she could talk the trick into another half hour.
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
The room is dark, the shades are pulled low, and the only light in the room comes from images flickering across the old TV set pushed to the corner; Boo can barely see the other shooters huddled in pairs or scattered around the room but they don’t concern him anyway. He sucks in a deep breath and tries swallowing the bile working its way up his throat but the violent churning and cramping in his stomach grips his insides and squeezes a stream of bright red vomit with the consistency of snot from his lips. His shirt is wet with sweat and puke, and his back sticks against the wall as he holds the spike in one hand, looking for a vein in his arm. He doesn’t need to tie off and the needle goes in with only a little bit of pain – a pain that is both familiar and comfortable – when he draws back the plunger the backflow of blood confirms he hit the vein. Boo pushes down hard and feels the wave of instant relief spreading up his arm and across his chest, followed by a rush of warmth and euphoria that makes the spasms in his gut slowly fade away. An uncontrollable smile eases across his face and his eyelids suddenly grow heavy; as he
wipes the spit from his lips he doesn’t care that he has soiled his pants again– all he knows is that it is good to be back.
INSIDE
Don’t matter how many hours a day you spend walking the yard like a free man, the ten digit number on your shirt, the dirty blue fatigues that make you look like every other con, and the Mini 14 carbine rifles pointed at you shred the illusion of freedom – we all state property in here. East Jersey State is a cold, dismal place with dingy yellow walls and gray concrete corridors illuminated by weak fluorescents that leave wicked shadows dancing on cell walls late at night, calling your name through the bars and working their way deep into your imagination. Voices fill your head with thoughts about being on the outside, anybody who ever done you wrong, and all the mistakes you made that got you doing time; you can spend nights wrestling with everything you didn’t count on, trying to make sense of it, but you can’t change nothing just by wishing it was different. Most nights I think how it was supposed to be an easy score at the Broad Street liquor store – in and out with whatever cash was in the register – but I didn’t expect the clerk to come out of the stock room with a gun; when I pulled the trigger on the sawed off
I didn’t even see the lady at the end of the aisle by the freezer section, holding her six pack and a big bag of Doritos. Didn’t count on her being pregnant, or getting two life sentences out of it either – wasn’t really my fault if it wasn’t my intention to kill her, I thought, but nobody on the jury saw it that way. “You gonna’ die in here”, one of the guards says to me sometimes, and there ain’t nothing I can say that’s gonna’ change that.
CATCHING PARADISE
The old lady across the street pokes her head out the front door, tentative at first, then shuffles across the porch to peer at the kids jumping rope in the street, dancing in the spray of the open fire hydrant. Twist watches her from his house, remembering how it was when the Skulls moved into 238 Murray Street a few years earlier and she stood on her porch, waving a broomstick and warning them to stay out of her way. They laughed at her that day but none of them doubted her seriousness, and there wasn’t a guy in the gang who didn’t think she wouldn’t smack that broomstick across somebody’s head if given a chance – and none of them ever challenged her. But that was before her sixteen year old grandson took an unloaded thirty-eight into an all-night convenience store in Nutley; before he ran out of the store with forty-six dollars stuffed in a pocket and got gunned down in the parking lot by two white cops who claimed the kid pointed the gun at them – cops who shot him eleven times because they didn’t know the gun had no bullets. It was before the all white grand jury refused to indict them by ruling that their actions
were justified. Now the old lady watches the street a moment longer then hurries back inside to lock her doors and windows.
FADE IT OUT
Nobody saw nothing; a crowd of onlookers had gathered across the street at the steps of the train station, watching as one of the uniforms wrapped yellow police tape between two utility poles then off the side mirror of a Ford Expedition parked at the curb, but nobody knew anything about the dead kid on the sidewalk. It didn’t surprise the cop; nobody snitched – especially not to cops – so it wasn’t even worth it to try a few Q and A’s with the crowd. This was just another body, probably killed over something stupid – you could never explain half the stuff that went down on the street, and uniforms a couple of years on the job had learned to just take it in and let it be. The body was slumped against the chrome rims of the SUV, his head backwards with a bullet hole on one cheek and blood streaking down his face, forming a long thin line that criss-crossed the jagged scar that already cut its way to his chin. There was a look on the dead kid’s face; it might have been shock or confusion, but the cop standing over the body didn’t bother trying to figure it out as he crushed a cigarette butt under his shoe. He shook
another Marlboro out of its pack, kicked the red Phillies’ cap back towards the corpse, and wondered how he could kill a few more hours until the end of his shift.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KEVIN MICHAELS is everything New Jersey (attitude, edginess, Springsteen, Tony Soprano‌ but not Bon Jovi). Author of two upcoming novels (BOUNCE and STILL BLACK REMAINS), he can also be found at Word Riot, The Literary Review, Six Word Memoirs, and Dogzplot. He lives, breathes, and writes at the Jersey Shore.