And plenty of guns and bullets.

Step an a Crack

1

When we were all little kids together, Bobby was the bravest. He was the first to go from one end of the Projects to the other over the rooftops. I remember following him, all of us in a line. The last jump was the worst–the wind was blowing hard and there wasn't room to get a long running start. Bobby lit a cigarette and took a drag. Then he threw the pack over to the other side. He took another drag and snapped the cigarette over the side of the building.

"I'll have a smoke wherever I land," he said to us.

"It's too far, Bobby," Rodney said.

"I don't care," Bobby laughed.

You could see he didn't. He went over the gap between the rooftops like it was nothing, soaring.

Everybody cheered. Nobody followed.

If I knew how to voice such things then, I would have said that I loved him.

2

Me and Bobby were ten then. We were born almost on the same day. Bobby would stay at my house sometimes. Sometimes he would even tell other kids we were brothers.

He was very brave, but he was cruel and ugly too. He threw a cat off the roof once. He liked to set fires too.

Even when we were real little kids, he was like that. You know how kids have their games…their superstitions? Step on a crack, break your mother's back? Bobby saw Joey skipping down the sidewalk one day and he called him a girl for it. Joey got mad, but he didn't want to fight Bobby. Nobody did. Anyway, he explained it to Bobby…he wasn't skipping like a goddamned girl, he was just making sure his mother was safe.

Bobby said it was okay. He even said he was sorry for calling Joey a girl.

3

My mother was giving me cocoa the next morning like she always does when it's cold.

"I saw your pal Bobby early this morning, Jason, when I first got up. He was practicing."

"Practicing what, Mom?"

"I don't exactly know….It looked like hopscotch to me."

Bobby hadn't said anything to me about practicing. I knew he wouldn't play hopscotch….Only girls did that.

I couldn't sleep that night. I know Mom always got up real early. It wasn't even light outside sometimes. She had to do everything in the house before she went to work.

I was up even before Mom the next morning. I looked out the window but we were up too high to see much of anything. I put on my coat and went downstairs. Bobby was there, alright, just like Mom said. He was running down the sidewalk back and forth, but he was running funny, like he was drunk.

"What are you doing, Bobby?" I asked him, stepping out.

His face got all red. For a minute, I thought he was going to come at me.

"It's a secret, Jason."

I walked over to him. "Tell me, Bobby. You know I'd never tell. You're my pal."

"You'd tell," he said.

I didn't say anything–I just walked away. The wind was cold–it made my eyes water.

I heard him coming after me but I didn't even turn around. I felt his hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Jace."

"I never told, Bobby. Not about anything. Not even about the cat…"

"Shut up. I know. I said I was sorry, didn't I? Stop crying."

"I'm not crying!"

"You are!"

I punched him in the face and then he did come at me. I was doing good for a while but he was stronger and finally he got me down.

"You give?" He held his fist right over my face.

"No!"

But the punch never came. He got off me. After a while, I got up.

"It was a tie," Bobby said. "Even up. Okay?"

"Okay," I said. "You want to come up for some cocoa?"

4

Upstairs, my mother looked at my clothes and asked me what happened. Bobby told her some other kids jumped us and we fought them.

"I don't like you to fight, Jason," Mom said. "But it's good you and Bobby stick up for each other."

She washed my face and put orange stuff on the cuts. She washed Bobby's face too. He didn't try to stop her.

After Mom went to work, we had some cookies and then we went in my room so I could put on my school clothes.

"Jason…"

"What?"

"You know what I was doing this morning?"

"You don't have to…"

"I want you to know. I want somebody to know. You're my

pal, like you said. You know what I was doing out there? Trying

to step on every single fucking crack in the sidewalk."

It was the meanest thing I ever heard anyone say.

5

Later, I asked my mother. She told me it was just a stupid superstition–it didn't mean anything. "Bobby could step on every sidewalk in the city, honey," she told me, "and it wouldn't break his mother's back. It's just a saying, not a truth."

Me and Mom lived alone together. My Dad was killed. In the war. The stupid war, my Mom always called it. Bobby used to tell the other kids that his father was killed in the war too. Right next to mine. But he told me that he didn't know who his father was. His mother always had men living with her. One after the other. I asked Mom once, why she didn't have boyfriends like Bobby's mother. Mom said maybe she would, someday. Right now, she didn't have time for that stuff.

6

Bobby started to hate queers about the same time I knew I was one.

There was a place near the Projects, right near the river. We called it the Pier, but no boats came there anymore.

Fags would meet down there. There were some buildings, empty now. Sometimes they even did it outdoors. If you snuck up real quiet, you could see them.

Bobby and I were watching one night.

"I hate them," he whispered. Like a snake's hiss.

I said I did too, but I could feel things in me and I knew I didn't. I couldn't.

I was scared, but I knew I would try someday.

7

It was just past our fourteenth birthdays when Bobby came over to my place one night. He said he had something real good for us to do. In the basement, we all got together. Seven of us. Bobby passed out the stuff we had stored down there: bicycle chains, tire irons, a couple of sawed off baseball bats.

We thought it was the Uptown Tigers coming down here again, but Bobby said no, it wasn't that. We were going to drive the fags out of our turf. Stomp them down to the Village, where they belonged.

We marched over to the Pier like an army. They ran when they saw us but it was too late for a couple of them. We busted them up good.

8

Joey told on us. He didn't mean to, but he was talking to his girl. The police came to the block and they took us all in.

My mother got me alone in the station house and she asked me if it was true. I tried to lie to her but it was no good. She didn't hit me or anything. She sat down and lit a cigarette. Her hands were shaking.

"I am so ashamed of you," she said.

I didn't care what happened to me after that.