Streets of Fire

For a little while, he stood casually beside the gray sidepost, listening to the way it creaked and groaned in the summer wind. Bits of paper blew across the empty field, and when one of them came to rest against the small black hand, he nudged it free with the toe of his shoe. Far in the distance, he could hear the sound of sirens, and he knew that things had begun to heat up downtown. But they seemed far away compared to the whisper of the wind through the trees around him, the enveloping heat and the small curled hand that reached toward him from the dust.

Luther arrived a few minutes later, walking briskly up the field, his belly spilling in a doughy mass over his broad black belt.

‘What you got, Sergeant?’ he asked breathlessly as he stepped into the dusty oval beneath the goalpost.

‘Looks like a child,’ Ben answered.

Luther groaned uncomfortably as he squatted down beside the hand. Instinctively, he reached out to touch the fingers, then drew back. ‘What do you think, boy or girl?’

‘I don’t know.’

Luther got to his feet. ‘Well, they’re sending a couple of diggers,’ he said. ‘They should be here anytime.’ He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and offered one to Ben.

Ben took one and lit it.

‘Don’t guess they’s a public John around here,’ Luther said as he glanced up and down the field.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said.

Luther’s eyes shifted back down to the small black hand. He shook his head wearily. ‘Bad time for this to happen.’ He looked at Ben. ‘They’ll try to make a race thing out of it. That’s why they sent me down here, to make sure it was just a plain old Bearmatch killing, nothing to do with white folks, trash or otherwise.’ He blew three large smoke rings into the air, poking a stubby finger through the center of each one as it drifted upward. ‘Can you do that, Ben?’

Ben shook his head.

Luther smiled. ‘Trick my daddy taught me.’ He did it again, then leaned lazily against the unsteady goalpost. ‘Where were you when you got the call?’

‘Surveillance.’

‘Anybody in particular?’

‘King.’

Luther looked surprised. ‘Who put you on him?’

‘The Chief.’

‘He didn’t mention it to me,’ Luther said.

‘He just caught me in the lobby this morning,’ Ben said.

Luther nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s the way he works sometimes,’ he said, his voice faintly disgruntled. ‘Once in a while it screws things up down the line.’

Ben nodded, and for a moment the two of them stood in silence. Across the field, under the opposite goalpost, an old Negro man watched them cautiously, his ancient face half-hidden beneath a tattered straw hat.

‘Place is empty,’ Luther said, after a moment. ‘I guess everybody’s downtown raising Cain.’

‘Did it start up yet?’ Ben asked.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Luther said. ‘Same old thing so far. But they say the shit’s really going to hit the fan before long.’ He laughed. ‘You know, Ben, it’s a good time to be working Bearmatch. Hell, the whole place’s deserted.’ His eyes widened. ‘Down by the tracks, they say even the shothouses are empty.’ He laughed again. ‘Can you imagine that, even the whores and gamblers and such as that are out marching.’

Ben had never seen the fabled shothouses of Bearmatch, but he had heard of them for years. They seemed to swim in a hazy yellow light to the beat of honky-tonk pianos, and when they were spoken of by people who’d been in them, it was with a kind of distant, dreadful awe, as if life took on a wholly different texture as it moved southward toward the tracks. Down by the tangled iron railyard where the empty freight cars baked in the summer heat, you could hear the steady wail of the blues as it came from the shothouses and honky-tonks of Bearmatch. It was a slow, pulsing rhythm that seemed to sway languidly in the air, and Ben had often heard it during the years he’d worked as a young railroad guard. While searching the cars or patrolling the crisscrossed tracks, he’d glanced more than once toward the huge shantytown that spread out just beyond the high storm fence of the railyard. That was where it came from, the bluesy horns, sudden laughter and occasional gunfire. Others among the guards had sometimes ventured into it, looking for whiskey or a card game or a woman, but Ben had kept his distance in this, as in almost everything else.

Luther gave the tiny hand another peremptory glance. ‘They kill their kids down here,’ he said dully. ‘Sometimes the daddy does it. Sometimes it’s the mama.’ He took another drag on the cigarette, then tossed the butt out into the field. ‘Just ask anybody who’s been on the tour. They’ll tell you. It’s real different down here. Not the same world we live in at all.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘Course, the Black Cat boys like it. But they’s something wrong with those two.’ He tapped the side of his head with a single, crooked finger. ‘You know, up here.’