Randitty

Chapter Seven: Fate and Basketball

It was hard not to pass the Thanksgiving holiday struggling back across the Anacostia River after Gyra and Dansel got a chance to see what was on the other side of it.  Most of the makeshift town along those silvery shores was leaned up against the biggest Red-and-Gold-Reserve either of them had ever been presented with.  And, taking care to use his lesser known alias, Bartel Barrons guided his good woman-friend inside those crimson-colored glass doors.  Stinson the Boatman proudly read all the gilded gold signs for them once they all got inside.

“George-Ton and Tourism Co: for your realest DC experience, Target Presents: Columbia Heights Generalist’s Store, and The Side Hustle Intranet Lounge–for all your real-world needs when you aren’t hangin’ out and having a life’s-time.” the old man grinned gray stubble, and leaned on his boat’s oar that he used as a walking-stick.  “Beyond this resort, my friends, are all points north-west.  This is the grand gate to it.  Now you two kids are glad you paid all this money to take me here, aren’t you?”  Then, their only ride departed for the Uno tables, without explanation.  Gyra turned round again and flinched at where he now wasn’t, wondering why the old man’s voice seemed disembodied.

Gyra said, “I don’t understand, Dansel.  We aren’t even in Northwest yet?”

Dansel wriggled flat fingers imbetween the buttons of his tan vest.  He was watching something in particular and chewed lips on the far side of his mouth at wanting it.  “That’s just it, Gyra.  Folks can come here, spend a lot less, and marvel that they’ve–kind of–been.”

“Is that because it’s so dangerous to go all the way out there on your own the way things are?” but Gyra found herself speaking to another ghost.  The next time she spied her friend Dansel, the back of his head was turned to a Redskins game blaring on the bar’s flat screen, and he was flipping through some of his bluest dollar bills faster than ever.  Other men at the table smoked cigars and talked the talk.  Gyra wondered at how some people slipped into their old moods so fast.

Then, “Ohmigosh!  It’s a real life fortune teller–please, Miss Mystic, can you tell me whether or not I’ll finish college or at least grow up to be a DC Rollergirl?”

This merriment went on for days.  The three travelers rarely saw one another, but that they shared a suite helped–at least at the bottom of the night, they kept the same sleeping hours.  Later, that turned into two rooms done in faded bars-and-stars when Stinson lost his share of what Dansel had ultimately paid him for.  This dwindled to just one bed with them sleeping in shifts, once Dansel finally lost what was left of his money.  He gave them a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings but it turned out to be his last good streak of luck at fantasy football.  “I’m down to my Fenty Greens.  Nobody’ll want those.” he frowned.  “I just can’t understand these guys–they know about Redskins games I’ve never seen before.  And then I tried to bet on the Caps or DC United, but I hadn’t a sense of those teams either.  Damn and more damn.”

Gyra rubbed Dansel’s shoulder.  She’d written to the Cannoneer of course, but he hadn’t sent any money back or substantial correspondence other than to ask whether she and Dansel could stay away a little longer.  This made Gyra screw up her face now and again, imagining what foolishness her father had fallen into.

Old Stinson kicked his boots off and went from the breakfast table where their coins and scraggly bills were pooled together, then and lay down on the bed.  “Oh well, guess we’ll have to just stay here forever, earnin’ what we earn and lovin’ what we love.  And never having to see another snot-nosed, ‘can I have some money grandad’ relatives, ever.'”

It was uncomfortable, learning the spooky Boatman’s scheme all this time was to supplant his grandchildren.

“If it makes you feel better, Dansel, I’ve been going to a fortune teller this last month and she says we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.  Just one more payment–and there’s enough here for my last session.”

“Why does it sound like you finally up and took yourself to therapy, Gyra?”

Gyra chose not to answer.  “Can I take what’s here on the table and go?  I’ve spent the least money out of all of us, and I promise to bring back dinner later.  I bet this old bracelet will go for something at El Pollo Sabroso…”

“But I don’t like peruvian chicken.” Stinson complained absently.

“No, Gyra, we need the last of this money.” Dansel rested chin in palm, then found a smile for her.  “Though I am glad you’re getting help.  What is this Mystic woman telling you, by the way?”

“I have a case of urban despair, like we already talked about.  But she’s also about to tell me what I have to do, to fix it.  I don’t want to end up like my Momma did, Dansel.”

“You won’t end up like her.  But we don’t have the money to entertain you either, nor myself, nor Stinson anymore.  And someone like that Mystic woman is probably no help anyway if she’s so money-grubby.  Next thing you know, she’ll want to introduce you to her friend the acupuncturist, or…  I don’t know.  Let’s all just breathe a moment and think about what we might do to get back home.”

“Miss Mystic knows a real-life wizard, Dansel!   That’s who I’m on the verge of meeting–I didn’t want to say it, because look at you, you’re already looking it, but I’ve almost earned the right to see him, a true wizard with the power to change everything.  Please don’t deprive me of that, dear Sir!”

Stinson complained about their way of speaking, again.  Gyra became so incredulous that eventually she had to remove herself from the room, claiming that she would find the money for therapy and wizardry somewhere, somehow.

When her voice was done echoing down the hallway, Stinson raised up a little on his elbows. “Her Miss Mystic does know a real Wizard.  Dansel–how can you be so into fantasy sports and not catch it?”

Dansel wondered aloud between fingers folded before his mouth, “Who invited you to dip into my savings in the first place, or tag along with me and Gyra anyways?”

