by Adam Jernigan

Curtis walked until West Girard turned into East and his feet hurt. It was 5:15 in morning and the sky was still as black as it comes when he went through the bright blue door with the sign above saying PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPT 26TH DISTRICT. Inside, it was too hot and crowded. He felt itchy. But he kept still as he waited his turn. When it came, he unfolded the flyer with the pictures and put it flat on the counter with the thick scratched glass between him and the cop. He said, “I’m the one killed them kids.” He turned the paper around so the two children in the black and white photo stared right up at the policeman on the other side of divide.

Around him in the stuffy room all the sniffling and cussing and shuffling stopped. The all of a sudden quiet made Curtis sweat. He started to unzip his coat, but the officer put his hand up and Curtis stopped moving. Somebody held up a phone and took his picture.

The man behind the glass was saying things into a walkie-talkie stuck to his shirt. A door in the waiting room Curtis hadn’t noticed opened, and a white man in a suit stood there, said for him to come along. Curtis nodded and took the flyer and followed. A lady’s voice, saying that was bullshit because she’d been there all night long, got cut off when the door closed behind him.

The man in the suit didn’t look back to see that he was still following. That made Curtis feel okay about him. It wasn’t too warm anymore. They went in a room with brown carpet that was so thin it was as hard as the concrete it covered. The walls were cinder blocks painted glossy grey like pigeons and all pocked up. There was a metal table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room with a microphone standing up on it. The man said he was Detective Moore. He pulled out one of the two chairs. Curtis sat in the other.

He did the same thing with the flyer then—unfolded it, carefully because the creases were thin like tissue, and made the kids stare up at the policeman. He said it was him that did it.

“So you said.” Moore took out a notebook and wrote something on the top of a blank page. His knuckles were hairy. “What’s your full name?”

Curtis gave it.

“Age?”

“Thirty one, about.”

“From around here?”

“Dauphin up by 16th. My whole life.”

“Who with?”

Curtis pressed his lips together, pulled them in between his front teeth and bit down, not hard. Moore looked up from the notebook. Curtis licked his lips like that’s what he’d wanted to do. He put his hand over the faces on the flyer, said, “It was me. Put em in the river.”

Moore leaned back. He was skinny with pointy hunched shoulders. His clothes were too big. The collar of his shirt was buttoned to the throat with still enough room between skin and cloth for a couple fat fingers. His neck was raw and bumpy from shaving, his cheeks sunken and shadowed to the color of the insides of McNuggets. The hair on his head was short and thin enough to see that his scalp had a boiled-red look to it. He squinted a little. “Do you know what you are saying?”

The looks and the questions, like he didn’t know what he was doing, made Curtis mad. He got angry at himself too. Never go to the cops.

Never. His dad had told him that the first time after a bunch of older kids had wanted to start something. Walking home on Girard from school in seventh grade three boys started yelling. “Yo retard.” “We talking to you.” “Stop motherfucker.” He did when they got in front of him. They backed him up against a brick wall that scraped his jacket. The three surrounded him. He didn’t look up, didn’t have to to know who they were. “Nigga smell like piss,” the one in the middle said, spitting it. “You piss yoself?” A hand smacked him hard in the ear, the flat palm making suction that popped once loud inside his head then fizzed like soda. His hat fell off and the wind took it into the street. He pushed off the wall to go after it and six hands held him where he was. “Not til we say.” They yanked his backpack off his shoulder and held it upside down, unzipped. Papers drifted to the ground and scattered on the sidewalk. One caught on a telephone pole, hugging it like a notice for a missing dog. Jolly Ranchers fell out of the bag and the boys crushed them under their sneakers. The autobiography of Malcolm X he was never going to read got kicked in the gutter and soaked in brown water. They started in on his jacket. “Empty them pockets.” He crossed his arms around his chest. Fingers dug into his wrists. They tugged on the collar and pulled at the pockets. Fabric ripped. Curtis dropped his hands to his sides and got spun around as the jacket came off. Wind cut through his shirt and went into his blood. They laughed. “Lookit them stains.”

