The Boy We All Knew

The day we found out the tragic news was a beautiful autumn afternoon. I think it was a Saturday and the leaves were turning colors and gathering in mounds of reds, yellows, and greens at the base of the trees in front of the small houses on the block. I had just enlisted in the Army and I wanted to see my friend Ramone before I went off to basic training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

Alan, another close friend of Ramone and mine worked at an industrial cleaning company called C.Qs. over on East Grand Blvd and Palmer street. He detested the job, the pay, and the people, but with times being what they were, and jobs being few and far between during the Reagan era recession of the 1980s it was the only job that he could get so he took it, and fought tooth and nails to keep it. I had worked at C.Q's. as well, and speaking from personal experience I will tell you that there should have been an engraved sign over the entrance that read “All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” like at the gates of hell in Dante’s “Inferno”. I lasted all of six weeks before hell got to be too hot for me to handle. So, I quit and joined the Army.

Alan, on the other hand, stayed and with good reason, his girlfriend Kacy was pregnant now which only exacerbated an already stressful situation. They were beyond broke and argued constantly about everything. I can’t remember how many times they broke up only to reunite a few hours later after all the steam had run out of both of their engines.

Kacy was a feisty streetwise girl with the misfortune of having two train wrecks for her parents. The only thing keeping Kacy and her little brother Steven from being homeless or worse was Kacy’s wit and will. Kacy was the type of girl that could smell bullshit coming a mile away. She would smile sweetly at the bullshitter, some guy way too old to be hitting on a girl her age then she’d kick him in the nuts, and down he’d go. She and Alan were perfect for one another.

Her biological father was doing life up in Jackson penitentiary and her mother Jasmine was a part-time recovering addict who was more concerned with getting her next fix than raising her sixteen-year-old daughter and thirteen-year-old son Steven. From the moment I saw Steven, strutting up and down the block like a little Irish banty rooster with almost translucent white skin and an unruly bunch of red curls blustering and picking fights with anyone that would take him on, I knew he was on borrowed time.

Steven was a twig of a boy with visions of grandeur. He was the outlaw son of the outlaw father he never met or knew. A little boy with a major Napolean complex walking around with a boulder on his shoulder daring anyone to knock it off, and many did knock it off and much worse. Undeterred, Steven had decided that being a so-called outlaw was in his blood and that that was the way he was going to go.

I watched as Steven began to take up with the absolute worse elements in the neighborhood. Kacy had asked Alan to talk with him, then she asked me, but nothing worked. He was bound and determined to go the way of the wicked, a decision that would cost him his life. When he was 18 or 19 years old I don’t remember which. Steven’s brutally beaten and stabbed body was found in a burnt-out drug den near Woodard Ave.

*****

Kacy’s mother’s boyfriend Bulldog was a small-time weed dealer who liked getting underaged girls high and drunk so that he could take advantage of them sexually. He had tried this move on Stacy a few times when Jasmine wasn’t there or either blackout in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but Kacy always managed to escape unscathed. It was only a matter of time she knew before he would take what he wanted from her like he did with her friend Tammy, a young Korean girl from up the block. When he did come for her, Kacy and her four-inch steak knife she slept with would be waiting. She told me and Alan that she would kill him before she let him have her. Kacy was right, Bulldog did come for her a few nights later and she had managed to fight him off. When Alan found out he was furious and although she told him that she had the situation under control I knew that there was no way that Alan would let that kind of thing go.

Bulldog received an anonymous ass-kicking one wintery Michigan morning. Still high or drunk from earlier that night Bulldog staggered out on the icy porch and fell. His feet slipped and slid underneath him then shoot out from under him. the first thing that hit the porch was his fat girlish ass. His ass bounced off the ice, his feet flew into the air, he farted, then his head slammed into the ice-covered wooden porch.

“Motherfucker!” he yelled, his voice sounding super loud and tinny. He lay there for a moment breathing heavily. He was making a strange sound, a mixture of a groan and a whine.

“Fuckers crying,” Alan whispered.

“You think,” I asked amazed. Bulldog always played the tough guy now he was out here crying because he fell and bumped his head.

