Free The Old Neighborhood by Bill Hillmann

outta here.”
    â€œThat’s what the .25’s for,” he said, smiling. “Go ahead.” He flipped the box open. “Hold it if it’ll make you feel better.”
    I slowly reached in and picked up the .25. It still looked fake, but it was much heavier than I expected. I squeezed the white grip enclosed around the spring-loaded clip. The rough, metal-finished barrel was heavy and made it want to point downward. My hand felt big around the grip, like the gun was made for a hand not much larger than mine. I passed it over my lap and slipped it alongside my outer thigh so I could hold it between my leg and the car door. A calm set in my chest as I exhaled a deep breath. The faces of the bums turned comical, clownish even. A fat nose with long, black hairs shot out of each nostril; an old, wrinkle-faced Polack mug with a kid-sized, black and red Chicago Bulls cap stretched around his narrow scalp. I grinned with the knowledge that all I had to do was raise that thing up and squeeze to make them disappear. Inside, I finally felt that powerful aura of Pistol Pat.
    I heard the pop from that night at the carnival—that hollow pop that rang out in the midst of all that joy. I thought of where the bullet went. They all go somewhere right? The asphalt, the church wall, a ricochet. Hell, it could have hit me, or a little baby in a stroller. How could he have been so reckless? How could he be so foolish? A pregnant woman walked past my window with a giant, plump belly. It was like she was gonna give birth right then and there, or explode. Maybe he deserved to die.
    I could see through the people that filtered past to these glass storefronts filled with racks of clothes, suits, shoes, and gold jewelry.
    Up ahead, above the bustling sidewalk, I watched the profile of the street. The 100-year-old, dark brick, three-story buildings leaned and rested against one another like a string of winos in a frozen saunter. Several of the buildings had given way and collapsed in spots. The rubble extracted. Vendors had set up along the sidewalks. Children ran and played behind them in the hilly, glass and concrete-speckled lots.
    Twangy blues riffs spouted up from electric guitars every so often. Then, they were swallowed up by the slow thumping baseline of hip-hop that flooded out from the boom boxes of the street vendors who sold tapes.
    I could smell a heavy odor of onions caramelizing and rank fried sausage as we got to Maxwell Street. To the west, there was a large lot that was full of makeshift shacks. Rich parked in front of a hydrant. I put the gun back in the box, and we locked the doors and went shopping.
    â€¢
    WE PLAYED BASKETBALL on summer evenings in my alley. We used the hoop Dad’d built onto the sloped roof of our garage. I was always just a little bit better than anyone on the block around my age. Only Ryan could beat me and only sometimes. I wasn’t the best shooter, but I could always dribble past people and make these running shots. They weren’t layups because I was further out from the hoop. I’d dribble past my defender, jump, and sling the ball from my side with both hands with the form of a kid just barely strong enough to shoot on a big hoop. And I’d always bank my shots in using the red box on the backboard as my target. We played most nights. The girls from the block would lean against the far garage, chit-chat, and watch the game. One of them was Hyacinth—a skinny, little Filipino girl who lived on the end of the block at Hermitage Ave. She had thick jet-black hair with long bangs cut straight across her forehead, big amber eyes, and a cute smile. I had a long-running crush on her. She was in my grade at St. Greg’s, and sometimes we’d walk home from school together. When she was really sweet and flirty with me, she’d twirl her finger in her hair as we talked. That’s how I knew she liked me, too, ’cause I never saw her do that with nobody else.