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January 15, 2008
the body
The apartment complex in which Mason and I used to live was atop a huge ravine. At the bottom of the ravine was a trickling creek that wasn't even big enough for a canoe, and on the other side of that was more ravine and another neighborhood. Just how elegant were these neighborhoods? Both sides of the creek were littered with abandoned appliances. I always wondered who undertook the task of carrying a washing machine down a ravine in order to save five bucks at the dump.
Our basketball court was next to the creek, and folks would tiptoe across the creek to play. In the tradition of humans who have to draw arbitrary distinctions to feel better about themselves, we thought the creek kids were beneath us. They were pure trash, thugs. Not like us.
One morning, Mason and I were shooting baskets when one shot, doubtlessly mine, hit the outside of the rim and ricocheted toward the creek. Mason lunged after it, chasing it to the edge of a little rise, where he abruptly stopped. I caught up and gaped at what had caught his attention. Abandoned next to the creek, like so many appliances, was a body. He was maybe 15. His shoes were gone.
We didn't recognize the kid him from a distance, and we weren't exactly rushing down there for a closer look. Instead, we debated at length who was putting himself more at risk: a black guy calling the police and thereby ensuring himself a perp walk and hose bath, or a white guy calling the police and thereby ensuring that the culprit would eagerly dump said white guy's body between the Frigidaire and the Maytag dryer. It was a lively, unresolvable debate—a ghetto Zen koan.
"What makes you think whoever killed him was black, anyway?" Mason retorted.
"Because I didn't do it."
"Oh. Right," he nodded, still looking at the kid.
And so it went for several minutes, until the kid, his daydreams in the sunny spot next to the creek disturbed by the ramblings of two nearby morons, stood up. He grabbed his shoes, put them on, and started toward the creek.
"Or there's that," Mason said.
posted by john at 8:27 AM • permalink