The Corner. David Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ her voice now soft.

      Gary looks at her, sees that she knows. Maybe she knew the whole time. He wants to say something, to bring it home, but the snake seizes the moment instead.

      “No, Ma,” he says, “I got to go out.”

      DeAndre McCullough leans against the oversized concrete flowerpots outside the rec center doors, his demeanor on chill, his face tucked down inside the hood of his sweatshirt. R.C. is perched next to him on the steps, lacing and relacing his new Jordans, listening with growing impatience as DeAndre tells the tale. Boo is against the other flowerpot, half listening, half waiting with a broken fragment of the playground’s crumbling asphalt in his hand, watching for a rat to stick its head out of the discarded easy chair at the end of the alley.

      “You was getting out the hack?”

      “Right on Baltimore Street,” says DeAndre.

      “Sheeeeet,” R.C. says. “We should call a meeting.”

      DeAndre nods agreement.

      “We should send a message,” adds R.C. “Go down there deep.”

      “You see who it was?” asks Boo.

      DeAndre shrugs.

      “But, yo, Black, you was comin’ from the projects,” insists R.C. “You was down the hill where they always be. That’s why they took them shots at you.”

      DeAndre nods agreement. He likes it when anyone calls him Black. He fashioned the street name himself, figuring that any real gangster ought to be able to fashion his own corner legend, rather than leaving such important matters to random chance. His family used to call him Onion, because when he was little his head had that particular shape. DeAndre hated Onion.

      “I’m saying we should go strong,” adds R.C., warming to the idea. “Fuck them project niggers. They ain’t all that.”

      It probably was the Lexington Terrace boys who took a shot at DeAndre on Baltimore Street, and by rights C.M.B. should mount up and march back down there in force. But DeAndre has other things crowding his mind; they all do since they started going off to sling drugs in ones and twos. Hard to raise a posse when the crew is scattered over a half-dozen corners.

      “Must be them,” says Boo, chiming in late. “Or maybe those niggers from Stricker and Ramsay.”

      “Boo, you stupid,” says R.C. “They ain’t gon’ be up on Baltimore Street. And, yo, half of them is white anyway.”

      “So?” asks Boo, wounded. “Least I ain’t stupid like you, R.C. Least I go to school.”

      “I go to school,” R.C. says, then catches himself before the other two dissolve in laughter. “Well, I will go to school soon as my mother gets me into Francis M. Woods.”

      That’s the current theory on Richard Carter’s academic career. If he could only get out of Southwestern and into Francis Woods, then he’d turn it around, maybe get to the tenth grade before reaching the age of majority. It’s a fine theory, and there are appreciable differences between the chaos of the Terrordome, as the local kids call Southwestern, and the controlled anarchy of Francis Woods. But the contrast is relevant only if a student were to attend more than, say, two or three days a semester. R.C. always hits a shopping mall for the back-to-school fashion sales, then shows up looking right for the first day of class. After that, it’s back to the streets.

      As for DeAndre, lately he’s been living in both camps. Since Rose Davis put him back on the rolls last month, he’s been making it down to Francis Woods for little more than half of his classes. He’s also been slinging enough of his Blue Tops on Fairmount to keep money in his pocket. Not as much as he’d like, of course—Tyrone Boice plucked him good when he tried to bring his vials up to Monroe Street—but enough to get by.

      “What you say?” DeAndre asks, changing the subject.

      “Huh,” says Boo.

      “About the thing.”

      “Yeah,” says Boo, throwing the asphalt chunk. Hitting the chair, missing the rat.

      DeAndre waits for more of an answer. When none is forthcoming, he suppresses an almost overwhelming desire to smack Boo upside his head. He’s been trying to give Boo a little piece of his package on consignment, bring on a subcontractor and make a little more than he could make on his own.

      “I’m sayin’ you’d get twenty-five,” DeAndre tells him.

      “Twenty-five dollar?”

      R.C. laughs loudly from the steps. “Boo, goddamn!”

      “No,” says DeAndre. “That’s the split.”

      “Oh yeah,” says Boo, nodding until silence descends on them.

      DeAndre looks over at Boo and waits. Boo is a loyal member of C.M.B., but sometimes talking to him is like banging your head on a wall. DeAndre’s latest partner in the Blue Top venture on Fairmount was Corey, his cousin Nicky’s boyfriend. And while Corey didn’t mess up like so many others, he also wasn’t spending as much time on the corner as DeAndre. So hiring Boo seemed to make sense, assuming simple math was at all within his grasp.

      “How much I get?” Boo asks finally.

      “DAMN, BOY,” shouts R.C. “YOU IGNORANT AS SHIT.”

      “At least I ain’t messin’ up all the time like you do,” says Boo, bitterly. “You always a fuck up.”

      Now DeAndre laughs. It was true enough: R.C. was always messing up the money; he couldn’t sling drugs for two days without getting into some kind of hole.

      “Fuck you, bitch,” mutters R.C.

      DeAndre breaks it down to Boo slowly: I give you forty, you sell out and one-fifty comes back to me and fifty you keep. You sell twice that, you make a hundred dollars. And the Blue Tops, DeAndre assures him, they are the bomb; he’s selling out at five dollars a vial on Fairmount. If Boo wants to try them down at Ramsay and Stricker, they could go for dimes.

      “Okay,” says Boo.

      They sit for a time on the two thin steps below the rec doors, glad for a February day with a little warmth. Distracted by a conversation that amounts to half war council, half marketing meeting, they hardly notice as bodies begin to drift in from Fayette Street, lining up meekly. In scarcely a minute, eighteen men and women are standing hard by the fence, on the edge of the playground, across the vacant lot from Mount Street. All in a row, all waiting patiently.

      From here, too, they can see Collins come north up Vincent from Baltimore Street and park his radio car at the intersection with Fayette.

      “Bitch always hanging ’round Malik’s house,” DeAndre says.

      “Yo, that’s cause Malik be snitching,” says R.C. “Many times as he gets locked up and never goes to jail, I’m telling you that boy be snitching.”

      They watch a tall, lanky fiend walk up the middle of Fayette Street in front of Collins, pulling a new refrigerator balanced on a homemade wagon.

      “Collins СКАЧАТЬ