Free Guarding Lacey: A Smokey Dalton Story by Kris Nelscott

 
 
    Guarding Lacey

 
    Every other morning, my dad drives me and
my cousins to school, except he’s not really my dad and they’re not really my
cousins. My dad — his name is Smokey — he says we’re family, and I
guess he’s right about that.
    He sure guards us like family. When Smoke
drives I known Smoke since I was three; I just can’t get used to calling him
Dad), he lines us up like little ducklings, and makes us walk hand-in-hand into
the school.
    The duckling thing is hardest in the
winter. It’s the beginning of 1970 — a decade Smoke says’ll be better
than the last one — and there’s been ice. We lose our balance if even one
person slips (and it’s usually Noreen, who’s six, and never pays attention),
and we just look plain silly.
    I’m tired of looking silly, but I know
the dangers if we don’t.
    Last year, the Blackstone Rangers tried
to recruit me and my cousin Keith, and Smoke, he beat up a Stone so bad they
ain’t bothered us since. Or not much, anyway. Smoke’s a big guy and now he’s
got a knife scar on his face and he can take on just about anybody. The Stones
look away when they see him. I think he scares them.
    They hang in the playground and smoke
cigarettes and they watch us all, especially my cousin Lacey. Smoke says she’s
thirteen going on trouble, and he don’t know the half of it.
    Our school is on the South Side, which
the news says gots the worst schools in Chicago. Smoke agrees, but he’s weird
about it; his girlfriend, Laura Hathaway, is rich and white and has what Smoke
calls clout and she says she can get me into one of them private schools and
she’d even pay for it. But Smoke says we gots to do what we can afford and we
don’t take charity from nobody, not even if it’s from someone like Laura.
    Besides, he says, we got to do for
everybody, not just make one of us special, so that’s why him and my Uncle
Franklin started the afterschool program for anybody who wants to come and
really learn.
    Sometimes I wish Smoke would come inside
our school though instead of staying out front. He thinks we’s safe inside, but
that’s not true. Some of the gang kids still go to classes just to cause
trouble. Last week, Li’l Dan sat in the back of history class and just snicked
his knife open and closed. I almost turned around and took it from him, but
that would get me noticed, and I been noticed enough.
    Lacey and Jonathon, they say it’s worse
in the junior high part of the school, which is an attached building at the
other end. They come in with us, go down the hall, and then go through the
double doors which get locked until school’s over since the teachers don’t want
no older kids coming in and “corrupting” us younger ones. But they forget: most
of us gots brothers and sisters who’re older or friends or neighbors and we get
corrupted all the dang time.
    I don’t like school much.
    Especially this year, and that’s because
of Lace. I’m the only one who sees the problem, and I ain’t sure what to do.

 
    ***

 
    Ever since she got into junior high, Lace
has been weird. I mean, she’s always been stuck-up and stuff, and she’s always
worn make-up and clothes that my Uncle Franklin don’t like at all. This year,
Uncle Franklin and Aunt Althea, they make Lacey change dang near every morning
before school, and they’re threatening to ground her.
    But it won’t do no good.
    Once Smoke or Uncle Franklin drops us
ducklings off at school and we get inside those dented metal doors, Lace heads
to the girls room. If she can’t smuggle her clothes out of the house, she takes
what she’s already wearing and changes it. She rolls up her skirt and tucks the
fabric under the waistband so the skirt is short and double-thick. She ties off
her shirt to show her tummy, and she puts on so much make-up you can’t see her
face at all.
    Lately she’s been gluing on them fake
eyelashes and wearing hot pants like Twiggy and big ole clunky high heels. That
kinda