Like We Care (21 page)

Frank Kolak, who had arrived early for a good seat, watched as the townspeople shuffled into the modest assembly room, blurry-eyed and put upon. Some unwritten compact had been violated, the one that guaranteed them the right to never pay attention.

“Why do I pay my taxes if the cops aren’t going to respond when I need them?” demanded Art Berndt, one of the unhappy Happy Snack neighbors. Just about every declaration of discontent contained an embittered reference to taxes. In even the dimmest of minds, there was the understanding that something of benefit was due in exchange for the money taken from them every year.

“This has been going on for three weeks!”

Mayor Mary Claire Vincent, the matronly wife of a retired dentist, and herself a life-long resident of Berline, sat with discomfort, in charge of a room she had never seen this full in her nearly three terms of service. The eight Council members—all white, mostly male—expressed emotions that ranged from startled unease to coiled megalomania. The more goal-oriented members sensed that, finally, here was the issue that was going to liberate them from City Hall, and propel them into elected state office.

The local media, by now checking in regularly with the boycott, were there to spotlight any politician who distinguished himself. If that obnoxious music video channel sent a crew all the way from New York, could CNN and the other news networks be far behind?

Political careers had been launched by issues less notable than this.

“The Happy Snack operates on private property,” Mayor Vincent responded. “If the proprietors choose to allow large gatherings in their parking lot, there isn’t a lot we can do to stop them.”

“There are ordinances in this town,” barked Don Salem. Salem, voted off the Council last time around, still kept his nose in everything. He was convinced the town was going to hell since his steady hand left the wheel.

“If a tenant chooses to host what has turned into a
party
involving the kinds of numbers we’ve been seeing,” he continued, “then they are required to pull permits, provide toilets and other facilities, and make damned sure that the surrounding neighborhood is not impacted. City Code 484-A clearly states that any property owner who billa staarta dooda
violation
offa den den reetz
ordinances
eff eff sinching of the roobel
held accountable
oyah stepsss
immediate
app app app. . .”

Todd Noland, sitting next to Frank Kolak, sighed in bored agony, his eyelids heavy and about to close. Nothing in his young life—not church, not trips to Grandma’s, not fourth year German—had ever been as abominably dull as what he was being forced to listen to here. He couldn’t understand why Mr. Kolak had insisted he come, and he really couldn’t understand why the Social Studies teacher was sitting on the edge of his chair in rapt attention, as if this were a monster truck rally or something.

“Sssh,” the teacher hissed sharply at Todd’s anguished groan. “This is getting good.”

“. . . Article Three, Section Twelve. . . ordinance clearly states. . . Articles Six
and
Fourteen. . . duly noted. . . Section Nine, amended to reflect. . .
pay our taxes!
. . .”

Todd’s skin ached. He crossed his arms bitterly and studied the two woefully scrawny video cameras that the city used to broadcast the proceedings. Jesus, he sulked. ATMs have better cameras.

“Obviously, Don’s right,” said Councilman Jerry Self, who oversaw the Sixth Ward, in which the Happy Snack operated. “I move that this issue be given top priority when the committee meets. . .”

“We aren’t waiting until a committee meets!” said Art Berndt. “We want this dealt with right now. Tonight!”

Mayor Vincent cleared her throat. “There are procedures which we are forced to—”

“What the heck’s going on here?” asked Fran Webber. Fran was on the PTA, the school board, the community Block Watch committee, the Dickinson High Booster Club, Citizens for a Better Berline, and various other civic entities that kept her sufficiently oblivious to the fact that her son—a Dickinson junior for a second consecutive year—was selling ecstasy out of her garage.

“Why are we talking about going after that store for some petty code violation, when we all know they’ve been selling cigarettes and liquor to our underage children for years?
That man
”—meaning Daljit Singh—“should be driven out of business!”

The crowded room blurbled with indignant approval. This is precisely how the Frankenstein monster always ended up with torch-bearing villagers on his ass.

Todd couldn’t fail to be impressed by the tempers in the room. Mr. Kolak listened with anticipation.