A girl pushing a stroller walked by. Curtis looked her in the eyes. She looked at him, then away quick. She didn’t slow down. The three boys turned to watch her walk in her tight white jeans. One sucked his teeth. Another said something about making more babies. They grabbed themselves like they had to pee. And Curtis took off. He ran north a block and turned on 15th. He heard them coming. They weren’t yelling. Just their feet, fast and light on the pavement. He went down Flora and into the first row house with no door, hoping to go through and out the other side onto Girard. But it was boarded up in the back. He pulled on a piece of wood but it didn’t budge. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. And they were in the house now, not even breathing hard. They didn’t say anything, just surrounded him again and swung. He dropped down because he knew it’d be better that way, curled up, with his head covered. They stopped kicking after awhile and grabbed at his shirt. It tore off easy. They took his shoes. They said, “I aint touchin them pants.” They each kicked his one last time before leaving.

He waited a minute in the silence with his eyes shut tight, then got up and started home. On Cabot Street an old cop riding alone pulled over so the front wheel was on the sidewalk. “Come on” was all he said. He let Curtis ride up front and turned the heat on all the way. “I suppose they got everything,” the cop said.

Curtis looked straight ahead, pointed when it was time to turn.

“You know em?” the cop asked.

Curtis nodded and said their names.

“I know their people,” the cop said, “not them though.”

Curtis pointed again. The car slowed to a stop in front of his place. The man put his coat over Curtis’s shoulders and walked him to the door.

His dad came out and pulled him in. “What he do?”

“Nothing,” the cop said. “Just had trouble with some boys is all. I can try and sort it if you want.”

His dad shook his head, took the coat off Curtis and handed it back. Then he shut the door hard.

Curtis had wanted to say something else to the man. He didn’t know what though.

His dad slapped him on the cheek and pushed him against the wall. “Never the police, boy. They come to this house it better be with a charge. Anyway else aint gone fly. You hear?”

Curtis nodded.

“We handle shit on our own.” His finger was an inch from Curtis’s eye. “Who was it?”

Curtis said. He went to bed that night without eating.

His dad woke him sometime late. He stood beside the bed huffing and propped a pipe up against the wall. “They not going to the police neither. Watch.” In the soft yellow light from the street Curtis saw shiny wet spots on the pipe. In the morning they had dried to a kind of brown that was different from the rust. When he got home from school that afternoon it was gone. His ear still hurt.

And those boys crossed the street always when they saw him. One limped. One’s arm swung loose. One twitched. But Curtis didn’t feel any better or any safer.

To Detective Moore he said, “I know cause I did it. Now you know too.”

Moore said, “And I want you to tell me all about it. Do you care if I record what you say?”

Curtis shook his head.

“I also need to bring another officer in, just for a second set of ears. You mind?” Moore got up and left the room when Curtis said he didn’t.

He took off his coat while he waited. He got bored quick and his left leg bounced. He thought about having no place and both legs started going at once. His knees knocked against the underside of the table. The noise made for something else in the room.

Moore came back followed by a man dressed like a cop. “This is Officer Bess. He’s here just to listen.”

Curtis’s legs stopped.

Bess dragged a plastic chair behind him and put it in the corner, took a seat after Moore did, and started picking at his nails. He didn’t look at Curtis. Moore pushed a button beside the microphone. A light glowed red. He spoke for a long time about Curtis coming here on his own, not because anybody made him, and about Curtis talking because he wanted to, not because police asked him. When he was finally done he asked Curtis if all he’d said was true.

Curtis nodded.

“I need you to say it.”

Curtis said it.

Moore put one fingertip on the flyer and said, “You’re here about Tyrese Brown and Omar Gibbon. Correct?”

“I’m the one done it.”

“Did what?”
“Kill em.”

“When?”
“I’s twenty-eight.”

Moore looked down at his notepad. “Three years ago. Where?”

“Fairmont Park. By the river.”

Moore sighed, said, “Can you maybe tell it like you’d tell a story?”

Bess looked down at his feet and shook his head.

Curtis wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He took a deep breath and made his hand into fists under the table. He thought about the shows he used to watch on the TV. He had been sitting in front of it when his dad pulled the cord out of the wall. Curtis hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved. His dad carried the TV out of the house, banging it against the wall as he opened the front door, and took it down to the corner. When he came back cussing about cheap motherfuckers, Curtis was still sitting in the same place, still staring straight ahead at the hole in the room where the TV had been. He’d never know how the episode ended.

The detective cleared his throat.

