The death of John Radkovich registered sixty seconds on the 10 o’clock news; the segment included a safety expert noting how many fatal accidents occur in bathrooms, so people should be vigilant. There was no mention of a crime being caught on camera, of a car being spotted fleeing the scene.
The police didn’t come that day or the next. Or ever.
I didn’t have any problem getting out of luxury box duty. It was simple actually. All I had to say was, “My son wants to go to the game with me Sunday night.”
“Do you want to bring him in the box?”
“No, I think he’ll want to sit outside.”
“I can get 50-yard-line seats for the two of you. Would that be all right?”
Was it ever. The Pack whipped the Bears 28-6. Drive after grinding drive capped by Tyrone Williams returning a pick for a touchdown. Shane Matthews was no McNown. Andy was as excited as I’d seen him in months; he was smiling, jumping, and high-fiving a couple Packers fans sitting two rows behind. The Bears fans around us were tolerant and one even told Andy that Favre was the best quarterback he’d ever seen.
I wondered what they’d think if someone had told them not three months ago I killed one of their fellow Bears fans. Would they have believed it? This guy who takes his son out on a Sunday night to see a game? Who called for beers for the woman whose call wasn’t heard by the vendor? They would have expected some mark probably: excessive stubble or a twitchy eye or a haunted expression. Some physical manifestation of guilt. But not a trace of that. And not because I was hiding it. I didn’t feel it. I’d slept soundly since the first few days, when I realized I wasn’t going to get caught. It didn’t hang over my thoughts either. And, to be honest, Nat and I had been having our best sex in years. Nothing like a crisis averted to reawaken the animal passions. I was still enough of a Catholic to wonder if I should be guilty: I killed a man, after all. But it had been an accident. And while he’d left behind a son, who’s to say his ex’s new husband wouldn’t be a better man? What kind of father can a man be, really, if he’s berating a small boy in a public rest room?
For years I’d been putting food on the table by skillfully finding ways to take jobs away from hardworking guys, men just as good as my father, real Grabowskis, and send them to another country. Every time I did that, I knew in some way I was killing those guys. Sometimes, indirectly, not just metaphorically. Analysts at Doolin’s firm repeatedly called for corporate America to cut jobs, to “contain” costs, to be a little more nimble. Bill Chait two doors down was a lawyer who fought workers’ comp cases. House after well-maintained house in Wilmette was paid for by taking a little bit from the Grabowskis. Of course I could live with accidentally snuffing a landscaper from Lincolnwood. So could any number of my neighbors. We’d all had plenty of practice.
About the contributors:
Jeffery Renard Allen is an Associate Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and an instructor in the graduate writing program at New School University. He is the author of two books, Harbors and Spirits, a collection of poems, and the novel Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction.
Jim Arndorfer was born and raised in Milwaukee. He now lives on the far North Side of Chicago — in broadcast range of the Packers Radio Network — with his wife and son. He has attended four Packers-Bears games and the teams have split. He is a reporter for Advertising Age and a contributor to The Baffler.
Daniel Buckman is the author of Water in Darkness, The Names of Rivers, and Morning Dark. His fourth novel, Wet Trees, is forthcoming in 2006. A former paratrooper and journalist, Buckman lives and works in Chicago.
Todd Dills hails originally from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but desertion is sweet release: He has called Chicago his home for these past years. He is editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND, a broadsheet and online magazine (the2ndhand.com) for new writing. His stories, reviews, and erratta have appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Reader, where he also works.
Andrew Ervin lives in downstate Illinois. His stories have appeared in the Prague Literary Review and Night Rally. He has also contributed reviews, articles, and essays to the New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Tribune, The Believer, and other places.
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski was born and raised in Pilsen on the South Side of Chicago. He has published numerous stories in journals such as Triquarterly, Ploughshares, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. He still lives and works on the South Side of Chicago.
Luciano Guerriero, a contributor to Akashic’s Brooklyn Noir, recently completed his first noir novel, The Spin. His fourth play, Fireman’s Dance, will be produced in New York City in the fall of 2005. Luciano has acted in or directed seventy-five plays, and has appeared in twenty Hollywood and independent films, and in many television shows.
Kevin Guilfoile’s first novel, Cast of Shadows, was published this year by Knopf. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and son.
Adam Langer is the author of the novels Crossing California and The Washington Story. He divides his time between New York City and Bloomington, Indiana.
Joe Meno is a fiction writer from Chicago and winner of a Nelson Algren Literary Award. His latest novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, follows the exploits of adolescents as they struggle for belonging on Chicago’s South Side. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Punk Planet magazine, another 2nd-city landmark.
Michael K. Meyers is a writer and performance artist. His fiction has been published in the New Yorker, and his performance work has been presented around the world, including at MoMA, Tel Aviv Museum, and Warsaw Institute of Contemporary Art. He teaches in the M.F.A. Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and lives in Evanston, Illinois. He is the recipient of numerous arts fellowships.
Achy Obejas was born in Cuba and grew up in Indiana, looking across Lake Michigan at Chicago and thinking it was her own Emerald City. The author of three books, including the critically acclaimed Days of Awe, she currently lives in Kenwood, on the South Side, and teaches at the University of Chicago.
Bayo Ojikutu was born and raised in greater Chicago. He is the son of folks who migrated to the city from West Africa (Lagos, Nigeria) and the Deep South (Shreveport, Louisiana). Ojikutu’s first novel, 47th Street Black (Three Rivers Press, 2003), won the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Great American Book Award. His second novel, Free Burning, will be released in 2006. Currently, Ojikutu teaches in the Department of English at DePaul University, Chicago.