Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 7

Jen kept pace with her host. Jerry had parked at the summit of a steep gravel and stone driveway and now they walked purposefully past the shrubs coated in flurries and strings of white lights along the front of Jerry’s house, all huge and white, with Romanesque white columns on either corner of a concrete slab porch. She watched him turn the key and kick the rug, stumbling into his front door, then smiling back at her sheepishly. “Here we are.”

“I like your Christmas lights,” she observed. “Classy.”

“That’s my family, all right. Classy as hell.”

A dog, full of wild fur, leapt at her waist, tongue agog.

Jerry intervened. “Midas, get down, man. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” She knelt and scratched the pup’s head. Three more dogs rounded the corner, a whirl of tongues, fur, and paws. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah, my mom breeds Collies. Come on, guys, go lay down. Lay down. I tack it up to some kind of weird Lassie obsession she had as a child. I don’t really get it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a breeder.”

“Well, tomorrow will be your lucky day. Do you want some water or anything?”

“No, I should probably just get some sleep.”

“Okay, the basement couch is probably the most comfortable. I’ll grab you some blankets.” He disappeared down a hallway, three dogs in tow, while Jen, with Midas following, wandered into the living area towards the framed family photos on a shelf next to the Christmas tree. She held a photo to the tree’s white lights. Jerry and a girl who had to be his sister, aged about ten and seven, wearing matching grins and pastel blue ensembles.

The next frame featured a woman of about forty, had to be Jerry’s mother, sitting in the grass with two big Collies flanking her and three Collie puppies, one in her hands and two at her feet. “Recognize anyone here, Midas?” She held the photo in his face for a second. He sniffed loudly and turned away.

Another photo looked fairly new: the sister sat next to the mother with a high school version of Jerry above them, completing the pyramid, in front of one of those standard gray backdrops, most likely the same standard gray backdrop at Sears department store that Jen and her father had posed in front of when she was twelve.

She remembered getting dressed to leave, buttoning up her dark green blouse (when she wore it to school, the kids called her ‘Camo’), while Kenny, her father, had pulled his thinning hair into a ponytail, sported the only collared shirt in his closet, and borrowed a thick paisley tie from Bill, a guy with an office job who lived down the street. Kenny had even let Jen trim his mustache as he knelt on the bathroom floor with a towel around his neck, and had grinned as his little girl circumspectly snipped away with a tiny scissor. “Dad, stop smiling. You’re screwing it up. Keep still.”

Kenny bought as many copies of that photo as he could afford. Pocket size, wallet size, 3x5’s, 4x6’s, 8x10’s. Something in that photo validated own insecurities with his parenting, somehow proving that he was capable of running a functioning family alone, and that he even if he personally was a loser, he wasn’t pulling his daughter down into the muck with him. That year was the only year Kenny ever sent Christmas cards, and he felt more satisfaction with every pocket size photo he slipped into each envelope. He kept a framed 8x10 on the mantel of the small fireplace in their rented mobile home, and he knew he was doing all right.

After Amelia, Jen’s mother, moved away to France when Jen was barely a year old, Kenny did his best to erase the mother of his child, to take all that love and pour it into his little girl. The name Jennifer was Amelia’s idea, so Kenny started calling his daughter by her middle name, Delilah, which he concluded to be the prettiest name in the Bible. Kenny, who was only nineteen at the time, did his best, getting relatives to watch her as he loaded and unloaded boxes forty hours a week. He knew that while he covered his nose with his Guns’n’Roses t-shirt while changing her wet yellowed diapers, his former band mates and high school buddies were pissing off the roofs of Pennsylvania state school frat houses into green quads full of crushed cans, draining their pipes after hours of guzzling Coors Lights.

When Delilah was three, the lead singer of his old metal band, God Save McQueen, came by and let Kenny borrow his copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Jesus wasn’t doing much to help Kenny’s situation, so he just stopped asking, and listening to Metallica just made him miss the glory days, so it wasn’t long before Kenny boxed up his collection of metal cassettes and swapped Messiahs: Christ for Kurt. When Jen thought of those years, the first years she could remember, she thought of playing with her stuffed Care Bears, rolling around on the living room’s burnt orange shag carpet, Nirvana blaring and Kenny in the recliner, nearly catatonic from whiskey, bobbing his head, eyes closed, mouthing the verses of “Lithium.”

When the whiskey reached just the right level, before he would put his little Delilah to bed and go to his room and think about Amelia abandoning him and punch his pillows, he and Jen would have their air instrument session. Kenny would be Dave Grohl and lean forward in his chair smacking the shit out of his air drum kit, crashing his air cymbals and cracking his air snare, while Jen held the neck of her air guitar with an outstretched left hand and strummed the air strings with her right. She had all the lyrics of Nevermind memorized, and she would throw back her head and yelp with toddler angst and look to her dad for approval. Half the time he was beaming at her and the rest he was so consumed in the drumming out of his regrets that he forgot she was there, but that was okay.

When Kurt died, there were no more after dinner jams. Kenny started going out a lot more in the evenings, and Jen, at age six, had to put herself to bed most nights. Kenny bought her a Care Bear night light and told her, “Delilah, even if I’m not here, if that light is on, you’re safe.” So when her daddy was out drinking with warehouse buddies and barfly gals in Middletown, Jen would switch on Share Bear with her glowing belly and stare at it in the darkness and whisper Kurt Cobain’s lyrics until she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

*

On one night in May, two days before Jen’s high school graduation, she walked in and found him sitting in his tan lather chair, his eyes red with hastily wiped tears, two dying ice cubes in a sweating highball glass. A lit cigarette in the tray next to him whispered a thin line into the air atop a mess of freshly dead butts. He looked at her blankly, then to the framed photo with the gray backdrop in his lap. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

He coughed, leaning forward and holding a fist to his mouth. “Your mother wants to come to your graduation.”

Jen had asked about her mother plenty of times in seventeen years, and Kenny would always give the same answer. “Your mother and I were young and we didn’t get along. She moved away, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you,” a rehearsed response which sprouted new layers of encrusted bullshit every time she heard it. She sat down on the couch across from her father, who now tilted back the highball glass, scrounging for whiskey remnants and finding only melted cubes.

“I thought you two didn’t talk anymore.”

“Well, it’s your graduation. It’s a very important –“

“She just contacted you out of the blue after all this time?”

“It’s not that simple, Delilah.”

“Daddy, you know I hate that name. Call me Jen, please.”

“I talk to Amelia sometimes, and she’s sorry.”

“Are you sticking up for her? Why can’t you just tell me what happened? I’m almost eighteen!”

He stood, walked toward the mantel, and placed the photo back in its proper position. “You’re right.” He turned, thirty-five years old but feeling like a washed up old man, and glanced at the glass.

“Pour me one more and I’ll tell you.”


Emmanuel Gonzales and Felisha Jones stepped out of the car in front of a house that looked curiously similar to the thirty or so they had passed before it, each one large, two stories, colored a pastel blue or yellow, white or beige. Occasionally one made of brick or stone would pop up. Each had a porch of some sort, some holding unnecessarily ornate columns. There were walkways, like the one they were standing before, which traveled to the front door. Cars of the latest makes and models stood like trophies along curbs and in driveways. It was a sort of residential heaven that Manny and Fel were unfamiliar with. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter there.

The home of Louis Allen was faint yellow with a chocolate brown-shingled roof. A large white porch wrapped around the front of the house, holding one of those hanging wooden benches. The number of windows seemed unusually high; especially since each one was shrouded by deep burgundy curtains. Fel grabbed Manny by the arm and they both made their journey up with walkway.

Felisha knocked on the door then tugged on the collar of her blouse as she waited. Mr. Blik has made sure they both wore their “good” clothes so they would be more able to fir in in their new alien world. Manny had a sky blue button-down shirt, untucked, dress khakis and a clean pair of Timberlands. Fel wore a sweater vest over her blouse, dress pants and conservative heels.