Curtis said, “It was cold like now. Light out still. I’d went to the store. Somebody throw away a bunch a bread so I took it and went to give it to the ducks. They quackin and scootin around and peckin at each other to get at what I give em. And this one starts throwing rocks.” He tapped his finger on the flyer in the middle of Tyrese Brown’s face. “The other one laugh when a duck got hit. They all flew off. But I don’t say nothing. Just walk on down the trail to go where the ducks go cause I still got more bread. It’s colder and dark now and I can’t find em but the boys follow me. They throwin rocks at me now. This under the bridge for the trains. I put the all the bread in the water cause I don’t care when they hittin me with rocks and laughin. That bridge made a rock, got real big ones all on the ground. So I throw some at them cause they started it. Hit that laughin one first in his eye and he go quiet. That one that started it just stand there lookin at his friend so I get up real close before I hit him too. I stayed for them to get up cause I know it’s bad even though it aint my fault but they didn’t move. So I put em in the water.”

Moore said, “Were they still alive?”

“What?”

“Could you tell if they were still alive when they were in the water? Moving? Breathing? Anything?”

“It matter?”

“I don’t know yet. It might. Think hard. You see any bubbles?”

Cutis didn’t know what his answer might mean. It made him nervous. He waited until he knew he couldn’t anymore and finally said, “Yeah.”

He’d thrown the bag of bread in the water but wanted it back when he saw some more ducks. It was plastic, full of air, bobbing away from him on the surface like a little ugly balloon. He found a long stick and reached with it. Bending forward with his arms stretched out all the way still wasn’t enough. The end of the stick dropped in the water, making ripples that pushed the bread farther. He stepped out onto a rock. It was slick and his foot slipped off with a splash. He was leaned forward so far he had to put his other foot in the water so as not to fall all the way in. The cold snatched the breath from him. He backed out fast and fell on his ass in the mud. The wet soaked through his jeans and the cold moved from his middle to cover the rest of him. The bag was letting out air as the bread sunk.

He moved up the bank on his hands and knees and started walking. His shoes made squishy sounds. It was all dark by the time he made it back to the street. He couldn’t feel his feet and he stumbled sometimes on the broken sidewalk. On Diamond he walked through a crowd of whores in short skirts and cracked leather jackets. They leaned into car windows and showed their panties to guys on stoops. A vacant’s second floor was burning on 25th. Kids stood around in the street and stared up at the flames that pushed out broken windows and caught on the overhanging roof. Blind dumb pigeons rose up with the smoke. Curtis stopped to watch them scatter and cry and shit. His head tilted back as far as it’d go, his mouth hung open, and he smiled at them. The cold of being still pushed him on. A paddy wagon and three patrol cars blocked up the intersection of 19th and Diamond. The wagon got loaded down with boys fast and it drove off with the three cars following. Curtis didn’t even slow. He turned left up 16th. At Tanner Elementary a lookout leaning on the wall painted bright blue and red and yellow got in his way. He had on a knit hat with loose threads and gloves with the fingers cut off. He put a hand up and asked Curtis what he wanted in a high crackly voice. He was maybe thirteen. Curtis pointed down the block, said, “My house.” The words came out shaky through clicking teeth. The kid gave some kind of wave, asked Curtis what he was waiting on, then leaned back against the wall. The dealer was in the middle of the block under a busted street light wearing a fat black bubble coat with a fur-lined hood pulled up and cinched. Without looking up he said, “Keep moving, fat man.”

When he got inside it felt at first like it was as cold as the outside. Then the warm came. It made all of him shake and twitch and every small move made a sharp hurt. He didn’t hear his dad come down the steps. Curtis jumped when he yelled, “Fuck you been?” His voice was low and thick and hard. He was at the bottom of the steps, panting. His chest swelled and his shoulders rose. “I sent you for cigarettes and you come back hours after all dirty and shit. Fuck’s wrong with you, boy?” He undid his belt and it made that hissing sound as he pulled it free of the pant loops. He brought the strap down on Curtis’s shoulders, across his neck, his cheek. “I asked you a question.” He stretched the belt out and looped the end he’d been hitting him with around his knuckles. He swung the buckle over his left shoulder and brought it down on Curtis’s right leg, then switched sides. The blows were hot. He couldn’t remember getting the cigarettes. Everything in the day already felt so long past it might as well never have happened. When his dad stopped he ran up the stairs. In his room he dropped onto his mattress and covered his eyes. The front door slammed and his dad’s cussing faded.

He didn’t know how much time had passed before the door opened and closed again, softer now. He was still in bed. The mud on his pants was dry and flaky. His socks were wet and his shoes too tight. He just didn’t want to move. He heard his dad stumble on the steps, stop, light a cigarette, breathe in deep and out slow, and start up the stairs again. He was at the doorway and said, “Curtis?” His voice still sounded thick like there was a bubble in his throat.

