Two opening excerpts from two short stories following residents of Philadelphia, then a story of visitors in an Appalachian shack. As they navigate their arbitrary and decisive circumstances, we do not get any authoritative view into their interiority just as they do not get any of their exteriority. Any similarity here to the literature of realism is an accident of narrative circumstances that the author has been subject to as much as the characters. All of the story —  grammar, symbol, and character —  is only repressed mythology hacking at a spectre of truth.

 

​

“I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.”

 

Ralph Ellison

 

​

"Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision."

 

Judith Butler

 

​

“I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.”

 

Ralph Ellison

 

 

​

​

 

 

 

Osage Avenue 1985

 

Sidewalks laid dry and thirsty. Big clouds overhead muted the sun and their shadows brushed up the cracked avenue and over the jagged landscape, churches and crumbling factories boxed in by rows of conjoined brick houses. Under the clouds the breeze was cool enough to have blown from April's first weeks to this precipice of Summer, eve of Mother's Day's eve. A trolley screeched passed the blocks of rowhomes and corner stores. A plastic bag amongst cigarettes in the gutter was caught in the passing streetcar's gust of pollinated smog to float across the street and catch against the chain-link face of an alleyway, filling and deflating like the lungs of an atrophied spirit. The day was ripe to bleed.

On concrete porches and in small front lawns, old men and women laughed over their barbeques. Their children opened beers and danced to the radio and their grandchildren threw firecrackers in gleeful raids. Down the street a pregnant teenager with a bag of groceries walked with an old woman pushing a cart of scrap. The woman's hands shook and the whites of her bulged eyes were spotted brown but she had little trouble pushing the cart heavy with copper pipe joints, copper wires, Christmas lights, an old car battery and other miscellany she had collected that morning. Hours spent in an abandoned industrial lot she often gathered from. She had moved slow and careful, lifting the rusted junk but still sometimes she grew disoriented and this morning, her legs shaking and old lungs wheezing, she leaned back against a pile of tires and watched a humid orange sunrise overtake the sky and turn the early clouds violet and she was thrown into convulsions and visions. She woke later, splayed out with her head resting on a tire. Her cart and scrap was untouched. She gathered herself and spent the day finding someone who would get her something to drink. Now with a gallon of water wedged between the junk, she was on her way to the park and found herself for a few blocks accompanying this pregnant girl home.

Suh'gift, baby. You young but don'lehdem tell yuh you too young fo' that chile.

The girl smiled and touched her own bulged stomach. Aw, thank you. God bless you. You sho' you don' want nothin t'eat?

            Nah, nah, you keep that for you and yo' chile. I will pray fo' yous both.

A young man passed the other way in the street, dragging a small tree behind him. He was dirty, a wood axe slung across his back and a dreadlocked mane about his shoulders as he labored forward. He saw the ragged eremite beside her scavenged assortment and nodded.

            Sister.

She frowned and watched him with distant sibylline eyes. He passed and greenery slithered in his wake. The pregnant girl watched him until he had passed on to the next block then turned to her house and brought the groceries inside.

The man with the tree —  ashy white juvenile beech —  went three blocks, shifting to the side when cars needed to pass, then came to the fourth block and the detachment of police. They watched him with crossed arms. Two cops talked to a fearful old couple, two stood by a squad car drinking cola, two sat in another squad car. Even there in the street with an unbroken wall of three story brick running the length of block, he smelled the rank fertilizer of his family's garden in the alley beyond. To him the smell indicated home and to the corrective organs of the city an alien aura befitting him. He went up the few front steps and with all the eyes of the street on him, he went into the house. When his eyes adjusted to the quiet sawdust dark of the living room, he saw a woman with a rifle in the floral armchair facing the door. A naked child came from behind the chair and looked.

            Joshua, the woman said.

Sister, he said.

Wussit like out theh?

Same cops. They all talkin to the cops.

They always doin that. Don't mean nothin.

He shook his head, I don't know. They lookin ready.

She smiled and brandished her gun. An' we ready.

He looked at the child. A pigmy bloated with hunger caught him in a stare.

She said, If you so worried go talk t'John. He up in the tower.

Joshua took the tree and carried it down into a small backyard. Rats scattered. A wire fence encircled a vegetable garden of tomatoes and peppers and carrots amongst banana peels and ant swarmed poultry guts and human feces. A few chickens pecked around in the shit. He took the axe from his back and chopped from the tree everything green and threw the leaves into the compost garden and the bundle of branches onto the rack of firewood against the wall. 

Opposite the vegetable garden were work tools and cutting benches atop scattered wood scraps and sawdust. He left the skinny beech among the other small trees and logs and half rotted two by fours and scum encrusted pallets. Around the perimeter of the yard was a tall wooden barricade they had built to stay out of the neighbors' eyes. He went around looking into the neighbors' yards through cracks in the plywood. Two cops sat in the yard beyond. Joshua went back into the house. He saw the child suck on its hand.

            Telah, you gotta get that kid some damn food.

