Nobody's Angel (15 page)

"What are you so afraid of?"

"Somebody might want to take target practice."

"Who?" He laughed.

I had to admit he had a point. There was hardly anybody on the street. The buildings had been burned, bombed or otherwise destroyed and whoever had lived in them had, for the most part, disappeared.

The brick pickers had picked the whole bricks from the rubble and stacked them on pallets, and they'd been trucked away. Only the rubble remained on the West Side. Rubble and weeds, and junk dumped directly under NO DUMPING signs which were nailed to thriving stink trees.

The prairie was returning to Madison Street.

There was a burned-out record store, barely standing, near a fire station that hadn't been close enough. A storefront church was boarded up, and beyond that, we finally found a little action.

There was a line of cars. A nice orderly, integrated line, everybody waiting patiently for a group of black kids to lead them around the corner, one car at a time, to buy whatever drug it was that they just couldn't live without.

One of the kids whistled and waved as we passed, pointing us back towards the end of the line.

"Just like TV," my passenger said.

I skirted a crumbling stretch of pavement and my headlights exposed a lone streetcar track, set in sturdy red paving bricks, shining back from some long-gone city.

A couple of skanky hookers were lounging in front of a low viaduct. Was this what he was looking for?

One waved halfheartedly, as if she knew no one would ever again be interested. They both looked diseased and old, women that North Avenue or some other strip had

already used up and thrown away. Was this Relita's future? Was this where you came when you only had one tit left to sell?

"Safer to go swimming in a sewer," my passenger said.

A squad car passed going in the opposite direction. Neither cop glanced our way and I wondered if they would pay any attention to the line of cars a few blocks ahead.

I glanced in the mirror. The squad turned south.  We swerve and don't observe.

There was a father leading two kids Indian file down a crumbling stretch of sidewalk. The kids were about six and eight. They were having a great time dodging the holes.

There were a few cars at the curb but almost all were burned out or abandoned. Anybody who put enough money together to buy a car probably drove it straight out of the neighborhood.

There was a liquor store and then a storefront medical center, both with every window bricked up solid.

I didn't see a grocery store anywhere around.

"What is it you're looking for?" I finally asked.

"Damned if I know," he said. "Last time I was here was 1964."

"You're shitting me."

"Lived here most of two years," he said. " '63 and '64. People start talking about where they were when John Kennedy got shot, I tell 'em I was sitting in a barber shop on the West Side of Chicago getting my hair cut by a little I-talian guy name of Pasquali. Christ, I'll never forget. It took about two hours. He had a little black and white TV in the back room and we kept running back there every time something new came on."

"You're not gonna find any I-talians out here tonight," I said.

"No, no," he said. "I figured as much. Hell, years ago, I was changing planes at O'Hare. Had a couple of hours to kill, so I got in a cab and asked the driver to take me out this way. He flat out refused to go. Wouldn't leave the cab line."

"Can't say I blame him," I said.

"No," he said. "I gotta admit it's worse than I thought. But boy, you should have seen it back then. It was really something."

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

We were in the center of the riot zone now. There was nothing but rubble for blocks. But I could still detect the faint scent of charred wood decades after the last ember had died. I knew the smell was just a trick of memory but all the same there I was standing on the roof of the building my father loved so much. We were watching the smoke from the riot drift over our heads.

"The late, great, West Side," I whispered to the ruins.

I wondered if my father had known what was coming, that day on the roof, as his great business sense went up in smoke. It had never, ever, been spoken of, and never would be now.

My old man, I thought, and I shook my head at all the things that had never been said.

A few blocks later, my passenger finally had enough. "You might as well turn around. It's not going to get any better. Why don't you take me to the Marriott."

"Downtown?"

"The one on Michigan Avenue."

I drove another half block and then started to make a U-turn in the middle of a deserted intersection. Up ahead, some red neon glowed from the only building on the block.

"Wait a minute," the guy said. "Let's see what that light is."

"Son of a bitch," he said as we got closer. MITCHELL'S was written in red neon script. An unlit Budweiser sign hung over the door. "Stop," he said, and I stopped across from the bar. "I can't believe it's still here."

"You can bet there's a slightly different crowd."

"Same name."

"Too cheap to buy a new sign," I said.

"Let's go in and have a few," he said.

"Yeah, right." I laughed.

He threw a twenty over the seat. "Stick that in your pocket and I'll buy the drinks."

"Tell me you're kidding," I said, but I knew he wasn't. "They got guns out here." I said as I tucked the twenty away.

"Hell, they've got guns everywhere."

"Yeah, but here they'll kill you just for being white."

"Son, I've been all over the world and one thing I've learned, if you treat people with respect you usually don't have too many problems."