Curtis knew he wasn’t the angry kind of high anymore, knew he’d got to that sad loving kind now. Either way made Curtis the same kind of scared.

His dad got on his knees at the foot of the bed and started pulling on his wet laces. “What you done?” he said. The shoes made sucking sounds coming off. His socks peeled away. It felt so good he didn’t care about anything. He told about the ducks and said he was sorry. His dad stood and crushed the cigarette out on the floor. He sniffled, wiped his nose with a hand. Then he crawled on to the bed and put his arm around Curtis. “I don’t know what’s gonna come of you,” he said. The words already had a half-sleep sound to them. He put his face in Curtis’s coat. His arm relaxed and his breathing changed. Curtis stared into the dark corner of the room and listened to his father sleep. He was heavy and warm against him.

Curtis was folded over now with his elbow on the metal table and his face down in the crook of his arm, so tired all of sudden his thoughts just stopped. The Detective Moore tapped his pen on the table and said, “Stick with me, just a bit longer.”

He lifted his head and wiped some crust from his eyes.

Officer Bess shifted in his seat and looked at his watch when Curtis looked at him.

Moore said, “Did anyone other than the boys see you at the water?”

Curtis shook his head.

Moore pointed at the microphone.

Curtis said, “No.”

“Did you tell anybody about what happened?”
“No.”

“Not then or ever until today?”

“Til today.” He put his head back down on his arm.

“So why now?”

He lifted his shoulders up in a small shrug and waited for Moore to tell him to say it out loud. He didn’t though. There was a little click and the whirr of the tape recorder stopped.

“Jus cause,” he said into his sleeve. He closed his eyes, making everything go black.

Probably wasn’t dark outside anymore. But when it still was he’d gotten out of bed to use the bathroom and seen his dad’s door was open. Light from candle flames flicked and jumped on the walls in the hall. He looked in the room. His dad was sitting up on the bare mattress with his back to the wall. The leather belt with twenty years of teeth marks was across his lap. Two candles burning down to nubs stood in shot glasses beside the bed. His eyes were open and staring at the place in wall were the plaster had crumpled off and the brick showed. He didn’t have a shirt on. Throw up was drying in the little bit of hair he had on his chest. Curtis coughed into his hand and when nothing happened he said, “Pop?” He stepped in the room slowly, lightly, to blow out the candles. He felt something like emptiness when he got close. He pulled the sheet up to cover his dad and his fingers brushed against cold cold skin. He shivered and straightened and just stood there looking down for a while.

Then he went to the other side of the mattress and sat. His weight made his dad shift and slide sideway down the wall until his head hit the floor. Curtis didn’t try to sit him back up. He stayed there for maybe an hour. Some of the street lights turned themselves off. His dad’s guts made gurgling noises and a heavy bad smell made Curtis have to go. He went his dad’s pockets and pulled out a wadded up dollar bill and a quarter.

Between the candles that had gone out on their own was an old silver Zippo lighter his dad had had forever. He flipped the lid and rolled the wheel. It sparked and lit the first time. He laid it on its side on the mattress gentle so it wouldn’t go out. The flame pulsed like it was trying to grab hold of something. Then it did. Black oily smoke coiled up and the burning mixed with the other smell. He went downstairs, put on his shoes and tied them tight, buttoned his coat all the way to the neck, left the door open when he stepped outside, and started walking east. He stopped at the McDonald’s and waited for them to open. He was the first one there. With the dollar and quarter he got a hash brown that he ate while he walked.

“Just because,” Detective Moore repeated. He tapped on the table again and said to Bess, “Keep him separate while I call the courthouse.”

A hand was on Curtis’s shoulder. He looked up at the man in uniform and stood slow. He was led past the bullpen where a hundred eyes watched him, then past other rooms like the one he’d been in so long. They went down a narrow stairway with little uneven steps to a hallway with six heavy metal doors in a row on the right and a smooth wall of concrete on the left. Bess stopped at the first open door and pointed inside.

It was a six-by-eight with no windows. Curtis went in and folded his coat lengthwise first and then into a nice square. He placed it at the foot of the cot. He sat to untie his shoes and then put them side-by-side underneath his bed with the toes pointing out. He took off his socks and stuck one in each shoe. He rubbed between his toes and looked at Bess who was just standing there watching. Curtis said, “Can I get a TV?”

The cop said, “You won’t be here long.”

“Well, but when I get were I’m stayin, can I have a TV?”