            I got her bread.

            Did she eat it?

            A bite. She ain't hungry.

            Yeah? he said. He went out again and came back with a tomato and handed it to the little girl. She let it roll out of her hand and across the floor. He shook his head and went up the narrow stairs to the second floor. Telah's eyes followed each creaking footstep. At the top of the stairs a ten year old boy stood in his underwear.

            Yo Birdie, Joshua patted him on the shoulder.

            Hey brother, Birdie said.

Joshua came into the master bedroom; a few people by some books and papers to one side and a wood stove and scattered plates to the other. A woman and kids talked and lounged on a rug in the center. The woman said,

            Joshua, you seen Birdie?

            Yeah, he out in the hallway, you need him Rhonda? Birdie, yo momma need you.

She halfheartedly scolded him and he sat by the other kids. They took up crayons. Joshua leaned on the wall by the window and watched them draw. Another two women and a man lay against the far wall eating bread.

Birdie's mother spoke to the children in a teaching voice, What's everybody drawing?

Birdie held up the torn notebook paper. On it was a fat circle of brown and gray with a beak. His mother laughed. The three adults by the pile of books looked up surprised and watched her as she held the paper up. Rhonda turned it slow for them to see.

            Birdie drew a birdy. This a dove, baby?

He nodded.

            Have I told you that's what you named after?

            Yeah, that's why I drawn it.

The other children, younger than Birdie, looked at his mother expectant. She pointed to the next drawing.

            Look look, Junior drew some rats, rats a part of life too right?

The kids nodded their heads.

            You wanna tell us why you drew rats, Junior?

Junior was six and played with his hands as he said, Yeah, uh, I...rats are part of life. I was watchin them in the 'maters and they were funny.

Rhonda grinned, What did you like about them?

He giggled and wiggled his finger. The tails!

            They do got funny little naked tails don't they! You know, there's people hate rats, people who wanna kill em whenever they seem them. Cause they don't have the teaching of John Africa. John Africa tell us that everything alive is important, that we a part of all these living things, not separate from it. People are animals, animals are a part of nature, and nature is everything, all the trees and wood, and we don't always think about it but the sky and water is nature too. She paused, then said, What y'all think of that?

Birdie looked thoughtful and shifted as if to say something. He looked up at Joshua and the two made eye contact and Birdie remained silent.

            Don't you want to see my drawing? the third child said, her eyes wet and voice trembling.

            Of course baby, of course!

Rhonda held up the girl's paper for the other kids to see. On it there was an amorphous blob of yellow and blue with green stripes.

            This is a great picture honey, I'm sorry but what is it?

The girl giggled and put her face in her hands. I made it up, she said.

Rhonda grinned and dismissed them to get bread. She sat contemplative. Joshua touched her shoulder and she flinched away.

You okay? He asked.

Yeah, fine, you surprised me. You talk to John? She said.

Naw, he need me?

He wanna see if you can do something with the bunker, put up a door I think.

Joshua said, Alright. You sure you good?

She turned and looked suspicious at him. Yeah, go see John.

Joshua reached through the open window and along coarse brick until he felt rope. He climbed onto the sill and leaned out. The rowhome wall vertical above him rose to where afternoon sky flowed from the blushing masonry. Futile seawall against celestial tides. Joshua put his weight to the rope and pushed out of the window. He pulled himself hand over hand, feet flat and cautious followed his body up the building. He grabbed the rope where it lay taught against the roof's black shingles, threw his leg over the top and eased himself prone onto the easy slanted terrace. He looked across city to where gray stratocumulus enormities clouded the sky. Rays of light fell through breaches in their gold trimmed shapes to reflect in the glass and steel anthropocene peaks assembled in the skyline here like gibbering attempts at a Babelian tongue.

            Burn it all! John Africa said. He stood over where Joshua lay and smiled. Square jawed grin parting his silver beard like a moonlit and inconvenient sea breaking over black sand coves to flood matted locs, ebon woodlands rooted in a volatile coal scalp. Lion visage carved from pagan geography. Eyes behind old sunglasses. Joshua rose and shook his hand. John clapped him on the back.

            John Africa said, How are yuh, brother?

            Joshua said, Good, brother. Brought some wood.

            I want you to see if you can add a door to the tower. Maybe get more wood tomorrow, John said.

Joshua nodded and followed John up the roof's gentle slant to its flat terrace and the plywood structure. It was built sturdy there on the roof, the size of a shed, reinforced and with rifle slits. John pulled a rustling beige tarp to the side and revealed the shadowy box of an interior, a dark and claustrophobic room crowded with crates, a few rifles leaning against the walls.

Can you put a good solid door in where this is? John said. He shook the tarp.

Yeah. No problem. Gon' need mo' wood though.

Get a couple'a yuz out there tomorrow and drag back more'n enough in one trip, huh?

Sure.

Good. How you doin? John put his hand on Joshua's shoulder.

Fine, brother. Just tired.