The door crept open just enough to get caught on the chain lock inside. A sliver of the head of a woman, peeking out with a nervous green eye came into view. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Louis live here?” Fel asked firmly.

“Louis. Yes. Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want with him?”

“We...” Felisha paused for a moment, “we was downtown with him last night...at a bar. He left his license and, um...” She signalled for Manny to show the woman the license, “we couldn't catch him before he left but...here it is.”

“Oh. Oh, good! Good.” She disappeared from view, closed the door, then after a few clicks the door swung open revealing the tiny blond middle-aged woman in her pale green dress. “He'll be so glad to know it wasn't stolen with the rest of his wallet.” Fel nodded, stoic. “Thank you both. Thank you. Have a wonderful day.”

Louis' mother tried to close the door, but Fel blocked it with her swiftly placed foot. The woman, upon realizing why her door had not shut, showed a flicker of fear in her round glistening eyes. “Can I, uh, help you?”

Fel smiled. “We was just wonderin' if Louis was here. We had such a good time last night n'-”

“He's out,” said the woman. The pleasantness she had previously faked, then meant, had faded away. “Lunch with friends.” She tried to close the door once again, by Fel's foot remained.

“Any idea when he'll be back?” Fel asked politely enough.

“No.” The woman's nervous smile had given way to a quivering frown. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wash clothes, so...”

“I'm pregnant.” Fel's words caused Manny eyes to open wide and the woman's jaw to drop. “Last Thanksgiving, bot came down to my corner n' fucked me right in his car. Said he had protection n' I was too drunk to doubt 'im, ya know? Could weeks later I found out that motherfucker got me pregnant. Imagine my luck when I find that cracker last night to tell 'im the news? Boy runs off like it ain't even his responsibility. Lucky fo' me I find his license. Fucker.”

The look of terror on the woman who was undoubtedly Louis' mother left her frozen. “I...I...no.” But she, like most, was quick to exchange fear for defensiveness. “My Louis would never do that! Now get off my porch before I call the police!”

“Listen, bitch!” Felisha's voice grew sharp. “Either you let me in or I'm gonna drive around this shit-hole neighborhood tellin' all yo' tennis club friends that yo' boy fucked a black chick. A fuckin' prostitute!”

Louis mother froze again. She thought to herself. Looked at Fel. Then Manny. Then Fel again. “Pregnant,” she whispered in case any of her neighbors were closer than they had been when Fel said it the first time. “Are you sure?”

“Sure as shit,” Fel spat.

The mother lowered her head. “Hm.” She took a step into her house. “Come in then.”

*****

The Harrisburg City Police Station...

“I'm sorry officer,” panted Angela Gonzalez, “sorry I came so late. I couldn't leave until now.” She had run from the bus stop to the station six blocks away. Beads of sweat rolled down her round face. “My son! Emmanuel! Where is he?!”

Officer Randall, a young man in his late twenties, stroked his chin and narrowed his eyes, making a sound that seemed to say, “Don't push this” to the woman at his desk. “Ma'am,” he said, “his bail was posted.”

“By who?!” she jumped to her feet, tired as she was, unaware of anyone who would do such a thing for him.

The officer swallowed. “A man by the name of Ronald Blik.”

“Blik!” she repeated excitedly. “Where can I find this man?!”

Randall swallowed again. “Mrs. Gonzalez, Ron Blik isn't the kind of man that you can just go up and ring on his doorbell, ya know?”

“But...my son!” She was in tears by this point. It had been so long since she had seen his face; since the day he left home because of her. “How...can I find my son?!”

“Mr. Blik is...a dangerous man.”

“I have to find my son!”

“We'll do what we can, ma'am," said Officer Randall, an automated response that meant that she realized to mean he would do nothing at all.

Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 6

“Nice wheels, Ashcroft.”

“It’s a station wagon.”

“Volvo, though.”

“It’s my mom’s.”

“You don’t have a car?”

“I go to school in New York. You don’t need one.”

She raised her eyebrows and he turned the ignition. Right on 2nd St., away from the revelers who still had an hour in them until last call.

“So where am I going?” he asked, taking his eyes off the road slightly, enough to catch this strange girl’s brown curls swerving to look out the back window, as if to make sure no one was tailing, and on the way back to the road, his eyes caught her little knees and thighs leaning on the center console and maybe he didn’t care where they were going after all.

“Maybe I could crash with you tonight. I need to catch a train in the morning.”

“You need a ride to the train station? That’s the ‘danger’ you’re in?”

“Don’t mock me, Jerry. This is much more real than you think.” She turned and looked back again.

“What does that even mean? Is someone following us?”

She smoothed her skirt. “Doesn’t look like it. You mind pulling into that Wendy’s. I’ll get you something.”

“Are they open this late?”

“‘Eat Great, Even Late’ – of course they are.”

“What?”

“That’s been their slogan forever. Do you only eat sushi or something? I had this friend who was wasted out of her mind one time and we drove by here and she was like, ‘Eat Late, Even Great!’ over and over again and we were all dying.”

Jerry gave her a nervous chuckle.

“No need to humor me, Jerry.” They pulled up next to the florescent menu and talking box. Jen took off her seatbelt and leaned onto Jerry’s lap, rattling off items, bracing herself with a hand on the seat near his crouch, a shoulder on his arm, midriff on his leg.

“Anything else?” said the box.

“Do you want anything?” she said to Jerry. “I’m paying.” She was two inches from his face. He tried to hide his whiskey breath.

“Um, a Frosty?”

She finished the order, and leaned back into her seat as the car inched forward. She removed a white envelope from her wallet, packed with crisp fifties. She handed one to him.

“What the hell? Where did that money come from?”

“Work. Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you steal that?”

“Shut up, Jerry. Don’t accuse me.”

“Oh, come on. What am I supposed to think? You dragged me to my car after you knocked me over. You keep checking for somebody tailing us. I say you tell me what’s going on or else I’m not driving you anywhere.”

“Do you really want to know, Mr. Jerry Ashcroft, Honor Roll, New York preppie? Really? Just let me buy you a Frostie, crash on your floor, and you’ll be done with it. Believe me, it’ll work out a lot better that way.”

They got the food, a white bag of it with big straws and yellow napkins and ketchup packets, and turned back onto the road. Jerry defogged the windows as his Frosty slowly melted in the cup holder and Jen gulped hers down as outside the houses moved further and further away from each other, making ample space for grass and parking lots, plazas with CVS pharmacies, Chinese food, pizza joints, spirits stores, banks, Edible Arrangements. He agreed to let her stay the night. He would tell his mother that Jen lived far out and didn’t have a ride or something.

He adjusted himself in his seat, embarrassed to be such a skinny little pushover. It didn’t matter if he knew this girl years ago. You don’t let this kind of shit go this far. He was half horny for her, half afraid she or somebody after her would come slice his nuts off as he slept. But there was no way she was budging from that car. She’d made it abundantly clear. He had encountered assertive girls, but all the NYU girls were too prissy and JAPy to act like this. Their insistence was more of a Daddy’s girl whine, not Jen’s ‘Take-no-shit’ bravado. And if he couldn’t stand up to pushy princesses, he had no chance now.

The Volvo’s headlights revealed parallel lines of two-story homes and mailboxes and driveways and Christmas lights. Inside, they were silent.

Maybe some cheesy suburban decorations could break their awkward stalemate. Jerry pointed. “Check out this house up on the right.”

“Which one?”

“You’ll see.”

“Oh my God! That is the biggest blowup doll I’ve ever seen.” The googly-eyed white doll stood at least seven feet, and was tied to stakes in the yard.

“It’s the Abominal Snowman. The one from that Rudolph special.”

“No way! That’s right! With the Island of Misfit Toys?”

