Jericho Read Online Free PDF

identity.
    My grandfather Lonnie Bischoff had the gift of the gab. In him it wasn’t a curse, it was still only a gift. He went to Snaketown the first time on a fact-finding mission and came out empty-handed and broke. Hearing him tell me this is one of my earliest memories. He went down to the old Rounders’ Club, owned by the unofficial Mayor of Snaketown, who hardly anybody had ever actually seen but still always bragged about knowing. Lonnie just wanted to listen to some music. At dawn, he’s sitting on the curb out front with no cab fare, no money for breakfast and his head cupped in his hands. A beat cop comes by and spots him.
    “Lad, do you want me to go in and get your money back for you?”
    “No, officer. That wouldn’t be right. I lost it fair and square.”
    The copper laughs and looks at him awhile and then goes on his way, checking doorknobs and maybe whistling, like in mockery. That’s how I picture the scene, though I may be thinking of stuff I’ve seen in an old movie.
    Lonnie—that’s about all everybody ever called him—used to tell me there was a moral to the story. The moral was“Don’t be a jerk.” Growing up with him was like growing up in the Aesop family.
    When he was young, Lonnie married a middle-class brainpan who didn’t take to Snaketown, the loud noise of decay, the steady hum, the part of the city between the white spires and the brown soil and vegetable matter, a crawl space underneath the respectable part of town. My grandmother was basically upright and brown-sighted, strictly a novelty act. They fought all the time.
    “Don’t ever let yourself be tricked into defending yourself,” he would tell me after I was old enough for him to take me down to Snaketown. “It’s all that middle-class shit, it’s a drug. It puts people in a trance. Remember that.”
    I’m remembering it right now. The reason why no one but me ever talked about the history of Snaketown is that there’s no phenomenology of that old-time headspace. It’s not allowed. It’s not aloud. The past’s as lifeless as a lake.
    Lonnie carried a tool box with him most everyplace he went. Carpenter’s tools, a few mechanic’s tools, lots of screws and washers in little pull-out trays. Down at the bottom at least once that I remember there was a nickel-plated forty-five. “Stupidest weapon. Picks up fingerprints if you look at it from across the room. Big boom. Not very accurate.”
    Now the Mayor of Snaketown was not a morning person, but then Snaketown was not a morning place. One night His Worship calls Lonnie at home. It’s like two, three in the morning. “Lonnie?” he said. You couldn’t mistake the voice. He never had to identify himself. This went with his temperament. “Lonnie? Can you meet me down here? Bring the tool box.”
    The middle-class wonder was outraged at the phone ringing at that hour. “Where’d he get our number?” The two of them got into a fight as Lonnie was finding his shoes and putting his pants on in the dark. “Don’t come back,” she said.
    “I’ll take the kid with me,” he said. “He needs the exercise.” I got to carry the tool box. I needed both hands.
    At the Rounders’ the sign was still on out front and the main door was unlocked and there were still a few people sitting here and there, but waiters had come out of the kitchen to sweep up and put the chairs on top of the big round tables. The Mayor, also known as S or Mr. S, was sitting way back in the corner with the drawers from the cash registers in front of him, counting. There was an old cat asleep beside the money.
    “Lonnie. And the boy. Nice to see the boy again.”
    We sat down.
    “Listen, here’s the thing. Out at the track—” The Mayor was a partner in a racetrack across the river, a beautiful half-mile. Oh, he was quite a presence in the economy and in the community. “—I want you to build me a sweatbox for the jockeys. Know what I mean? Good. About yea by yea.” He cut the big room