“You stupid boy–I’m talkin’ about there being real celebrities downstairs, who play basketball!  What if you chat one of them up, then they go back to Downtown-civilization and throw a game or two… that could be our way out.  What if one of them even knows Michael Jordan?”

“Anybody could just call themselves a magician or whatever, especially out here.  And, that whole Michael Jordan owning the Wizards, and then playing on the team and then fleeing DC… we already did that and suffered from that.  Why would any professional athlete ever listen to me anyways?”

“Well, Dansel, if it can’t be something so big, then it is about there bein’ real people from behind the Beltway Wall way out here, in this part of the city.  Somebody’s bound to have a tip on what’s really going on out there–stuff that not even those friends of yours downstairs could know.  There must be scores and rosters nobody in this city has seen since the Near Revolution of 2010–if you don’t get up right now, then I’m going to, and I don’t know that I’ll be so fast convinced about sharing my wealth when you’re being so danged stubborn about a free lunch!”

And so, the two men went off to find Gyra, her Mystic, or the Mystic’s Wizard, himself.

It took a whole night of sneaking around, asking questions without letting on that real people from beyond the Beltway Wall were someplace in the Red-and-Gold resort.  Dansel and Stinson schemed their way backstage of a live junkyard band concert, they shuffled at bachata to navigate around a discotec dance floor unnoticed, while peering in people’s faces for any celebrity they recognized.  Stinson chatted up an old woman in broken Vietnamese that Dansel didn’t think him capable of, and then later came Stinson’s turn to cringe while Dansel attempted to pass off elementary French as Haitian Creole to a woman who put hands on her hips and left when she realized that, no, he wasn’t flirting with her and not even selling anything.  This polished off young man was going crazy after some kind of Wizard.

“I just realized, I don’t know what in the world this guy looks like, and we can’t even call him by name since we haven’t seen a new anything-kind-of-game in two years.  It really is pointless.”

“But he’d be tall, and he’d have on sneakers, right?”

Dansel broke down and laughed.  Or, was he crying?  Something about Stinson was as sweet as an old man could get, but also tragic.  If that was all his cohort had aimed for, then they’d surely wasted all these hours of search.

This latest miserable ruminating was about when a tall man in sneakers and wearing a bathrobe covered in gold stars stopped in front of them and waved a large hand across their faces.  Dansel and Stinson frightened up straight, thinking some spell was cast.  But, no, that was just the difference in height.  The robed stranger had been waving hello.  They also noticed his costume was really some standard-issue team gear the Wizards probably gave their players to use in the locker rooms.  And, well, the Red-and-Gold-Reserve was a hotel and resort, wasn’t it?

“I hear that you two are looking for a Wizard.”  Dansel tried to speak up, but he was snapped at.  “I already know what you men seek.  I have here, in the palm of this great hand, something that will grant you access to all of your dreams, anything you would have desired in life, I can make it, I can shoot it from all over the court, but only for those fans who are worthy.  If you can answer my riddle, what is in my very hand, right now, can be yours–”

“No, I don’t think so.  You’ve got as many holes in your shoes as I did before I painted over them.” Dansel said.  “We just want an inside take on any of the sports teams out there in downtown DC right now.  I’ve got guys down at the bar forecasting a season ahead of me, and it’s not like anybody can look it up on the intranet.”

“Ah yes, the intranet.  So different from our… internet.  I really miss being able to check my Facebook.” said the Wizard.  “I’m Howard Lanier, by the way.  They had me at point guard before I decided to protest the latest section of wall and got banished from Downtown.  Out here in the real city, though, nobody knows who I am–I wasn’t on the team in 2010.  So, I ended up speaking out for people who not only couldn’t have asked for it, maybe they don’t even deserve it.”

Dansel wasn’t or chose not to be offended.  “Did you help the Wizards win anything, while you played with them?”

Howard shrugged, and the toll of dealing with more disinterested people seemed to wear in his voice.  “My girlfriend Shandrea once did, but she won’t speak about it.  And, I never see her because she’s lost her mind pretending to be a real mystic.  Shandrea only tells fortunes these days.  We got banished together.”

So, they all were going to be stuck in paradise with no way to enjoy it.  Dansel was also secretly horrified at the Cannoneer leaving Gyra entirely to him without any paternal restriction in his letters–the romantic hope and reason for their delay being so obvious in that sense, though it couldn’t have been written.  And then, Stinson having adopted he and Gyra so fast was still more frightening.  Now that they three were broke together, perhaps he and Gyra even owed Stinson as much money as his real relatives, wherever they were.

When Dansel looked so dismayed, the Wizard Howard seized upon it.  “Now then, I know you guys want to guess, what it is that I have in my hand?”

“That’s not a riddle by the way.”

“Fine, I’ll just show it to you.”  and Howard uncurled long, strong fingers to reveal a rubber banded set of thin paper slips.  The power latent in those small cards was suggested by the strange writing embossed everyhere–or was it an enchanted code, blacker than night itself?  And then also, a soapsud metallic gleam smiled back at Dansel when he recognized it.  “So, can I sell you guys some superbowl tickets?”

“How much?” Stinson srutinized.

“WHO’S PLAYING?” Dansel covered his mouth.  He was shouting, anyone might hear and rush over… when he’d already seen, he already sensed it.

“Well the Redskins are, of course.  Didn’t I just explain to you guys that I got fired for protesting them moving the Beltway Wall, in order to build a stadium down on the National Mall?  That’s what Superbowl 2012 is–a sham.  And the city practically bought the game.  Meanwhile, so many of its residents are being disenfranchised.  The people can’t leave the city, most of them don’t even have access to proper schools or even the internet…”

“…and they have no idea that the Redskins are back in the Superbowl.” Dansel was amazed.