“Yeah!” He slowed the car down as he laughed. “I’d totally forgotten about that part. You remember the dopey train with square wheels? I haven’t thought about that in forever.”

“My favorite was the gun that squirts jelly. Why don’t they just refill it with water instead, you know?”

Jerry was doubling over. Maybe it was his nervousness trying to escape somehow. “And is the talking jelly gun able to pull his own trigger or does one of the other toys have to do it for him?”

She giggled and the curls flew around. “You are silly, Jerry! I had no idea.”

“‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ from that is one of my favorite Christmas songs.”

She launched into the refrain.

“Oh, so we’re skipping right to the chorus?”

“Well, if you know the verses, Mr. Rudolph, then by all means, take it away.”

Some flurries fell and stuck to hood as the Volvo approached the Ashcroft driveway, Jerry candidly impersonating Burl Ives.

Manny and Fel climbed into Mr. Blik's forest green Honda, a secondary vehicle he'd bought in case of a need to keep a “normal” profile. Fel took the driver's seat, partly because Manny had never acquired his driver's license. Mostly because he was no longer trusted. The latter reason being the one that made Fel's accompaniment a necessity.

The address on Louis' license was located in a place called Forest Hills in the outer limits of Harrisburg. According to Mr. Blik, some of the city's wealthiest lawyers, doctors, and businessmen called the place home. Felisha printed directions off of Google Maps. Estimated travel time: nineteen minutes.

They moved northward along Front Street. Manny leaned against the window on the passenger side, hardly noticing the thunderous bass of the blaring rap music. He could feel the anger coming off of the young woman to his left. Fel and Jen were closer than he had thought them to be...not that he had ever really put too much thought into it at all.

The radio turned off, snapped Manny into the moment and allowing for the tension to fully set in.

“What the fuck were you thinkin'?” Fel shoved Manny in the shoulder. The other did not answer so she did it again, harder this time. “I asked you a question, Manny.” More silence. He liked Fel, Manny did. His quiet was more a force of habit than a malicious act.

“Dammit, Manny.” Her last remark was subdued. That anger she'd given off had been replaced with something new. Sadness, maybe. Disappointment.

“I'm sorry.” These words were the first that came into his head, but not necessarily the most true. “It was my dad.”

“You're...” She looked away from the road, her purple contact lenses glimmering in the winter sun. She really was a beautiful girl. “You mean that bastard who left you when you was a boy?”

“Yeah. That...bastard.” Manny grew quiet again. “He showed up at my corner. Then there was a...” He was hit with an image from that night. His father gasping for air. He was wearing so many layers that Manny saw not one drop of blood. But the gasping, that unnatural clacking sound erupting from his throat. “His wallet had a number in it. Some guy wanted to meet him- The guy wanted my dad to bring three people, people like us I thought. I had to find out.”

Fel was a smart girl. She took the fragments of Manny's tale and wove them into the parts she had taken part in to create a story not far from the actual truth. “The guys in the boat...”

“My dad worked for them, I think.” He buried his head in his hands. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“You fucked up.”

Manny sat up, suddenly on the defensive toward someone who merely stated what he had been thinking since the incident. “My dad said he needed me! I had to find out!”

“How?!” Fel punched him. “By using us?! Selling us?!”

“No!” Manny looked at her, eye-to eye, for the first time during the drive, his expression almost as fierce as hers. “I wouldn't have let anything bad happen to you-”

“Bull shit.”

“I just...”

“Had to find out. I heard you. But what you ended up doing was fucking up everything good you got now and getting Jenny kidnapped!”

“Kidnapped?!” Manny found the idea absolutely ridiculous. “Why the hell would you think she got kidnapped?!”

“Because why else wouldn't she have come back to us?”

“Because she hated it.” Manny returned his gaze to the trees and townhouses whizzing by along the river. “She was never like us. She never wanted to be there. You know that.”

“She was kidnapped. By your friends on the boat.” Felisha's eyes were open wide. The water swelling up within them terrified Manny and he saw her for the first time for what she really was: a girl in denial, a state he had been able to pinpoint since listening to his mother say, “Everything will be alright,” each night before she put him to bed.

“The guys were gone before even I reached them,” Manny said with a careful cool. “Jen never came down with us, to the river. You and I both know that she's a stronger girl than she seems. If your friend went somewhere, she did because she wanted to.”

Fel shrugged, the single motion that always coincided with her acceptance of being wrong. “Well...we have to find her. Blik won't be happy if we don't...especially with you. He'll kill you.”

Death. A fate that's never too far from those who exist in the underworld. “Yeah,” was Manny's response. “And after I'm dead. After you...get whatever he gives...he'll find her and kill her, too.”

Manny and Felisha said not a word for the remainder of the journey. They turned off from the river and drove up a long road lined in nice homes, offices and high-end shopping centers. Twelve minutes later they reached a gray sign with green letters which read “Forest Hills.”

Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 5

“Jen Karpency. You remember me, right?”

He stared back at her. “Um, yeah, I mean -” He pulled himself to his feet.

“You are Jerry?”

“Yeah.” Her hair was longer and she had bangs now. Her eyes the same, maybe, but what the hell did he know, spending most of elementary school and junior high avoiding her. Jen had boy’s hair back then, and he remembered first grade when Brian Haines said to her, “Why are you wearing that? Boys don’t wear skirts.”

“But I’m a girl,” she replied.

“Then why don’t you look like one?” Jen cried and ran off with the giraffe-shaped girl’s room pass and Miss Milton eventually had to talk her out of a locked stall.

Jerry had no desire to be Jen’s friend, but he picked up her eraser for her if she dropped it and he tried his best not to laugh when Brian stole her packet of school photos and drew Sharpie mustaches under her nose and curly hair on her chest and passed the doctored images around the class.

Jen walked up to Jerry one morning and asked him, “Do you want to play with me today at recess?”

He felt blindsided, so he just said, “Okay.”

Jen said, “Great,” and walked back to her little wooden desk.

At lunchtime, after he dumped the reminder of his school lunch (he’d finished everything but the green beans) into the designated bin, he found Jen waiting for him at the top of the stairs. She held out her hand, and Jerry shook it, and it was probably the first time he’d formally shaken hands with anyone.

“I was thinking we’d play on the slide to start with, then swing on the swings, then maybe pretend we’re marooned Eskimos fishing in the ice in Alaska. That jungle gym there can be our igloo,” she said. He found it odd to have such a strict playing agenda, but he thought it impolite to say so. Jen offered him the slide first and he grabbed the ladder and ascended, and when he reached the top he surveyed the playground, observing most of his class playing freeze-tag by the swings.

“Go already!” Jen grasped the ladder behind him. He sat, eased himself forward, and whooshed, rear on metal, and at the bottom he pressed down on his little Nikes and came to a complete stop and stepped off.

“You slide wrong!” Jen called from above. “Watch this!” She thrust herself forward and flew, leaning back, hugging her knees towards her chest to avoid traction, and spilled straight off, rolling onto the rubber chip-coated ground and exploding into a foray of giggles. Jerry ran to her.

“Can you teach me?”

“Sure!”

So they slid: on their bellies, on their backs, on their feet pretending they were California surfers. One slid halfway and stopped and the other slid and smacked into the one playing roadblock, which hurt just a little, but they laughed and kept sliding, squealing and sprinting back to the ladder after each joyous descent.

Eventually they ran out of breath and rested on a nearby bench and heaved in and out, their hands on their knees and their little legs dangling.

“Hey Jerry, do you like Nirvana?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s music.”

“I like music. I listen to it in the car with my dad.”

“Do you have a mom, too?”

“Of course I do.”

“And she listens to music?”

“Yeah, she dances sometimes when she’s making dinner.”

“Is she pretty?”

“I think so.”

