Omar

Someone up the street shouts. "There's the cheater schmuck!" The shouter is the Con Edison kid, with another boy, tall, a bouncy kid with a flat head and a nose like an eraser. They are cutting through the parked cars like pros, jumping onto the curb near Keef.
    Con Edison's shirt is white today, white and blank, with no Consolidated Edison patch like his shirt had yesterday. Still, he's the Con Edison kid, you can tell by the eyes that look at you like a hungry dog with rabies. His yellow hair is shorter today too, as if he got a haircut right after manhunt yesterday. "Here's the cheater baby," he says. The boy with the flat head looks like he could be in eighth grade. Or even in jail.
    As Keef squeezes the Spaldeen, Neal comes out from under the car asking Keef, "Why aren't we playing?" his face going blank and scared as he sees the older boys coming closer.
    "Hey cheater-baby," Con Edison says. "Ready to die?"
    "It doesn't matter," Cian says to Con Edison, "Whatever you say, you're just a dog barking. It doesn't matter anymore."
    "It doesn't matter that you're a lying manhunt-cheater?" Con Edison asks.
    "Barking," Cian says, feeling his own words like an unafraid miracle coming right out of his mouth, "Barking's all I hear."
    Neal steps close to Con Edison's side and he asks did they want to choose sides for manhunt? "Three against two?" Neal asks.
    "Get the hell away, runt," Con Edison says. "Who's Spaldeen ball is that?"
    Then, as if he's Con Edison's slave, Flathead takes the Spaldeen out of Neal's hand and throws it into the air, bouncing in places as he catches it, bouncing again and squeezing the ball in his hands that aren't human hands. His hands are all knuckles.
    Con Edison stares at Neal and Keef like he's going to give them detention. Or flip them both, both at once. "Where'd you get that ball? They don't sell it in no stores around here."
    "I found it in his cellar," Neal says, like he's talking to a teacher.
    "Whose cellar? The cheater baby's cellar?"
    "Could you let us have it back?" Keef says. "We're playing Three Strikes."
    "What if I flip you?" Con Edison asks Keef. "Can you play Three Strikes with your head bleeding?"
    Keef backs up, bumping into Flathead who stands still as a tree.
    "Or what if I flip the cheater baby who thinks I'm a dog barking?" Con Edison steps close, one foot on the bumper, and Cian feels a burning in his stomach spread, hot, burning on his bottom, down his legs, and he stares up at Con Edison's big nostrils, nostrils big as a man's nose. A dog-hairy nostril-nose. Or is that boogers in the nose? Cian hugs himself. "You can flip me," he says. "But we won manhunt yesterday, fair, flipping me or not flipping me. So you're our slaves."
    "I'm your slave?" Con Edison asks. "I didn't carry your books. And I won't ever in my life carry a baby third grader's books. So how could I be your slave?"
    "You just are," Cian says, and again his words feel like a kind of lifting magic that could make him get hurt as quick as they make the air and even his body feel light. "You just are a slave. And you're like a dog, too, barking. A dog and a slave are almost the same thing. All you and your fifth grade friends did last night was bark bark bark."
    Con Edison comes closer to Cian. He tells him stand up. Behind the fat shoulder, Cian sees Keef put his hands over his mouth like a surprised girl. "Don't stand up, Robert," Keef says, in an annoying-all-afraid whisper, "He'll flip you, bad if you get off the car."
    Staring down at gutter, Cian feels as if he's already been flipped, somehow. Like this happened already once, somewhere, if he could just remember when. Like it's over already and could never happen again.
    A fat ant crawls over Con Edison's shoe, the ant sloping up the shoe like it's a mountain, the ant carrying a twig bigger than the ant's whole body. Maybe when he dies, Cian thinks, Con Edison will come back as an ant. An ant but not that ant. How long do ants live? Just a day, like a butterfly? Or inside a tree maybe they could live from George Washington time to the year nineteen-ninety-nine and further, like trees do. And will. But you could die early if a big kid like this flips you and your skull breaks.
    Cian slips off the car and stands up, feeling that how long he took to stand means he wasn't taking the order from Con Edison. He was but he wasn't. From the sidewalk, he's almost as tall as Con Edison who stays put, there, one step down in the curb, like he's thinking of the best ways to flip someone. His dark brown dog eyes are like eyes that can't know what they see and are only in his face for decoration. Over his head Cian can see Flathead trying to pull the Spaldeen out of Neal's hands and behind them the boy who was playing kick the can is gone. The stray cat's long gone too.
    Someone says, "Oh my God," and before Cian can think of what's next, his legs drop off into a tripping forward without his own hips, crazy, even as his face spins into a turn, an upside down blurring black and brown rush, then up again, his stomach blooming white clouds and white across his eyes as his elbow hits a rock, his face falling forward between his own knees.
