Painted Cities (12 page)

“We can go after school,” Chuey said to us.

By this time the girls behind us had returned to their own conversations.

“Go where?” I asked him.

“To find dead things,” Chuey said. And then he walked away.

After school that day we hit the three places we thought most promising: the alleys behind Martin’s hot-dog stand, Del Rey tortillas, and Slotkowski sausage. Each time there was nothing, not a dead rat, dead bird, or dead cat to be found.

“Just our luck,” Alfonzo said. “When you need a dead animal you can’t fucking find one.”

“No shit,” Marcus said. He tilted back a garbage can. “I thought the city was putting rat poison down. There should be a shitload of dead rats.”

“They’re probably immune,” I said. “Super rats.” I peeked down a long, descending gangway.

“Hey, bro,” Alfonzo said. “Does your magic work on trees?”

“I don’t know,” Chuey said.

“They’re dead, right?” Alfonzo asked. “In the winter.”

“No,” I said. “I think they’re just sleeping.”

“We should try it,” Marcus said. “Maybe it’ll work.”

So we walked back to school, back to Twenty-First Place. After a short search we found the tree that looked the most dead: twisted branches, peeling bark, white streaks down the trunk like the tree had been bleeding. Above us the streetlights were just flickering on. The sky had a dark lavender color.

Chuey took off his jacket.

“Does it hurt?” Alfonzo asked.

“No,” Chuey said. “It’s weird. I don’t even feel anything. But I know it’s coming so it almost hurts.”

Chuey took a deep breath. “Ready?” he asked.

We all nodded.

Chuey reached out and tapped the tree. He did it quickly, as if expecting an electric shock.

We waited.

We waited even longer.

There was nothing. No sudden blossoms, no thick, heavy leaves, no fresh bark climbing up the diseased-looking trunk.

“Touch it again,” Alfonzo said.

“No,” Chuey said. “This is not how it works. This is not what it’s meant for.”

“Well, it’s getting fucking cold out here,” Marcus said. He blew into his hands.

We started to move toward home.

Twenty-First Place was flooded with orange street light now. Tree branches cast long shadows against the two- and three-flats. In the sidewalk, messages etched before the cement had dried stood out like miniature mountain ranges:
PARTY BOY LOVE, MARIA-L’S-FRIDO 4-NOW
.

We crossed an alley. I took a quick glance down to the other end. There, in the middle of the alley, resting in the shallow drainage canal, was a large black mound.

“Look,” I said.

“Damn,” Alfonzo said.

“If that’s a rat…” Marcus said.

We walked down the alley. As we got closer the mound began to take shape: a fat pink tail, a wide belly, yellow teeth propping up a long, pointy head. It was the biggest rat any of us had ever seen.

“That fucker’s huge,” Alfonzo said.

I picked up a rock and threw it. I hit the rat square in the ribs.

Nothing.

Alfonzo stomped on the ground. He waved his arms over his head.

Still nothing.

It was the size of a small dog. The tail alone was so fat that wrinkles were visible, fingerprints, almost.

“You sure that’s not an o-possum?” Alfonzo asked.

“What the fuck’s an o-possum?” Marcus said.

“Just like a rat, only bigger. They got them in Jew-town, by Maxwell Street.”

“That’s a rat, man,” I said. I looked down to the animal, its stiff, short hair. I gave the body a kick. The entire thing moved, a block of ice. Even the tail held its stiff s shape.

“You’re going to touch
that
?” Alfonzo asked Chuey.

Chuey didn’t answer. He got down on his knees and started to rub his hands together.

“Those things got diseases,” Marcus said.

“Shhh,” I told Marcus.

“Those things can jump too,” Marcus said. “One time, in my gangway…”

“Shut up, asshole,” Alfonzo said. He yanked back on Marcus’s hoodie. They both fell in behind Chuey.

Chuey pushed the sleeves of his brown jacket up to his elbows.

I scanned the porches of the apartment buildings around us. In some windows Christmas lights had been hung, tight crisscrossing patterns, steep triangles. In a few windows the designs had collapsed, leaving only sagging, drooping strings of lights, barely hanging on, like a wino’s pants. Through some windows blue TV reflections could be seen, brilliant flashes against white plaster ceilings, Christmas specials probably,
Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life
. At that moment the whole city seemed asleep.

Chuey blew into his hands. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them. Then he reached out and stabbed with his finger at the rat’s hind leg. We waited. I looked to Alfonzo. Beneath the powerful alley lamp his breath was luminescent. I looked to Marcus. He was on his tiptoes, trying to see over Alfonzo’s shoulder. Nothing seemed to be happening.

“There!” Chuey said. “There it is!” Down on the concrete the rat’s large body began to move.

That night, in that alley, we witnessed creation, maybe re-creation. Life came to the rat in a wave that spread from the hind leg, where
Chuey had touched it, to the front and rear of the rat’s body. The tail whipped. The front legs jerked and twitched. At the head, the rat’s mouth clapped shut. The rat thawed before our eyes: its belly dropped; its back arched; its hair stood on end. There were no flashes, no sparks, just the rat heaving, then breathing, then darting for the nearest bank of garbage cans. We jumped and screamed. We yelled for Marcus, who had run to the end of the alley. We hugged Chuey. He had the gift of life.

