Enginetown Daze
Apr. 21st, 2010 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonApril '95:
Clustered south of the main rail line, just east of historic Gallowsville, Enginetown is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Terminus. It is also one of her most baffling. Maps of the neighborhood resemble a maze at first glance. Except mazes have a pattern to them along with a way of untangling an exit from their journey. Enginetown offered neither. Its narrow roads, laid out haphazardly along a mish-mesh of overlapping grids, often ran one way unannounced and frequently into sudden dead ends at that. Exacerbating this sprawl of confusion was the fact that the serpentine streets tended to shed names every other block before inexplicably looping back in on themselves. Even life-long residents of the neighborhood could find themselves surprised by the discovery of a sudden road hiding meekly behind a wrong turn.
Originally settled shortly after the Civil War by then recently freed slaves, Enginetown bloomed from the shores of the railroad that employed them. Within years it became a vibrant and thriving community. Then in 1909 the city of Terminus annexed the area whole. Forty years later and the once prosperous neighborhood began to wither along with the rail industry that nourished it. Poverty metastasized and ghetto status soon ensued. The rows of tightly packed shotgun homes ran ramshackle. The clusters of brick lower income housing developments that rose in the 70's and 80's quickly became no-go areas before and after dark. Law enforcement was lax even by Terminus standards. So long as the shit was peddled locally and remained contained south of the rail line the cops turned a blind eye. By the mid 90's its plethora of abandoned homes became a squatters paradise. A sizable gutterpunk population began to take root in the still primarily african-american community. Shambling droves of unwashed mohicans and dreadlocked neo-pagans often crossed the tracks to converge on neighboring Little Five seeking spare change and restaurant left-overs.
It was amongst these ranks that I could be marginally counted.
I didn't squat with the locals though. Instead I couch surfed with my friend Tom and his girlfriend Winter. We were huddled up then in a cramp second floor/ one bedroom across the street from both the main CSX artery and the Enginetown Station on the TRRAP (Terminus Rapid Rail Authority Program) line. Our block was kept relatively crime free by locally mustered Nation of Islam Security Enforcement patrols. In fact the only dealer on the block was Tom, who enjoyed a state of diplomatic immunity from the N.O.I.S.E. so long as his customer base stayed white and his business hours nocturnal.
Tom mainly sold weed. By the bulk at first but with potheads being an often broke lot he soon found himself weighing out quarters, then eigths and finally reluctant dime bags doled out to close friends down on their luck. Tom also sold the occasional roll and tab of A. The vowel business often had a more affluent clientele but not in enough numbers to make rent tenable. Eventually he gathered and employed a Dickensian crew of modern day Artless Dodgers to do the leg work for him. This motley network of baby faced punks, skins and ravers were a ragged lot. Some geeked up hard and waving their guns around after marathon Wu-Tang/Tarrantino sessions oblivious to the customer base they frightened off. Some were straight up schemers who would consistently jack up the prices and pocket the profit on the down low. Some were earnest but brain dead to the point of borderline zombification. Managing his crew turned into more work than running the business solo and Tom found himself just eking out a Jackson on every Benjamin invested.
So it was Tom bought me into the fold. Not in the sales department (both of us agreed that my innate sense of social awkwardness would prove detrimental to such a goal) but rather on the accounting end. What few skills I boasted tended to be bureaucratic in nature. I had a gift for on the spot number crunching and despite what they say, my short-term memory worked just fine. This gave me a mixed blessing of a rep. Bad on the one hand, because I was known as the asshole who brought up a long forgotten debt that nullified a much needed front. Good on the other hand, as in the right hand - of which I was known to be Tom's - meaning no one would dare fuck with me.
Plus it had to be said - Tom was more than generous in reimbursing me for my troubles. Besides living rent free on the sofa, I possessed a steady influx of walking around money, drinking money, comic book money and on top of all that free weed whenever needed.