"You married?" I asked.

He nodded. "Twenty-seven years."

"How do you think your wife's gonna feel, you get yourself shot in some bar on the West Side of Chicago?"

"I'll take my chances," he said.

"And I'll wait right here."

"One drink," he said.

"Not gonna happen."

"Don't you ever get tired of being afraid?"

"Hey, fuck you, pal."  There aren't five drivers in town would have even brought him out here.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"They kill us," I said. That seemed simple enough.

"Everybody dies," he said, and I got a sudden glimpse of my own funeral. Nobody was there. Who'd miss me besides a kid I hadn't seen in years?

I coasted a few feet to the next cross street, made a U-turn in the intersection, then pulled to the curb in front of the bar. "I'm probably going to regret this," I said.

He stuck a hand over the front seat. "Name's Floyd," he said with a smile.

"Eddie," I said, shaking his hand. "Make sure that door's locked, okay?"

Floyd led the way. It was strange being on the sidewalk in a neighborhood as decrepit as this. For years, I'd been getting out in bad neighborhoods to open the trunk or to help some invalid to the door. But to actually be going up the sidewalk on the way to a West Madison saloon. If the boys could see me now, I thought, but then I realized there was no way I could ever tell them. They'd never let me live it down.

Floyd wasn't thinking about potential dangers. He was smiling with memories. "Used to be a used car lot here." He gestured towards the weed- and junk-filled corner next to the bar. "Whitey's," Floyd said. "Had a thing about Fords."

"Pitched for the Yankees," I remembered.

The door was locked. Floyd peered through a small, diamond shaped window that had an iron grate on the back. "People in there," he said, and he started to knock. Amber bar light glowed through hazy Plexiglas.

"Closing time," I said.  I started back for the cab, and he could forget about ever seeing that twenty again.

"Open up," Floyd shouted, and knocked a little harder.

"Take it easy," I said. You could get killed pounding on doors in this part of town. A buzzer sounded and Floyd pushed the door. I turned and followed him inside.

It was just a small neighborhood place. We could have been anywhere in town. The lighting was low, mostly from assorted beer signs, some brands long out of business. There was a bar along one wall with a curve by the front. The stools were mismatched. Some had backs but most didn't. They were covered in red or black vinyl. A row of three-sided booths was covered in red. A silent jukebox, with tiny Italian lights flashing to some unheard beat, stood against the back wall.

Three guys sitting around the curve swiveled on their stools to watch us enter. They were all black, of course. The oldest was probably pushing sixty. His hair was turning grey. He watched us through tiny, octagon-shaped glasses.  I could see him back in the Sixties, wearing a beret with his fist in the air.

The others were probably a decade or two younger. They were both wearing CTA bus driver uniforms but neither drove the Happy Bus. There was a TV playing above their head, some old black and white, the sound down low.

The bartender was a kid in his twenties, tall and thin, with a tiny beard, bushy eyebrows, and a neat afro. He was dressed up like an old-time bartender: rolled sleeves, a black vest, white apron.

There was only one other customer, a small guy sitting all alone at the far end of the bar staring into his drink. From the looks of it, that was all the company he'd ever need.

The bartender watched us approach. He drummed his fingers on the bar. He looked to his right. He looked to his left.

"Evening," Floyd said.

"The boss'll be right down," the bartender said nervously. And there was the sound of someone hurrying down a staircase.

"Don't need the boss," Floyd said. "Just some Tennessee whiskey." He moved a couple of stools out of the way and staked out a position in the center of the bar. "Call yours," he said to me.

"Beer," I decided.

A door behind the bar opened. "Fellows, fellows," the boss appeared. "What seems to be the problem?" He was a short black guy, about Floyd's age. He had a healthy potbelly and a shiny bald head. He wore a white dress shirt, the tails exposed.

"No problem," Floyd said. "Just stopped for a drink."

"A drink?" the boss said. "Sure, Sure," he gestured towards the bartender who hadn't made any move to fill our order. "Not too often we get the pleasure of serving the department. What'll it be, gentlemen?"

Floyd shook his head. "We're not with any department."

The boss looked towards the bartender. The bartender shrugged.

One of the bus drivers slipped off his stool and looked out the front window. "Sky Blue Cab," he announced.

"I used to drink in here years ago," Floyd explained, and the more he talked the sillier it sounded. "Thought I'd stop by and see what the old neighborhood looked like."

The boss started to laugh. "Oh, goddamn," he said, like it was the funniest thing he'd heard in weeks. "Get these boys a drink. Service!" he shouted, and laughed some more. The bus drivers and the old-timer joined in the laughter.