Or what else? I could go back to the train station, stand there and feel that same buzzing I had felt the night before. That feeling that there was something important that I was missing. That I had been missing for years.
Or I could just go home. Leave right away and be back for a late lunch at Jackie’s place. Some of his world-famous beef stew, maybe. With a real Canadian Molson. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon.
Or I could even call Janet. Thank her for having dinner with me, maybe answer her question about whether I’d ever consider moving down here again. Not that I knew what that answer would be.
In the end, I chose none of the above. I checked out of the motel, threw my bag in the truck, and started driving around the city again. I was seeing it in the morning hours now, when every able-bodied person past school age should be at work. But I knew the unemployment rate for black males was hovering around fifty percent here. A staggering number of men without jobs. A good position in an auto plant was just a dim memory, and even a job sweeping a floor for minimum wage was all but impossible to find.
There were young men hanging out on the streets, some of them eyeing me like it was a personal affront for me to be there. I stared back at them, an old cop habit that I’d never get over, and I kept driving around. I was still on the west side of Detroit. I was staying on the secondary streets, avoiding the highways. You get on I-94 and you just zip right through everything, from one end of Detroit to the other, without really seeing any of the city itself.
Eventually, I found myself going down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. This had been such an important street for us, back in that month when we were searching for our suspect. On paper, this had seemed like the northern limit to how far a young man would reasonably run that night. It was dense on either side of the street with apartment buildings. How many man-hours we had spent, knocking on every single door.
I turned south on Wabash, not really thinking about where I was going, just circling through this part of town like a goldfish in a bowl. To the east, the Motor City Casino towered over everything else in this part of town. A strange sight I’d never get used to. I turned my attention back to the road ahead.
Then I saw Ash Street. I stopped dead at the intersection.
Ash Street. I’d been driving around for an hour, not even thinking consciously about where I’d end up. But here I was.
I made the turn. There had been a grocery store on the corner of Fourteenth Street. The building was boarded up, the brick walls tagged with graffiti. A sign in front announced that the building was FOR RENT. As if anyone would see any reason to open a business here now, even if the rent was a dollar a month.
The next block was empty. Not a single building. I thought back and remembered that a few houses had been here once. Now it was just weeds and sumac. Even the sidewalk was almost completely hidden.
There’d been a fire here, on this block. That was a sure bet. A fire right here on Ash Street. It was supposedly just another tree-named street, like Elm and Spruce and Butternut, but no, Ash Street in this particular city meant something else entirely.
I drove one more block, to where an elementary school had been. The playground was still there, and so was the building itself, but the windows were all boarded over. The side of the building was tagged with graffiti, as huge and as elaborate as any I’d seen all morning. An elementary school, the heart of a neighborhood, come to this.
One more block, more vacant lots, an old boat somehow left there on the corner and filled with tires. A neighborhood watch sign, like a cruel joke.
Then finally, the block just past Seventeenth Street. There was one house on the north side of the street now. One single house. Two stories, once white, now a shade of light gray. Some of the siding was falling out of line, and the front porch was visibly sagging away from the house.
It was a small porch, just like I remembered it. Just big enough for one chair. A woman sat in the chair, looking serenely out at the street. A large black woman in a sundress, maybe midsixties, her hair the same color as the siding on the house. I slowed down in front of the house. I had to. If she hadn’t been there, I would have kept driving. It would have been a curious little side trip, something I’d shake my head at all the way home. But the woman was sitting right there on the porch, watching me. The same woman I had met all those years ago, on another warm day not unlike this one, on this very same porch.
It was her. No doubt about it. It was Mrs. Jamilah King. Darryl King’s mother.
I parked the truck on the empty street. I got out and approached her. If having a strange white man paying her a visit made her uneasy, she didn’t show it.
“Can I help you?” she asked me. “Are you lost?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I was just driving around and I saw you sitting here. I hope you don’t mind me stopping.”
“If you’re trying to sell me some of that frozen food, I’m going to have to say no, thank you.”
“I’m not selling anything, ma’am. I promise.”
“Then I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine what would bring you to this end of the street. Ain’t nothing here to see.”
“Well, it has changed,” I said, taking a quick look around. There was an empty shell of an old house down the street, on the other side. The sumac was so tall and so close, you couldn’t even see half of it.
“There used to be houses all up and down this street,” she said. “Kids all went to that elementary school on the next block.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I remember.”
“You were around here then?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. My name is Alex McKnight. I was a police officer back in the day. The last time I was here at your house, I was, um… involved in the arrest of your son.”
She processed that for a few moments, looking at me again like she was seeing me for the first time.
“I think I might remember you,” she finally said.
“I definitely remember you. I know it had to be a hard day for you.”
She nodded and looked down at her hands. “My son will be coming home soon. It’s been a long time.”
“I know, ma’am.”
“Mind you, it’s not like I’ve been sitting here on this porch ever since he went away. I actually went to live with my sister for a while. But I kept the house. Now I’m back. Because Darryl’s coming home.”
“I understand.”
“They’ve been sending people around to get me to abandon this place,” she said. “So they can knock it down. With everybody leaving, the mayor says we need to ‘right-size’ the city, whatever that means. I guess just move everybody to one side so they can shut down the rest, huh? I understand the part about saving money. I really do. But this is my home, you understand? This is Darryl’s home. The only home he’s ever had.”
“Yes,” I said, looking up at the upstairs windows. There was no doubt a bed up there, waiting for its old owner after all these years.
“So you say you’re not a cop anymore.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why are you here?”
She put up her hand before I could answer.
“Never mind,” she said. “I know why you’re here.”
That stopped me dead. Because honestly, I wasn’t sure I knew myself.
“I think you should come inside for a bit,” she said. “Get out of this heat. Do you like chocolate cake?”
I was feeling more lost by the second, but there was only one answer.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”
She pushed herself up from her chair and held the door open for me. I followed her inside. There was a small front room with a fan set in the side window, moving the air around. The floor was once a beautiful hardwood. Now half of the slats looked damaged by water.