None of which changed the fact that I was still living out of my duffel bag. Sleep came rare in a living room carpeted in fast food wrappers and where every flat surface was occupied by empty beer bottles. The air was drenched in a lingering litterbox stench mingled with stale pot fumes. On top of that Tom was often up until sunrise in telepathic symbiosis with his Playstation. Only when the room's lone window took on a washed out orange glow and purple shadows haemorrhaged across us with day's first light did Tom finally abandon his controller, joke miming a vampire's retreat back into the bedroom.
Me time was a blur. One spent mummifed under a single wool blanket on a couch just that short from allowing a full on stretch. Winter's cats nestled in the nooks of my resulting fetal curl. Waited for the crash by listening to the world waking outside. The iron-dragon hiss of the massive engines. Industrial sized cymbal clashes of freight car connecting to freight car. Passing TRRAP buses rumbling through the walls. Shriek of children playing while being shepherded off to school by tired parents. Mourning dove choirs cooing soft dirges, while the Northern Mockingbirds and Brown Thrashers heckled them ruthlessly. A lonely banshee wail of an approaching train interrupts them. All of it seguing into Winter's moaning while Tom banged an endless drum solo of bedboard-slapping-the-wall-action.
Such was the case that morning.
Tom was in machine mode and Winter roared louder than normal under his bombardment. I tried zoning it out with early a.m. cartoons off the cable-free TV. But watching animated robots that turned into dinosaurs fight each other while accompanied by a full on fuck fest soundtrack made me feel weird and dirty at the same time.
Before drifting off though I realized that muffled under the bedroom commotion was a persistent knocking at the front door.
I tried to wait it out. Both the bedroom and the front door. Finally I got pissed off enough to go answer it. I figured it must be the downstairs neighbors here to request Winter toning down her primal screams. Keeping the chain on I cracked open the door to discover it was actually two of Tom's errand boys - Numbnuts and Scowl.
The 'boys' stood there on the outdoor landing shuffling their weight foot to foot. Both were hoodied up and barely repressed speed shivers. Numbnuts darted his eyes everywhere and kept craning his neck to see if anyone was looking. Scowl blinked a pair of bloodshot iguana eyes up at me.
"Tom in?" Scowl mumbled by way of a 'hello'.
"'fraid not guys. Why doncha come back around five and I'll tell 'im you stopped by."
"Y'sure?" Scowl pops up on his tippy-toes to peek past me and through the door crack trying to see if anyone was there.
"Wouldn't be standing here if he was..." I huff and go to close the door.
"Hol' up!" Scowl plants a palm against the frame and keeps it from closing.
"What?"
"Can we uh..." Scowl quickly glances over at Numbnuts who gives a slight nod in the affirmative, "... can we come in fer a minute? We wanna discuss our 'account'"
My response comes by way of a long cold stare. Hint-proof they return the glare back deadpan.
"Sorry, man but business hours are closed. Come back later" I push the door forward throwing Scowl off balance. Scowl recovers quick and wedges a black Converse in the doorway at the last second.
"I said 'can we come in for a minute'!" Scowl lifts the front of his zipped up hoodie up to reveal the handle of what appears to be a very large gun pressed against a flat belly.
Freeze.
My thoughts extinquish at the sight of the pistol. Vision locked and focused as Scowl covers the handle with his free hand and Numbnuts resumes look-out. A flock of laughter erupts on the other end of the courtyard. A couple of kids start up a round of tag. A TRRAP train swooshes into the station. A car pulls out of the driveway below and obliviously zooms off.
"S'up?" Scowl sneers and snaps me out of the panic fugue.
"Uh..." something darts in the corner of my eye. I side glance over to catch Tom, a very naked Tom at that, standing off to my side in the space reserved for the opening door. With one hand he's holding his beloved aluminum baseball bat. The other is giving me the 'hush' sign with a pointed finger pressed to his lips. Tom nods once.
Glance back to Scowl who's looking agitated and has the hammer clicked back.