“Yeah, listen to him,” Alan whispered. I cocked my ear in his direction and listened harder. Bulldog was crying.

“Damn,” I said shaking my head.

After a few minutes, Bulldog pulled himself together and tried to stand up. His feet slid back and forth beneath him and he fell again. His ungloved hand slapped down hard on the icy wooden rail. He yelped and yanked his hand back and tumbled backward off the porch. He rolled down the four or five front steps and landed flat on his back in the walkway. After a few seconds, Bulldog got to his feet and staggered toward his 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, red with a white interior, a very nice car. As he reached for the door handle he looked up and got knocked out. We heard that Jasmine found him lying face down in the snow with a bloody nose, ears, and a broken hand twenty minutes later. A few days later Tammy’s family contacted the police about Tammy’s sexual assault, but by the time they got around to investigating it, Bulldog was gone. West Virginia, that’s where I heard he went, and surprise, surprise, he ended up in jail for statutory rape a few years later.

*****

“What are you going to do,” I asked Alan after he told me about Kacy’s pregnancy. He looked sick.

“ Got to marry her I guess,” he said staring down at the floor.

“ You guess?”

“Yeah, what else can I do. We ain’t having no fucking abortion.”

“ I never suggested…”

“ I know. I’m sorry. I’m so fucked right now.”

“What about money,”

“ I got the job over at C.Qs. Tony’s gonna have to give me a raise.”

“Tony’s not going to give you a raise.”

“Why not?”

“Because he just gave you one a few weeks ago. Why don’t you join the Army with me,” I said? Alan shook his head.

“Forget that, I ain’t going into no Army.”

“ You’ll make more money in the Army than you will be working at C.Qs.” Alan thought about it then shook his head again.

“ Nuh, we’ll be alright, we’ll manage,” he said.

“You still driving me to the airport?”

“If you want me to,”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m heading over to Ramone’s. I’d like to see him before I go.”

“I’ll drive,” Alan said quickly and grabbed his car keys.

*****

Although it had been a few years since we had last seen him, I still considered Ramone a good friend and I wanted to see him before I went off to basic training. Ramone’s street was quiet as it always was when we were kids. Alan parked in front of Ramone’s house and killed the engine.

“I can’t believe he still lives here,” Alan said absently as he looked up and down the block.

“His parents left him and his sister the house is what I heard.”

“Fuck that, I would sell, I wouldn’t want to live around here now.”

Alan and I got out of his Ford Talon and walked up the thin paved walkway up to the house. Everything about the place seemed smaller and shabbier. It was the same small house on E. Palmer that he and his family had lived in when we all went to Ferry Elementary. Going there was like stepping back in time. Many of the same families and small business owners were still there. “Young’s Barbeque” on Mt. Elliot and East Grand Blvd, was still there at the time, “Thompson’s cleaners”, on McDougall and Ferry was still there, and my favorite penny candy store Frank’s Beer &Wine Store, on the corner of Ferry and Mt. Elliot, my old block was still there at the time. That was years ago, they are all gone now, even Ferry Elementary is gone now. Torn down by the city leaving a gigantic black hole where our childhood once stood. An obscene black scar the size of an entire city block with scattered houses and overrun weed fields.

As Alan and I walked toward the small blockhouse my mind drifted back to when I first met Ramone in Mrs. Drum’s class when we were in the fourth grade. I wanted to be Ramone’s friend. It took a while, but slowly but surely he started opening up to me. I remember sitting at our table waiting for the class to start. Alan for whatever reason wasn’t in school that day. Ramone and I sat quietly waiting then he turned to me and look me directly in the eyes. His voice was calm and splashed with a hint of contempt for me.

“ Do you like Alan better than me because he’s white,” he asked. My views on race and culture were still in the development stages so this question caught me completely off guard. As I sit here today writing this, I can almost hear his flat monotonic voice.

“ I don’t like Alan better than you,” I said quickly.

“You don’t,” he asked slightly surprised.

“No, why would I? I like you both the same,” I said.