“That’s nice.” Jen slid closer on the bench and rested her head on Jerry’s shoulder. He didn’t like to be touched, but he stayed put because he didn’t want to be rude, letting his weight support her until the bell rang and everyone playing freeze tag ran back towards the school building.
“Let’s go, Jen. The bell.”

“Jerry?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to play again another day?”

He saw all his classmates running ahead and knew that when he and Jen arrived everyone would say they were in love, that they were sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

“Maybe.” He ran. Brian and Lou and the other boys had a long head start. For awhile he could hear Jen huffing, trying to keep pace, but he didn’t slow down.

Now she gave him a weak smile. He watched her compose herself, adjusting her tiny frilled skirt, doing her damnedest to make it look modest, and her tiny cleavage exposed and she must have caught him looking because she pulled her denim jacket around and buttoned it and folded her arms and he instinctively looked away.

“So how are you?” she asked.

“I’m good. You look great.”

“Hmm.” She pulled the jacket tighter.

“So, why’d you knock me over?”

There were yells and groans and punches from the river. Jen looked down at the noises and Jerry walked forward to get a closer look, but she stopped him saying, “Jerry, could we go somewhere?”

“What? No, Lou is down there. I should-”

“Jerry,” she took him by the elbow, “I’m in danger. I need to get out of here.”

“Lou chased some pickpocket! You remember Lou, right? Didn’t you two-”

Yelling from the river.

“Let’s go, Jerry.” She grabbed his hand and it was coarser than he would have expected and she led him, jogging, very composed, back across Front St. onto Second St. where the nightlife crowd was growing, stumbling in heels, talking too loudly.

“Where’s your car?”

“On State St. Wait.” He stopped and she turned. There were bouncers on stools checking ID’s and drink special banners and muffled 80’s music and traffic passing and here was this girl who stepped out of the past, with her little hand around his wrist, dragging him along and he was letting her. Maybe he owed her something. There was buried guilt and drunken young lust. He glanced at her skirt again.

“This can’t wait, Jerry. We need to go NOW!”

“No, what we need to do is clarify what’s going on here first. What’s this danger you’re-”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

It had been nearly two years since Mr. Blik had any reason to punish Emmanuel Gonzalez. For minor offenses, like holding back a small portion of the profits, he would use physical force, maybe even something as harmless as a run of verbal abuse in the midst of one's peers. But for the major offenses, such as treachery or refusal to work, Blik resorted to the de-emasculating, dehumanizing, and destructive act of rape. All of Blik's children had to go through it as an initiation into his world, but after that the fault of such a punishment could only be the effect of their own inability to follow the rules.

The fierce monster bared its sharp teeth during these times. Manny was tied to the bedposts by his wrists and ankles and gagged with a dirty sock and scarf as Blik pounded violently into his small body with no regard to the other's comfort, tears, or muffled whimpers.

Three hours passed before it was over. Manny emerged from Blik's private basement bedroom into the room he shared with his co-workers. It was early morning now so most of them were there. The expressions on their faces, which none attempted to conceal, made it clear that they had heard Blik's cries of sadistic pleasure, Fel and Marty among them.

Emmanuel climbed into his bunkbed, sore all over, so lost in anguish that he failed to hear Felisha say, “Got what you deserved, motherfucker,” as she passed by. Had he heard, he would have agreed. Four years since his father left him and the man continued to cause him pain. He had had a good life since then, but his father- no, his curiosity -reduced that life to ruins in a matter of hours. Fel and Marty were his best friends and they looked at him now as if he were a villain treading on enemy ground.

Jen.

He had to find her. “If you don't I'll kill you.” Those words or something like them were what Blik whispered in Manny's ear between thrusts and punches and kicks and grunts.

Jennifer. Of all the children she was the one Manny knew the least. He had spoken to the least. He didn't even know her last name. In fact, in the year that she had lived among them, they had only had one real conversation. It was on her first day, after her own especially violent initiation. As Manny whimpered under the covers of his bed, hidden from the judging eyes of the others, it was all he could think of.

It was a busy night. Summer. Manny had returned home to pick up a few more condoms and drop off some cash. He was all alone except for a mousy girl, rocking back and forth, muttering unintelligible words every now and again. This girl, a stranger, he knew to be the new arrival Blik had told him about the day before. He understood what she had been through. Against his better judgment he approached her and said...

“I'm Manny.” She jumped at the sound of his voice. “You're new here, right? Jen?” She gave no response. “He doesn't do that all the time, you know. It's just...something we all have to go through. Only once if you follow the rules.” Silence. “Um...the people here are good. Nice. Marty and Vanessa and... We have food, Internet, video games. Whatever we want. You'll like it after a while, I'm sure.”

“Slaves,” she reached up and grabbed Manny by the shirt so fast he had no time to react or to speak in protest. Her face was red from crying. There was a dark fire in her eyes.

“W-what?” Manny couldn't quite understand what was happening.

“That's all you are.” Her grip on Manny's shirt tightened and then she let go, her head dropping to her chest. “He owns us.” Manny had no response as these ideas of hers had never fully taken form in his sheltered mind. “It wasn't supposed to to be like this for me. I'm not like you, I'm not. My life...I deserve better than this.” Manny was too thick to catch the insult in her statement, too job-oriented to pry any further. He merely shrugged and went on his way, condoms in hand.

In the coming months Jen grew more accustomed to the life that had chosen her, as they tend to do. Felisha, the one out of them all who seemed to be most fit for the job from an outsider's perspective, took her under her wing and the two became friends along with Vanessa who...was no longer with them today. Manny would watch the three whisper and laugh at Marty's perverse sense of humor. He would join them and the other kids from time to time, but friendship with one such as Emmanuel could only go but so deep. He had a set of internal walls and emotional barricades that made him perfect for Mr. Blik's needs, but ill-fit for basic social interaction. It was a trade-off that Manny rarely noticed he was making, and even when he did, avoided and wrote off as a waste of time.

Jen.

Where would he begin? Perhaps Felisha had some insight. Manny was not yet ready to resort to that after the events of the last evening. Then, it hit him. The last evening. He remembered passing a man on his way to retrieve Marty. He remembered that Jen had not joined he and Fel in rescuing their friend. And, perhaps most importantly, he remembered his captor shouting for someone shouting for someone as he dragged him to the police station, deciding to save that search for later. If Jen was caught up with the man by the river, and the guy by the river to his captor, then maybe...

“Here,” Marty, usually so jovial and full of youthful spirit, angrily shoved the stolen wallet against Manny's already aching chest. “Now get the hell away from me.”

Manny opened the wallet and looked at the driver's license within. Louis Allen. That was the man's name. He read the address. It was in Harrisburg, which was good, but the street name was completely unfamiliar to him. Wherever it was the address was the only shred of a clue he had and there was no other option but to find where it would lead.

Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 4

Manny found himself pressed firmly against a wall by a man far too strong for him to break away from. He could tell by a fat lip and red bruises on the other that Marty and Fel had knocked him up quite a bit before escaping.

“Your little friends took my fucking wallet,” he seethed, his big block head red all over. “Do you have any idea what the boys're gonna think of that? A bunch of fucking kids?!” Kids? Marty and Fel weren't too much younger than this guy, Manny thought, but his fear and the alcohol on the other's breath kept his mouth shut. “Fuck!” The big man shoved Manny against the stone support of the bridge. Manny's head hit hard.

The man then grabbed the other by the wrist and lead him along the river, pulling ever ahead, no matter how much the other resisted. “You're coming with me and if you even fucking think about trying to escape I will make you wish you didn't. I'm tired of little fucks like you and your little friends fucking up the rest of the world for decent people. You're the reason this country's in the condition it is.”

The two made it to a set of steps which led to the top of the incline, across the grass, then an empty Front Street, and up a narrow alley that housed the Harrisburg City Police Station. Upon realization of their destination Manny became at once a terrified little child and his struggling grew more violent, not that it changed anything while in the powerful clutches of his the other.

