It was a beautiful view, Twenty-Second Street, the street I lived on. I’d walked Twenty-Second so many times I knew every crack and buckle of its dilapidated sidewalks. But seeing it from two stories up, seeing each expanse of concrete imperfection, was awesome. The sidewalks seemed to make sense from up there; one could almost read the streets, the way they dipped and turned, how the sidewalk simply followed suit. I took a seat on the ledge of the roof and picked up a rock. I dropped it down to the sidewalk, waited for the sharp snap.
Across the street a large group of gangbangers, Disciples, were playing basketball. Their voices echoed loud and clear off the school building behind. “Ball! Ball!” they called out. “Foul, motherfucker! Goddamn!” It occurred to me that from up there I could be a spy if I wanted to. I could climb the roof late at night when the Disciples were having their meetings and overhear plans for drive-bys, cocaine sales, turf wars. It occurred to me that I could go to the Laflin Lovers or the Bishops, archrivals of the Disciples, and sell their secrets. I was hatching plans, schemes, when suddenly, behind me, the gravel churned.
He was there, standing. He was short, much shorter than he looked from two stories down. He was younger-looking as well.
“Ha!” he said. “I knew it, bro! I knew you’d find the way up here.” He sucked spit. “You climbed the fence, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Ha, I knew it!” he said. “No one else knows how to get up here. Just you and me.”
I thought about this. In the end the climb hadn’t seemed that difficult.
“Yeah,” he said. “No one knows…”
He sat down next to me. He scooped up a handful of rocks. He had blue eyes. This was strange. He was Mexican, just like me; he had dark skin, dirty summer skin, but he also had these almost pastel-blue eyes. His face was lit up. He was smiling.
He shook his handful of rocks, loosing a couple. He looked down to the street. The noise of the basketball players came to us. “Center. Ball!” His eyes moved to the kids on the court.
“That’s my cousin over there,” he said. “Right there, see, the one with the ball.” He looked down to his handful of rocks, shook another couple free. “His name is Junebug. He’s a D. He’s a little crazy.”
I studied the kid with the ball. I’d seen him before. He looked like the type that liked to corner younger kids against the walls and ask them, “What you be about?” I avoided kids like him, crossed the street when I saw them coming.
“He shot me with a BB gun,” Buff said. “Like three days ago.” He pulled up his T-shirt and showed me. On his belly were three small welts, each holding a tiny, deep, dark pit in its center.
“He shot you?” I said.
“Yeah,” Buff said. He laughed. He let his shirt down. “Ha ha, it didn’t even hurt!” He looked down to his handful of rocks, shook out another two.
“You should go to the doctor,” I told him.
“I should, right?” he said. “Aaaa.”
Buff looked out over the ledge. By this time there was only one rock left from his handful. He looked far down the street.
“All right, bro, here it comes,” he said. And then, in a split second, Buff jumped to his feet, fired his rock over the ledge, and ducked back down. I followed him, ducking too. I heard a loud POP, then a long screech of tires.
“Damn, bro, that was a cop car!” Buff said. “I got them, bro! I got the Law!”
I stayed low. I didn’t want to see.
After a few moments I couldn’t help it. If it was the cops, I thought it might be better if I turned myself in. I peeked over. Down on the street, a fat man wearing a red baseball cap was inspecting the shattered windshield of a rusted green station wagon. The man was dirty, sweaty, like he’d been working all day. His car didn’t appear to have any backseats, only chunks of concrete filling the space from the driver’s seat all the way to the tailgate. Stuck out of the back window was a bent metal pole with a red bandanna tied to its end. Two other people were down there, a couple. “Pinche cabrones,” the man said. He shook his head and took his cap off. “Pendejos,” he said. He rested his forearms on the roof of his car and then brought his head down. The couple walked away.
I tucked back down behind the ledge.
“It was the cops, wasn’t it, bro?” Buff asked.
“Yes,” I told him. “I think it was the narcs or something.” I swallowed hard.
“I knew it, bro,” Buff said. “I knew it was the cops. My name is Buff,” he said. He sucked spit.
“Jesse,” I told him. I shook his hand.
That summer we were inseparable. I found out Buff was ten, the same age as me, although he looked like he could be a year younger, maybe even two. I found out that he lived on the North Side, but that he was spending the summer with his aunt on Twenty-Fourth Place because “people” were after him. I asked who the “people” were but he didn’t want to tell me. He said: “Maybe you know them. I don’t want to start any shit.”
I also found out that Buff was going to be a father. That he had a girlfriend named Letty who occasionally visited him. She was seven months’ pregnant, Buff said.
“Isn’t your family mad?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but what are they going to do?” Buff said. “Besides, we’re in love.” I nodded like I knew love could be the reason for anything.
One afternoon we were up on the roof drinking some Cokes I had bought from Midwest corner store. I was staring up into the sky, listening to the traffic. Buff was looking over the ledge. We were talking about cars, maybe, or what prison was like. And then Buff said: “Look, there she is. There she is, bro. That’s Letty.” I turned and looked over the ledge. Across the street a group of girls were talking to some of the basketball players. “The one with the white shirt,” Buff said. I looked to her. She was pretty. In fact, to me, at my age then, she was beautiful. She was thin, tall. She had short, dark hair. She looked like an older girl, like she was in high school. She smiled a lot, seemed genuinely happy about things. When she talked she moved her hands. When the boys spoke to her, she rolled her eyes. She did not look pregnant.
“That’s Letty?” I asked Buff.
“Yeah, bro,” he said. “I forgot to tell you she was coming down here today.”
“She’s talking to all those D’s,” I told him.
“I know,” he said. “That’s her cousins. Most of those guys down there.”
I watched the girl move. I watched her pull back her hair as if she could put it in a ponytail. I heard her laugh out loud once. It was a deep laugh, like she had never been unhappy.
Finally, she and her friends walked away. When they were in the middle of the block Buff yelled out, “Let-ty!” He tucked down behind the ledge. “I don’t want her to see me, bro,” he whispered. “She doesn’t like it when I call out her name like that.” I lowered my head but continued to watch. The girl turned and looked behind her. In the playground the boys were already back to their game. She looked in front of her, across the street. She looked to her friends. They all laughed together.
“Did she look?” Buff asked.
“Yes,” I told him.
“Damn, she knew it was me,” he said. “She’s going to be pissed later.” He shook his head.
I rested my chin on the ledge and watched as the group of girls walked away. Buff came up and watched as well.
“Those girls are bitches,” he said. “They talk too much.”
This is how we spent our time. Sometimes throwing rocks, but mostly just talking. Buff showing me things, telling me what it was like to sniff cocaine. In truth, I don’t think I believed much of what Buff said. I simply went along with it.