On a Clear Day (24 page)

Tristan seemed less mindless as he walked off. I thought I knew him better now. He knew what he did. He was a fighter—he found his enemies and waged war, and he waited for the chance to do that. He needed me to say something, to allow him not to think about anything else, just to do what he did best. Fight. I knew him better, but I didn’t know if I liked him as much.

We were waiting. Javier texted everybody that the
jamming had stopped. He wanted to know what that meant. Mei-Mei texted him back that C-8 was probably trying to limit their involvement. She had a grasp of things that I had to admire.

“A group of Sturmers has been spotted,” Javier texted. “They are just to the left up ahead. Less than a mile away. They don’t appear to be doing anything at this point.”

Vultures, I thought.

We were waiting. I felt myself tensing up, felt the stiffness in my shoulders as I thought about what was to come. I imagined more old cars filled with high school dropouts moving toward the barriers, moving toward Tristan’s people with their high-tech gear and square shoulders.

As few as we were, maybe fifty or so against three hundred that Sayeed might be able to muster, we were in the best position. On impulse I texted Mei-Mei.

She texted me back.

Was that it? Was the best endgame only that we lived? What had I read about Martin Luther King, Jr.? That longevity had its place? I made a mental note to always hate Mei-Mei. Added that to the list of things I didn’t like about her.

What I knew was that I hated Mei-Mei because she was right. I wanted to live. I wanted to know what was going to happen in the next few seconds, the next few minutes, the next hours. That was what made me human. Not the
intelligence or the opposable thumbs. It was about finding out what happened next.

The fighting started again like a sudden spring rain, with big hard drops banging against the shutters. There were bullets hitting the barriers in front of us. I felt my legs and arms moving, scrambling like crazy to get closer to the protective metal shields. I was holding my breath, palms flat against the steel that I hoped would not let me die.

There was return fire from our side. The answers to the staccato fire, the high-pitched whines of bullets coming toward us, were the low and rumbling sounds of Tristan’s men and their guns. The beasts had awakened.

I didn’t want to, but somehow I forced myself to look around the steel barrier I had found. It was slightly shorter than me, about five feet high, with vertical slits to fire through. I looked, but I couldn’t see anything. Who was shooting at us?

I could hear the sound of the shooting, could see the puffs of smoke and an occasional flash of light, but I couldn’t see anyone holding a rifle or actually shooting in our direction. How could killing be so impersonal? An Asian dude with powerful arms and legs was giving orders over a phone. I wondered how he was giving orders to other people if he couldn’t see shit.

“Armor!” The voice that called it out cracked as it rose.

I looked down the wide corridor again and saw four vehicles headed in our direction. They were tracked vehicles, lumbering and rumbling as they headed toward us.

The immediate response from our side, Tristan’s army, was a wicked hissing noise followed by a boom that seemed to fill me up before knocking me down.

“Oh, my God!” Anja’s voice. I looked up and saw she had her hands by the sides of her face as she looked down the street.

I looked. One of the vehicles had been hit. There were flames shooting high into the air. At the base of the flames there was still the outline of the vehicle, and a dark spot where it had been hit.

Another hissing noise, and I felt myself reaching for something to grab hold of. Too late. I had struggled to my feet, but now I was on the ground again. The blast from the gun had knocked me over. The sound seemed to be inside my body. I was shaking, and crying, and confused. I wanted to be away from where I struggled on the hard ground.

Another blast. I put my forehead down and felt it hit the black asphalt of the street. I wanted to puke as I pushed myself up to sit.

I saw a figure running across the road. It looked like a man, or a boy, maybe even a dog. Behind it there were the flaming hulks of two of the vehicles. Suddenly the silhouetted figure burst into flames. The figure still ran—I could make out the motion of sprinting legs, flailing arms. It was burning, but it still ran. Then it stopped.

More people, I pictured children, appeared from the brilliance of the flames. They ran a few steps and then, from where I sat flat on my ass and hurting, I could see
them falling. Their arms always seeming to reach up to the sky before they hit the ground.

They had attacked, without a doubt on the strength of Sayeed’s words, his promises that they would be all right. Now they were being slaughtered on the streets. I thought of how far away some of them were from home.

“Dahlia! Are you okay?” Anja’s voice.

I turned and saw her running toward me. Then I saw one of her legs jerk up as she twisted, even as I was filled with a searing pain. Something tearing into my shoulder.

I was lying on the ground, Anja no more than inches away from me. She was moaning. Were we going to die here? God, how can you do this shit?

Hands picking me up. I was being carried. My shoulder hurt so bad. I was peeing all over myself.

I saw the van, and soon I was in the dark. I was lying on something, maybe a bench. Then there was light again and something was being laid beside me. I turned and saw it was Anja.

My shoulder was burning and I wanted to hit it, to put out the flames. I tried to look around, but there was nothing to see. I was trying to think of a prayer.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou …
 “Oooh.”

A moment went past. Two moments, maybe a thousand. I looked for Anja and saw her a few feet from me. She had gritted her teeth. They were small and white, and her lips were flat against her face.

There were guys shouting around me. The sounds of
the fighting went on, but in the darkness of the van, they seemed ever more far away.

Someone next to me. A Latino snipped away at my shirtsleeve.

“Not bad,” he said. “A scratch. Nothing vital.”

