The Waking Read Online Free Page A

Wylie and Elmore breaking people along with twenties, fifties, and hundreds, a place where Recovering Mothers and Children does big business and folks unite against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while a war rages all around them.
    In a city that once banned Beethoven, a school can suspend a five-year-old for bringing a plastic axe to go with his firefighter costume on Halloween, and the Statue of Liberty can float downtown on Liberty Avenue with an IV-drip in her arm. And in the blackest part of my Pittsburgh, some white folks put up a billboard that reads, “It’s never too late to give up your prejudices.”
    Our prejudices? What about theirs ?
    And here’s Freedom Corner, a patch of polished granite, and me standing in center of a bunch of circles as spring rain tumbles down, puddles everywhere. Surprised they let us have this much space. I mean, they tore down every other place to live, like Allequippa Terrace and the Bedford Dwellings. Of course, not many folks like to sleep on polished granite.
    Behind me is a Freedom Marchers’ Ring with a line of fools marching somewhere. I’m standing on the Negative Ring, men and women with shackled, empty hands getting a beat-down by the police. And dead center in front of me is this Circle of Honor with twenty-five names of nobodies nobody ever heard of.
    This monument will never last. Nah, some junkie will be passed out on the Prayer Circle before ripping off one of the Pages of History to sell for a bundle, and bottle caps and syringes and little bags of “Death Wish” will be scattered like the leaves that used to fall off trees here. Even the pigeons will stay away after that.
    I bet the pigeons will even stay away from St. Benedict’s across the street. Skinny pleading statue, arms up like he’s being eternally arrested, like he’s giving up on the Hill, his white head standing out against the rainy black sky. How much of a Moor could he be with all that white in him? And he ain’t looking down on the Hill, oh no. He’s focused on downtown Pittsburgh, checking out the neon and the culture there, culture that exists thanks to the destruction of the Hill. Guess he doesn’t like his vow of poverty, and the dude ain’t praying either. How can you pray with your arms spread out like that? I’m surprised no sniper has used him for target practice.
    One last shot and I’m out of here to find the cure.
    Or die.
    Either way, I’m cured.
    I could go out like Dante Taylor, a man not much older than I am who blazed a trail of lead through Wilkinsburg a while back. He didn’t hurt black people, though. He killed three white folks, and the police charged him with “ethnic intimidation.” There’s a loaded phrase. The Hill’s been a victim of ethnic intimidation from day one. They say Dante was a racist, but how could he be? How can a minority be a racist? He was just trying to get the white monkey off his back. And what about me, a half-white, half-black man? How can I ever be a racist? And my monkey sure ain’t a monkey. It’s an elephant, and it’s fat, gray, and hungry.
    I’ve been following Dante’s case since it happened because the dude is so much like me. They called Dante a “diseased man” for what he did over five blocks and five minutes. He was just one pissed-off black man who couldn’t take it anymore. He told his white landlady his door needed to be fixed, and it just took too long for anybody to fix it. A man’s home is his castle, but it ain’t one if your door’s busted. Dante just wanted to be safe, right? So he shot a maintenance worker and set fire to his crib. He could have stopped there, but he couldn’t very well stay home with it all on fire. It’s hard to eat a decent meal with all that smoke. So maybe he was hungry when he went to Burger King and took out a priest, though Dante didn’t know he was a priest when he pulled the trigger of his legally bought gun. Old Dante might have double-tapped him if he knew that, who knows?