His musclebound captor approached an old pot-bellied officer, who worked at a desk from behind a bullet-proof window, and explained how he was a proud member of the navy, toured the Persian Gulf, saw great men die in a bout with pirates, and, lastly, caught one of three kids involved in theft and assault, which he only survived due to his exceptional military training. The officer thanked him for his local and national services on behalf of the city of Harrisburg, made a phone call and Manny Gonzalez was taken to the back, searched for drugs or weapons and fingerprinted...

“Who are you?”

“Where are you from?”

“Do you have any I.D.?”

“Tell us what happened!”

“I said, tell us what the hell happened!”

The demands of the officer, a short female with a booming voice that more than made up for her size, were only met with silence. The bright lights, constant stream of radio transmissions and uniformed men and women that revolved around him existed in such blatant contrast to the life of shadows and chaos he was used to that he could not help but be afraid, thought he hid it well behind a false face of stubborn courage.

In an empty jail cell he went, the female officer put him in there snickering to an older guy about learning lessons and no-good Spics. “No name, no money, you're gonna be here for a while,” she spat. “Ya little shit.”

Hours passed. The sun would be up within the next thirty minutes. Manny sat in a corner of his cage, wiping the tears from his eyes before anyone could see them. “This is my life now,” he thought. “Because of something I didn't even do...because I couldn't leave shit alone...” He accepted his fate for what it was- a possible one for someone of his age, race, and social status. It happened. Though there was one thing he was certain of, a single feeling that brought a tiny glimmer of comfort: while under the protection of the law, he would be spared the wrath of the man he betrayed.

“You're free to go,” said the officer who caged him. She walked in sucking at her teeth, uninterested in her own news, which took some time to process in Manny's head as displayed by his blank-stare response. “Are you deaf?! Somebody posted your bail and you can go.” She unlocked the door to the cell. “So get the fuck out!”

Manny followed her past desk after desk and a dozen scowling officers who seemed to be blaming the boy for every hardship in their lives with their collective eyes. She led him to the entrance, opened the door, and told him that his ride was waiting around the corner.

He cautiously walked to the alley where his liberator waited, only to find that liberation was the last luxury he would be given. Mr. Blik, that tall imposing figure, stood propped up against his jet-black Mercedes, his dark eyes boring, drilling into Manny's soul. “Emmanuel,” he said, his voice slow and intense. “You're lucky the navy boy didn't press charges.” Manny watched the other, not daring to utter a word or make a move unless ordered to. “You disappointed me. Betrayed me.” Manny's heart was pounding in his chest. “All for what? Answers? Your dead-beat dad? Well, here's your answer. I had him killed. He was working for a man trying to work my streets so I took care of it.” Blik showed a sliver of fatigue. “It was supposed to happen before he got to you.”

Burning tears swelled up in Manny's eyes. “I'm sorry!” he cried. “Please! Please don't-! I'm sorry!”

“And what's worse,” Blik continued, unaffected by the other's pleas, “you used my kids behind my back. Fel told me the whole story when she and Marty returned home. She saw the men on the boat. She heard you yelling after them.”

Blik examined the other, slowing looking him up and down until he stopped, meeting him eye-to-eye. WHAM! He drove his fist hard into Manny's stomach. The boy collapsed to the ground. If any cops saw, they didn't do anything to stop it. “Find Jen,” demanded Blik through clenched teeth. “I don't know where she went off to during all of this, but it is your fault. You will bring her back to me or you will suffer.”


Jerry chased Lou who chased the pickpocket, but he didn't know why. He had no ties to him anymore. This time Lou was just running away instead of slowly fading.

Maybe Jerry chased his old friend out of habit, like he was still running the third leg of the 100m relay in eighth grade, rounding the track's top semicircle, his tightly laced Adidases slapping the surface of brown-red rubber in Lane 3, arms cutting the air, breath shortening, Lou accelerating in front, yelling “Stick!,” and placing the Linglestown Eagles' blue and white baton into Lou's extended palm for the anchor leg.

Jerry didn't run like that anymore. In high school, speech tournaments quickly replaced track meets as his primary Saturday activity. Jerry, as a competitive and smart young man, knew he stood a far greater chance of winning a trophy in the Extemporaneous Speaking category than a ribbon long jumping, and there ended his illustrious track career. And at NYU, he never ran except for spring semester sophomore year on Tuesdays and Thursdays to make it to that damn eight o'clock Anthro class across Washington Square, his messenger bag taking flight off his shoulder in the early morning air, but that really didn't count, which explained why Lou, despite his new gargantuan size, and his wallet-toting perp beat Jerry across Front St. and through the sliver of a park next to it, and had now tumbled down the steep embankment towards the Susquehanna River.

He leaned his hands on his knees and inhaled and looked at the chilly blueness rolling by, above it City Island, where the lights still shown on a playground he had frequented years ago. Every corner he turned in this city was another memory. It happened to him in New York neighborhoods as well, but those were recent memories, nothing older than two years. Every building and nook in Harrisburg felt old, too old to be his.

And that's when she kicked him from behind, one of those childish kicks that do no damage other than buckling your knees, but Jerry went down, breath still heaving, now with his back in the grass and his eyes taken out by looking straight up at the overhanging streetlight. The girl continued sprinting into the blackness, petite and fast.

Jerry yelled after her, “Hey, what the hell?” He lay sprawled out in the street light, exposed by an interrogation lamp, lit up in a spotlight center stage.

She spun, her figure silhouetted in the lights from the sidewalk. “No fucking way - Jerry Ashcroft?” She took a few steps forward. First the light caught her legs, thin and dolled up in black tights, then a tiny plaid skirt, then a blouse halfway undone, and then her little mouth said, “Un-fucking-real,” and it was Jen Karpency.



In a dimly lit bedroom in Harrisburg's downtrodden and much ignored south side, a woman in her forties sat at the foot of her bed once again crushed beneath the constricting guilt from what she lost. The sounds of happy children running in the apartment below were only salt to the wounds. She sat, as she often would, with the lights out and the windows drawn, consumed by what she had chased away.

The phone rang.

“Hello?” she answered, her Spanish accent thick and voice trembling.

“Is this Mrs. Angela Gonzalez?”

“Si. Yes. It is.”

“Well, Mrs. Gonzalez, this is Officer Randall of the Harrisburg City Police. I think we found your son.”

Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 3

Jerry peed his pants. When he had to go, he couldn’t bring himself to disrupt his kindergarten teacher Mrs. Sebastian, so he would just sit there. She seemed far too consumed in introducing Mr. P and his Pointy Patches or Miss E and her Exercise Energy, speaking slowly and making pointed eye contact through her huge glasses, engaging the fickle attention of twenty little five-year-olds, for Jerry to trouble her. She worked so hard, so he would simply release, sitting in his little plastic chair, and then he could relax and give Mrs. Sebastian the attention she wanted.

After repeated incidents, a few of his classmates noticed, which turned into the whole class knowing, and Jerry had to play by himself.

One afternoon, he was stacking blocks in the corner by the cubbyholes, meticulously constructing a castle wall of plastic primary color, when Lou walked over. The plastic wall was tall enough that only Lou’s little head peeked over. He spoke in a loud whisper. “Can I come in, Jerry?”

“What do you want?”

“Why do you pee your pants?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“There’s a bathroom in the hall. Did you never learn how to use one?”

“I know how to use it, Stupid.”

“Then -” Lou leaned on the castle wall.

“I don’t want to interrupt Mrs. Sebastian. That’s rude.”

“You’re shy?”

“No.”

“You pee your pants because you’re shy?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll help you build this thing.” Lou picked up a green block.

“Okay. But you need to come in here. You’re standing in the moat.”

