Hi folks,
Here is a story that I want to include in my short story collection. "Gettin' Out" has been published already in a small college literary magazine. (A second one from my collection, "A Place Unlike Home", was also supposed to be published, but the editor at the time was an exJW and decided he didn't want to publish it...I guess it hit too close to home maybe.)
Well, I've let one poster (Rodnico) from this board take a look already and I was hoping to find out what the rest of you think of it.
Gettin' Out (an excerpt)
by J. Matthew Greene
1988
People say there's no getting out of here. But that's a lie. Sometimes. Sometimes, somebody gets a college scholarship because they did good in high school or for their basketball game. Usually, it's for their game. Most of the time, people get out of here because they die. It don't matter how you die, because you get out of here for good. If you go to jail, the bet is against you -- you come back because there's almost nowhere else to go.
Almost all the folks I know were born into this place, and it's the only home they know. Some folks, like Vu Pham's family, are here because the city don't know where else to put them. He was six and I was seven when the city dumped them off here and forgot about them. Vu's daddy didn't come here, just his momma, his little sister Mai, and older brother Quoc.
Skinny Quoc with the golden-yellow skin different from everyone else's said he was ten. But he didn't live like he was ten. He got up with the sun, shook his sister and brother awake, got them dressed for school, and maybe, if his momma was too scared by her ghosts, he would fix their rice and milk. I never saw him do anything else. He never got to those all those kid things, like play ball or ride a bike. Nobody asked him if he wanted to either.
His eyes always hung back in his face with a look nobody here could figure out. You knew he had been somewhere, but nowhere nobody really wanted to know about. His eyes burned whenever the teacher couldn't remember his name; they burned when the other kids at school made fun of his clothes that the church ladies gave him, stained and faded; they burned when the bigger kids called him "gookboy" so he would fight. And they burned when he tried to say something in English and couldn't.
Every day after school, I walked with him and his brother and sister part of the way back home. Three blocks to the end, I had to stop; Momma wanted me to go straight home after school. But Quoc had to go on back into the John Stith projects. Momma says it's the kind of place that angels won't fool with even if God told them to go there.
Every day that went by and I walked with him, I'd watch Quoc's eyes give off that look. It tore me up because I wanted so many times to ask him why he left his old country, but I couldn't find the guts to do it. Finally, I caught a glimpse of where those eyes had been. The chance came when he had been here two years.
We were all going to school one morning and Mai started showing me a picture she was taking to show-and-tell. "Look, K-Bar. Look." Mai called me "K-Bar" because she could never say my real name, Charles Barton. The tag stuck with me.
The picture hung limp and wet in her fist because the morning was all foggy and rainy. Vu piped up and told me Quoc drew it. The picture looked like a Tarzan movie -- big trees and vines all over the place. Right in the middle, a big green guy sat cross-legged with a slew of little bodies lying down in front of him.
"What are they doing? Sleepin'?" I asked as we started crossing the street.
From behind me, Quoc said, "No." His voice sounded hollow like a tunnel. It always sounded like that. I turned around after we crossed the way. Quoc's face seemed a little tired and worn and wet like the newspaper down in the gutter.
"So, who's the big guy?" I asked.
"Buddha."
I watched Quoc's breath rise out of his mouth and into the chilly air.
I turned back around and told Mai the picture looked good. We turned the corner and got in front of the school and stopped at the crosswalk. There wasn't a crossing-guard there. So we waited until all the cars went by. Quoc opened his mouth as we crossed and said, "Buddha is better than Ho Chi Minh."
I looked at him as we went up the schoolyard. I had no idea what he was talking about. They don't teach you these things in school.
Right as I grabbed for the front door, Mai tugged at Quoc's jacket. "I los' it," she said. "I los' your picture." She said almost everything in English.
Quoc smacked the top her head and said something in Vietnamese. He looked back across the schoolyard, but the drawing wasn't there. "Watch them," he told me as walked away. Mai's face looked pale as I took her hand and started to lead her and Vu inside.
The big, old door shut behind us with a clank. I started taking off Mai's gloves and coat when I heard the screech of tires out on the street. I didn't even stop to think, I ran back outside. Right by the manhole cover, I saw Quoc's body. Blood flowed out of his hair and mouth, mixing with the rainwater that was flowing down into the gutter. The lady who hit him, sat out on the street by her car just crying, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus."
The church ladies who helped the Phams, raised the money for a little funeral for Quoc. A lot of folks came, and that surprised me. Nobody talked to Quoc at school, but there they were crying like he was one of their own. The preacher then got up to the podium and started talking about how God taken him to a better place. He went on saying how Quoc got out of here, out of life, with his innocence.
But I know now that's bullshit. I've seen too much to believe the preacher. Nobody gets out of here with their innocence. Everyone here knows that. And judging by the picture that has hung on my wall for ten years, I don't think Quoc was born with any to lose.