“Yep, and their chance of winning is pretty damned good too.  You know, because so much money got thrown at the team these last two years.”

Dansel clamped fingers down over the Wizard’s palm, smiled hard while he possibly crushed the man’s hand.  “I will sell you, the clothes off of my back and go crawling through the city naked for these.  How much?”

How much?
How much?
How much?
To trudge penitent through the streets of DC,
To smuggle across the Beltway Wall to see,
Something right,
Something just,
How much?

But Dansel didn’t have any money.

“Well,” said Howard the Wizard, “I’m finding that these aren’t really worth anything to folks here, you know, if you think about how impossible it is to get past any of the stilt-bridges or beyond the Beltway Wall.  But if you two guys want them so bad that you’d actually take them off my hands and rid of me these stale memories in exchange for something… you can have this set of ten for a song if you just get your crazed friend Gyro-whatever away from my Shandrea so I can finally have an evening alone with her.  I don’t care if God himself comes to DC and sets up his throne on the National Mall, you couldn’t pay me to go back Downtown again.”

And so, when not even the Wizard would, Dansel was going to find a way.

---

Another hypothesis:  should Washingtonians go on here, struggling as they do, people might begin to reflect, about preventable miseries, out loud.

Gyra took Dansel’s hand as they walked on, and she started singing:

“Went a long ways North to make my old-nag education worth its ride.
Found out, Fall and Spring, everywoman else’s taught-animal had a bigger stride.

So I beat her hard, until I could make her go!
Somewhere after Firstyear, I left her dying in the snow.
Bartered my fears and mother’s old three-dollar-bill,(1)
for at least a tow.

‘Till I could find my way…

Though,
I felt so ashamed I left Old Girl barely alive,
During my summers I used to hide,
Deep,
Far,
Down,
beneath the Mason-Dixon line. (2)

Still got a summons from the Juror’s up in old Massachusetts, (3)
sayin’ they were comin’ to collect me.
(Cause they figured, I was theirs)
Still got a letter-back from my Congresswoman down in the old Federal District,
sayin’ she couldn’t protect me.
(Cause she figured, she wasn’t even her own)

Though I was born in George Washington’s own hospital, here in DC.
Nobody, but nobody, wants to adopt old, big-eyed, me.

Gunshots call out deep down here—and I’m supposed to ignore,
That it’s my own city burning, like Daddy said it did before.  (4)

And then on holy Sundays,
TVs move on and say,
at least the Redskins won’t really lose.

When we’ve all, already lost, but that’s not in the news.

You see, I’m a woman who’s not supposed to be here.
I live in a city,
where,
when you’re grown,
healthy,
Black,
hard-working,
and alive,

They ask you if you’re really from here?
(They ask you why you didn’t get put under here?)
(They ask why you haven’t fled from here?)
(They ask you where are all your friends, from here?)

DC nativity is not some cute coincidence, I say.

They always sound so surprised.
(They’re always so polite, about being surprised.)
(They don’t want to hear you talking about why it’s no surprise.)
(Only your Old Girl knows why you couldn’t shoot her in the snow, and that it’s no surprise.)”

After, Gyra said to her friend Dansel Darrons, “I came up with that thing, back in 2010.”

“I know you did, Gyra.” Said he.

“But it’s still true today—”

“I know that too.” He sighed again.

“Do you think it’s just black people who can’t really be from here after a certain age, considering?  I got asked that two years ago by somebody before my Daddy and the Cannoneers founded New Uniontown… but there’s Vietnamese people in DC, and there are Latinos living in DC, and Haitians, and white folks and Ethiopians and all kinds of other people too—In fact, it was an Ethiopian cab driver who asked me that the last time, you know, but does everybody from here get asked that by everybody else–wouldn’t that be weird?  All of us ‘not supposed to be here’ and not knowing why not?  Maybe we’re more asking each other, why people say we’re not supposed to be here?  Well, except for the government folks across the Beltway Line, the part that goes through downtown.  Everyone across the nation assumes they’re supposed to be here.  Or, maybe DC folks should start asking one another why it is we can’t be from here and do well too.  It’s like, as soon as you start to do well—”

Well?  Dansel was well-past irritated, and he felt for sure it wasn’t all Gyra’s fault.  “Look.  You’re just going to have to go up and ask different people to their faces, I guess.  Now, can you leave it alone?  Gyra, you can’t keep worrying like this all of the time.  How come you never got any medicine, for what you have?”

“Cause I don’t know what it is I have.  Just like we didn’t know what Momma had until she died from it a year later.  People shoot into a crowd and then she dies from it, when she wasn’t even hit, a whole year later.”  She clutched at her stomach, as if  newly pained.

Dansel squeezed his friend’s hand and pulled her along.  He wouldn’t let Gyra stop walking.  “You have some kind of anxiety, maybe.  We’ll fix it once we get home.”

“Maybe before?  Why should we wait?  That’s not good to wait, when you could be fixing something.  My life could be better right now and you don’t even know it.”

Dansel tossed his head back and shouldered the rifle on its strap, higher over his shoulder.  Where they were right then in Northeast, was cold and desolate.  Without knowing why, they were both going downhill, past boarded up old stores and row-house stoops.   They could already see the Anacostia River and, soon, they were going to descend far enough to know the whole shoreline and enjoy more of it.  No matter where a person is, it seems, there’s a human desire to see some bold natural thing like a river, to know how it really dares to be there, and ‘what exactly is it churning beneath the gray wash?’  Fish—real-live fish?  Hopefully, not garbage.