You workin hard. Get some good sleep.

Yeah. You see them down there?

Joshua nodded to the street below. The cops looked up at them crossarmed, sunglassed. Some neighbors loaded their things into cars.

            Yes, yes. Somethin's goin down. They been packin into their cars like that all day. First they were trying to do it without my noticing, but I seen it enough times; they don't care no more. Now I know these six little piggies at our front door ain't all they got, you see any more out there today?

            In the other yards back theh. An' they got cars parked down the end each street. None'a them said nothin to me.

            Hmm.

Joshua nodded.

            You worried? John asked.

Joshua looked away and shook his head.

            You can be worried, jus' be ready too.

            You think they'll try tomorrow?

            Maybe, John shrugged. We should be ready tomorrow. Next day at most. I don't think they gonna come till later in the week. When the water and electric shut off is when we gotta worry.

            You think they gonna do it like last time?

            Worked out for them last time, didn't it?

            They lost a guy.

            One guy, John shrugged. We lost everything.

Joshua started to speak and stopped.

John looked at him. Yes?

            None'a ours died though.

John removed his sunglasses. Deep igneous eyes naturally narrow. Eyebrows thin arches. Soft wide pyramid of a nose.

            Joshua, brother, you think they really mourned that dead police? You think they cared at all 'bout his sorry life? They play that up fo' the folks out theh. John threw a thumb over his shoulder towards the suburbs and said, Police on up, they don't care about nobodies life. They put him on the news and give'um somethin' be angry about. They know now'days they can't just be mad cause we niggers existing. Befo' it was more'n enough. Now they need to find a socially'ceptable way t'hate us. Dead cops the best fo' that. Tha's why they shot him in the back'uh the head and put it on us.

Joshua looked at him curious.

            Yeah, I told y'all that we shot'im cause it was right for yous to think it at the time. We couldn't fail that bad without takin' one with us. But naw, believe me, believe me, they shot they own man. We shoulda, but they done it, and now nobody for us. Nobody marching. Just us. All them wanted a reason to hate us now they got it. It's nineteen-eighty five and all that changed is now they need'a filter to wanna lynch the uppity nigger, and a dead cop, man that's the finest filter you can buy. And they didn't have to sacrifice nothin. They didn't keh fo' that man. They gettin' everybody to cryin about how he been over in world war two fightin' for us, over in Korea fightin' for us, then he die by some filthy stinkin' nigroes, they leave out that they sent him in those wars, that they started those wars, and that they started the war with us. Even if we did kill him, and we woulda if we needed to, blood's still on they hands. You know, I mourned that son'bitch. I mourn'im now. Police casualty himself. Every dead cop another man killed by police.

Joshua nodded, Yeah, yeah, you right. He was tired and sore, afternoon breeze quivering in his diaphragm, and he felt John watching him. John looked out over the city again and held the last moments of the day in his gaze. They bled from the sunset like juice from a tomato tested and found overripe.

 

            Next morning Joshua turned the faucet. Creak of pipes, water fell. He ran his hand under where it came yellow tinged into a cracked ceramic basin, wiggled his fingers in its chill. As he turned the knob back with dripping hand he had thought he saw himself briefly in the mirror but it had only been a burning symbolic landscape. He left the bathroom disgusted. He found Telah and a man called Darius waiting for him in the living room with the axe. They went out into the warming day single file and quiet down the sidewalk. Tired cops stood in the street and watched them pass dirty and wild haired with axe slung across Telah's back. She glared at them and the guns holstered at their sides.

Telah and Joshua and Darius walked the cracked sidewalks and passed only occasional residents putting bags into their cars, inexperienced holidayers, creeping in station wagons out of that anxious dioramic landscape on the precipice of history. Civilian steps heavy in the quiet midday of a city's west side boiling in cardinal direction.

More cops parked at the first and second intersections and then past the third intersection; a resumption of city life. A growing crowd and depleting audience. The three shed a dark harbinger trinity and walked as foreign curiosities. Groups of old retirees in the shade on the corners laughed and told muffled jokes about the passerbys' hygiene. High school dropouts rolled past on chrome bikes. They came out to a wider avenue and crossed through the traffic to Black Oak Park, an open public square encircled by a wood fresh bloomed. Leafy canopy an oily sour green in the bright urban noon. A squad car pulled up on the far side of the park and watched.

            Least it's not as hot as yesterday, Joshua said.

Darius squinted at the sky blue empty and bright.

            Ain't that hot, Telah said.

            Is fo' the season.

            Whatever you say, Telah said.

            Whus'yo problem?

            Whatchu mean?

            You gotta problem wit ever'thing any us do, Joshua said

            Telah said, Don't gotta problem wit' John. Don't gotta problem with Rhonda or Darius, don't gotta-

            Your kid eat yet?

            The fuck that gotta do wit dis, she said.  She stopped on the grass in the shadows of the swaying trees.

            All of this got to do with all of this, sister, he said. He kept walking.

            I ain't just a mother.