    His head stops on something hard as bricks.
    His elbows burn. The yellow-blue sky spins without any clouds.
    As he lays there flat, everything over him and under him moves, Neal and Keef spinning as they stare down at him and the sidewalk is suddenly his own spinning bed.
    Lifting his elbows off the ground, Cian can feel scrapes already bleeding on his elbow, a wetness, as if he's laying in a puddle. His feet feel the world moving under them and the top of his head throbs, a throbbing that spreads down his neck and into his back.
    "Are you alive?" Keef asks, putting his hand into his and helping him pull up, stand. Still, the air around his head spins, dizzy.
    "Did you like that, baby-cheater? That was the most easiest flip I ever did. Now admit that you cheated yesterday at manhunt or else we'll throw your friend's Spaldeen into the sewer." Con Edison sits on a car, laughing. Flathead has the Spaldeen and he asks Con Edison what should he do with it? No one says anything. And no cars pass. It's colder, Cian thinks, colder even than before these boys got here, which feels like a hundred years ago because they're still here and might be here forever. Down the block a voice breaks the quiet. Throw the money down Connie, hurry, the deli closes in five minutes. Cian asks Con Edison, "Why don't you stand up now?"
    "Because you're too small to flip me."
    "Then why don't you stand up?"
    "You know, you better go inside, baby-cheater. Even your friends here, they all look so scared, like they are going to cry for you."
    Out of nowhere, Neal runs off, charging out across the street and skipping steps into the center of the street as he runs off without looking back, Flathead laughing as Neal skip steps up his stoop and disappears into his front door.
    Maybe gone to tell his mother about the flipping?
    In the darker sun-going-down light Con Edison's face is fat, fat as a pig but not completely a pig. A pig that God never invented yet. Even his piggy nose shakes as he laughs. Cian thinks if it's a dream, and this cold is too, then you can do anything, whatever you want and there's no reason for this older boy to laugh like a fat pig like that and Flathead too, holding the ball that isn't his, the jerk so happy to have in his hand what isn't his that Cian opens his hand and without even thinking about what to do he pushes his right hand into Con Edison's face, feeling the boy's face-skin go cold as he pushes his hand even harder, Con Edison squirming to slip away as Cian slams himself forward, full and heavy into him, punching the sack under his shirt, again, his knuckles driving hard into his stomach, again, punching against the car too and without seeing, punching more, tripping on the curb as he swings at Con Edison's face again without looking his wrist ringing pain as his knuckles feel the give of skin, face, something hard, again to hit harder, and soon they are so low down that Cian smells the rubber of the car tires, the blackness just behind Con Edison's yellow hair, and with his eyes closed again he brings his fist down, as if punching into mud, or mush, punching a face that could be Dad, Sister Bea, Buckteeth, anyone you'd ever want to punch and there's a screaming so loud that he should let go but he doesn't let go, taking hold of Con Edison's fat neck, bringing his free fist down hard as around him shouts sound.
    When Cian lets go, everything is quiet.
    He stands up, dizzy.
    His lips taste like he drank red hot chocolate in the middle of summer.
    The air feels like water, water up to his waist. His knees throb.
    Pebbles are stuck to the back of his arms. And this spinning sidewalk could be anywhere, dizzy, but it's his block.
    Keef is smiling.
    Cian notices Flathead is gone. Con Edison is slouched, sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the car tire, breathing hard, patting down his yellow hair, his right eye so red he might be crying. But as he stands up full, Cian can tell the eye isn't red from crying. Because the boy isn't crying. The red is a perfect red ring around his eye, from a punch, a punch that he can tell must have been his punch. There's a cut too, under Con Edison's eye, like somebody else maybe cut him, somebody not Cian. But he knew it must have been his fingernail that got caught during a punch.
    Knowing he did that ring around the boy's eye makes his stomach feel empty and the more he looks at how red the ring around the boy's eye is the more he wishes he could go back, go back and start again, before Con Edison got off the car and before he put his hand into his face and started to slam into him, start everything he ever did all over again so that red ring around the boy's eye would never have happened.
    Keef says, "You just beat up a fifth grader, Robert!"
    Across the street, faces come to the window. Even over his head he hears windows opening. And like a bad dream he wonders how many people saw the fight?
    "Amazing," Keef says, "That redness on his eye is going to be a black eye."
    Steeping closer, Cian asks is he alright? Con Edison touches his eye, sniffling, shaking his head, yes. The red skin around his eye is puffy and looks so bad that Cian feels like he might puke, right here, onto Keef's shoes.
    "Can you see in that eye?" Cian asks.
    "That's what you get, jerk," Keef says to Con Edison. "Cian's strong, I told you. He got sent to Sister Bea yesterday. He got a foot whipping."