"...sure man. C'mon in." I unhook the chain and open the door slightly, stepping to the side to block any peripheral view of Tom. They shuffle in quick scanning the livingroom before them. I close the door softly and just stand there. Scowl's talking the whole time -
"S'up there, Mister Numbers Man? Not feelin' so smart when you got a..."
Bam!
A very naked Tom has just run up and hit a home run off the back of Scowl's skull.
Scowl tumbles over and bounces of the kitchen counter before hitting the floor cold. Numbnuts turns around and goes for under his hoodie. I yell out to Tom in warning. Numbnut's piece snags on his waistband. Tom closes the gap - swings, batter, batter, batter, swings - and a muffled thud of broken humerus resounds. Numbnuts yelps. Tom tackles into Numbnuts. Liberates his pistol from his drawers and tosses it to me. I fumble the catch and the pistol hits a mound of unwashed dishes in the sink.
Tom grabs Numbnuts by the throat, pushes him up against the wall, tearing at an already tattered Crass poster and growls for me to grab Scowl's gun.
I run over and flip the kid onto his back. Take quiet comfort that he's still breathing and take his gun. Holding it with trembling hands I awkwardly look for the safety. Find it and almost pop a shot off by accident while doing so.
Tom's choking the shit out of Numbnuts - "Come up in my home and pull this shit!" - he barks.
Numbnuts is starting to cry. Scowl begins groaning. The cats are all meowing for breakfast. I retrieve the other pistol from the sink and front like some gwaillo version of a Chow Yun-Fat character. Finally Winter steps out toga-wrapped in a bedsheet.
"What's going on?" she demands.
"Business, honey!" Tom snarls over the shoulder.
"Well take it somewhere else... I got work in five hours!" Winter snarls back even meaner, then turns around and slams the bedroom door shut.
"You done fucked up now, Bitch!" Tom whispers inches from Numbnuts ear. "You pissed her off... which means I'm in trouble and you're really in trouble!"
***
To be, as they say, continued...
Clustered south of the main rail line, just east of historic Gallowsville, Enginetown is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Terminus. It is also one of her most baffling. Maps of the neighborhood resemble a maze at first glance. Except mazes have a pattern to them along with a way of untangling an exit from their journey. Enginetown offered neither. Its narrow roads, laid out haphazardly along a mish-mesh of overlapping grids, often ran one way unannounced and frequently into sudden dead ends at that. Exacerbating this sprawl of confusion was the fact that the serpentine streets tended to shed names every other block before inexplicably looping back in on themselves. Even life-long residents of the neighborhood could find themselves surprised by the discovery of a sudden road hiding meekly behind a wrong turn.
Originally settled shortly after the Civil War by then recently freed slaves, Enginetown bloomed from the shores of the railroad that employed them. Within years it became a vibrant and thriving community. Then in 1909 the city of Terminus annexed the area whole. Forty years later and the once prosperous neighborhood began to wither along with the rail industry that nourished it. Poverty metastasized and ghetto status soon ensued. The rows of tightly packed shotgun homes ran ramshackle. The clusters of brick lower income housing developments that rose in the 70's and 80's quickly became no-go areas before and after dark. Law enforcement was lax even by Terminus standards. So long as the shit was peddled locally and remained contained south of the rail line the cops turned a blind eye. By the mid 90's its plethora of abandoned homes became a squatters paradise. A sizable gutterpunk population began to take root in the still primarily african-american community. Shambling droves of unwashed mohicans and dreadlocked neo-pagans often crossed the tracks to converge on neighboring Little Five seeking spare change and restaurant left-overs.
It was amongst these ranks that I could be marginally counted.
I didn't squat with the locals though. Instead I couch surfed with my friend Tom and his girlfriend Winter. We were huddled up then in a cramp second floor/ one bedroom across the street from both the main CSX artery and the Enginetown Station on the TRRAP (Terminus Rapid Rail Authority Program) line. Our block was kept relatively crime free by locally mustered Nation of Islam Security Enforcement patrols. In fact the only dealer on the block was Tom, who enjoyed a state of diplomatic immunity from the N.O.I.S.E. so long as his customer base stayed white and his business hours nocturnal.