            You ain't a mother at all.

            I shouldn't have to be, we all s'posed to raise-

            An' what else is there fo' you to be doin', bitch?

            Excuse me? Whatchu just say? The fuck am I doin' right now?

Darius said, Can y'all both save this for when we get back?

Joshua had stopped and was looking at the parkgoers, kids and dog walkers, all watching them.

            He's right, Joshua said.

            Yeah, I'm sho'. What's yo' issue, boy? Sayin' I gotta problem with y'all, maybe I just got a problem wit you, talkin down to me an' actin like I'm useless.

            I'm worried about yo' kid-

            No you ain't, you only-

            How you gonna tell me what I am? You say we all supposed to raise him an' get mad when I ask about if he eatin' and what's wrong with'im.

Yeah I'm sure tha's whatchu meant.

            Y'all done? Darius said.

            Yeah. We done, she said.

Mothers watched anxiously from benches. Their children watched from the rusted playground. The three ignored the glares and went behind and past the playground to a thicket on the downslope of the hill. The grove was narrow and extended along this far hill of the park and the daylight saturated cityscape beyond was visible only in brief flashes through the ivy draped from the branches. Heavy mats of green kudzu closed the gaps between oaks and shrouded them like guardians of peace maskless and indecipherable.

Telah took the axe from her back and used the handle to push away thorn bushes and stinging nettles hanging in the way of a narrow footpath. The ground matted with a layer of garbage. Muted logos reached up like leprous hustlers from old fast food bags and cigarette packs and beer cans. Used needles scoffed consummate. She came to the shattered asphalt square that marked the center of the thicket, fire pits overflowed charcoal and burnt cans, piles of broken glass and disgusting rags wrapping the periphery. Joshua and Darius kept watch just outside the wood patch. Two narrow stumps in the undergrowth where Joshua had previously cut the young beech trees. Looking thereabouts for more small trees she pushed the high nettles aside and two people squatting in a pile of rags stared back at her. A man and woman of indistinct age. The man in a red and white baseball jersey stained with mud and sweat and the woman in a rainbow t-shirt faded and torn at the sleeves. Her dreadlocks fell straight over her face, portcullis over her frown. The man lifted a bottle to his mouth and poured some vague liquor through his yellow smile.

Watchu doin withat axe, girlie? He said.

Telah didn't answer. The other woman spat.

What you doin withat axe. The man said again.

Lookin fo' wood. You see any little trees?

They both laughed.

Who you talkin to? Joshua called in.

Some folks heh, Telah said. She went passed them and continued searching. Stepped over their belongings, junk wrapped in rags, and poked around in the thick vegetation.

She called back out to Joshua, There ain't nothin left here to cut.

Joshua came down the footpath and scowled at the two homeless where they squatted. 

              Telah, ain't this wood? Joshua said. He reached down and grabbed the end of a tree trunk. It fell apart in his hands.

            They all burnt or rotted, she said.

Joshua wiped his hands on his pants. Telah turned and from where she stood behind the couple on the ground they all faced Joshua.

            Les'go, Joshua said.

Telah spoke to the couple, Sorry we don't got nothin for youall.

They laughed. Telah frowned.

            Naw honey, the man said and shook his drink. We got what we need.

            Give her some that, the woman said.

The man raised his eyebrows and rocked back on his heels with pursed lips.

The woman grabbed at the bottle, Gimme'it you old-

            Telah said, Nah I don't need tha-

The woman interrupted with a glare. She took the drink from the man and passed it to Telah. It was an old blue plastic bottle. Dirt stuck to the side that once held a label. She unscrewed the cap and drank. It was good sweet rum. Joshua shook his head and walked out of the thicket to the field in the park and talked with Darius.

            I ain't got all these lice off me, the man said and scratched furious at his scalp. He looked at his fingers and said, Your fingers gonna be bloody forever if you don' gettem all.

            The woman shrugged. Thousand ants can't lift a cube'a sugar.

            You callin me sweet?

            Nah them bugs liftin you right ouchya pants.

Telah handed back the bottle and the man snatched it.

            Nice to meetch'all, Telah said.

            Yeah yeah, watch yo'self, weather lookin bad. You out in the streets and the fields and trust us baby we know these storms. Thundeh and lightnin. Watch yo'self.

Telah waved goodbye and left shaking her head.

            Hey, tell that boy we wanna give'im a little somethin too, the man called.

            Joshua, they sayin they want you, Telah said.

            Fuck that. Sick'uh these bums. They mean fo' havin nothin.

They left the park empty handed as they arrived. The women on the benches of the playground watched. Glassy with quiet attentiveness. A few in well assembled thrift store suits and straightened hair. A few disheveled and in sweatpants.

            Where we goin now, Darius said.

            'Nuther park down the other way from the house, Joshua said.

            Shit, why we didn't go there first? Darius said.

Telah nodded and looked sideways at Joshua.

            Thought there was more wood here, Joshua said.

