There's William reading the Daily News. William sipping his coffee from Micky D's. William dozing off on his suddenly comfortable bridge chair like old guys are prone to do, guys who pull night shifts and dream about their wife doing their business partner every way to Sunday on a motel vibromatic off Utopia Parkway. Guys like that. Even as a Chevy Impala with one broken headlight circles Weissman's Auto Parts like someone lost; once, twice, three times around the block till it finally pulls over and lets two black men out onto the pavement. Three black men really-counting the one still sitting in the car-seven empty cans of Colt 45, a stolen sawed- off shotgun, and a spanking-new jigaboo special-.22 caliber to the uninitiated-check the police manifest for further corroboration.
William still dozing, somewhere between Brooklyn and Pimlico by now, although what's this? Clank, bink, boom. Someone being rude enough to ruin his beauty sleep- that's what it is. William opening his eyes and actually hearing someone trying to jimmy open the front door. Imagine that. They hired you as a security guard, didn't they, and suddenly that's what you're being asked to do. Guard. Not sleep, not sample the coffee and donuts from every diner on Utica Avenue, not analyze the box scores and handicap the ponies and do two words of the crossword puzzle. Guard. Used fan belts, four-horsepower transmissions, and radiators of dubious lineage, but they're all yours.
There's William with his hand already sneaking down to his.45, trying to remember if he's ever really shot it, even once, ever even taken it out and sighted it and pretended to shoot it, and knowing that the answer is no- not on your life, but taking it out anyway. Sidling up to the door in a kind of bent three-quarter shuffle, then stopping just in front of it-the door starting to quiver from the pressure of whatever they're using to jimmy it open or maybe just from the knocking of his knees.
I have a gun. That's what he says. Because it's true- he does, and who knows-maybe they don't, and the simple fact of him having one might make them reconsider their options here.
I have a gun he says again.
But they do too. They have a gun-or actually guns. A sawed-off shotgun, a spanking-new.22-check the manifest for corroboration.
Suddenly the door splinters open and there they are- the three of them, caught in an awkward moment Emily Post just can't help you with. William with his gun out, pointed in the general direction of black groin-though he can swear the safety's still on-and the two of them, one with the shotgun raised past William's shoulder.
No one says boo.
So the gun speaks for them. William's gun actually- the safety wasn't on after all-deciding to fire a shot into the black man's kneecap, the kick of the gun tending to lower aim by as much as a foot. The gun just deciding to do it-what William told the police later on his way into the ambulance. Because William has no recollection of pulling the trigger, none. There they were staring at each other and the gun didn't like what it saw. Bang.
There's one black man going down-Vernon M. Maxwell, by the way, five foot eight, one hundred eighty pounds, BedStuy by way of Rahway-two stints for breaking and entering and a dismissal on rape. And there's the other black man running back across the street and starting to fire as he goes.
William? He's wondering why his gun went off like that and considering if he should bring it up on charges. He's staring at Vernon M. Maxwell's right kneecap, which doesn't resemble a kneecap now as much as the ground beef in Pirelli's Italian Deli. He's ducking too-because the other man is firing at him and William can hear the bullets ricocheting off the tin walls of the warehouse.
Now the other man is back at the Impala where he's multiplying before William's shocked eyes. That is, he's becoming two men again-the driver has joined him of course, which means William is again outnumbered and possibly outgunned.
Now turn your attention to the left, ladies and gentlemen. It is a Sunday morning in spring. The kind of morning that makes Sunday mornings in winter bearable. The kind of morning that makes you think of possibilities instead of realities. The kind of morning a five-year-old girl puts on her Sunday best and decides to skip rope before church.
And there she is. Mom still in the apartment somewhere, but Deidre-yes, he knows her name-out there on the pavement with a jump rope. A my name is Alice… B my name is Barbara… C my name is Carol… D my name is dead.
Not yet though.
William crouching down behind an old fender just outside the door, with Vernon cradling his shattered kneecap and calling him every name in the book to his left. And now his two bros coming to get him. Both of them advancing across the street like gunfighters do-like Wyatt and Doc at the O.K. Corral maybe, only they were the good guys and these guys here are the desperadoes.
This is what William can see: A Chevy Impala still idling across the street. Two black men bearing guns- one of them for sure. The five-year-old girl skipping rope-yes, he's seen her by now. And one thing else.
He's seen this guy, William. You know him, don't you? This guy crying into his blanket, cowering behind an auto part, blubbering into the air. This pathetic security guard positively pleading with the deities not to take him yet. Can you believe this guy-I mean can you?
The two black men halfway across the street now, one of them with a small pistol aimed at the chicken's head.
So William raises his.45-the one with its own mind, only this time William taking charge. Even as he sees Deidre putting the rope down and walking curiously out into the street. Even as he sees-yes he does-a police cruiser rounding Utica Avenue just out of the corner of his eye. Still he raises the gun, still he pulls the trigger. Still he closes his eyes-that's right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you saw it right-he closes his eyes. Why? You'll have to ask him-maybe because he didn't wish to see. And bang. Bang, bang, bang. One of those bangs a bullet he takes in his left shoulder courtesy of one of the black men still walking. One of those bangs a bullet taking out the left front tire of the Chevy Im- pala. One of those bangs a bullet slamming into the front cranial cavity of a five-year-old jump-roper dreaming of summer.
Last snapshot.
There they are, strewn before the Brooklyn warehouse like the various pieces of a wreck, blood seeping like oil onto the cracked pavement, onto the willow leaves carried by the spring wind all the way from Van Cortlandt Park, onto the white petticoat of the little girl right next to him, because once he's opened his eyes and the sheer awfulness of what's transpired here has begun to make itself known, he's staggered, crawled, stumbled in her general direction. The little girl in mid-moan, in terrible gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling pain. He tries to tell her to lie still, to keep quiet, that the doctor will be there any minute, tries to tell that to her and her wailing mother too, her mother and the police and the man in the moon, all looking at him as if he's crazy, mad as a hatter, which, of course, he is. For when he tells the little girl to lie still, to be quiet, shh… shh please… please… the whimpering does stop, but not because she's listened to him. She can't listen to him-its technically and medically impossible. Why? Because she has no head. One of his bullets took it right off. The crying, of course, had been his; he'd been comforting a corpse.
Old men, the warehouse owner said, you send me old men and this is what happens…
TEN
It seemed to William, now very much back in the present and staring at that picture again, that it was from that moment on that he truly became old. You need guilt for that, it's an irreplaceable part of the equation. Suddenly it was as if they'd served him his birthday cake with all the candles on it after years of counting by decade. So many candles he'd never be able to blow them all out. So there'd be no wish for him that year, or any other year either; wishes were for people with futures. The ordinary courage it took to open your eyes and start the day was suddenly no longer there.