He was spraying me with something unbelievably cold, and the pain went away. I heard him saying something about how it was going to swell but that I’d be all right. It’d be more painful tomorrow, he reassured my hurt ass.

“Anja?”

I twisted up and saw that they had taken Anja’s pants off. Her legs were white, and I saw she had an angry red crescent on her thigh. A kid with a roundish face sprayed her leg. Put his nose almost on the wound, sniffing. Then he took a paper square from a shelf, undid it, and put it on her wound.

“This will stop the bleeding,” he said.

I looked at Anja’s face, and she looked miserable. She saw me and forced a smile.

“I love you, Anja!” I called to her.

“We’ll be okay,” she said. It was what I needed to hear.

I was lying in what I recognized as the back of a medical van. On the wall, there was an illuminated strip. There were numerals on it. 4P2, 10 Mod 7, 3!, the square root of 81. A clock. I felt better. I didn’t think I was going to die.

I saw Anja getting up, pulling herself together, pulling on her pants, and I swung my legs over the side of the platform I was lying on and got to my feet. Anja winced as she
slipped back into her pants. The technician taped over the spot where he had cut them.

I steeled myself, ready to go outside again.

Outside. The sun was brilliant. The shadows on the ground were autumn-dark. There were few sounds except for the horrendous
whoosh
ing noise of our side’s heavy weapons. The guys around me seemed relaxed. They looked at me and quickly looked away. I realized I was standing there in my bra. I banged on the door, and a guy opened it. He had my shirt in his hand, and I took it and put it on. As I twisted my shoulder, it hurt like hell.

Down the road where the attack started, the tracked vehicles were still burning. I wondered if there were still bodies in them. In the far distance, heat vapors rose toward the sky. The stench of the fighting—the fires, the gases from the guns—hung in the air.

To our left, across from the park, doors were opening. Slowly, people were coming out of their houses to see whatever they could. They were black and brown. They looked at us from across the grass and concrete field that separated us, and we kept a careful eye on them.

“Dahlia! Are you okay? How’s the arm?” Michael. His hair was matted to his head, making a dark hieroglyphic over his forehead.

“Fine,” I said.

“Tristan has Sayeed,” Michael said. “I think he’s going to kill him.”

“He’s captured him?”

Michael nodded.

“That’s not right—the right thing to do,” I said.

“Everybody thinks it is,” Michael said, stepping closer to me. “He’s caused the death of at least eight, maybe more, kids out here today.”

“It’s not the right thing to do!” I said emphatically. “We don’t need to cross that line. What is it, revenge? We’re writing history with us as the good guys, so everything we do is cool?”

He looked at me, his eyes widening; then he got on his phone. I could hear him calling Tristan. He turned away from me as he spoke into the phone. Then he turned back. “He hasn’t killed him yet,” he said. “If he doesn’t kill him, then what?”

Think, Dahlia. What’s the endgame? I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life explaining to myself why I could be part of the street fighting and part of the bloodshed and still think I was a decent human being.

“Let the Sturmers take him,” I said. “If the police want him, they can negotiate with those animals. They’re all on the same side, really.”

Michael let his arms drop to his side.

“Give Sayeed to the Sturmers,” I said, this time more slowly.

Michael was on the phone as I walked away.

Americans answer violence the way they usually do, greater violence
that carries the day! Should we be thankful?

El Bronx. Four-thirty in the morning. A hazy moon hung over the dark
silhouettes of the warehouses. Below, the all-night
restaurante y bodega
was
still open, the yellow-orange light from its window lying like a stain on the sidewalk.
The smell of pulled pork and plantains was only a memory, but it still made me hungry.
An old man came out of the store carrying a plastic bag, and I imagined it held what was
left of the day’s roti.

There was a light rain; it was only slightly cold. It started and stopped
every few minutes. My mother used to call this kind of rain “angel
piss.”

Across from me I saw a woman looking out from the window. Half hidden by
the curtain—her hair, straight, long, and silver, gave her away. How many things
had she seen on this street? I retreated from the window, took a pillow from my bed, and
put it on the windowsill. Then I put my arms on it and leaned out to see the street more
clearly. I didn’t look at the woman.

Michael had asked me to stay with him and the others in Morristown, but I
needed to get away. None of my
numbers added up to anything I could
call truth. They just led me to other equations, other problems, other what-ifs. And
even as I saw why my numbers didn’t arrive at any great and clear truth, I could
also see how C-8 could add their numbers and think they had a holy friggin’
grail. They were looking for profits, and more was always there for them, always
available. The answers they looked for were just a damned lot easier than mine.

I wondered if I would ever come up with one true answer that would tie
everything together. Could be, but right now I didn’t have it. Later, I would go
with my gut, but for now I still wanted to go with my brain. I would analyze everything
carefully and try not to lie to myself, even though I knew that there were lies waiting
to comfort me.

“Don’t give in to them, girl,” I told myself. That
made me smile. Here I was in my tiny apartment in the South Bronx talking to myself.

I thought about our little band.

Tristan was simple. For him everything was either right or wrong. There
was nothing in between. I envied him. I was nothing if not my in-betweens. He was
good-looking, with a detachment about him that reminded you of a Scottish moor or an
angry, moody sea. That was his charm, really. The aloofness. You wanted to cross to get
where he was, to be near him, but he wouldn’t let that happen. Even his arrogance
worked for him.