            Why don' we go down another way so we not passin all the same cops comin in? Yeah, les'do that and look for wood in the trash along the way, easier doin that than makin it yo'self from wood, right Joshua? Telah said.

            Yeah.

They wandered under high sun south three blocks then back west on Cedar Avenue. The Mercy Hospital old brown brick with strips of architectural intricacy. Pillars around the door arch and white lace patterned stone embedded into the rim of the roof and a Virgin Mary statue holding a cross that rose small and distinct above her highest point. An hour then down blocks of rowhomes like their own. Spring day warm in the sun and cold in the shadows. Joshua looked down side streets for the basketball game he heard pulsing off the buildings, ball on asphalt, skidding sneakers. A tree line became visible down the end of the last stretch of blocks. Between the strips of narrow conjoined homes were some empty lots and a church and a condemned restaurant. The ballgame thumped from one of the final lots. A dozen or so boys and men of various ages played beyond shredded chain link and a few glared when the three dreadlocked lumberjacks passed.

            A teenager shirtless and in jeans said, Josh'uh, what you doin bro?

The game stopped around him. Someone muttered for him to shut up and mind his business. Joshua briefly glanced over and stayed silent and walked, looking at the ground until they reached the trees and the game had resumed and a few of the young guys back there were laughing. They went across a field of high grass, then ducked through a thicket to a stand of real woods. Telah went to work and felled two small trees and gave the axe to Darius. She sat next to Joshua in the leaves. The day cooler still in that grove. Brown creek trickled down a silt-sand bed, fluid vertebrae of narrow green woods winding through the far western length of the city. Darius handed the axe to Joshua after he chopped two and carried them over beside Telah's.

Joshua squared himself. One hand at the bottom and one below the blade. Put his right foot back and swung the axe, hand sliding down the handle and body pivoting until the blade struck wood and he felt the tree in his hand and arms and chest. He swung twice and a third time. He saw the three shallow cuts separate and felt the tight and obscure energies in his chest lash out, bitter and frustrated. He swung hard and sloppy at the tree and tears were running down his cheeks into his tangled patches of beard. When the tree gash was widened he dropped the axe and with his hands shaking and hot from the harsh vibration of heavy consecutive swings and he pushed the tree until it snapped and wiped the tears from his face with his filthy shirt. The next tree he approached easier and breathed steady and when that had come down, he brought both over to the pile with composure.

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

Bustleton Avenue 2014

 

            Crimea was annexed beneath membranous sun glare on a Smart TV. Yevhen Makarenko, tall, light haired and round faced, watched from his seat at an orange table scattered with sugar in a Northeast Philadelphia Dunkin Donuts. Russian tanks paraded into the great shining smudge in the bottom left of the screen. Yevhen sipped coffee and spilled some on his pants. He dabbed at the spot with a napkin. The door from outside opened and inside came a dark haired, wide nosed man named Petr, who Yevhen had not seen for five years but who now badly needed a job.

            He nodded to Yevhen and said in Russian, «Hello Yevhen.»

            «You took your time to get here,» Yevhen said.

            «You know, I had to drive Georgy to school, traffic on the Boulevard.»

            «Just like a Russian to leave me starving.»

            «Oh, but isn't it like an ungrateful Ukrainian to wait for a Russian to feed them?»

            Both men laughed and Yevhen stood and they embraced.

«You could have ate, bastard,» Petr said.

Yevhen said, «I'm in no rush. No work today, if I go home the wife will have me clean.»

Petr said, «You were being sweet to me waiting, no need to lie. What do you want, I can get it.»

«No no, I don't want an affair, keep your money.»

Petr said, «An affair?»

Yevhen said, «Buying me food and such.»

«Oh, oh, ha ha. No, not an affair with ugly old me. What about with this one? Ugly old her?» Petr pointed to the woman behind the counter.

            Yevhen laughed hard. «She's married, look at the dot, it means she's married.»

            «What do you want to eat, bastard?»

            «A bublik with the meat and the egg and cheese.»

            Petr spoke to the woman in slow and accented English. «Two bagels with cheese and sausage, one medium coffee.»

            She said, «Two bagels one coffee is that all?»

            «Yes,» he said and he swiped his card through the machine.

            Yevhen said, «What do you think of all this on the TV?»

            Petr shrugged, «Crimea? I'm not over there, what is it to me.»

            Yevhen said, «Well I suppose that's easy for you to say. We're speaking Russian, aren't we?»

«You know my Cossack is bad. And I'm not the Ukrainian who kept my Red Army uniform, huh?»

«Fuck off, Muscovite, I'll fuck your mother.»

They both laughed hard. Yevhen laughed with his hand over his face and Petr laughed, watching Yevhen closely. The woman behind the counter handed them a brown paper bag with their sandwiches inside, while they were bent and shaking with laughter. She looked at them sideways for a moment then she spoke in quick Hindi to a young man on her side of the counter who shook his head and smiled. Yevhen and Petr sat.

            «I'm not watching Russian news,» Petr said.