“For real,” he smiled. It was a rare thing to see Ramone smile.

“Yeah, sure I do. Maybe I’ll ask my mom to see if she’ll let me have company this weekend.”

“Spend a night,” he asked excitedly.

“Yeah, you haven’t spent a night yet,” I said.

A cloud suddenly came over his dark face and his smile slowly faded.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He looked down at the table and began to fidget with a piece of torn notebook paper.

“You going to invite Alan too,” he looked up and asked cautiously.

“I was going to, why?”

“ Oh,” he said and looked down at his torn piece of paper again, “Then I can’t come.”

“ Why not, should I not invite Alan, I thought you liked Alan?”

“I do. Alan and I are best buds,” he hesitated, “ It’s just that if my mom and dad knew that Alan is going to be there… I don’t think they’ll let me come over.” I looked at him confused for a moment then I remembered Alan telling me about how Ramone’s parents weren’t too keen on him having white friends.

“ My mom would talk to your mom and let her know that you’ll be safe.”

“I know,” he hesitated, “ It’s just that if Alan’s there they won’t let me come.”

“Why not,” I asked even though I already knew the answer. I needed to hear him say it. I don’t know why, but I did. So, he did say it.

“My mom and dad don’t want me playing or hanging around them.” He motioned with his head toward a table of white children.

“Oh,” I said, “why not?”

“They’re white,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

“My dad says you can’t really trust them and that most of them look down on us black people. They think we’re all on the welfare, or on drugs, or crooks,” he said.

“No, they don’t.”

“My dad says they do.”

“I’ve been to Alan’s house…” I started to say before he interrupted me.

“Your mom and dad let you go over there?” He asked shocked.

“Yeah, and his mom and dad treated me real nice too. They never looked down on me. I even ate dinner over there once.”

“ I bet they think you're poor now. They gave you charity, see,” he said raising his voice slightly.

“ My dad works at Ford Motor Company, that’s a good job. We’re not poor, my dad’s a boss or something.” I said.

“ I know you’re not, but I bet they think you are.”

“They don’t. They’re nice every time I go over there.”

“ My dad says we shouldn’t do that. He says we should stick to our own kind.”

“ You want to spend the night or not?”

“Alan going to be there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just don’t tell your mom and dad.”

He looked at me as if I had just suggested that we rob a bank.

“You mean lie?”

“No, just if they don’t ask you about Alan don’t tell them.” Ramone smiled again and nodded. Ramone was never allowed to spend the night. His parents just wouldn’t let him do it.

On the day of our visit to Ramone’s house, Alan’s family and my family had moved out of the neighborhood and had been out for years by this point. My family moved out right after I graduated from Ferry in 1979. We moved to a quiet middle-class neighborhood about ten miles from where we lived on Mt Elliot Street. The neighborhood was strikingly different than the one we had left. These were tree-lined streets with manicured yards. Our neighbor Mr. Traminski literally had a white picket fence around his yard. It looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. When my family moved in the neighborhood was predominantly white with a few black, Asian, and Arab families sprinkled in for good measure. By the late 80s rolled around almost all the white families had moved out. White flight is what they called it, I guess. Mr. Traminski was one of the first to go. I guess we liked him more than he liked us.

Alan’s family moved out of the old neighborhood around 1983. In this period, Alan and I had become as close as two friends could be, while Ramone whose family never left the old neighborhood began to drift from our orbit. We tried to keep in touch with him but were unable to regularly. All and all, Alan and I had been away from the old neighborhood off and on for almost nine years and at that time, we might have seen Ramone five or six times. The times we did see him he didn’t seem quite right. He seemed tight, and a little off-kilter.

By 1985 Alan and I were high school graduates with our whole lives laid out in front of us. I looked as if I was about to embark on a promising college football career, Ramone had been accepted into several really good universities, and Alan had gotten a job at a paper manufacturing plant.

*****

“This neighborhood has gone to shit,” I said as I scanned my surroundings. I looked out toward the empty lot where Ferry Elementary once stood. The last time Alan and I had been in the neighborhood Ferry Elementary was still standing It had been closed and torn down for years by the next time Alan and I rolled around.

