I rose to hands and knees, swaying like a sickly dog as I coughed again and again, each cough a deep, gluey, rattling boom. I finally convulsed up a thick wad of chunky green phlegm, spat it onto the ground in front of me, and studied the gross little puddle clinically from a few inches above. I was in bad shape here.
I got to my feet and commenced shambling slowly through the fog, the swamp water slopping up next to the muddy path I followed. Behind me the hospital bulked up to darken the haze. As long as I was headed away from it, I was going in the right direction.
I hit a path leading uphill away from the marsh and turned that way, toiling up a slight incline that I wouldn’t have given a second thought to in better circumstances. Right then it felt like Mount Everest, and I found it harder and harder to breathe with every step. I felt like I was drowning with each labored rattling breath. My legs were rubbery stilts, stretching an infinite distance from my whirling head to the teetering ground below.
At the top of the path was a sidewalk on an empty street. The fog was thinner here but it still prevented me from seeing more than maybe twenty-five yards in any direction.
Memory failed me; my thoughts were less and less coherent. I had no idea where in Stagger Bay I was.
At random, I turned left and continued slumping along. The further I got from the marsh the thinner the fog got, until it finally disappeared.
I was on a wide street, brand new – an avenue, really. It looked out of place in this uninhabited corner. Both sides of the road were bulldozed and graded flat in preparation for construction, the lots all laid out. Surveyor’s stakes were everywhere, connected by string and fluttering with orange plastic ribbons. Cement sidewalks and curbs were poured and cured – inlets to what would be courts and cul-de-sacs broke the lonely curbing at architecturally appropriate intervals; concrete curves and spirals led off to ghost houses yet to be constructed.
I passed a bulldozer and grader parked next to a prefab contractor’s hut on concrete blocks. The wide avenue teed into a pot-holed cross street leading to my left, into a lurking cluster of identical bungalows, all of them in need of a paint job.
Now I recognized where I was: I’d stumbled my way straight to the Gardens. It was a jarring contrast between those run-down hovels and the pristine blank area I was passing through.
This was the erstwhile home of a man I’d gotten murdered at the school. Wayne, I recalled the Chief saying – his name had been Wayne. I always figured that, at a minimum, you should at least remember the names of people who die because of you.
Chapter 18
I’d always felt calling this neighborhood the Gardens had been somebody’s idea of a bad joke: a ramshackle cluster of one-bedrooms situated in a lowlands next to a swamp behind the ass-end of a hospital was not my idea of a scenic locale.
The Gardens weren’t projects; they weren’t part of any official government housing authority. They were originally little shacks built by some timber baron to house his bachelor loggers. Over time, one slum lord or another had pimped the Gardens’ hovels to whatever people were currently too poor to afford living anywhere else.
The Gardens had always been home for the few black families in Stagger Bay – people who’d been living in this white bread rural community for generations without attaining jobs paying enough to buy property of their own. While the Gardens couldn’t hold a candle to the strife and violence of any Bay Area housing project, it was like a small unofficial hick replica of one.
The Gardens also housed several extended Hmong and Lao clans out of Southeast Asia brought over to the U.S. for services rendered in Viet Nam, and then relocated from the bigger cities to a place where their government sponsors hoped they’d be better able to assimilate. Despite the Hmong being mountain folk themselves, I’d always figured the philosophy behind the move had probably been more ‘out of sight, out of mind.’
Because of the welfare influx, however, the people of the Gardens were all races: black, white, Mexican, Asian -a low-rent Rainbow Coalition. It was still the kind of neighborhood where strangers stick out and residents take immediate note of them, though – you needed a Pass here.
I staggered into the Gardens proper, walking molasses-slow down the middle of the street that was the only way in or out for vehicles. Women were cleaning their narrow porches, and folks sat on what passed for stoops. Children played on dirt patches where lawns should have been, and groups of men worked on cars that looked like they’d be better off sent to the wrecking yard.
As soon as I entered, every eye in sight was staring right at me without shyness or welcome. An old man stood from where he’d been sitting on the stoop nearest me, called hoarsely to the children playing in his front yard, and shuffled inside through the warped screen door. The kids streamed into the house after him like a pack of puppies.
“You’re him, ain’t ya?” a wide-eyed teenage white girl asked, standing right next to me even though I hadn’t noticed her approach.
I ignored her as I stumbled on. The only sounds I heard were papers fluttering in the wind all around me – flyers, posted on every door. Squinting at the nearest sheet flapping in the breeze, I saw ‘ORDER TO VACATE’ posted on it in big letters.
I was drenched in sweat and shivering. My cough had gotten much worse. And, in the blink of an eye, I was the only one on the street anymore. Except… down the block a group of young males stood in front of a stoop, facing me with intent postures.
It was déjà vu: this wasn’t Oakland, I hadn’t been a street kid for years – but this crew appeared familiar. Like if I could just make it all the way to them without falling down, I’d see some of my childhood homies among them. Maybe I’d be as close to safe as surrounding friends could make you.
Of course, when I finally got close I didn’t recognize any of them. ‘What did you expect?’ a voice jeered in the back of my head. ‘All your home boys are dead.’
“You look like shit, dude,” one tall black kid with cornrows said.
I didn’t argue with him. My head commenced spinning and I sank to my knees. I started coughing and couldn’t stop, my booming lungs sounding like a broken washing machine.
I toppled over to lie on my side, which seemed to be becoming a habit for me. My empty left eye socket throbbed, blurring what was left of my vision; but with my good right eye I saw a circle of pants legs and shoes surrounding me.
“Hey, Natalie,” the tall black kid said. “Here’s Sam’s dad. Here’s the cracker who killed your man.”
“Bring him inside,” a woman said from the open door to the nearest bungalow.
With a feeling akin to flight, I was hoisted into the air by many hands. I felt myself being carried up the steps and onto the bungalow’s stoop, but I passed out before we got through the doorway.
Chapter 19
The next while was an endless fever dream. Movement and voices, doors slamming, people coming and going. An occasional hand touching me.
Even in my delirium I felt bone-deep shivering rack my frame. During one of my more lucid moments I felt something delightfully cool and wet mopping my brow. I opened my eye to see who was comforting me.
She was young: a tall big-boned Mexican girl with calm brown features and a long mop of curly black hair, a lit Newport cigarette dangling from her full lips. Her expression didn’t change as she saw I was awake, but she stopped mopping my brow to return my gaze. I drowned in the dilated pupils of those big brown unsympathetic eyes.
“I’m ruining your couch,” I said, embarrassed to be sweating buckets onto her furniture. A small black boy stood behind her, staring at me wide eyed.
“Go back to sleep,” she said.
“You should hate me,” I said.