Though they could already smell it and they knew better, the land had opened itself up, it wanted them to come in, and the spirit needed to go near water and be by there.  To be thrilled, and then drink, in its own way.  Gyra and Dansel lightened, sensing that soon, they would be able to rest, near the humbled river.

“…is that why you were wanting to ride a horse in your song, Miss Gyra?  Because you lost your other one in the snow?” Dansel tried on a smile.

It really was a HIDEOUS dress…

Gyra stopped her baby-voice.  “Heh, maybe.  But it was just a silly song, Dansel.  I don’t even know how to ride a horse.  City girls just look at all those statues around, and wish.  So, I guess I was hoping, a little.  Hey, there’s smoke comin’ from the chimney of that shack down by the river there—if there’s someone really home, and they aren’t crazy like us, maybe we can finally stop and ask directions?  Even if they aren’t driving directions, when the car’s gone and all shot-up, but at the least, we can find out a safer way to walk back.”

It seemed like a good idea.  But Dansel didn’t want things to go so well between them, in that moment.  So, he reminded Gyra that her dress was still a hideous shade of Jaw-break Blue.

Notes:
(1)    Once, rather than have her spend the last of her change:  a lucky $3 bill, a kindly teller let my Mom take us four girls on a paddle-boat ride on the Potomac River, at a discount by that much.  Fond DC memory.
(2)    Washington, DC is beneath the Mason-Dixon line.  Slaves were once bought and sold, right on the National Mall.  Now, at least for me, walking down there is empowering.
(3)    Years ago, I really did get a jury duty summons from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts claiming that, as a student, I was a permanent resident of Mass. required to serve (I even fell short of the time period they stipulated students must live in the state to qualify as jurors, and the letter was also mailed to my DC home address, during summer break—I’m sure other, non-Washingtonian students faced similar predicaments, but it was odd, nonetheless).  When I cc’d my Congresswoman on the complaint letter, her office really did write me back, stating that it was not in her power to protect me from any perceived abuse of protocol.  They then went on to explain all the other things a DC Congressperson is not able to do.  Either my functional misunderstanding about the role of Congresspeople is a crime—when I never had the advantage of being fully represented, or getting such a disempowering letter signed by the local pseudo-representative of my hometown was tragic for me at that age.
(4)    In the 1960’s back before I existed, my father was finishing up his thesis in the university lab, and looked up from his work to see a great deal of the city burning.  Some parts of Washington, DC, are only just now recovering after the MLK riots.  Which is the real origin of that wonderful Target store finally come to Columbia Heights, by the way.

Seriously, it’s a nice store and it was about time!  Let’s all shop there some more and visit the local businesses too!

---

Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant

It would be furthermore appropriate to hypothesize that, should the Washington Redskins remain as they are, bookie Dansel Darrons could not have been a very happy man.

He and the Cannoneer, that brave father to Miss Gyra (and it took less bravery to have been a near-revolutionary two years earlier) the young and elder man spoke over house-noises with fists stuffed into their pants pockets.

There were many footsteps upstairs, as maids were ordered about by the lady of the house.

Dansel went, “Cannoneer, sir, I do not want to go to this next place in our conversation…”

“Fine.  You might as well go on and take me.”

“But you see, I’m owed, when your daughter is—”

“Careful with your next word, son.”

“…You have to put money right down, this time.  Vick broke his ribs, in last week’s game.  There is no way Washington will win the next one.”

“Broken?  Oh, you know that was only a cartilage tear—err, irritation, as far as I remember it.  Is that what they programmed at the Red-and-Gold Reserve for this year?  I don’t believe it, they’d never revisit 2010 like that and hurt us Washingtonians so cruelly.”  Here, the old Cannoneer’s speech was interrupted by Gyra calling downstairs, asking which parasol ‘her father’s wife’ would have wanted to take on a trip to see the whole wonder of Southeast.

“I hate to ask,” Dansel interrupted, “but where does Gyra really think she’s going next, after embarrassing—both ourselves—and ruining my business life ontop of that?  You are going to punish your daughter, aren’t you, Cannoneer, sir?”

The old near-revolutionary waved it off, white handkerchief in hand.  He might have just got through blowing his nose, but one might also argue that waving white flags had always been the way of those in his latest profession.

“Twenty-four-year-olds are well past punishment, in my experience.  Anyways, Mister Darrons, the Red-and-Gold Reserve will—in fact—become a lot lighter and respectable on their television sets, I expect.  Michael Vick’s going to be substituted out for Pete Wysocki and we’ll get a better season in that way.  Change the 1970’s team for this one.  Via injury for injury.  Or, they might make a connection on that very date we won against the Eagles in 2010 and the Pete Wysocki’s own birth-date.  I don’t think they put that together for the broadcast last week, on coincidence—”

“But that’s not fantasy football.  That’s not anything, Sir Mattheson.  Will you hear me out, already?  Your daughter owes me money now, and that’s ontop of what you failed to hand over in these clean hands of mine, for weeks.  Why don’t you just come off your pre-doomsday loyalties and bet against the Redskins, for once?  I’ll starve to death at this rate, I swear.”

“They’ll make the connection and set up a less bleak season than before the near-revolution, they always do.  The Taxation Without Representation Society is about lifting spirits.  I hope you didn’t think the Red-and-Gold Reserve was ever established for making money?  We wouldn’t have survived without a few good games after the stilt-bridges and that damned Beltway Wall went up, way back in 2010…”

“Do not go off on a tangent, sir.  Please, do not waste any more of my time.  I’m begging you to just pay me.  Isn’t it enough that I walked her home?”

