Chicago Noir [Anthology]

I’m not sure my uncle Blas would’ve allowed any boyfriend of Irene’s to attend the cotillion, but Stoney didn'’t have a chance. He had issues, most noticeably the tattoo on his neck that said Almighty Ambrose.

No one had been at the door at that moment. So Stoney and his four partners simply burst into the basement. They were obviously high. My father and Moe walked up to them. There was wrestling, chair throwing, screaming, and two gunshots, pops that sang off the basement’s polished cement floor, the massive concrete support columns. Then the police came and made arrests—three paddy wagons worth. But the moment I remember most, right before my mother pulled me under the table, was catching sight of my cousin Max, on his knees, his fist jackhammering straight down into Stoney’s limp head over and over. I couldn'’t see Maximillian’s face; his head was bowed. But I could see his thick shoulders, his biceps bulging within his dress shirt. Behind him my aunt Lola was pulling at my cousin Irene, my uncle Bernardo was reaching for Max, and my father had one of the gangbangers up by his collar. All of them were staring down at Max. All of them had looks of horror.

Maximillian ruptured something. His arm and fist were in a cast for months. I don’t know what got worked out, but Irene kept seeing Stoney. Eventually they married.

Stoney never had a cross word for Max, not that I ever heard.

Memory number two happens a few years later, when I was eleven. By that time Maximillian had turned eighteen, graduated from Juarez High School, and joined the army. We threw a going-away party for him in the yard behind his father’s house.

I'’d lived in this house for nearly a whole year, holidays included, back when my parents were split up over my father’s cheating. They gave me my own bed, the bunk over Maximillian’s. Like other houses were haunted, my uncle Blas’s house was marooned. The Kennedy Expressway rumbled within yards of the back door. Out the front door the South Branch of the Chicago River turned. There were neighbors to either side, but still my uncle’s house was lost. Living there made life desperate.

The party happened a year or two after I had moved back in with my parents, and though I'’d seen Maximillian nearly every weekend since I'’d left his house, at the party he seemed aged. He’d grown a thin mustache. He had on shorts and a Diego T. His muscles looked thicker than usual. His skin was dark, worn even.

Maximillian was never a big talker. But as the afternoon progressed and he continued to draw from the keg, he spoke more freely, eventually calling out my name like I was a friend of his from the street. “Jes-se!” he would say. “I love you, bro.” And then he’d start laughing.

Late into the party, the adults were drunk and I remember Maximillian putting his head under the tapper and chugging beer right from the keg. He smiled and laughed as he gulped. He came up choking, spitting suds, and stumbled around the gravel yard trying to catch his footing, like he was momentarily blind, lost in his spinning head. We were laughing. My mother had her arm around my shoulder. My father had his arm around my uncle. When Maximillian fell on his ass we doubled over in laughter. We were roaring. And at that moment we seemed really together, my father, my mother, my aunt and uncle, my cousins, Irene and Chefa, Stoney, my sister, even my cousin’s dog, Princess. For a moment we were a real family. Behind us traffic droned on the Kennedy Expressway.

Just out the front door, the South Branch flowed.

My last memory of Maximillian happens a couple of years later. I was thirteen. Maximillian was in his twenties. He’d come home on leave from Germany because his mother, my aunt Lola, had died.

As sick as my aunt Lola had been, her death was mostly unexpected. In just a few weeks her cancer had gone from manageable to terminal. The last time I saw her was two days before she died. She was back in St. Luke’s Hospital and when I said hi to her she could not respond but to look in my eyes. Her look scared me. It was the kind of look that needed a voice to explain itself.

My aunt Lola was a kind woman. The months I lived with her she always had a steaming bowl of frijoles waiting for me when I came home from school, two or three thick tortillas waiting to be dipped and sucked like summertime paletas. My aunt’s most remarkable feature was her bridge, which she’d pull from her mouth and set on the armrest of her La-Z-Boy as she sat and watched TV. When she dozed off I'’d try to put the bridge in my own mouth. As my months of living there wore on I used to steal her bridge and move it to some other location, in her bedroom or on the kitchen table, then wait for her to wake and be forced to speak, her pink gums showing through her fingers as she asked if anyone knew where her bridge was.

They held her wake at Zefran’s Funeral Home on Damen and 22nd Street. Masses of people came, including cousins I didn'’t know I had. Though I loved my aunt, especially the frijoles she used to leave me, at the wake I felt no need to cry. Mourners placed flowers on her chest, blessings delivered to her open casket. At one point a boy standing next to me, a boy that had been introduced to me as my cousin, began to cry. He turned and gave me a hug. I wasn'’t sure what to do. So I patted his back. “I know,” I said to him. “She was a good woman.” The kid raised his head and looked at me like I was at the wrong wake. Then he turned and walked away.

After the viewing we packed into cars and lined up for the funeral. The procession was too long for our family. My uncle and his daughters rode behind the hearse with my father in his black windowless work van. A few cars back, Maximillian and I rode alone in his Chevy Celebrity.

We were silent as we drove down Pershing Road. Maximillian had placed our orange FUNERAL sticker on the top passenger side of the windshield and for me it was like a sunscreen even though the day was overcast. The blinkers of the Celebrity matched our speed, the tick-over lagging as we braked, then racing when we sped to catch the car in front.

At Oak Park Avenue we slowed for a red light. Our blinkers were on. Our orange sticker displayed. We followed the car in front of us into the intersection. Suddenly a red pickup took off from the crosswalk. The pickup broke through the procession just in front of us, then continued south down Oak Park. It was a short pause, but long enough for me to consider what an asshole the pickup driver was for cutting off the procession. We were on our way to a funeral. I had that much in my head when Max threw the Celebrity into such a sharp left hand turn my temple knocked against the passenger side window.

We chased the truck for three blocks, the Celebrity’s blinkers clacking so loud they seemed about to explode right through the dash. Finally the driver of the pickup pulled to the curb.

Through the rear window of the cab I could see the man jerking around. He looked out of his mind, yelling to himself. As we pulled up behind him, his shoulder heaved and he threw the truck into park. His taillights flashed to full red. He kicked open his door.

We’d stopped in front of a bank parking lot. It was the middle of the day but the lot was empty. Black screens covered the plate glass windows as if the bank was actually closed for good. Trees lined the street. I felt a million miles from home.

The truck driver slammed his door shut as Maximillian was stepping out of the Celebrity. The truck driver yelled something. He was a big man, white, potbellied. He wore a flannel shirt. His neck seemed like one big chin and his jeans looked too tight at the waist. Each one of his steps had a little bounce to it as if he had learned to walk on his toes.

The man continued yelling as Max moved forward. Maximillian didn'’t say a word. He simply continued to close, his feet looking small, his shoulders broad, his tight waist neat with his tucked-in dress shirt. His tie had blown up around his shoulder.