The Residue Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

dwarf returns my license and turns his eyes into hot flares. Tonight’s your night, he says.
    This boy here could shoot that ball, the taller officer says. I seen him score thirty-something points one game, must’ve been five or six three-pointers. He turns to me. Youngster, you supposed to be in college somewhere scorching the nets.
    Oh, you were at that game? I say, and offer my best impersonated smile. It was seven threes that game, sir, I say, still hoping the
sir
sounds sincere and honorific. I tell him how I’m in college, about how close I am to earning my degree.
    You balling? he says.
    No, sir, I say. Just the books for me.
    He fixes his face into a frown you could almost call authentic. You got the right idea, he says. For sure. You could be out here running amuck like the rest of them. You keep on.
    When they pull off, the part of my brain that makes good decisions says, Leave now! Leave now! Leave now!
    But what do I do?
    What they should tell you in those youth programs is that reckless confidence breeds bad decisions, that avoiding a felony can swell almost anyone with a superfool’s sense of safety.
    Back in my ride with window cracked, it’s Northeast in concert: tires whirring over slick streets, water rushing down a sewer, a dog barking in somebody’s backyard. It’s Northeast on stage: a stray cat rummaging through a curbside recycling bin, a small black thing darting into the lot across the street. This is the same lot where years ago, I’m talking back when we were living in the house on Sixth (our home then and now though we don’t own it), me and my homeboy Half Man and a couple of my patnas from King Elementary would play stickball or football or kickball against dudes from another neighborhood. On days when everyone showed we had enough for six-on-six, but attrition is a motherfucker. It’d be slim pickings for our reunion squad: Half Man, my boy with the lazy eye, and maybe my wannabe pimp patna, but only if we could coax him away from the beefy white broad he brags to anyone who’ll listen is paying what she weighs.
    Bam!
From nowhere a basehead appears at my window. Say, boss, I’m doing bad out here, he says. Let me get a little bump to set me straight.
    Dude’s a veteran smoker. Used to see him my second go-roundat curb-serving. Good sense says I shouldn’t speak one word, but I speak two: Beat it.
    Aw, boss, don’t do me like that, he says. I’m not askin for no handout. He waves his arms, fans a noxious funk of mildew, smoke, and highgrade piss and backs into a snatch of light. In that snatch you can see he has a nappy beard that runs all the way down his throat and yellow eyes, my alcoholic uncle Pat’s yellow eyes. Right after we’d left for the first time the house on Sixth, back when my moms kept the family level, balanced like the weight you use to zero a digi scale, my always-soused uncle Pat would pop up unannounced plying at her with sob-ass drag: Grace, I just need a place to lay my head a few nights, he’d say, and parlay that few nights into a week, into a month, into a year of living rent-free, drinking the last of the 2%, and spending whole days beached in front of our TV.
    I ask dude if he’s police cause back in my crucible days an old head told me asking the question would protect me against police entrapment. Dude scratches his head and bores into me with spangled I-get-zooted marbles. C’mon, boss. I’m fucked up out here, he says, as if the shit isn’t explicit. I raise the window and shoot him a glare that’s the same as thorough ass-whooping.
    This veteran basehead, nappy beard, my drunk uncle Pat’s yellow eyes, he drags to the other side of the street. He stops, plucks a small bit off the ground, and, with the rain slapping his skull something vicious, holds it to the sky and cocks his head. He leaves his arm up until it tremors. Then he drops his arm and shakes his head and