Later, Mrs. Sebastian was talking about Mr. V and his Vegetable Vest and Jerry had sucked down two Hi-C juice boxes during snack. Lou saw him fidgeting, tapping his untied sneakers on the floor like a nervous rabbit and eyeing the hall door, and Lou raised his hand.

“Mrs. Sebastian, could Jerry go to the bathroom?”

“Yes, Lou, but Jerry can ask for himself.”

“I know,” said Lou. He smiled at Jerry. Jerry smiled back and ran off towards the hallway.
Now, Jerry flushed the bar urinal and washed his hands but there was no soap or towels. He bounded up the stairs and saw Lou throwing his winter coat over those grizzly bear shoulders of his.

Jerry took the lead out the front, as Puff Daddy’s “Been Around the World” hit the speakers. He noticed that most bars played the music from their primary clientele’s glory days. These late nineties rap tunes were intended to spark reminiscing by all the college kids home on Christmas Break. Jerry pitied people who considered high school the best years of their lives.

“Hey Jerry,” said Lou as they hit the cold street, “that song reminds me: I forgot to show you this.” He rummaged for his wallet. “Do you remember listening to that song when my mom drove us to that laser tag place in Lancaster with you rapping along?”

Jerry had known every lyric to every pop/rap song back then, back when they were thirteen and Lou’s mom hauled them everywhere. Since Jerry couldn’t bring himself to dance at the junior high dances, he thought that it somehow made him cooler and look less awkward if he stood close to cute girls and rapped every verse into his fist, complete with shoulder bobs and ‘gangsta’ hand gestures, so he would memorize every new radio hit. Though he’d spent the last few years trying to erase those lyrics and that sad person, he knew he could still recite from Coolio or Eminem or Mase on command.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“And we got those laser tag ID cards.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, here’s mine.”

There was the thirteen-year-old tiny-faced Lou he remembered, with his laser tag code name, Shark, right beside it. “I can’t believe you still have this.”

“Do you remember your code name, Jer?”

Footsteps. Snatch. “Hey!” And Lou’s wallet was gone. The kid raced down Second St., just about hurdled a couple walking out of a restaurant, and darted towards Front St.

“That little shit.” Lou after him. Jerry wrapped Shark’s ID in his fist and ran. Past couples down Locust. Traffic coming on Front. Headlights. They ran anyway. Jerry stopped and the traffic passed. The kid and Lou gone. Down the hill. Towards the river.


Felisha Jones was easy enough to find. She stood at the same corner she always did, just across the street from the Broad Street Farmer's Market. A streetlight doused her in a hazy glow that only accentuated the seductive curves of her body. She took a drag of her Marlboro Light, the breeze coaxing the smoke to caress her soft chocolate skin and getting caught in her long black hair.

“Fel!” called Manny from across the street. “Mr. Blik wants you! It's an emergency!” The girl was a sizzling spitfire. A sexual ravager with a fiery disposition to back it up. But at the mention of Blik's name she was as threatening as a snail. She approached Manny and Jen with the tap-tap-tap of her high heels.

The three walked for twenty minutes or so until they reached Second Street and the four blocks of bars and clubs that made it Harrisburg's single nightly hot spot. This was the base of operations for Marty O'Brien. Blik usually avoided such public areas to run his sordid business, but the flirtatious and eternally horny red-head had a knack for getting drunken middle-aged women to loosen their belts and their wallets for a good time...almost as much as he had a knack for getting into trouble.

“What does Blik want with us down here?” asked Fel as we came upon the busiest section of the street.

“It's a secret,” said Manny, trying hard to conceal the betrayal in his voice. “A surprise, he said.”

“Oo,” Fel sang jokingly. “Maybe he's finally gonna take us out to dinner fo' all that cash we bringin' in.”

“Maybe.”

Manny, Fel, and Jen rounded the corner to a dimly lit alley that Marty had renamed his “kingdom”. To Manny's dismay, the alley was empty, but before he could decide their next move, a not-too-distant voice called, “Hey, give me back my wallet!”

Having heard such an angry cry before, Manny followed the sound to the next street where his assumptions were verified. Two young men, one considerably larger than the other, were chasing Marty across a busy Front Street toward the steep incline. One that lead to a concrete walkway along the murky waters of the Susquehanna River.

“Marty!” shouted Manny to no avail. By the time he and the other two reached Front Street, Marty and one of the guys had already jumped down the incline. “Fuck!”

The three crossed the street and ran through the narrow expanse of grass called the River Front Park which separated the city from the water. Manny shoved by the guy who had decided not to chase Marty and made his way down to the concrete path. He could hear Fel's heels digging into the ground right behind him.

When they reached the path, Marty was pinned to the ground, receiving multiple punches to the face by a muscular guy not too much older than they were. Manny rushed to the other's rescue, jumping on the man while Fel assisted with a set of swift kicks. “Let him go!” she barked.

Not twenty yards away was the Walnut Street Bridge, the walking bridge, an old metal grated wonder whose age was concealed by the white Christmas lights that lined its supports, year-round. It connected the city of Harrisburg to the square half-mile of out-dated family fun and home to Harrisburg's minor league baseball team known as City Island. At the base of the bridge, Manny could just make out the silhouettes of two men watching with careful interest from the shadows. “One of those has to be 'C.L.',” he thought.

Brushing the situation with Marty aside, he dashed for the men under the bridge. The sound of Fel calling out his name was lost on him. No sooner had he started for them did they hastily descend the stone steps and climb into a small motorboat that Manny had until that point failed to see.

“Hey! Wait! WAIT!” he called, but by the time he reached them they were already ten feet out into the water. “Wait! I got your call! I found you three, just like you asked! I'm his son! Julio Gonzales' son! Someone killed him and I found this number and...” All that running and shouting and fighting had left him short of breath, though he still managed to point frantically in the direction of Fel, Marty, and the other. “He said there was something I have to be a part of! I brought three!” By this point the men in the boat had disappeared into the night. “I brought three...” Manny clenched his fists and lowered his head. The one chance he had at something more had come as swiftly as it had gone.

“Gotcha!” One powerful yank pulled Manny off his feet where he hung face-to-face with the man who was beating on Marty. “Your friends may have gotten away, but not you, fucker.” He looked down the concrete path to see that Marty and Fel were nowhere to be found. They abandoned him, like his mother and his father before him. Emmanuel Gonzales was once again alone.

Book 1: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 2

“So how’s New York?” Lou asked, amplifying his voice so Jerry could hear it over thumping hip-hop and the bar patrons hollering over each other.

“Oh, it’s cool.” Jerry looked back across the table and couldn't fathom the size of Lou's head.

This kid had been a skinny-as-a-rail track star, and now it looked like he was hooked up to a helium tank. Mountainous shoulders and a face like a circus strongman: not the Lou of track meets, of long Saturdays in basements playing Madden on Playstation, of mixing everything on the lunch tray together (beans, potatoes, apple sauce, peas, milk, some other kid's Kool-Aid) and daring the other to venture a spoonful. This hulk across the table wasn't him. Apparently the military warps you inside and out.

Jerry had prepared himself for an hour or so of small talk and drink sips to cover silence, but now he could feel alcohol slowly weave through and stir his urge to tackle more ‘real’ topics.

“I think everyone should live in New York for at least a year. It just raises your awareness level. You’re more in tune with things.” He had always had an arrogant streak, being the only male in the Top Five of his graduating class and getting in Early Decision to his dream school gave him a nice foundation. And after a year of unsure footing in the city, including passing out on the train and ending up in the Bronx more than once, puking into a girl’s underwear drawer at a party, and losing $400 of his father’s money to chess hustlers in Washington Square, the last year and a half had seen Jerry establish a new identity for himself. He had watched a documentary on Noam Chomsky in one of his classes, and Chomsky had talked about how the population of the US was separated into two groups: the 20% who stayed informed and ran the country and business and basically everything, and the 80% of people who just didn’t get it, to whom the government spoofed reality TV and professional wrestling to divert their attention and keep their mushy brains distracted. Jerry felt he had graduated into the 20%, but that everyone of his old friends from home were stuck permanently in the 80%, doomed to lives of treading water. And Lou, with his naval duty and Phillies obsession and his marriage at age twenty to a local community college dropout, seemed to tread in the deepest of pools. And now, three drinks in, Jerry decided to have some fun with him.