And Gyra was still charming as ever, her raggedy singing voice coming through the floorboards from the story above.

“How about this, Dansel?” and the old Cannoneer brought five crisp folded bills from his pocket.  And this wasn’t play-money, either.  It was real-blue currency, with Marion Barry’s face on its best side.  You decide whichever that might possibly be.  “…Gyra wants to go on some fine adventure.  Take her.  Drive my black Sunday-car even, buy her some dinners…”

“Why was that plural, just now?”

“I dunno… well, you two may be gone, for more than a day.”
Dansel Darrons only stared at first, for a long time.  “Vick.  He’s injured.  Bet against the Redskins now, or I’m leaving.”

“Let me tell you something, D.D.  Around here, on the high-hill of New Uniontown, the best gentlemen don’t betray their tri-stars and doubled-stripes.  They stay loyal to the red-n-white cause.  And if I’ve got money to burn still, through some miracle of my celebrity, then it’s gonna be done on my time to win the game I know the—will–win someday.  And not just against the Eagles.  We’re gonna get another Superbowl, Dansel.  I can feel it.  It’s been more than twenty years.  How can I get there with them if I don’t work for it too?  How can any man?  Can you?  As Frederick Douglass once said, ‘People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.’”

Dansel turned, and struck polished black boot-heels all across the white marble floor.  He had a long time to exeunt and that also turned out to be the great brilliant design of the Cannoneer Mansion.  It was never long before one of the Cannoneer family caught up to escaping people.
Gyra cried out, “Dansel, you can’t leave.  Can he leave, Daddy?”

“I’m a man with my own will, you spoiled, rotten…” Dansel’s mumbling was quickly overcome by the crack of a shotgun being swiftly re-loaded.

The Cannoneer instructed them both.  “Take this, the money I offered, my car, and enjoy your sudden holiday, young folks.  Please Dansel, Gyra just wants time alone with her friends.  And I need time alone with my friends, too… they won’t come over when she’s not able to leave.  Young sir, I’ll add more to the deal for you later, I’ll even give you plenty of time to think up what you want in exchange for two days’ rest.  You know that it would go a long way.  She’s been through worse than most.  And mine should have been worse than even hers… I don’t know how else to convince you, Dansel, if compassion for your nextdoor neighbor means nothing.”

“I don’t live nextdoor.  I don’t come over here asking for sugar-cubes.  I barely exist, in a room you’re renting to me down the street, Cannoneer, and I’m paying too much for that, as it is!”

Gyra said, “I really do like being in the room when other people talk about me, honestly it’s a likeable experience.” Gyra was carrying a ridiculous suitcase filled up when she found Dansel by the door and linked an arm with him.  White lace gloves did not help the wild blue dress and its flashing red stars stabbed into the bodice.  “I am a little off for a person, but it’s not as if my switch has been turned off.” She dropped shoulders and bowed head, as if a talking doll gone deactivated.

“Oh, stop doing the robot Gyra, I’ve been threatened enough by your personality this afternoon.  Go get your Daddy’s shotgun and we’ll go.  But only for one day.  I’m bringing my dear friend back tomorrow.  And, Gyra, wouldn’t you like to sit up front with me this time?  Didn’t your fingers cramp from setting the shotgun up from the backseat and waiting on-the-ready to peg me during the whole ride?  I swear, as if you being the way you are isn’t enough—you also have to be the worst female backseat driver known to man…”

The Cannoneer’s big black car was a Cadillac Gyra tried to slide across the hood of, like in the movies, before getting in.  But she wasn’t sliding to the driver’s side.  And she was still wearing that outrageous blue dress, and she dropped her suitcase in the process.  Dansel knew better than to laugh.  It was exactly what she wanted.  So they solemnly seatbelted and drove.

“…Dansel?”

“No.”

Gyra reached backward, but her favorite souvenir from the near-revolution was laid across the backseat.  “Dansel, I just want to know why we can’t ride horses instead.”

The only answer could have been, “What?  I don’t even… Nevermind.”

“Nevermind, what?  We’re already dressed up like The Good Ole Days, and speaking like it too.  So then, why doesn’t the Taxation Without Representation Society make us all go back to using horses, too?  They might as well.  I think you’d be dashing up on a horse.  And I could name mine Danselbiter.”

“That’s not the point, Gyra.  It’s not a choice… this is a protest.  Douglass had a vision.  We are the vision.  We see it just fine now.  It’s okay to slip sometimes, but a real Washingtonian, a true patriot stays ruthlessly true–Ugh, nevermind.  You don’t get it.  You don’t care anyways, you’re just trying to annoy me.”

Perhaps Gyra truly didn’t care.  She let her braided head nod to the side, and began to fidget with interest at all the things they drove by.  Two old catholic churches, Cedar Hill, the museum for African American History and Culture, the Old Birney School, and then there was an AME church which was supposed to be the oldest black church in Hillsdale … all of which should not have surprised her, when Dansel and Gyra both were more than familiar with New Uniontown already.  Dansel advised Gyra then, that she should have been an actress as a warning that his patience was dangerously thin after only an hour of their journey.

“It’s just that I really, really, really need to see new stuff—wait, look!  Dansel, oh Dansel, there’s a pretty car there, and all the people in matching colors, I love it.”

Dansel stopped their car for her, when he realized.  “Yeah, I guess.  It is a nice funeral, Gyra.  Just like your mother’s was.”