The mayor and the Council squirmed slightly.

“Our records show that police officers have been dispatched to the store numerous times over the past few years upon reports of illegal sales to minors,” Mayor Vincent responded. “We have made it very clear to the store manager that the severest possible measures would be taken if it could be proven that he was violating the law.”

Jack Barber laughed bitterly. “It’s happening every day! Haven’t you been listening to those punks on the news? If they’ve got the money, that store will sell them whatever they want!”

“I’ve called the police over a dozen times after some of the things I’ve found on my son,” Fran Webber sniped. “I’ve gone in there myself and talked to that man. He just yelled at me and told me to leave. Nothing is ever done! What kind of message are we sending our children?”

Mayor Vincent cleared her throat. “That store, in one form or another, has been a valued, tax-paying member of our business community for over twenty years. Unless we have something more substantial than anecdotal evidence—”

“Excuse me. . .” It was Frank Kolak. On nervous legs, he had made his way to the podium. He was still wondering if he’d regret having set his VCR to tape the broadcast before he left home.

At least he’d be easy to spot on the tape. His was the only black face in the room.

“I don’t want to. . . I mean, I live in the Sixth Ward. I follow these meetings. I know the strip mall has been the subject of a lot of discussion over the past few years.”

The mayor and the rest of the Council turned to Jerry Self. He had lived in the Sixth Ward for the past 35 years, and had watched the area deteriorate markedly for the past five.

He knew exactly what Frank was referring to. It had been discussed—in carefully couched terms—before the Council numerous times.

“The commercial viability of that property is something we’ve been watching closely, yes,” Self said. “We’ve lost a certain quality in that neighborhood that we used to have.”

Just east of the strip mall where the Happy Snack sat was the city line that divided Berline and Cicero. Cicero’s working poor and just-plain-poor—blacks, mainly—had amassed just over the line, and every year there seemed to be more and more. As space ran out, families were crossing into Berline and taking root in the inexpensive apartment buildings that some of the town’s wealthiest residents owned.

With the presence of outsiders—and their outsider ways—the tone of the neighborhood had begun to change. Long-time residents, some still living in the sturdy and austere early 20th century homes they were born in, found reason to move out, maybe down to Florida, or to the west side of town. Something smaller, now that the kids were gone.

Terms and phrases such as “encroachment,” “quality of life,” and “maintaining our Berline identity” were used in Council whenever the subject of the erosion of the Sixth Ward ever came up, but the unspoken truth was simply that this predominantly white section of Berline was made uncomfortable by the influx of black families. The economic viability of the Sixth Ward had dipped worrisomely as the neighborhood changed, so much so that the block of stores in which the Happy Snack operated remained one of the very few stretches of functioning commercial real estate in the area.

The Happy Snack was the strip mall’s anchor, the traffic-generator that—according to theory—spilled business over to the mall’s other tenants: a video store, a dry cleaner, a copy shop, a Chinese restaurant, a take-out pizza place, and a hair salon. All these operations were struggling to survive, and none was eager to find out what life would be like without the Happy Snack there to assure a constant flow of potential customers to their doors. For some of the stores—chiefly the restaurants—the parking lot protest had prompted the best business they had seen in months.

Without the Happy Snack, the city fathers feared, the rest of the mall would wither and die. With commercial space then available to be leased at desperation prices, the neighborhood’s newer residents—or those seeking to exploit them—might be inclined to set up stores of their own. Rent-to-own shops, paycheck loan operations, salons, and restaurants offering services and cuisine alien to long-rooted residents would then define the neighborhood. And with welcoming signage and fare thus on display, the desirability of the area would draw newcomers in even bigger numbers.

It was like dominoes, the way neighborhoods fell, so the City Council— elected to serve their constituents and vanquish their fears—were absolutely meeting their mandate by protecting that corner. If they did run Daljit Singh out of business, or if harassment over sales to minors caused Happy Snack corporate to relocate the store to a community less pissy, the same neighbors now bitching about a glut of teenagers would be
really
thrilled to see what turned up in its place.

