The Waking Read Online Free

it’s a long way down.”
    “ What?”
    “ It has to be near a hundred feet or more.”
    “ I gotta jump?”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ And the water’s gonna cure me?” I doubted it as soon as I said it. There’s nothing but floating dogs, oil slicks, and garbage in those rivers.
    “ No, Manny, the water ain’t gonna cure nothing. The jump is.”
    An old junkie was telling me to kill myself. I started to get up, but Flake grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down.
    “ It ain’t no baptism, boy. You’re aiming for a barge going south, and make sure that barge is going south or you’ll be right back here.”
    “ I gotta jump from a bridge into a barge?”
    “ You can’t miss it unless you don’t time your jump right. Now the barge is most likely gonna be full of coal, so it’ll be a hard landing. If you miss the barge, you’ll drown. If you land wrong, you’ll break your neck, probably die instantly, or you might just shatter a leg and have your bone come out the skin. If you land in between them coal cars, you’ll be crushed to death.”
    “ How is all this a cure?”
    “ This ain’t even the cure part, Manny. If you land just right and aren’t hurt too bad, you’re on your way to the cure. Them fools at the clinic told me it’d only be a week, ten days tops to quit because heroin isn’t as addictive as nicotine, which we both know is a lie. I’ve only been able to go a day or two without myself, but I had a buddy jump from some bridge and I haven’t heard from him since. I hope he made it, and even if he didn’t, he’s cured either way, right?”
    “ This is crazy.”
    “ So’s The Life, so’s The Life, Manny. You’re on the edge of getting into The Life, and I don’t want you going over that edge.”
    “ It’s still crazy.”
    “ Gotta fight crazy with crazy sometimes.”
    Which made sense. Curing something that will kill you with something that might kill you made sense. “You really think he made it?”
    “ No. He was an old junkie, think he was fifty or so.” Flake was looking every bit of seventy in that half-light. “And if the jump didn’t kill him, the withdrawal probably did.” He smiled at me with only a few jagged teeth. “Find yourself a bridge, Manny.”
    “ Why don’t you come with me, Flake?”
    “ Misery loves company, huh?”
    “ Yeah. That’s all misery is good for. Nah, Manny. I messed up so much in life I’d probably mess up my own suicide. Besides, I can’t travel too well nowadays.” He pulled up his pants leg, revealing a plastic leg just below the knee. “Had me this little bad patch of skin down there once.”
    I rose on shaky legs. “Gotta go.”
    “ Hey, uh, you got a shot for an old man, Manny?”
    “ You ain’t that old, Flake.”
    Flake laughed. “I’m only thirty-two. Yeah, thirty-two is old around here, huh?”

2: Bridges
     
    Flake is only three years older than I am, missing part of his leg, slumped in a doorway of Heroin Hotel, and I’m here in the pouring rain at Freedom Corner, a monument to black people here in the ‘hood.
    And I don’t know a single name on this plaque.
    The names sound familiar, like I’m supposed to know them, but I don’t. Twenty-five “Fallen Heroes” in a Circle of Honor, names like Frankie Pace, Matthew Moore, Sr., Margaret Milliones, and Robert L. Vann. Heroes of what? Who are they heroes for? What have they ever done for me? And why are they on a plaque here at the corner of Crawford and Centre just up the hill from Mellon Arena, under the shadow of St. Benedict the Moor, in the Lower Hill, the most dirty, run-down, forgotten armpit of Pittsburgh?
    My Pittsburgh is black and white and gray, is roaming dogs floating through sooty smog amid elegant decadence, is seedy and weedy, upscale and downscale, is banks and cranks, loans and moans, outcasts and Everlast, upper class, working-class, and broke-ass. Trash or cash, pickles and ketchup, my Pittsburgh is a city of broken sidewalks and hearts, dealers at