«I don't mind if you do. I don't care.»

«It's bad, Yev.»

 «I am done with politics. You're right when you say, I'm not there what's it to me.»

«That was a joke.»

Yevhen shook his head,  «No, you don't know. Everyone has been making trouble now, because of just the fucking newspapers and news. I worry about Ukraine, but here what can I do? And it's not your fault what your country does. I don't care. I don't care.»

«My country is not the Russian Federation. My country was sold by a man who does Pizza House commercials.»

Yevhen laughed loud, «Pizza Hut, Hut.»

Petr smiled and said in a mock whisper, «This is why we get along, we're the only two East Europeans in the States that know Gorbachev belongs in Siberia.»

            Both men laughed. In his laughter, Petr spat a piece of reheated egg-foam from his mouth onto the table and looked worried for a moment; then when Yevhen laughed harder in big quiet heaves, Petr did the same. The breathy laughter faded and Yevhen and Petr sat across from each other looking down at the table. A news anchor spoke tense and muffled from the TV across the room.

«Yevhen you know I understand about family.»

«How is yours, anyway?»

Petr was surprised. He leaned back and took a moment to respond. «Good, but, things have been hard. Like I said on the phone. I'm only trying to tell you that I don't support all of this back-in-Russia business, you know, I'm here. I'm just trying to support my family, and I've been having trouble.»

«I don't care, Petr, is what I'm trying to tell you.»

Petr said, «What? Excuse me? That is what we're meeting for.»

«No, Petr, about Crimea. I don't care about Crimea.»

«Oh. I thought we were speaking about the job.»

«No, of course. No, no, we'll get to the job, just, all this in Crimea has been bothering me, and I'm saying, Putin is a motherfucker. But with honesty, I don't know if this is so bad a thing what the Russians are doing. These American news, they're not better than Russian news. All the Crimeans speak Russian. I worked in Feodosia one summer. Have you been there?»

«Fuck, Yevhen, no, I don't know what to believe. I hear the Russian news say what you're saying and, you know, I assume it is bullshit.»

«That is what I'm trying to tell you. I don't care. What can I do? And what, you believe what this news says? What do you want, a medal from BBC for being the Good Russian?»

            Petr looked away and forced a chuckle.

            Yevhen said, «I'm sorry Petr, all this time and all I can say is politics. Were you worried I would start to fight with you about Crimea?»

            Petr said, «No, that's okay. And I wouldn't blame you.»

Yevhen said, «I would hope you know me better than that.»

Petr said, «Everyone has been angry. Someone threw a rock through my window.»

            «Really?»       

«Yeah, yeah. Nikiya can't get groceries without someone trying to argue with her.»

            «I've seen some of that. This is why I won't get involved.»

            «Who do you talk to that you can stay away from it?»

            «Who would I be talking to? At the factory they are all Americans and Vietnamese and they all think I'm Russian anyway, they wouldn't care.»

            Petr said, «And your neighbors?»

            Yevhen said, «Russians. You probably know a few of them. Reshetnikov, Proskurkin? No? They never liked us. The looks aren't new. It's fine, Petr.»

            «Okay, you know, I just —  »

            «I don't care, I don't care, fuck you.» Yevhen said.

            Petr said, «I've seen so much fighting recently, I'm trying to be sensitive —  »

            Yevhen said, «Yes, and your words won't even touch me as a friend because of it. Why the fuck for, just call me a Cossack and move on. Be my friend.»

            Petr closed his eyes and laughed hard, holding his forehead, «You're strange, Yev, you're strange. I haven't laughed like this in very long. And in public, too. Not like me.»

            Yevhen nodded. «But, anyway. I don't mean to distract. I know you need work, of course I will try to get you a position at the factory.»

            «Thank you, Yev, thank you.»

            «It's just been a while, I wanted to meet you as a friend first.»

            «Yes, yes.»

            «Will you bring Nikiya and Georgy and come tomorrow night, so we can really talk?»

            «Oh. Sure. Really talk? You mean drink?»

            «Yes, a little Khortitsya, conversation assistant.»

            Petr smiled, «You sure you don't want the Putinka?»

            «Oh, why don't you bring some Smirnoff, you soft Muscovy faggot.»

«We'll see what you can drink, bitch.»

«So you'll come?»

Petr said, «Yes, yes. I'll see if Nikiya will come. Georgy might not. He is embarrassed of Oksana.»

«Oh, she isn't home. She's at university now.»

«Really? It's been so long since she watched Georgy, I remember her with the braces. What is she studying?» Petr said.

«Neuroscience, she's doing well. Won't talk to us much, though.»

Petr looked concerned, «What is wrong with her?»

Yevhen waved his hand, «She has her friends, nothing wrong. She makes her own money. It's different here.»

Petr said, «I know, and it's worse. Especially with the girls.»

«Oh, suck my dick. Misha's the problem, you know.»

«What's he doing?»

«You'll see him.»

Petr said, «Is he trying to be like the blacks?»

