SHORT STORY: ROWDY’S

(Short Story is from 2016, Junior Year at Ohio University)

The three of us squatted on the corner of 52nd and Market Street, rotating broken cigarettes and a can of Arnold Palmer, observing as the city of Philadelphia lay rotting underneath the blistering rays of an August sun. The beams of sunlight rippled the brick-scale architecture into coiled wavelengths, shattering the proud historic landmarks into a crumbling ooze that melted to the soles of our tennis shoes. I imagined the statues of Benjamin Franklin, strewn throughout the city, melting into a heap of liquid bronze, splashed by the sun-stroked dopers and corner boys who cluttered the streets. However, I never gave it too much thought. It was hard to think clearly in the heat.

​When my bottom began to seep with moisture and our cigarettes kindled low, I removed myself from the searing concrete and demanded we head back to the corner store.

“We need to hit Rowdy’s again, man.” I said while sticking the butt-end of a cigarette into an empty can of Arnold Palmer. “We gotta re-up on some goods if we’re gonna make it through this goddamn heat. I only got one more cig and nothing to sip.” I pointed to the lone cigarette tucked between my crown and a lavender bandana. A plain black t-shirt dangled from my frail eighteen-year-old figure, absorbing the flames that rained from a cloudless sky.

“I’m broke, my dude.” Jimmy said while pulling himself from the street curb, a vintage Iverson jersey fastened to his back. “Rowdy charges us like, three dollars a can and another nine for a pack of boges. Shit’s a hustle. Can’t he respect the come up?” 

Jimmy was always preaching, upset with the way things were. Whether complaining about the extra dollar for a can of drink from Rowdy, or the continual funding of the “military industrial complex”, Jimmy’s complaining became routine. He felt everyone was against him. See, Jimmy wasn’t raised on the streets like the rest of us. I never held it against him. His moms passed when he was thirteen, and his pops had to relocate after his decent into Xanax. We’d ask him about the suburbs, but on this subject he spoke solemn: “It’s a ghetto for the rich” he would say, but I didn’t believe him. I think a part of Jimmy died with his mom back in the suburbs. I think he really misses her. I think he really misses the suburbs. Though, it didn’t matter now, he’s a city rat like the rest of us, and Jimmy’s friendship came with benefits. 

The street corners were laced with crack, cut coke, pills, and meth, but Jimmy was from the suburbs. He explained to us that suburban traphouses operated through a different arrangement of drugs and clientele, particularly LSD, and that’s how we met Acid Dave.

“Shit, I betchu he gets those cans of Arnie for twenty-five cents a pop. You do the math on that?” 

Acid Dave, who had remained quiet during the loitering chirped in, “Better than a Wal-Mart, ain’tit?” 

“Fuckin’ A,” said Jimmy.

Acid Dave, now the last to emerge from the curb, stood towering over Jimmy and myself. He was flush with a cinnamon twinkle from the beads of sweat that trailed his dark skin.

“Man, Jimmy, you don’t even pay for shit, lets just hit Rowdy’s real quick. What’s good for tonight anyway?”

Jimmy attempted to withhold a smile, removing a sheet of tinfoil from his back pocket.

* * *

​Two summers ago, Jimmy and I were crossing through Temple University on a blustery Saturday evening, scrounging for hotties with unveiled belly button piercings and short mini-skirts. We were passing through shadows and fulgurating street lamps when we saw a dark boy thrown from the base of an apartment staircase. Close behind, a mob of five college students cloaked in polo button downs descended the staircase in pursuit, armed with clenched fists, beer bottles, and their parent’s attorneys on speed dial. Jimmy and I acted instinctively. They weren’t hotties with vanilla crème skin and strawberry lips, but they were drunken fratboys, and we loved kicking the shit out of fratboys. We dove headfirst, connecting fist with flesh, knuckle with jaw, until the fratboys retreated, leaving their wounded facedown in the concrete. I snagged the jumped boy by the collar and crossedtwelve blocks before hindering our sprint to a nimble jog. That’s when the boy turned to us, bruised and stained with blood, with a half-cocked smile dangling from his lips.

“Man I can’t believe I got saved by two white boys.”

Acid Dave wasn’t always Acid Dave. In a past life, he was just Dave. After the Temple brawl, we linked up outside Rowdy’s, standing under a vivacious neon glow that read “BEER”, where Jimmy paused to unfold the corners of a tin foil sheet. He removed vibrant colored squares of paper, distributing them between the three of us. When Jimmy motioned the tabs toward the boy, he quickly shook his head. 

“No, I don’t fuck with that shit. Makes you stupid.”

The insult rattled Jimmy, who darted his eyes toward the boy.

“Man, who told you that?”

“Easy Jimmy.” I said

The boy shifted uncomfortably. He had escaped the clutches of violent fratboys, but now he was staring into something new.

“I don’t know, man. Shit rots your brain’s is all I know. Just crazy white people drugs.”

Jimmy licked his lips, drawing attention to the words that would spill from his mouth. “Let me tell you something…?”

“Dave,” the boy replied.

“Let me tell you something, Dave. This right here is going to shine a spotlight on all the critical thinking in your brain. It’s going to embrace you, man. It’s going to show you everything that you’ve been missing. You think government wants a high population of critical thinkers? No way, Jose. Then they’d see how fucked up and fragile this all is. You think they want young black men like yourself exploring the depths of their mind, questioning the status quo? You wanna find out why those fratboys really despise you so much?  You’re a threat, man. You’ve got free thought and you have to utilize it. You have the ability to make choices and accept change, and that frightens powerful people. Listen to me man, call me goddamn tinfoil hat sportin’ lunatic, but this right here is a one way ticket to understanding this giant shit rock.”