Tom mainly sold weed. By the bulk at first but with potheads being an often broke lot he soon found himself weighing out quarters, then eigths and finally reluctant dime bags doled out to close friends down on their luck. Tom also sold the occasional roll and tab of A. The vowel business often had a more affluent clientele but not in enough numbers to make rent tenable. Eventually he gathered and employed a Dickensian crew of modern day Artless Dodgers to do the leg work for him. This motley network of baby faced punks, skins and ravers were a ragged lot. Some geeked up hard and waving their guns around after marathon Wu-Tang/Tarrantino sessions oblivious to the customer base they frightened off. Some were straight up schemers who would consistently jack up the prices and pocket the profit on the down low. Some were earnest but brain dead to the point of borderline zombification. Managing his crew turned into more work than running the business solo and Tom found himself just eking out a Jackson on every Benjamin invested.
So it was Tom bought me into the fold. Not in the sales department (both of us agreed that my innate sense of social awkwardness would prove detrimental to such a goal) but rather on the accounting end. What few skills I boasted tended to be bureaucratic in nature. I had a gift for on the spot number crunching and despite what they say, my short-term memory worked just fine. This gave me a mixed blessing of a rep. Bad on the one hand, because I was known as the asshole who brought up a long forgotten debt that nullified a much needed front. Good on the other hand, as in the right hand - of which I was known to be Tom's - meaning no one would dare fuck with me.
Plus it had to be said - Tom was more than generous in reimbursing me for my troubles. Besides living rent free on the sofa, I possessed a steady influx of walking around money, drinking money, comic book money and on top of all that free weed whenever needed.
None of which changed the fact that I was still living out of my duffel bag. Sleep came rare in a living room carpeted in fast food wrappers and where every flat surface was occupied by empty beer bottles. The air was drenched in a lingering litterbox stench mingled with stale pot fumes. On top of that Tom was often up until sunrise in telepathic symbiosis with his Playstation. Only when the room's lone window took on a washed out orange glow and purple shadows haemorrhaged across us with day's first light did Tom finally abandon his controller, joke miming a vampire's retreat back into the bedroom.
Me time was a blur. One spent mummifed under a single wool blanket on a couch just that short from allowing a full on stretch. Winter's cats nestled in the nooks of my resulting fetal curl. Waited for the crash by listening to the world waking outside. The iron-dragon hiss of the massive engines. Industrial sized cymbal clashes of freight car connecting to freight car. Passing TRRAP buses rumbling through the walls. Shriek of children playing while being shepherded off to school by tired parents. Mourning dove choirs cooing soft dirges, while the Northern Mockingbirds and Brown Thrashers heckled them ruthlessly. A lonely banshee wail of an approaching train interrupts them. All of it seguing into Winter's moaning while Tom banged an endless drum solo of bedboard-slapping-the-wall-action.
Such was the case that morning.
Tom was in machine mode and Winter roared louder than normal under his bombardment. I tried zoning it out with early a.m. cartoons off the cable-free TV. But watching animated robots that turned into dinosaurs fight each other while accompanied by a full on fuck fest soundtrack made me feel weird and dirty at the same time.
Before drifting off though I realized that muffled under the bedroom commotion was a persistent knocking at the front door.
I tried to wait it out. Both the bedroom and the front door. Finally I got pissed off enough to go answer it. I figured it must be the downstairs neighbors here to request Winter toning down her primal screams. Keeping the chain on I cracked open the door to discover it was actually two of Tom's errand boys - Numbnuts and Scowl.
The 'boys' stood there on the outdoor landing shuffling their weight foot to foot. Both were hoodied up and barely repressed speed shivers. Numbnuts darted his eyes everywhere and kept craning his neck to see if anyone was looking. Scowl blinked a pair of bloodshot iguana eyes up at me.
