In the old days, these writers’ associations prided themselves on the scope of their artwork. Some of them even achieved a small measure of fame. One of them even had his work, such as it was, hanging in museums. Although some people thought it strange that a graffiti writer would be so honored, since most people felt these vandals should be hanged by their thumbs in the marketplace. But at least, back then, these writers—with a little encouragement from writers of quite another sort—really did consider themselves artists. So when they got together to form these writers’ groups or associations or leagues or unions, as the organizations were variously called, they were doing so to protect their work.
The Park Place Writers Alliance did not use spray paint anymore. They did not throw up any big two-tone pieces or color-blended burners because nowadays either there was paint-resistant material that would cause the paint to run as if it were crying, or else the piece you worked on all night would be taken off with acid the next day, it just didn’t pay anymore. Besides, paint wasn’t for posterity.
What was for posterity was scratching the marker into glass. You used either a key or a ring with a hard stone, if you could afford one, and you scratched the marker into the glass or the plastic, HB for Henry Bright, if you happened to be Henry. If you were one of the other three guys in the Alliance, you scratched either LR or JC or EB. If you worked on a big plate-glass window together, all four of you in the Alliance, then in addition to throwing up your personal marker, you put in the identifying Alliance tag, PPWA, in a corner of the window. This past Saturday night, they’d done a big jewelry store window on Hall Avenue downtown, all four of them etching their markers into the glass, and then throwing up the Alliance tag in the lower right-hand corner. Replace that window, it’d cost the store thousands of dollars. Be easier to leave it there, let the people look in at the jewelry through the initials scratched into the plate glass.
Henry had called the meeting tonight—lastnight, actually, since it was already a quarter past twelve now—because he’d detected that some of the others in the Alliance were running scared. Larry especially—who was only sixteen, but who was an industrious writer, throwing up the LR marker all over town, Larry Rutherford, LR, scratching in the tag with a diamond ring his grandfather had left him—Larry seemed very scared. When, for example, Henry suggested that they all go down to Hall Avenue again this coming weekend—“Do the bookstore across the street from the big jewelry store, make it like Alliance Alley , what do you think?”—all Larry said was, “And get ourselves killed ?”
What they were here discussing tonight was whether they were going to let some fuckin lunatic stand in the way of immortality. Because Henry didn’t care how the others felt about getting the marker out, that was a matter of their own personal aspirations or lack of them, although some measure of Alliance pride was also involved. But his own burning ambition was to become famous all over this city, and then to branch out across the river maybe, make his way west across the entire U.S. of A., throwing up the HB marker on every piece of glass or plastic in the country. HB. For Henry Bright. Ah, yes, the famous writer , do you mean?
“What I think,” Ephraim said—EB was his marker, for Ephraim Beame, the only black kid in the Alliance—“is we should wait a while before going out again, venturing out, you know, because I like agree with Larry that this person is really some kind of vigilante nut who’s out to get us all, eliminate us, you know, cleanse the city, purify it, is what I think. Of writers, that is,” he added. “Cleanse it of writers.”
“So suppose this guy continues for a month, two months, a year, what ever ,” Henry said, “are we supposed to hide from him all that time? Stay underground all that time? I really find that extremely chickenshit, Eph, I really do.”
“Thing is,” Ephraim said, “he’s like going around shooting people, Henry. It’s one thing to take a stand for what you know is right…”
“Throwing up the marker is right, you’re damn right,” Henry said.
“Am I saying no?” Ephraim asked. “I’m saying what’s right is right, is what I’m saying. But I’m also saying might makes right, you know, and this man is out there shooting real bullets. And dead is dead,” he added.
“The thing we’re discussing here,” Joey said…
Joseph Croatto, whose marker was JC, though sometimes he felt sacrilegious throwing it up.
“…is not whether we’re brave enough to go out there in the middle of the night to get stalked by some madman who doesn’t recognize what we’re trying to accomplish in this city…”
“Hear, hear,” Ephraim said.
“…but whether it’s wiser to wait a little while before we continue the work.”
“Hear, hear.”
“Because I personally don’t want to wake up with a bullet in my head, thank you,” Joey said, and nodded at Larry, who nodded back.
“Here’s the way I see it,” Larry said.
Sixteen years old with peach fuzz on his face, bright blue eyes, cheeks like a Cabbage Patch doll.
“I think you’re the only one who doesn’t want to cool it awhile, Henry,” he said, and hastily added, “and i admire that, I really do. But this man isn’t playing around. And what’s been happening the past week or so has been scaring other writers off the streets. So if this man is out there looking for writers, and there aren’t any out there, wouldn’t it be dumb of the Alliance to give him exactly what he’s looking for? To provide him with the targets he wants? We go down to Hall Avenue, like you suggested…”
“I can taste that fuckin bookstore window,” Henry said.
“Me, too,” Larry said, “don’t you think we all want to do that window? That window is aching to be done. Just across the street from the jewelry store? One of the busiest corners downtown? We do that window you’re right , it’ll be Alliance Alley down there, we’ll be famous! But not now , Henry. Give this guy a little time to burn himself out….”
“I don’t see any sign of that happening,” Henry said.
“Then give the cops time to catch him….”
“Ha!”
“He’s killed three people already, the cops must have some kind of line on him,” Ephraim said.
“Just give it a little time,” Joey said.
Henry shook his head and shoved his glasses up higher on his nose. Behind the glasses, his eyes expressed disappointment more than they did anger. He’d been depending on these people, hoping that their vision would match his own. As the oldest person in the Alliance, he had become their natural leader, even if he was shorter than any of the others. Short and a bit squat. In fact, with his spiky hair and his rotund shape, he somewhat resembled a startled porcupine. Sixteen-year-old Larry was taller and much handsomer than Henry was. And now it seemed that he had swayed the others into thinking the way he did.
“If you won’t come with me, I’ll do the window alone,” he said.
They all looked at him.
“And I’m not waiting till the weekend. I’m doing it tonight.” They kept looking at him.