Silencio in a South Side Riot

The neighborhood glowing, people yelling, people running. Silencio stood on Webster and Pearl Street watching his mother’s boyfriend throw a flaming milk-bottle high into the air. It landed on three raised shields and exploded.

What the fuck, Silencio wondered.

Silencio had a pipe draped across his shoulder. The pipe was heavy as fuck and had just been laying there. He was pretty sure it was made of lead, but then, who had lead pipes? Silencio was ten and knew about lead paint, and about lead in general, and that you weren’t supposed to suck on pencils.

And milk-bottles? Where’d they come from?

What the fuck, sincerely?

Nothing seemed real. The anger of the people, the noise they made, the standing in the middle of Webster Street throwing lit milk-bottles at po-po. And the po-po! Marching forward with their shields, their batons, coming, ready to start bustin heads.

“You go home, boy!”

It was Mr. Charley. Mr. Charley was the chinaman owned the 711. He had an orange brick cradled in his arm.

“Give me pipe!” he said.

Silencio gave him the pipe thinking, what’s a old chinaman gonna do out here with a brick and a pipe?

Silencio ran down Pearl Street and saw flashing lights and cut left through the torn metal fence and went hard across the open lot. He reached another fence, this one wood, and he took it with ease and was over it.

Red and green and yellow lights took turns in the sky and Silencio could suddenly see he was in a small garden. It smelled good in here. Roses. Their colors changing with the sky. He slid down onto damp grass and hugged his knees to the sound of glass breaking somewhere off in the night and wondered again, what the fuck, sincerely?



--300 Words--