"Tom in?" Scowl mumbled by way of a 'hello'.
"'fraid not guys. Why doncha come back around five and I'll tell 'im you stopped by."
"Y'sure?" Scowl pops up on his tippy-toes to peek past me and through the door crack trying to see if anyone was there.
"Wouldn't be standing here if he was..." I huff and go to close the door.
"Hol' up!" Scowl plants a palm against the frame and keeps it from closing.
"What?"
"Can we uh..." Scowl quickly glances over at Numbnuts who gives a slight nod in the affirmative, "... can we come in fer a minute? We wanna discuss our 'account'"
My response comes by way of a long cold stare. Hint-proof they return the glare back deadpan.
"Sorry, man but business hours are closed. Come back later" I push the door forward throwing Scowl off balance. Scowl recovers quick and wedges a black Converse in the doorway at the last second.
"I said 'can we come in for a minute'!" Scowl lifts the front of his zipped up hoodie up to reveal the handle of what appears to be a very large gun pressed against a flat belly.
Freeze.
My thoughts extinquish at the sight of the pistol. Vision locked and focused as Scowl covers the handle with his free hand and Numbnuts resumes look-out. A flock of laughter erupts on the other end of the courtyard. A couple of kids start up a round of tag. A TRRAP train swooshes into the station. A car pulls out of the driveway below and obliviously zooms off.
"S'up?" Scowl sneers and snaps me out of the panic fugue.
"Uh..." something darts in the corner of my eye. I side glance over to catch Tom, a very naked Tom at that, standing off to my side in the space reserved for the opening door. With one hand he's holding his beloved aluminum baseball bat. The other is giving me the 'hush' sign with a pointed finger pressed to his lips. Tom nods once.
Glance back to Scowl who's looking agitated and has the hammer clicked back.
"...sure man. C'mon in." I unhook the chain and open the door slightly, stepping to the side to block any peripheral view of Tom. They shuffle in quick scanning the livingroom before them. I close the door softly and just stand there. Scowl's talking the whole time -
"S'up there, Mister Numbers Man? Not feelin' so smart when you got a..."
Bam!
A very naked Tom has just run up and hit a home run off the back of Scowl's skull.
Scowl tumbles over and bounces of the kitchen counter before hitting the floor cold. Numbnuts turns around and goes for under his hoodie. I yell out to Tom in warning. Numbnut's piece snags on his waistband. Tom closes the gap - swings, batter, batter, batter, swings - and a muffled thud of broken humerus resounds. Numbnuts yelps. Tom tackles into Numbnuts. Liberates his pistol from his drawers and tosses it to me. I fumble the catch and the pistol hits a mound of unwashed dishes in the sink.
Tom grabs Numbnuts by the throat, pushes him up against the wall, tearing at an already tattered Crass poster and growls for me to grab Scowl's gun.
I run over and flip the kid onto his back. Take quiet comfort that he's still breathing and take his gun. Holding it with trembling hands I awkwardly look for the safety. Find it and almost pop a shot off by accident while doing so.
Tom's choking the shit out of Numbnuts - "Come up in my home and pull this shit!" - he barks.
Numbnuts is starting to cry. Scowl begins groaning. The cats are all meowing for breakfast. I retrieve the other pistol from the sink and front like some gwaillo version of a Chow Yun-Fat character. Finally Winter steps out toga-wrapped in a bedsheet.
"What's going on?" she demands.
"Business, honey!" Tom snarls over the shoulder.
"Well take it somewhere else... I got work in five hours!" Winter snarls back even meaner, then turns around and slams the bedroom door shut.
"You done fucked up now, Bitch!" Tom whispers inches from Numbnuts ear. "You pissed her off... which means I'm in trouble and you're really in trouble!"
To be, as they say, continued...
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on 2010-04-22 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-04-22 05:01 pm (UTC)