“So, how did you and your wife meet?”

“Um, my mom knew Sarah and put us in touch.”

“Knew her from where?”

“Working at Target.”

“Cool, cool. How are you two doing? Over a year now, right?”

“Yeah, she’s been living at the base with me in San Diego.”

“Nice. So, I know you love your wife and all, and I don’t mean to…Why do so many military guys marry young? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, that’s fine. We’re dudes here. We can talk about shit. To be honest, money is a big reason.”

“I thought so.”

“But I think it’s more than that. I can’t speak for everybody, but for me, it gets lonely out there, man, and if you know you’ve got a girl nailed down, waiting for you, that’s comforting. Helps you get through the day.”

“And the girls?”

“They like men in uniform, I guess.” He laughed and raised his drink.

“I think it’s more than that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, these are small town girls with nothing to look forward to, so they find a military guy and he’s not around much so there’s plenty of time to romanticize him and make him into this hero, this crusader on a white horse, when in reality he’s just some dude like everybody else.”

“Oh, so you want to talk politics, now?”

“Sure, let’s talk politics.”

“You liberals just think we’re a bunch of meat heads out there, but we’re fighting for you, and if my girl wants to love me because I’m a soldier and a real man, because I act instead of just think all the time, then good for her.”

“You don’t think there’s anything inherently unfair to Sarah and all the other girls? Don’t you guys bang chicks in every foreign port? Don’t panties fly off for American soldiers? Prostitutes and-”

“Enough, Jerry. Are you trying to be an asshole?”

“Sometimes I don’t have to try, I guess. I’m just curious. I want to know how two kids run track together for five years and by the time they’re twenty-one, they’re completely different people. It’s fascinating to me.” He took the last sip of his drink, tilting his head back, ice cubes resting against his lip and nose. “Don’t blame me. Blame this.” He pointed to the empty glass.

“Yeah, alcohol’s gotten me into some trouble too.”

“It tends to do that.”

“I thought we were just going to catch up and talk about old times.”

“Whoops.” Jerry shrugged.

“Well, maybe I’ll ask the questions now. What’s it like being back in Harrisburg, city boy?”

“Oh, not bad. I’m dealing with it. It’s nice for a month, but I could never live here.”

“Why not?”

“There’s just nothing special about it. To me, it’s the epitome of average, vanilla America. No discernible flavor. We have the standard American accent, no dialect. It’s a city, but in five minutes you’re in the suburbs, five more and you’re in farmland. We don’t have the care-free attitude of the West or the slow simplicity of the South. We’re close to the frantic Northeast, but that’s not us either. No beach. The Appalachians are only big hills. No principal exports. No notable cuisine. No identity.”

“Wow, you hate this place.”

“But I don’t, because it’s impossible to hate something with no identity. It’s just there and you accept it and that’s it. But if you want to take a stand or try some other flavors, you have to go somewhere else.”

And then...BLAM!

The explosive sound put an end to Manny's struggling to break away. The first thing he noticed was the tiny circular hole through the windshield lined with thin veiny cracks, then his father's grip on his arm loosening. He watched in bewildered terror as the other gasped for air, a sharp clacking sound crackling in his throat. Manny could see the point of the bullet's entry; the center of his father's chest, disappearing into a hole in the large man's black trench coat.

“E-Emmanuel...” spat his father between heavy breaths. “I-I...” and he father died.

A cacophony of thoughts and emotions shrieked and shouted within Manny's head. His father, the cause of most of the hardships of his young life, had met a fate he had wished for him a million times over...before Manny's very own eyes. But it seemed so much different than he had imagined it would years ago. Distant. Empty.

Manny's street-savvy was soon to kick in. Swallowing his tears for a more appropriate time, he robbed his father's body of his wallet and cell phone and ran for cover just in case the shooter had not gotten his fill or any of the locals could connect him to the crime.

Through the dark alleys of the city he ran under cover of shadow to the only place he knew he would be safe.

Mr. Blik owned an antiques shop a few blocks away. It was generally closed and its main function was that of a front for the true dealings happening below. Manny, fatigued and out of sorts, used his key to open the back door and descended a set of rickety wooden stairs to yet another door. He opened it and entered his home.

The space was about nineteen feet by sixty, a basement finished to look like some extravagant and homely twenty-four hour lounge. Orange shag carpet covered the entire floor. Various pieces of multi-colored found furniture clashed so profoundly with each other that it worked surprisingly and stylistically well. One of the corners had a counter, fridge, microwave, pots, pans, silverware, and shelves upon shelves of food. Another was walled off into a pair of bathrooms, men and women. The third corner housed three sets of bunk beds and a futon. The fourth had a big HD TV, stereo, all the major gaming systems, and a computer. Five kids in addition to Manny called this place home. They had each escaped their own private hells and either did, or would very soon, accept this new life as their destiny.

When Manny arrived only one of his co-workers was there. Jen was her name. At twenty-one, she was one of the oldest of them. Quiet. Used. No one besides Mr. Blik really knew how she winded up where she did. From what the others had gathered she came from an okay life in the glistening suburbs of Harrisburg, light years away from Blik's underworld. She sat in a corner as she would sometimes do, reading a book, hardly acknowledging that she was no longer alone.

Manny was glad to see the place was as empty as it was. The others were out bringing in their nightly earnings. He climbed into his bed (the top bunk) and opened his father's wallet. Julio Gonzalez was his name. A flood of memories crashed in on him. Breaking glass and broken bones. He would have cried if he hadn't made himself forget how. The wallet contained three hundred forty-two dollars, which he pocketed. The rest was credit cards, a driver's license, Blockbuster card, and a note...

JULIO,
I NEED THREE MORE TONIGHT. ONCE YOU GET THEM, GIVE ME A CALL AT 717-861-3457 AND I'LL TELL YOU WHERE TO MEET ME.
-CL

Manny couldn't even begin to understand what that was about, but immediately connected it to the few words his father had managed to share. That “something” he wanted Manny to be a part of. He wasn't one to waste time wondering. Curiosity had always been his most persistent vice, so he pulled his father's cell phone out of his pocket and called the number on the note.

After a couple of rings, a man a raspy voice answered, “Meet me under the Walking Bridge, city-side. Bring the kids, get your money, and I'll take it from there.” He hung up.

Manny's better judgment told him to leave it alone. He enjoyed his life on most levels and had no real love for his until-that-night estranged father. But there were parts his mind at work that he had spent the last years forcing into submission. Emotions mostly involving his neglectful mother and monster of a dad. Emotions that, despite how hardened he pretended to be against them, whispered through the cracks in his subconscious barricade a deep and painful sadness that he was an orphan, forgotten. And then he was visited by another little something inside of him, a voice he tried so hard to keep concealed- the insufferable twitter of a voice that said he deserved something more than the life Blik had given him, that of a creature of the night. The voice told Manny that the short-lived and borderline incomprehensible return of his father and the wishes of the man on the phone could be his only ticket to a more fulfilling existence.

“I need three more tonight.” Kids. People like Manny, probably. It was obvious that his father was seeking one out- he just hadn't expected it to be his own son. If Manny wanted to peer into Julio's world, discover an escape, he would have to play by its rules.

“Jen!” he called. The girl, pretty in her bedraggled mousy sort of way, looked to him with wide green eyes. “That was Mr. Blik on the phone. He wants us to meet him under the walking bridge by the river. He says it's important. We need to pick up Marty and Fel on the way, too.”