“I would have gone with a different sort of flower, though.  You know, I didn’t dare let them put a lily anywhere near my mother or even a white rose.  I had marigolds.  Nothing but marigolds.  I didn’t want her to get lost, on the way…Marigolds guide the dead, I even looked it up.  In a real life library.”

“Yes, you planned the whole thing.  You did a real good job.  Be proud of yourself.  Gyra?”

She was crying, but in the way only she did.  By leaving the world for a moment, fearing to blink wet eyes.  Holding still until the horror passed through her.  Dansel did not breathe.  He feared to even touch his troubled friend.  He turned the engine off.

Gyra rested her forehead against the cool window.  It was a big funeral letting out, just like the other one a year ago.  Whatever people were calling to each other up and down the street, back and forth, mourning in their agitated way didn’t matter.  Their voices were muted through polished steel and through whole glass.

“Why are do they look angry?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a good death…”

Suddenly, the crowd outside crumpled.  People ducked heads and went on their knees like a gargantuan nuisance yellow-jacket had buzzed over all their heads at the same time.

Gyra looked for it, too.  Whatever the instinctual terror was.  Dansel gripped his leather seat.  It creaked.  Gyra was doing the wrong thing, he sensed, looking but not listening.  “Those were gun shots, get down!”

“But we’re in a car…?  Oh God!  Drive away, D.D.  Why can’t you drive us away?”

“Dammit.  The engine won’t start again—your cheap father.  Just try to stay down, there’s a wall of steel, practically.”

The back passenger windows shattered.  Dansel yelled and forced Gyra down, down, beneath the glove compartment at least.  She got quiet, he got loud.  “The hell kind of guns do they have?  Assault rifles?”

Gyra wouldn’t let go of Dansel.  Her fingernails snagged in his tan check-coat.  So many shots.  Dansel was counting them?  One… two… suddenly, nine.  What was he doing, leaning across seats now, reaching for the shotgun Daddy left them?  She couldn’t really shoot it.  She couldn’t really do anything except point it away from people, play with blanks.  And that was Daddy’s gun.  Daddy’s was okay to play with, he said.  It was good to have a gun in these times, and look protected, with it.  But, the Cannoneers weren’t shooting off anything, anymore… unless one of them walked into the Red-and-Gold reserve while sorry-drunk.

“Please!  Stop!” It wasn’t clear whether Gyra wa screaming at Dansel, or the people outside.  Somehow, their car had become the target.

“…Have to make it stop.” Was all Dansel said, before he rushed them both out of the driver’s side of the car.  Gyra watched Dansel count again, cock gun, lean to have his last glance out at life, it looked like, then ran.  One powerful, double-barreled burst that deafened Gyra and made her see white, though nothing was that way.  Everything was real, everything was painful, and it wouldn’t stop.  Somewhere, Dansel was yelling for her to get across that sidewalk and behind a dumpster in the alley way.  She raged behind her eyes.  She didn’t want to hear any more.  No the sidewalk was not right there.  No, there was no way to survive this.  Gyra almost didn’t run away like he wanted.

More terrible shots.  Gyra felt that Dansel wasn’t there anymore, and then she peered around the green dumpster and he wasn’t.  Men were standing lined up in the street, pointing.  Shooting.  Some of them fell.  Women screamed.  The way Momma had, not because she was in pain but because she was so done with DC, there was only a hollow wild rage left.  It cracked her very voice towards the end.  That scream made Daddy go on his knees.  It had made Gyra give up on school and then sent Lucie fleeing for college.  Gyra held onto the foul metal garbage dumpster now, and cried that she couldn’t do better for herself.  No, she was not revolted.  Hadn’t it always felt like this?  People were fleeing.  Or, more people were running out onto the sidewalks to see the result of so much violence.  Gyra didn’t want to know.

In time, there were footsteps.  The sweep of gunmetal near the ground, where the long barrel almost touched it.  Out there, in the street, sirens were going off.

“It not the Cannoneers coming.  Gyra, that was a gang, out there.  Two rival ones, I think.  Fighting over a funeral.  They couldn’t even wait after… Now they’re going to need ten-times’ as many caskets.  Get up.  Let’s go.”

Gyra shut her eyes then tried looking at this stranger again.

“It’s D.D.  Did you forget already?”

“Why are you still standing… Dansel Darrons?”

Dansel finally exhaled.  He reached out a hand to help her up. “I’m fine, I’m not a ghost, Gyra.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.  What did you do?  Did you kill people, Dansel Darrons?  And what if they’d killed you too?”

“Calm down.  And weren’t you the one shooting, and badly, at the ceiling of a crowded restaurant not long ago with this same gun?  I was defending us.  So let’s get over it already, and get gone.”

“I was drunk earlier at the Red-and-Gold Reserve and didn’t mean to shoot.  I didn’t aim for heads either, there were supposed to be blanks in the double-barrel—you know that when I never did honestly shoot you all those other times.  And, my father was a near-revolutionary.  Near, did you hear that?  So we almost attacked the National Guard when they came to Fort Stevens, but we didn’t really shoot first—”

Dansel swore and tugged her arm, but Gyra yanked him back down onto the filthy ground.  “What if you’d missed and there were mothers out there, Dansel?  You know that’s why I’m begging you, please don’t ever do it again.  Let them fire, but we can’t fight back.  Better to get directly away, stay safe.”

“What help is there really gonna be, when it’s 2012 already and DC is like this?”

Gyra had no answer.  She cried and hugged her stomach.  Despair did really hurt, for some people.