Happy Snack corporate, when choosing locations, had a formula for figuring this out.

Frank Kolak got it on his own.

“What’s your point?” Jerry Self asked Frank.

“My point is. . .” Frank said warily, looking to see Todd watching him with anticipation. “My point is that I wonder if the city’s priorities in this matter haven’t been misplaced.”

Frank heard himself speaking, heard himself sounding frail and resigned to surrender before he had even begun. He looked again to Todd, and was reminded that this kid had risked something to set his own protest in motion.

Now it was his turn.

“I think it looks like you’ve been willing to look the other way at some of the things that that store’s been doing because you need that store to stay in business. I think you need that store to stay in business because you think it’s the only thing keeping you from losing control of that neighborhood.” He didn’t dare pause. “I think it appears that this city’s been willing to expose its children to illegal liquor and cigarette sales if it means that people you don’t approve of aren’t crossing over from Cicero and messing with your ‘Berline identity’.”

Frank swallowed hard. All around him, the public tried to decipher what he had just said. Once it sank in, they mumbled their disapproval.

The Council bristled with indignation.

“Excuse me,” Mayor Vincent said in clipped terms. “May I have your name?”

“My name is Frank Kolak,” Frank said. “I live here.”

Leonard Fischer from the Fourth Ward clicked open his microphone and stared down Frank skeptically. “I don’t think I appreciate what I hear you accusing us of.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just telling you how it looks. If there’s another explanation—”

“Oh, good Christ,” lamented 63-year-old Ralph Dorey, from the Third Ward. Dorey, a 28-year Council veteran, had a flattop, a beet-red face, and a generational discomfort with minority groups. He had moved his parents out of the Sixth Ward the year before.

“Are you trying to turn this into a black thing?”

Frank recoiled as if slapped, then had to suppress a laugh. The lack of discretion was stunning.

“No, all I’m saying is—”

“This is how it starts!” Dorey threw up his hands with an embittered chortle. “One minute you’re just a small town council trying to keep the garbage picked up and the traffic lights working, and the next thing you know you’re branded a bunch of racists, just waiting for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to parachute in and run some parades up and down Main Street. Happened in Decatur a few years back. It can damned sure happen here.”

“Councilman Dorey. . .” the mayor cautioned sternly. Nevertheless, the town fairly gasped at what Dorey was predicting.

Frank felt emboldened. “I can direct you to the minutes of any number of Council meetings in which the protection of that strip mall was given a top priority. I’d just like to know what it is you’re protecting
against.
”

“We’re protecting against losing even more business in that neighborhood. This town can’t afford to have any more boarded-up storefronts,” Fran Webber explained tersely, putting on her “Citizens For a Better Berline” hat. She understood that the Happy Snack was a barricade. She would have to do better by it. “Why do you people always have to drag race into this?”

“You
teach,
don’t you?” asked a skeptical Nan Caplan, councilwoman from the Eighth Ward. She seemed to be accusing Frank of something.

“Yes. At Dickinson.”

“And do you think it’s appropriate, then, to come down here and insert yourself into these discussions? Does Principal Keller know you’re here?”

Frank was dumbstruck. “This is a town hall meeting. I live in this town. I don’t have to—”

“Look, I just want those kids outta that parking lot,” said Art Berndt, reclaiming the mike sheepishly, regretful for having stirred this up now that he saw the big picture. “If some of them are buying cigarettes when they’re not supposed to—hey, who didn’t when we were their age? But I’m not looking to that store to baby-sit my kids. That’s my job, and you can be damned sure that
my
kids are not breaking the law.”

“I just think the store could do a better job of checking IDs, that’s all I’m saying,” said Fran Webber. “I’d be happy to work with the manager to make sure he has a procedure in place.”

“You know what might be a great idea?” Helen Stargell, another housewife, offered brightly. “If we made sure the store had a copy of the Yearbook every year, he’d have names and pictures of the students right there in front of him. He’d know right away who’s a freshman, who’s a senior. . .”