In Blik's underworld you learn fast not to question your superiors, and as the top earner and favorite arguably, Manny Gonzalez was indeed Jen's superior. Jen climbed to her feet and silently followed Manny out the door.

Book I: The Sub-Urban Brawl, Chapter 1

Jerry was tossing beanbags at a hole in a red wooden box when he notice them for the first time.

“Dad, what are those?” and he pointed over the shoulder of his father, who was also holding beanbags, at two towers in the distance with gray white clouds pouring from them into the early evening sky.

“That's Three Mile Island.”

“What?” “It's a nuclear power plant.”

“I think it's on fire with all that smoke coming out.”

“No, it's making energy.”

“By smoking?”

“To be honest, Jer, I'm not sure how it happens. It's very complicated. I'm sure you'll be getting to it in school in a few years.” He tossed a beanbag and it missed the box completely, tumbling in the October grass. “See, Jer, you're distracting me now. The only thing I really know about it is that one of the reactors or something blew back before you were born.” Another beanbag flew, this one hitting the bottom left corner and sliding off. “The biggest nuclear accident in US history happened right over there.”

Jerry still remembered his fascination that day, back when he was nine: how he had bombarded his father with questions he couldn't answer and then looked them up later in the encyclopedia on the bottom shelf in the living room. He found out nuclear waste can cause cancer, and so when one of the dogs died the next month and his mom cried and mentioned “cancer,” he blamed Klondike's death on those two ominous smoke stacks.

And tonight, twelve years later, he saw them off in the distance as he drove downtown for drinks with Lou, and he thought about his little paranoid self and how paranoid this little city must have been back in 1979 when the news broke about the busted reactor. He knew how wild people were around here when they would hear about a snowstorm coming. Close everything! Buy milk, bread, now! We may not see daylight for weeks! At least six times a winter this happened. How did these people react to news of a nuclear accident? It wouldn't have surprised him if everyone in a fifty mile radius bought those neon biohazard suits and wore them everywhere. In cubicles. At the gas station. To PTA meetings. As Jerry saw it, Three Mile Island pumped a looming cloud of fear over Harrisburg: fear of snow (though the winters were quite moderate), fear of terrorists (though what terrorist would target Central Pennsylvania, seriously?), and the biggest of all, fear of leaving Harrisburg. His mother would never come to visit him at school at NYU. She would say it was because Emily, his younger sister, had a school function, or because she couldn't possibly leave the dogs for the weekend, but he knew the real reason was she was terrified of riding the subway. Terrified she would board a train going the wrong way and a black hole would eat her.

Jerry was a junior now and each year he came back from New York for the holidays he unearthed new layers of fault in his hometown that hadn't occurred to him before. Now it was time to find fault in Lou, one of Jerry's best friends in junior high who had since joined the navy, who had been contacting Jerry every now and then since graduation and today he had finally responded. Boredom's the catalyst of all kinds of new things.

Jerry parked his mother's Volvo on State St., locked it with the remote Bing Boop!, and looked up at the capital building and its grandly lit dome, a beacon in the chilly December air, the symbol of this town, the center of this state. Yet, if you travel aways on the highway in any direction, nobody will know Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania.

“No! I thought it was Phili!” the rich New England kids would say on Friday and Saturday nights after meeting Jerry at NYU parties. He walked Second St. towards the line of bars.

Maybe the capitol building wasn't the symbol. Maybe it was those two fat smoke stacks across the river, still billowing clouds after all these years.


Christmastime in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is more or less just like any other time in the capital city. A little colder. Blinking lights hanging lazily above. Fewer faces on the streets, save for the children of the gutters, hanging on porches, choking on the failures of their fathers as they smoke their cigarettes and dream of futures on ESPN and MTV. To them, life is not as it should be. It is as it has to be. The present is inescapable and though the future is spattered with delusions of grandeur, deep down they know it will be more of the same. That- not their failing grades or overbearing parents -is the root of their anger; the cause of their neverending emptiness inside.

Friday, December 27th. The night sky was alive with stars. The breeze, biting yet bearable. Emmanuel Gonzalez leaned idly against a stop sign at the corner of Fourth and Kelker Streets in a section of the city wedged between the urban-chic of Harrisburg's political hub and the green riverside neighborhoods of uptown. The corner existed in a world too set in its ways to become a candidate for gentrification; too indifferent to become a cultural center. It was a breeding ground for the lost, the lazy, those who fed upon the dreams of our ancestors, leaving only vice and emptiness in its wake.

Emmanuel, or Manny as he was most commonly called, was your basic product of a broken home. His father was an abusive, alcoholic who left he and his mother without a trace four years ago, though the stench of his rum-riddled breath and the burning sting of his massive fist would remain dark memories engraved in both their minds. His mother, in the twisted logic of the abused, blamed Manny for her husband's abandonment, the level of impoverishment that followed, deeper than their already dire condition, and dumped upon him a sea of guilt that eventually thrust the boy out of the house and onto the streets.

Manny, disproving many a statistic on the issue, found his new home far more accommodating than the old. There was freedom from schoolwork and bedtime, shouting and pain. At fourteen years old, begging for food wasn't nearly as difficult as it would be for someone twice his age. Stealing, as well. This was summertime. Sleeping outdoors was often more of a comfort than not. Manny was graced with a silver tongue, one he had perfected as his only possible weapon against avoiding his father's wrath. He had a pair of hazel eyes, a caramel complexion and shiny black hair that placed him amongst the beautiful people of the world. It was charm and good looks that caught the watchful eye of Mr. Blik.

Blik approached Manny in a gray tailored suit and matching fedora. He was a towering figure, thin with leathery brown skin and the teasing smile of a well-fed snake. He took great interest in the well-being of Manny, offering him free room and board, limitless access to food and drink and companionship...even a job with substantial pay, which lands us where last we left the boy.

A jet-black Honda Accord with tinted windows pulled up to the corner. Manny had been through this plenty of times before. He would climb into the vehicle, receive half of his pay, pleasure the man or woman within the limits of their wallets or Blik's rules, hopefully receive the other half, and set himself up to do it all over again. Manny's skill at mimicking personal pleasure, faking desire and instilling it in others made him Mr. Blik's highest earner. This was his life and he was fine with it.

Manny climbed into the car, already thinking the thoughts that made him hard. Without taking his eyes off of the horizon, he said, “Two-hundred now, two-hundred after for a straight fuck.”

There was a cold silence. Manny thought that he might have to negotiate a new price or sooth the nerves of a first-timer when a familiar voice muttered his name. The boy reached for the door without a second thought, but a part of him could not help but look. It had been three years since he last saw him, and despite the thick beard and a scar across his left eye, his father had not changed a bit.

“What the fuck...” grumbled Manny as he tried to make a run for it. His father's massive hand grabbing him by the arm made that impossible.

“Wait!” his father hissed. His voice was just as Manny remembered it, but something in the tone was alien. Weaker, maybe. Tired? “You're coming with me, boy. There's something I need you to be a part of.”

Greetings From Harrisburg!

Harrisburg is an ongoing saga, a chaotic romp through a small city by two authors, Trystin Bailey (T) and Patrick Gaughan (P).

We're going to whip these chapters out once, count 'em, ONCE a week (Don't worry, they're short).

We are writing two stories, but they toss plots and settings back and forth like hot potatoes. They dart and veer and smash into each other like bumper cars, stirring tidal waves, toppling card houses, all the while relishing in the mayhem. These two stories are one.

Welcome to Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania, where dark secrets lurk beyond the glistening walls of suburban dreamworlds and love brews amidst the violent howls of the urban underworld. This is a work in progress and your comments will play a crucial role as to what happens next...

So enjoy Harrisburg, our take on our hometown, and visit regularly. We'll be happy to see you.