Dansel took off his fine coat at that moment because his best friend needed to calm down, and it was cold outside.  There was also a great deal of blood on fabric.  He quickly swifted out the winter lining and set that about her shoulders instead.  The rest, he pitched fast over Gyra’s head, into the dumpster.  “I was a gentleman, of course.  Is that what this… fine, completely silly lady needs to hear?  Now whatever you may think of my righteousness, your Daddy’s car or its engine is completely shot up and we need to get walking right now.  As He once said, ‘I prayed for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.’”

“But Douglass also did say, ‘A gentleman will not insult me and not a gentleman can insult me.’  My father was a Cannoneer in the Near-Revolution of 2010, but he would never go shooting into a crowd, indiscriminate like you did, just to suit his pride.  I still say we should have called for help or waited it out.”

“Dammit, Gyra!” Dansel stood,  “‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress!’”

“’Well, a man takes his hue, more or less, from the form or color of things about him’—and you’ve always been darker than even I am.”

Dansel tossed head back and turned a circle, some exhausted military spin on his black heels.  He philosophized in quiet rage for only a moment more before an answer occurred to him.  It seized Gyra suddenly up with his work-a-day hands and shook her.  “AGITATE, AGITATE, AGITATE!”

And that was promptly the end of being so fearful as to show supine disregard for their city’s hurtful realities.

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Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant

To begin, let us assume that, where I am, things remain exactly as they are.

If so, then Gyra could not have been a very nice girl.

When she was seven, and her little sister got a new doll, Gyra snatched it and beat little Lucie with it.  That was about the time when they first ‘stilted’ our bridges.  Later, when Gyra turned seventeen, she got mad, took her father’s shotgun and blasted apart the biggest crystal pieces of the heirloom chandelier.  Gyra loved the way it crashed and scattered fine-dressed people down in the politicking-room.  She adored that it made them horrified, first, but then later they were thrilled to talk about it all over town.  Better!  Daddy was never thrilled, however.  Together with news that the amended Beltway Walls weren’t coming back down, it finally got Daddy to cry.  Best!

Somewhere after all this, Gyra came home for summer break and then sort of forgot to go back to college.  Her mother once called it the evilest of evilness.  But only once.  After the mistake, Momma couldn’t say it again.  She went away just in time, too, before Daddy said she would have needed to get a Federal District Pass.  Because people needed one of those now, to go and see Redskins games.

Daddy stopped letting Gyra go see the DC Demoncats even though she didn’t need a fed-diss-pass for it and she always did come home smelling strong enough to trick him into believing he’d left out the whiskey.  Oh well.  There was only half of a Metro Rail left, anyways, and it was above three dollars, so Gyra eventually resigned herself to playing roller derby with her sister.  But only when little Lucie wasn’t looking.

Finally, after the derby incident, little Lucie realized it was high-time she did remember to go to college, did apply for a fed-diss-pass, then threw out all the whiskey in the house before she got on a Greyhound bus and did get her smart-butt ten stories up a bridge then out of the city.  Lucie didn’t write.  She didn’t even Facebook.  Stupid Facebook.

So then, at twenty-seven, Gyra walked the rough-paved, potholed streets with Daddy’s shotgun again. The old dolly (she was a rag of a head) got tied to Gyra’s belt by the blonde hair nobody in their family had.

But where can bad girls even go, at twenty-four, with no sisters to pity them, no fathers with any patience left, no husband in line, nor professions to make themselves even halfway useful?

On a drunken adventure.  But first, Dansel had to come along.

Dansel Darrons, when consulted on his availability, felt it necessary to put another cigar in his mouth instead.  “I didn’t come to your birthday party last week for a reason, Gyra.  So then, of course I’m not leaving the neighborhood with crazy-old-you.”

“Don’t you mean that you left me alone in the house, three hours last week, for a reason?” Gyra flared.

The other men in three-piece finery laughed over brandies.  Their social club nicknamed the Red-And-Gold-Reserve was one of the best places on this side of the city to watch a Redskins game, and actually like it, lose-or-lose.  A seventeen-point lead now eclipsing the Redskins in the second half made the whole place suddenly go groaning at the big screen, and ordering a fresh round of Forget.

The Red-and-Gold-Reserve was designed after another prestigious landmark in Anacostia.  We are, as of yet, still uncertain that it shall live up to what Frederick Douglass or else the Mayan Calendar perceived about modern society. September, 2012.

“Gyra, I’m begging you, please… who here can light this?  I’m looking for convenient breaks in my speech, dammit.”

The other middle-high-class men in three-piece-suits with him practiced more laughter.

“You shamed me Dansel Darrons.” went Gyra, “You know how hard it’s been, and then you still didn’t come to my party.  This time, you owe me…”

“I can’t pay you anything that I owe, of course, until I finish doing business here with my friends.  Go bounce.  Hit the street real hard, Miss Gyra.”

The Maitre d’ came up with a good reason to interrupt, by then.  “Madam, if you please, we can hang your shotgun in the coatroom and provide a ball gown better suited…”

Gyra screamed, cocked the thing, then shot a hole through the ceiling.  Oh, were people scandalized.  Almost worse than seeing another 58 yard field goal, missed.  Now, they wanted fresh batches of hot wings and nachos.

“Dansel Darrons, I don’t like you.  In fact, I hate you–”

“Yes, and I declined that unequal offer of companionship on your birthday for just that reason, excuse me…” then he whispered, “Are you bat-shit crazy, girl?  Gyra, go home!”

“…Oh, suddenly he can’t talk proper-like, as a real member of the middle-high-class that can still afford to live around here.  Or, lives in splotches around the city, having bought in during the seventies then stayed on through fluffed up or failed developments, the first three rounds of property-tax hikes, or whatever Daddy cusses about.” she smiled, fake and big, like that same baby-doll once upon a time ago.  She patted the sad childhood talisman at her belt.  “Come along now, darling Dansel.  Or do I have shrink your fat head first?”