            Yevhen laughed, «Well, he is trying to be a gopnik, so yes.»

            «Oh, fuck, see Yev, that's the problem. All kids are gopniks, you need to beat it out of them.»

            «He's sixteen Petr. He'll be okay.»

            «It's these schools, you know. He's in Northeast?»

            «Washington.»

            «They are both shit. I don't want my Georgy going to a school that has a police station. But Nikiya has her fucking ulcers and the surgery, Yev, you know how much these cocksuckers are charging? Fifteen thousand for each. She has five.»

            «It's bad, my friend. I know. But you will have the money. Georgy will be okay at Northeast. He is good at his classes, yeah?»

            «Perfect scores,» Petr said.

            «Oksana was the same, she was in the good classes at Washington and she never had any problems. He'll be fine.»

            Petr said, «Maybe. Maybe. I am sorry, you are a good father. I'm worried, that's all.»

«That's okay.»

Petr looked worried. «Look at me, it's been, you know, so long since I've seen you and I insult you like this.»

«Ha, no, no, that is the Petr I remember. You aren't suspicious like so many of these other miserable Slavs, you say what you think, it's good.»

Petr nodded and closed his eyes for a moment. His brow was wrinkled and his lips were tight. Then he looked away and put on his hat and said, «I'll be over tomorrow night. Thank you, my friend. Very nice to see you, but my ass hurts in this chair.»

Petr left and Yevhen stayed and finished his coffee. From the TV, a fat man in a suit yelled about the deals down at his Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership on the Boulevard.

 

*          *          *

 

            The smog-muted blue midday was pushed out by a gray slab of afternoon. Rain fell in brief showers and speckled with water the warm concrete, the chainlink, the kudzu blooming in the cracks of buildings. Misha squatted on the sidewalk outside Philly Gas, across from the library and the Washington High School football fields. He pulled his phone from one pocket of his track pants and Pall Malls out the other. He fell off balance and rocked back on his heels, spreading his arms winglike to catch himself. He lurched back into a squat and looked quickly around, then went back to his phone. Misha put his last cigarette in his mouth and let it hang. He went to the back facing camera on his phone and put it between his knees. He looked up at the sky and smirked. He took the picture and realized his gold chain had been inside his shirt, so he draped it properly and took the picture again. Misha turned up the brightness and was happy with the picture and sent it to his boy Andriy with the message Where are u cyka blyat?

            He put his phone away and lit the cigarette. By his foot, a mass of black ants roiled out of a fractured corner of sidewalk as an undulating and smooth edged diamond. He leaned closer. Two indistinguishable tribes fought. The concrete was scattered with lost antennae and legs underneath a silent battlefield of mandibles locked in combat and exoskeletons hacked and severed to twitching scraps. Misha nodded. He watched while he finished his cigarette. He considered putting the butt out in the middle of the swarm but did not.

            He went into the gas station and shivered in the air conditioning. His damp Ukraine Football jersey clung to him. He spoke to the man behind the counter and the plexiglass-wire mesh wall.

            «Pall Mall Reds.»

            The cashier took it from behind him, «ID, sir.»

            Misha checked his pockets. «Fuck, you know, I was just at the gym,»

            «Next time. Seven dollars ninety five cents.»

Misha put eight ones in the slot under the glass. He took the pack of cigarettes and the nickel.

            «Thanks,» he said.

            «ID next time.»

            He checked his phone and Andriy had texted him. I’m in class, he said. Misha sent a response asking why didn't he just skip. He scrolled through his phone for several minutes and when Andriy still had not responded, he watched the cars pass.

            Misha had bought an ice tea and smoked until he was dizzy in the fifty minutes before the crowd of high school students flocked across the street. Andriy was there, six feet and six inches of bad posture. He talked with a dark girl who had bad acne and a streak of green in her straightened hair. The crowds of dismissed students in khaki pants and navy blue shirts came to the gas station parking lot yelling and dancing. They gathered in groups to trade money and drugs and jokes. 

            Andriy said «Hey, bro.»

            «You took forever man.»

            «I was in class.»

            «What you gotta be in class for?»

            «What do you mean? What did you do instead?»

            Misha shrugged. «Bought some cigarettes.»

            Andriy and the girl laughed.

«Didn't card?»

            «No. Who's this?» Misha said.

            «I'm Camila.»

            «She's cool,» Andriy said.

«You want percs or something?» Misha said.

            She laughed. Andriy shook his head and said, «We're just hanging out.»

            She said, «Yeah, but also yes actually. You got thirties?»

            «You got twenty bills?»

            «I don't get friend prices?»

            Misha frowned and looked at Andriy.

            She looked hurt, «I'm just kidding.»

            «You don't want it?»

            «No no I do want it, I got enough money,» she said. She took off her bookbag. She took thirteen dollars from the top pocket and looked around the other pockets for more and found nothing.

            «Shit, I'm sorry, I thought I had enough,» she said.