“To shit and then some,” Alan said. I looked up at the cool cloudless sky. A tiny barely visible plane flew by overhead. A reflective dot high above it all creeping across the cobalt sky dipping in and out of sight. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. I could almost feel the earth rotating, even though I knew that it wasn’t possible, still, it made me feel dizzy. I took half a step back to avoid staggering, then opened my eyes.

“I bet Ramone’s heading off to Yale or Princeton or some other ivory league school partly because of his grades and partly because he’s black. Affirmative action,” Alan said out of the blue. I slowly turned to him not believing what I was hearing.

“What,” I said sharply.

“ I bet I couldn’t get in,”

“Yeah, because you don’t have the grades.”

“ I’m just saying,” he shrugged.

The front door swung open and Serina stepped out onto the porch. Serina’s Ramone’s younger sister. She had smooth chocolate skin and wide brown eyes, she looked like a black Barbie doll. She stared at us with a blank expression. She didn’t recognize us. Before that day I remembered Serina as a slightly chubby happy-go-lucky little girl running and playing with her friends on the playground with her protective older brother Ramone always keeping one eye out for her and the other eye out for us. The chubby little girl that used to be too shy to look at me was gone and had been replaced with this beautiful stern woman standing before us in the partially opened screen door.

“Can I help you?” She asked while subtly looking us over.

“Serina,” I said cautiously.

“Yes,”

“I’m Luke and this is Alan,” I said, “We’re friends of Ramone. Is he here?” Her jaw tightened and her eyebrows came together in a tight knot.

“What,” she said, the words came out in a breathy whisper. Her expression softened.

“ Is he home?” I asked. Serina looked at me for a long moment then she turned and looked at Alan. I could see the light bulb coming on. She slowly raised a finger and pointed it at me.

“ Your Luke?” She asked. I nodded and motioned toward Alan.

“ And that’s Alan, do you remember us?” She nodded and stepped out onto the porch.

“Where have you guys been?” she asked in a thin wavey voice. Alan and I looked at one another confused.

“Excuse me,” Alan asked.

“Ramone is dead,” she said in a voice that suggested that she was still struggling with the realization of what had happened. The news was devastating.

“What, when,” Alan and I asked loudly and in unison.

“He walked into traffic,” she said in a voice strangled with emotion. “ a truck hit and killed.”

“Where did it happen,” I asked.

“He was on Mt Elliot when it happened.”

“How could this have happened?” I thought. “We were all good friends, weren’t we? How could it be that this was the first we were hearing of this?” I looked at Alan he was standing with his jaw gapped and unhinged looking glossy-eyed and confused. Alan and I stood there on her front porch like mute idiots as Serina dropped the bombshell on us. My brain went foggy and felt warped and wobbled and I jerked my head to the left to shake off the cobwebs. I couldn’t believe it.

“Suicide,” Alan muttered in a low husky voice. I was trying to think of something to say, but my mind was blank.

“I’m sorry,” Serina said. “I thought you guys knew,” she paused, “I thought everyone knew by now.”

“By now,” Alan asked, “How long has he been gone?”

“Three years,” She said matter-of-factly, “ I thought all his true friends knew,” she said bitterly.

“No,” I said shaking my head.

She cocked her head to the right and looked at me with her big doll-like brown eyes. She had the kind of eyes that made grown men stutter if she looked directly at you and she was looking directly into the eyes. My mind went blank. Serina was studying me with those eyes, looking for signs of a lie. I understood what she was doing so I held her gaze until she looked away. Ramone had killed himself on my old street. He didn’t kill himself on my block thank god. He did the deed a few blocks up near East Grand Blvd. I don’t think that I had ever known anyone that had committed suicide before or since.

As sad as Ramone’s suicide was I’m sure he is now in a better place. Ramone was a melancholy boy from the moment I met him back in 1976 up until the last time I saw him which must have been some time in the mid-eighties. He just seemed too delicate of a human being to survive in this harsh and hateful world.

#Death #writing #friend#suicide#eighties#Detroit#race#friendship