He couldn’t even finish his drink.  Dansel went away at gunpoint.  And just then, of course, the local football team suffered another embarrassment.  “Oh, shut up!  You know they’ll be roaring right back next Sunday–Gyra, stop fooling around and tell me what it is you really want?”

By the door, Gyra tugged the Maitre’d, who still stalked them, by his lapels.  It was a wonder drinkers and diners were more distracted by the terrible game, than a lone woman wandering up and down the tables with a shotgun, or a crumbling hole in the club’s ceiling.  “Would this ball gown you offered me have been… complimentary?”

“Ah, but you aren’t staying here, Miss Gyra–

“D.D. and I will have a drink at the bar then.  You know where it is, just over there… and if this free dress can be a shade of Jawbreak Blue, then you know I’ll LOVE it, and my Pa’ll give a whole bunch more money to this place.”

“I don’t think your Pa,” he spat in speech, “could do enough to remedy that wound you put in the ceiling.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself.  Pa was a cannoneer in the near-revolution of October 2010.  He’d just come up here–drive, even–and finish that hole as a sky-light, if he ever heard ya’ll were mean to me.”

When they were settled with ice-in-chippers, Dansel regained his courage.  “You are a girl, a stupid girl, do you know, Gyra?  I kissed you once and you turn it into this?”

“Sillies, I was educated at only the finest local academies and out-of-state universities.  So, I am not foolish, nor am I a statistic.  I’d never be a statistic.”

“I don’t know about how you imagine yourself calculated, you’re more calculat-ing, I’d say.  But the rest stands.  You aren’t a woman, do you see?  You, Gyra, are a mess.”

It hurt her more than she expected.  “I’ll put the dress on right here in front of all these people if you aren’t nicer to me, Mr. Darrons.  And don’t you complain at me again, either.  I’m a smart, fully-functional person.  You know very well that I invented Jawbreak Blue.”

Dansel hastened to have his drink, once they poured it out for him.  He realized that ice-in-chippers was not a real drink.  Previously, when Gyra ordered it, that was no shock to him.  But, that the bartender had interpreted her goof-request as some powerful sedative-in-vodka, that had him swerve a little off the barstool.  However, Dansel swerved back, when he realized there was also no point in warning Gyra about it.

Dansel sighed.  “…Is that made-up Jawbreak color from one of your drawings?  Or, your mother’s?  I admit, it does sound pretty decent.  And this is pretty good, you should go on and have some.”

“I only heard the word pretty, and thank you.  Blech, this tastes jive-strange.”

“Drink a little more then, swish it round your mouth a bit.  I swear, it’s exactly like wine-tasting… Gyra, just because the world is shit doesn’t mean you can come in here and bash up one of the better places in Anacostia.”

She slipped a little too, on the bar itself.  Dansel supported Gyra’s arm, helped her to stand again, then took the shot gun.  “Better?”

“Mhrm…”

The Maiter’d came back, a ruffled something folded over his arm.  Dansel got his first anxiety attack seeing that, yes, it was some odd shade of blue.

Gyra snatched it, snatched Dansel, then rushed them through the front door and into the foyer.  She tripped over her black boots several times.  Then, Gyra swifted exactly by eager finger-pointing bouncers, saying she ‘was gonna pee right and there if they didn’t let her into the ladies’ room.’

Which left Dansel wanting to get back inside the Red-And-Gold-Reserve with his friends, banging on the frosted glass, yelling, while men with shades restrained him from re-entry.  Gyra emerged after a time, re-fastening her awful belt round the waist of something with grand skirt and stitched everywhere it should not have been with plastic stars.  They looked sharp.  Dansel was not just panicked now, heart racing, but he also began to feel sick.

“How does it look?”

“Well, it’s the District’s flag… urp.”

“Which is always wonderful, isn’t it?  Look!  Oh, Dansel, it’s like the dress mommy and me wanted together.  This is perfect for journeying.  People will know we mean business–they’ll think me a queen, maybe?  Can DC have a Queen?”  She put a hand on her forehead, wandered a drowsy circle.  “If University won’t let me be a student, and Daddy’s afraid to let me be a rollergirl, then at the least, I should be qualified to become queen of the District of Columbia…”

Dansel looked up at the scowling bouncers.  He offered to pay them anything…

The Maitre’D returned.  “Sir, Miss?  You two have been banished from the Red-And-Gold-Reserve and all its affiliates.  It’s time to get out.”

“…And affiliates?  For how long?  I have get back in there, it’s where my living is made!” Dansel slipped and went down on one knee.  “God, sometimes I hate living DC.  Here I am, begging you to let me watch the Redskins for the price of two limbs and on a regular basis.”

“The ban is for life.  And tell the Cannoneer that we’ve lost our last bit of patience for his daughter until he pays his tab.”

“Gyra can come back in, but I can’t?  She shot a hole through the ceiling!”  Dansel threw a punch, but it never landed.

The Red-and-Gold Reserve, Taxation without Representation Society’s Last Stand Bar and Grill threw Gyra and Dansel out on their asses.

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Chapters
1 The Red and Gold Reserve :: 2 Authentic Agitation :: 3 Bringing the Old Girl to Water :: 4 Message from a World of Fear, Insanity :: 5 No such thing as transitional musak after the Apocalypse :: 6 Fate and Basketball :: 7 Party in Mount Pleasant