            «She's gonna be at Fire Pit tomorrow, let her pay the rest there,» Andriy said.

            Misha put a little blue oxycodone tab in Camila's hand.

            «Thank you so much, this is actually my bus, I'm so sorry, see you tomorrow,» she said.

She looked up at him and hugged him goodbye then hurried into the crowd getting on the Frankford bound SEPTA. Then the parking lot was mostly quiet.

Misha said, «Is your brother at work?»

«Yeah,» Andriy said.

«Will he buy us drinks?»

«Probably.»

            The boys started their walk down the cracked sidewalks, towards the Moldovan restaurant where they would stay until Andriy's brother got done waitering. The neighborhood of Bustleton was strip malls, condos, parking lots, rowhomes, all trash strewn and properly zoned, groveling under the iron sky. And between the housing and commercial sections were empty lots and the occasional collapsed building half obscured by strips of woods growing from plastic and thorns, glass and dirt. Misha and Andriy were under wires and billboards wherever they walked. Outside a garage they crossed oiled asphalt and saw the men inside working on cars and yelling to one another and leaning sweat-drenched in front of plastic fans. They crossed a traffic bridge over train tracks and pushed aside the honeysuckle vines crowding the sidewalk. Underneath the bridge and beside the tracks, a man lay on a feculent mattress surrounded by needles and bottles. 

The signs above the shops were in Cyrillic or Devanagari scripts as often as Latin. A fur outlet, a supermarket, an entertainment-store front for a mob operation, a dollar store, a fifth generation pub, a mystic, a diner, a bank, a Hookah bar, a pharmacy, a post office, a vacant storefront, a vacant storefront, a condo, a Dunkin Donuts, a Moldovan restaurant. Then scriptless were the homes and the boys and the woods leaning in the humid evening wind.

           

*          *          *          *

 

            Friday evening Petr rung the doorbell outside the apartment complex where Yevhen Makarenko and his family lived. He was dressed well and held with both hands a brown paper bag. Next to him was his wife Nikiya. She wore a heavy fur coat and carried a deli platter of zefir treats. She rasped when she spoke and she rarely spoke.

            Nikiya asked, «Are you sure that is the right number?»

            Petr did not acknowledge the question. He pushed the buzzer again. They waited some minutes and no one came. Petr leaned forward and squinted through the glass flush with visions of a fibrous and darkening sky. He saw no one, only stairs.

            «I am going to call him,» Petr said.

            Nikiya nodded. She watched her own blurred face reflected in the plastic covering the platter. She was sweating. Petr grunted as he bent to place his bag on the ground. He stepped out away from the doorway and into the parking lot with his phone to his ear. A rhythmic clanging began in the auto-yard across the street, a sprawl of construction equipment and junk cars enclosed in barb wire. Petr could hear only a faint ring under the metallic bangs and the passing traffic and when the ringing stopped he couldn't be sure if Yevhen or his voicemail was speaking.

            «Yevhen, Yevhen I can't hear anything if that is you, Nikiya and I are here outside, come down.»

            He tried to listen again for a voice on the other end, but did not and ended the call. Petr sighed heavy and his lips tightened into a star of flesh. Nikiya stood in the doorway still and watched him look around with his lips tightened in a fleshy star and his hands on his hips. The day was gone now and he paced under the orange lights. A man carrying shopping bags came out from the dark between the apartments' parking lot and the Wawa parking lot adjacent. With the balding head and hunched walk Petr thought it may have been Yevhen for a moment, but when he came into the light it was not him. He stopped in Petr's stare. The man's orange goatee scrunched suspicious. He was in a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and old jeans covered in paint and tar. On one of his arms a stylized P was tattooed in faded red ink.

            He said, «Yo, can I help you?»

            «Do you live here?» Petr asked.

            He didn't answer.

            «My wife and me are here to visit our friend.»

            He relaxed when he saw Nikiya waiting by the door. «Yeah, is your friend the Russian guy with the family? Second floor?»

            «Second floor, yes. Russian, no. His name is Yevhen Makarenko.»

            «I think that's him.»

            «Yeah? You know his number?»

            He motioned towards the building and started walking. «Nah, I mean I think that's him right there ain't it?»

            Petr looked over and Yevhen was holding open the door to the building. He waved to Petr from the doorway. He picked up the bag Petr had left there and held the door first for Nikiya, then Petr and then the other man, who cut past them and went quick up the steps. The three were crowded together between the door, the stairs, and the cleaning supplies and recyclables piled in the corner. The place smelled like mold and dust.

            Petr said to Yevhen, «I can take that bag.»

            Yevhen started up the steps. «No, no, I've got it, no problem. Sorry I missed your call, I was in the bathroom.»

            Petr followed him and said, «You are room 205?»

            «Yes but the bell has been broken for a while now. I should have let you know. Sorry about that.»

            Nikiya said, «That's okay Yevhen.»

            «Thank you Nikiya, thank you. It's been too long, when we get inside we can say hello properly.»

 

           

 

​