The other night I took a walk. The air was cool and crisp, causing me to
button my Artful Dodger jacket all the way to the neck, and the city was as
quiet as it gets around here. Down by
the train yard, boxcars boomed like thunder as they were coupled together and
somewhere off in the distance sirens wailed.
I was on my way to the corner store for a pack of smokes and, since we
are moving this weekend, was looking around the neighborhood with a critical
eye. I passed the alley where a drunk
guy came at me one night, brandishing a 40 ounce malt liquor above his head
like a club; I passed within a block of
the apartment buildings that had been shot up not too long ago, victims of a drive-by shooting that luckily ended without bloodshed or loss of life. It seemed like every other house had a pit
bull chained in the yard and the dogs’ barking echoed off the surrounding
buildings, making it sound as though I were surrounded by a vicious pack.
As I got closer to the corner store, muffled strains of
Southern rock drifted through the air, but this was to be expected. The music
came from the LST Club. The windowless
building leans to the left so badly I was actually surprised it remained
standing after last year’s dericho turned our town into a post-apocalyptic
wasteland; a faded sign informs
passersby that it was established in 1945 under the name Granny’s and that its current acronym is an abbreviation for Lynn
Street Tavern. The LST is a private club with a reputation
for violence and I always cross the street before passing it because you can
never tell when a scuffle will spill out of the front door and onto the
street. It’s always seemed a bit ironic
to me that people who've spent their entire lives paying their dues now pay monetary
dues so they can obliterate that past entirely.
But I digress….
The store I was heading to is catercorner to the LST Club
and just across the street. It sits at a
four-way intersection, a block or two from an abandoned house that was
riddled with bullets, and a stop sign is posted just outside the front
door. Between the beer and sweet wine
sold at the store and the LST Club, many a drunk has held onto that stop sign
for balance as their bodies purged alcohol saturated stomachs. So many, in fact, that the sidewalk
surrounding the sign has been stained with a Rorschach pattern of old
vomit. The store’s employees have a way
of dealing with the mess, however; they
take bags of potato chips and cheese curls that have gone stale and crunch
them up, covering the puke entirely. The
chips absorb what they can overnight and in the morning birds flock around the
stop sign, carrying away the evidence to waiting nests and keeping the sidewalk
clean.
The store itself is deeply integrated into this
neighborhood. It seems as if there are
always people hanging around inside, swapping stories about who has recently
been arrested, who’s been paroled, and whose ass deserves to be kicked. The first week we lived in this neighborhood,
I walked into that store to discover a young guy with a busted nose and split
lip. He was bleeding all over the
counter and floor, despite the wad of paper towels the clerk had given him, but
this was no big deal… just another night on Lynn Street. At the this store, you can buy what I've always thought of as a meth-kit; it’s a
brown paper bag which contains everything you need to smoke meth, bundled
together for one convenient price. You can
also place some bets in under the counter gambling and, despite the Health
Department ban, someone is always smoking cigarettes. When you get there a few minutes before closing, the lines
are always longer. People sway and
stagger, their arms loaded with six packs, malt liquor, and little bottles of
Bootlegger Jack, desperate to get what they need before it’s too late.
Walking back home, I chose to cut down the alley, which is
what I usually do. In a neighborhood infested with drunks and tweakers, this
may not seem like the smartest plan in the world, but I have my reasons. For
one, the alley butts up against a state cop’s backyard on the far end; but there is also always enough litter and
garbage lying around that I could easily find a makeshift weapon if
needed. Thankfully, it’s never come to
that but I like to be prepared, just in case.
When I was almost home, I remembered the young girl I’d seen
one evening. It was about 3:30 AM and
she was standing on the corner, directly across from our building. She couldn't have been older than fifteen or
sixteen, but she was draped in a flowing, white wedding dress and was dancing
in circles in the heart of a redneck ghetto.
Another time, we were sitting on our second-story porch when a guy we’d
never seen before decided to give us an impromptu stand-up comedy routine from
street level. I remember one of his bits
involved Wilford Brimley doing a commercial for crack and the guy had us near
tears by the time he moved on. But moments like that are few and far between around here.
We’re moving this weekend and I can’t imagine that I will
ever miss this place. In all honesty, we should’ve been out of this
neighborhood long, long ago. It was only
meant to be temporary, somewhere with cheap rent where we could get our
finances back into order before moving on with our lives. The first month we lived here, our car was
broken into twice and when my wife called the police, the dispatcher responded
with, “Well, that’s what you get when you live on Swann Street.”; that should have told us something then and
there. I’ve got this sarcastic suspicion
that Swann is spelled with two Ns to ensure the street isn't mistakenly associated
with a thing of grace and beauty… but
that’s just me.
I’m ready to say goodbye to the
condemned buildings (and the ones which, by all rights, should be condemned) .
I’m ready to walk through a neighborhood without constantly being
on guard, making eye contact with other pedestrians long enough to nod an
acknowledgment, but not long enough to be considered a challenge. I am ready to leave this all behind. And not a moment too soon.
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