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Sunday, January 09, 2005 - 03:52 PM
The Code
Exerpt from Hypothetical Old White Guy Steps Out
By Michael Burnham
Cincinnati Author
In waking life, I guess I’m at the kitchen table now. Cop’s gone to the car to fetch some pictures. I’m remembering the day they showed me Larry Pollack.
Larry Pollack Dives for Nothing
Larry Pollack figures prominently in my dreamlife. Has since the 5 th or 6 th or 7 th grade. Things were pretty quiet in those days. Most violent we ever got was to go to Friday Night Football and cheer, “Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow, blood, blood…” well, you get the idea. And race, man, race was just watching “Burn, baby, burn” on the television set. We was all white boys near my house and Larry Pollack, he was older. Showed up now and again. Always called us by our names when he hit us. “Having fun, Mike?” and the arm would be bruised or the belly would be welting up all raw and pink. “Look, everybody, Mike is crying, aren’t you, Mike?” slap, slap, finger marks on cheek.
In my dreamlife he’s not punching or slapping or pulling up our shirts to pink our bellies. In my dreamlife, Larry Pollack’s flying. It’s a still-life, a freeze frame, except the legs are churning and the hands are clawing air. In my dream I think he’s lucky there’s no blood except the drop below his nose. Once I thought that about him in my real life, too. 7 th grade, maybe, summer before 8 th, me and Stevie down by the creekside. Three big white guys in leather jackets, pegged tight bluejeans and pointy leather shoes with taps at the back to make ‘em go clack are going through our pockets hunting for spare change and testicles to pinch, when a fair-sized tree limb breaks across the middle white guy’s back and the voice of Larry Pollack rings out as if it were a movie – “Own size, you sons of bitches, own size!” Don’t take long to tell the rest. They let go of us and went for him. Dragged him to the middle of the bridge that crossed the creek, two of the white guys bend him back across the railing, pull his jacket up, pull his shirt up over it. Middle white guy flicks his wrist and there’s a blade there, long and thin and shiny in the sun of freedom summer number one. He’s tickling the soft part of Larry Pollack’s naked left side like that’s what the point of the blade is for, says, “You our size, boy? You our size?” and he knees Larry Pollack in the nuts. Larry crumples forward and middle white guy draws on his face with the knife. Doesn’t cut him, just traces down along his nose, “I asked you, boy, are you our size?” Other two white boys hoist Larry Pollack up the railing. Middle white guy tickles Larry Pollack’s soft left side again and Larry Pollack somehow gets a leg loose to kick at him. Middle white guy grabs that kicking leg and flips it and the rest of Larry Pollack with it up and over the railing, full flip in mid-air, and in my dream he hangs there frozen while me and Stevie Koehler try to figure out where the blood beneath his nose came from and he hangs that way forever. In real life there was a splash after awhile and middle white guy closed his knife and called to us “Hope your friend there likes to swim” before the three of them took out going the other way across the bridge. Me and Stevie ran onto the bridge and looked down to see Larry Pollack swimming in his clothes. I’d never seen anybody swimming in their clothes before. As he walked up out of the water, fully clothed, he downright snarled at us – “Don’t you never let nobody break the code on you! Don’t you never let nobody break the code!” – and off he went. Didn’t hit us, didn’t call us by our names.
Maybe six years later I’m AWOL from the army. Phone rings. It’s my mother. Conversation starts with her screaming and goes downhill from there. Near the end she says, “Now I suppose you’re going to tell me Larry Pollack died over there for nothing.” “Larry Pollack died?” “Read it in the paper,” she says as if I should have done that, too. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, “Larry Pollack died over there for nothing.” My mom hung up. I sat there wondering if there’d ever be a wall between the war and me.
Cop brings in pictures, sets up a little line-up on the kitchen table, one of the pictures has a letter jacket on and I’m off into dream flash again.
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Elder’s Got a Gun
Pollack hung out with Catholic boys who smoked, which is maybe where the jacket dream came from but I don’t think so. I think I’ve known that jacket all my life. But the Catholic boys are maybe where The Code came from. Protestant boys thought codes were things for keeping secrets in, Catholic boys thought codes were rules – “Always pick on your own size.” “Never jump a notch unless somebody broke The Code.” – things like that. There were just four notches then, four steps of escalation, if you will. Four notches and one jacket, in my dream there’s just one jacket. The notches go Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun. “Never jump a notch unless somebody breaks the code.” In my day nobody ever made it up to Gun except for hunting or the army. Nowadays the notches just go “Disrespect me – Gun.” That’s the trouble with kids today, man, they’re always jumping undeserving for the top. Now where’d that idea come from, Mom and Dad, where’d they get an idea like that? |
But we were talking about the jacket. It’s got a purple body with white sleeves and on the back in white letters it says ELDER and I must have been little when I saw it because judging from the people I saw in it I thought ELDER meant Old. And Wise. And Helpful. And I wanted one when I grew up. Elder – a Wise Old Man whose advice is heeded, eh? I’ve wanted that jacket almost since the days of “This Little Piggie Went to Market” and “Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel.”
Somewhere on the far side of the kitchen the cop says the crime is usually Black on Black. “Sometimes these young ones will go after whites, but it’s usually Black on Black” and I hear my dreamvoice say, “So the Elder got a gun. Nowadays you look around and Elder’s got a gun.”
White boy from Elder’s in business, and he has a very nice life.
White boy from Elder’s police chief – when did he stop beating his wife?
White boy from Elder was prosecutor, but he hated to work late alone.
White boy from Elder’s the mayor. He likes to drink and go home.
Black boy from Elder… Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun…
Black boy from Elder lies dead in the street and no one’s got no place to run.
And then I’m thinking maybe the jacket ought not read ELDER. Maybe it ought to read ONLY HUMAN COMMA I GUESS COMMA AFTER ALL and then in smaller letters under that OPEN PARENTHESIS GEEZ COMMA WHAT THE HELL DID OUR FATHER EXPECT QUESTION MARK CLOSE PARENTHESIS. And I’m wondering what The Code is now. “He dissed me, I shot him,” I guess.
When I hear my voice talking again in real life, it’s explaining to the cop that they all had masks on – knit caps pulled down with eyeholes cut out so I can’t recognize them. He puts pieces of paper over all the faces but the eyes. I pick out three right away. The eyes the eyes the eyes the eyes.
from Martin Luther King Meets Gesundheit My Ass
Cop’s still talking. I can see his eyes, but I can’t hear him. I’m too busy dreaming the budget hearing at City Council: “No, Mayor Elder, we’re saving lots of money. Used to have to pay the cops to kill ‘em. Now the smart mouthed little punks are killing each other for free. Who says that crime don’t pay?”
In the material published in Queen City Forum Magazine’s “The InkTank”, the author retains the copyright and all rights are reserved to the author of the story, poem, serial, or otherwise. None of the afore mentioned may be copied, reprinted or reproduced without the expressed written consent of the author.
Links
· InkTank
· The InkTank: About the Authors April 2005
Contact Information
· jsyroney@inktank.org
· Stacy Sims info@pendletonpilates.com
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