Read Online Calumet City by Charlie Newton - Free Book Online Page B

has metalwork, foot- and handholds that I scramble up panting, tearing Julie’s shirt. My sides hurt; I’m lost, and over the top before considering what the gate and wall protected.
    I land hard on my shoulder. My heart pounds while my eyes adjust. It’s a park. With rolling hills, and full of stone in deep shadow; the inside edge is barely lit by the overspill of Clark Street’s glow. Demons can make you a sprinter. My demons are Olympians. And it isn’t a park, it’s a cemetery.
     
•  •  •
     
       And it’s dark. Serious dark the deeper I go. My heart slowly finds a tolerable rhythm and the tingle in my fingertips stops, the traffic noise outside the wall dies to nothing. I brush a plaque that I can barely see. My fingers trace "Graceland Cemetery." The quiet intensifies, if quiet can do that. I creep farther toward the center, groping with my left hand extended. Ornate buildings built in miniature catch what little moonlight there is, but only at a marble corner or a padlocked door.
    Mausoleums. And scented night air. Dead flowers, marigolds I think. The path is gravel or maybe a weathered road twisting through headstones I can’t see. Old ones probably, like on the Southside, old trees too—Fast
whoosh
to my left; I jump, stumble…and into hands all over me. Not hands, leaves, an untrimmed branch sweeping the ground. I suck air, step out, and the tree’s weakest leaves blow dead over my gym shoes. I let myself fall. The ground is soft. And the leaves keep blowing. I don’t move. My heart slows and warm tears tell me I’m crying.
    The night air swirls in and out for an hour, blowing leaves and tears and dead flowers I can’t see. A storm’s gathering in the east. There’s much to say, very bad things, but how, and to whom? Maybe I’ll sleep here, find a dry place among the forest of spires hidden by the dark, bed down with these ghosts who mean me no harm.
    My people. They know I’ve always been more ghost than person. A teenaged boy at the Salvation Mission once told me I was an unfinished song—we were the same age then—a lyric with more breaks than words and nowhere to put the notes. He had pimples, shoes that didn’t match, and a guitar and ran away that same week. I ran a week later.
    A shiver shakes through my back and shoulders. I’ll think about something else, call Stella, ask her to feed Jezebel and Bathsheba. My hand flattens on the unreadable marble by my hip and I wonder about the life under it, what it accomplished, wonder what my headstone will say and how soon it will say it…a thought sneaks through the blackout memories and self-pity: This is a famous place on the Northside, a bunch of famous Irish gangsters from the ’20s are buried here.
    Why think that?
    Annabelle and Roland don’t want to think about Irish gangsters and push them out of way. Annabelle and Roland want the family together again.
    I’m up and moving because moving is suddenly better. A dim line of light shimmers through shadow trees. The light must be Clark Street. The gravel path snakes toward it, then away, and finally a section of wall materializes. Squirrels or rats run from my approach. The ’L’ passes somewhere behind me in the dark back to the east. Graceland begins to feel bad, like a dark cemetery would to most people, all your fears peopled in these corpses and religious superstition. That’s someone else’s terror. I know mine. It’s got a name, shoes, saliva…
    This section of wall has a gate too and is easier to overcome. A yellow cab passes. I don’t want to go home, not where they can find me.
    Who’s they?
    You, me, them…Get a cab to the L7. Hide out till morning.
    The cab will be six or eight bucks; not like I’ve got it to burn, but I have no idea where I am. Another cab slows and he doesn’t stop either, then a gypsy does—I’m white and a girl—the cabby knows the address or pretends. We catch stoplights as it starts to rain, mist first then heavy drops; the