Those months we missed a ton of school. First there were the pigeons kids would shoot from their apartment-building windows. Then there were the stray cats the Ambrose tortured and left hanging from alley light poles. Then there were the puppies left in cardboard boxes, dumped in empty lots. Really, there was so much to do.

At first we experimented. Did the power work best at night or during the day? Did Chuey always have the gift or did it flicker in and out, off and on, like the
W
in the Woolworth’s sign over on Twenty-Second Street? As it turned out, the power was always on. Chuey could raise the dead whenever he wanted. Only time of day seemed to make a difference, and that affected only speed. Early mornings a cat would come back in a matter a seconds. Later at night it seemed as if the power had drained slightly. Things came back reluctantly. The process even appeared to hurt a little.

Within a couple of weeks we had a set routine. I was security. I made sure there were no witnesses, gave a whistle if someone was coming. Marcus tended to the animal, herding it in the safest direction once it came back. And Alfonzo, who had been an altar boy for
two weeks back in the sixth grade, gave the invocation.

“
May the holy ghost follow you through your new life. May you hold dear this blessing from God’s Country
.”

Chuey did the work.

Besides us, only Chuey’s great-grandfather knew what we were doing. Since the discovery he’d become a coach, instructing us on how to use the power. “Ask him if we can bring back humans,” Marcus once told Chuey. “We could go to Graceland and bring back Elvis.”

The following day Chuey had a response. “My great-grandfather says the power is to be respected. It can be used only for the common good.” His great-grandfather’s answers always begged more questions. Eventually we stopped asking things altogether.

We met under the trees on Twenty-First Place. From there we combed the streets. After the streets were cleared, we moved on to garbage cans, where we found parakeet mummies wrapped in newspaper, cloudy-eyed goldfish wrapped in toilet paper. The goldfish we collected in a Tupperware dish Alfonzo had stolen from his mother’s kitchen. Then we took the fish back to Marcus’s house and gave them life in the warmth of his basement bedroom. By late February Marcus had more fish than he had space for, and we started calling him Aquaman and telling him he was going to grow gills. Every time we found a new fish Marcus would say, “Hey, you guys need to take some.” But we always protested and said our parents wouldn’t let us.

We all started collecting things. Alfonzo had a puppy he’d named Cloudy. We’d found Cloudy frozen behind the junkyard on Peoria Street. His legs were stiff. His white coat was matted and ugly, bald in some spots. When Cloudy came back his coat was fresh and new, thin and wispy. We could feel Cloudy’s ribs as we held him up and
had him lick our faces. He was a puppy again.

By March I had three birds: a finch named Ron Kittle, and two parakeets—Harold Baines and Mike Squires, my White Sox all-stars. I had found a birdcage in the dumpster behind my apartment building; I began calling the cage my dugout. I was anxious to add Carlton Fisk to it.

By late March, by spring, all four of us had maxed out on absences. Our parents were called in. We made excuses. I claimed that gangbangers were after me, that they had threatened to kill me unless I joined their gang. Mr. Stoner, the disciplinarian, asked me to name names, and I rattled off a few I had seen spray-painted on our neighborhood’s walls. Tom Cat, Jerry Mouse, Player, Jouster. My parents were sympathetic. So was Mr. Stoner. He let us all stay in school with promises that we would not miss another day. We even signed contracts. By April, though, we were missing days again, and by May, by graduation, we had stopped going completely.

Those days were fun. It seemed quite possible that we could make careers out of raising the dead. We could leave the neighborhood, travel the world, resurrect important figures in history. Already I found myself scanning the obituary pages of the
Sun-Times
, cutting out clippings of former presidents, kings and queens, rock stars, anyone famous, creating a list of important people we had to bring back to life. We wondered together if there was a statute of limitations on Chuey’s power. Could we bring back Martin Luther King Jr.? Could we bring back George Washington if we ever found where he was buried, or King Tut, who had been on display at the Field Museum downtown? These questions were on all our minds in late May, when Chuey told Brenda Gamino he could raise the dead.

I am not upset. The truth is Brenda could do that to a man. The second week of school I’d tried to ask her, “So how do you like high school?” Only my tongue got thick and it came out more like, “How do oh a hisco?” She just looked at me and smiled. “What?” she said. I wanted to kiss her right then and there. Her voice, even questioning me the way it was, was soft and warm. I think I wanted to marry her.

“No, no,” I said. “High school… I mean… if you like it… is what…”

“What?” she asked again. And I just turned and walked away, my Adam’s apple so far up my throat I felt like I was gargling.

Marcus had done it, and Alfonzo too. Brenda just made people say stupid things. But Chuey had been saved. He was too embarrassed. He’d never said a word to Brenda. I believed Chuey when he said that
Brenda
had been the one to start talking to
him
. Her question had been, “What are you going to do this summer?” And in the heat of the moment, in the desperate search to say something of meaning, something she would remember, Chuey replied, “Raise the dead.”

She didn’t mind us much, Brenda. I’m not sure she remembered that any of us had ever tried to talk to her. Those last few weeks of school we used to pick her up, the four of us. They weren’t really even dating, not yet. They would walk together, laugh out loud, hold hands. Marcus, Alfonzo, and I would follow, smoking cigarettes, anxious to get back to the business of Life, hoping someone like Capone didn’t show up to make us look stupid.