Dave darted his eyes between the tablets and the fiery passion that raged behind Jimmy’s pupils. He had heard the promises of salvation many times before, and this was not entirely different. Nervously, Dave turned his head in my direction. I noticed his eyes, aching and tattooed with painful memories. He was indecisive, fumbling over the idea of sprinting away from another pack of wild white boys. However, before revving his muscles for a long sprint home, he glanced at my hand, which lay trembling in a lonely breeze, battered, from delivering round after round of high velocity fists. He watched as the sanguine liquid trickled from my open wounds onto the ashen concrete, before grabbing the tablet and thrusting it down his throat.

* * * 

As we crossed through the streets of Philadelphia, the sun began to diminish behind a horizon of skyscrapers. We gazed at the spectacle of gridded apricot hues through our pupils, which expanded into cannonballs, loaded, and ready to engage. We were a block from Rowdy’s when we noticed threads of yellow wrapped around the base of the infrastructure. There were no glowing neon lights, no loiterers, only an eerie emptiness.

When we approached Rowdy’s, we could easily identify the yellow tangle of plastic tape. It read: POLICE.

“Looks like we’re beat, man,” said Jimmy, who motioned about the corner store, peering through grease-tinted windows. 

“There’s no way, man. We were here four hours ago. Think Rowdy got popped for sellin’overpriced Arnie’s?” asked Acid Dave.

Jimmy chuckled, “Fuck it, man I would’ve done it myself.”

The LSD was beginning to reach maximum efficiency when my vision narrowed into fractals, and the conversation between Jimmy and Acid Dave echoed through the empty gaps of my skull. How long had we been standing here? Acid Dave extended his arms into the wings of a 747, pretending to swoop back and forth between Jimmy and I. He announced that his flight to Chicago was on time with eighty-seven degree sunny skies. Jimmy fell silent, glaring into the sight of city ants hurdling over the dilapidated sidewalks. I, however, insisted on following the fractals from my vision, approaching as they beckoned me from afar. I tiptoed around the edge of the store, noticing that the back door had been propped open by a chunk of brick, a common practice by Rowdy on his cigarette breaks. I whispered for Acid Dave and Jimmy, who peered around the corner cautiously. When I extended my finger in the direction of the open door, Acid Dave bolted ahead.

“Houston, we have lift off,” he screamed before soaring through the blackness of the doorway, the cries of his space shuttle becoming withered and faint. 

Upon entering Rowdy’s, a foul odor stung and pinched at my nose, and a darkness heaved at my eyelids. Acid Dave leapt from the countertops and dove into the aisles, while Jimmy cracked Arnold Palmers and seized pockets full of candy. I ignited the cigarette from my bandana and stood in the middle of the room, attempting to close my eyes to embrace the grand infinity of the mind. I wanted to be in the center. I wanted to feel the room breathe. However, the odor broke my meditation, scorching my nasal passages like charcoals. I followed the fractals and grids from the drug once more, this time leading me to the cash register, the pungent smell flourishing in the vicinity. 

That’s when I saw the crimson. It scuttled down the register in thick canals, intertwined withfloating crumbs of white and pink. My eyes began to dart, my mind rush. There were crimson streaks splattered on the cigarettes and Hershey’s bars, it trickled along the edge of the refrigerators, into slicks of cherry-red and sidewalk chalk. It was wrong. Something was wrong. Shrieks pummeled my eardrums, shaking the fractals in my vision. Jimmy had collapsed into a puddle, sobbing, begging for his mother, unable to remove himself from the mess. Acid Dave had retreated to the corner of the store, driving his fists into rows of magazines, clobbering the celebrity figures on the front page. My skeleton, quivering in distress, wanted to rip the skin from my flesh, and bolt out the back door, but not without the rest. I couldn’t abandon Jimmy and Acid Dave.

I bustled toward them, scooping Jimmy from the saturated floor tiles, and catching Acid Dave by the collar, towing them through the bloody mess, slipping through cylindrical casings. They were hysterical, but we needed to escape. I dragged them out the back door, and sat them on the curb across the street, but I wasn’t done. How could I be done, I thought. Without a word, I shot back into the corner store. Alone, I moved through the fractal images and fluttering electricity, removing alcoholic beverages from the fridge, dumping them onto the crimson floor.  Tears pattered my cheeks.The alcohol birthed images of my father; the blood my mother, but I knew the past didn’t define me. I knew that I was given a choice of how to live this life. I knew which experiences I cherished. I pulled a box of matches from the counter top, and readied to strike, but paused to grab an Arnold Palmer and pack of cigarettes, leaving twelve dollars cash on the counter top for Rowdy. I struck the matches, and turned to run before the flame ignited. I followed the fractals through the back door and into Philadelphia night, as the wrath of the flames ignited the tips of my hair like wicks in a candle. 

We loitered from an adjacent street corner, my arm wrapped around Jimmy who sobbed quietly, while Acid Dave rested on an apartment staircase. I inhaled a cigarette, chambering the smoke through my lungs, grasping for each hit of nicotine. We exchanged the can of Arnold Palmer, sipping casually, and watched as the flames engulfed Rowdy’s Corner Market.