    Con Edison asks did that really happen, a whipping from Sister Bea? "You got hung upside down by Sister Bea?" Con Edison asks, repeating the question, like Sister Bea's office is worse than any fight could be. Cian says it's true, definitely. "She hurt me bad, much worse than when you flipped me just now."
    "I didn't really want to flip you," Con Edison says, rubbing his nose, sniffling. "I flipped you, just, because."
    "That's not true," Keef says. "You wanted to flip Cian, I could tell."
    Con Edison comes close to Keef's nose. "Eat my shit, Keef. I should flip you." Keef scrambles to the side of the car, back stepping. Someone across the street hollers. It's the man in the window with the screwdriver, his head halfway out. He points at them. Go home! Use your heads! Don't you got parents cooking you supper? Watch your goddamned language or I'll come down and clean all three of your clocks. Why don't you all go home to your own blocks?
    "We're allowed!" Keef shouts, "This is Cian's block," but the man slams the window shut. Cian asks Con Edison does that eye hurt?
    "It's nothing. I even fell out of a tree once."
    "How?"
    "My cousin built a tree house and the floor part broke in half. We all fell out."
    "Where did you get a tree big enough to build a house?"
    "My cousin has a giant yard. In Queens."
    "So does mine. My cousin, Nicy, in Queens too." And as he repeats Nicy's name he thinks how wild it would be if she was here to see what just happened.
    Keef shakes his head No and then says it doesn't matter if the boy's eye hurts, "It was a fight, Cian, and you won. So what about his eye. Too bad."
    "I have to go home," Con Edison says.
    "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to punch your eye," Cian says. "I got mad. Because when you flipped me, I got a bump on my head. You could feel it, right here." Cian bends forward to show Con Edison his head. "What's your name?"
    "I have to go home," Con Edison says. "This was such a waste coming to this block. I wanted to flip you because your friend told me after manhunt yesterday that you called me curses like fag-ass."
    "I never said that word," Cian says, and Keep shrugs like a jerk, shrugging as if to pretend what he is hearing isn't what he's hearing. "I never called you a curse. Can't you even tell me your name?"
    "I don't want to."
    "Why not?"
    "I don't want to be your friend," Con Edison says. "So forget it. I won't come on this baby block again. Plus, you scratched me under my eye."
    "I didn't mean for us to get in a fight. You can come on this street anytime. Manhunt was fun. Even this was fun, kind of."
    Con Edison shrugs, as if he doesn't care about manhunt, as if he never did. Turning, he yanks up his pants and goes, down to the corner and off the curb as he crosses the street, till he turns at the opposite corner, walking on until he is so tiny that Cian can hardly see him.
*
They sit on the car watching the streetlights come on as if some ghost was switching them on one by one until the one right over their heads was lit.
    "That was amazing," Keef says. "I think his name is Oscar. But he might be his brother Omar, 'cause they're twins. The live on my block. They moved in last month. You hit him so hard, you were punching his face like crazy."
    "Why'd you tell him I said curses after manhunt yesterday?"
    "I didn't," Keef says, sliding closer, his nosy face so close that Cian tells him go away.
    "Why do I have to go away?"
    "Because you told that kid I said curses when I didn't."
    "So what?" Keef says. "You beat him up. If I go, I could go to your friend's house. I could go to Paolo's. He's my friend too."
    "I don't care if he is," Cian says. "Go wherever you want. Just go."
    "Why are you not my friend now?"
    "Because. You're like Neal. You made that Con Edison kid get extra mad and that's why we had a fight."
    "His name is Omar. How about we stay friends if I brag how good you beat that Omar kid up, could we still be friends then?"
    "Just go," Cian says. "Go get the fuck off of my block."
    "It's not your block, it's the whole city's block," Keef says, standing up, finally looking like he might really go. "Plus you just said fuck which is a worse curse than fag-ass"
    "See?" Cian says. "That's proof you told that Omar kid I called him fag-ass. You just admitted it."
    Keef shrugged. Cian wanted more than any money to punch Keef right in the face for the way he shrugged. "Your friend Paolo who is now my friend invited me to sleep over. He doesn't really like you no more. He said you left him stranded in a lot once."
    "I didn't leave no one stranded. Not ever."
    "You like Paolo but he invited me to his house, not you. He used to be your best friend," Keef says.
    "Nobody is my best friend," Cian says. "There's nobody."
    He shoves Keef, hard and shouts, "Go!" his own shout so loud he hears it echo up the block, far. Across the street, the man in the window looks down, raising his eyebrows, surprised, and it feels like a gift when Keef finally slips off the car and turns without looking back and walks off, his hands in his pockets, turning at the corner, down the hill that goes to Ginsberg's, gone.
*
As Cian sits down on his stoop his elbows hurt but they aren't bleeding. Ma hasn't even called him once yet so supper must not be for a while. He hopes Paolo didn't really invite Keef for supper. Or to the lot. Paolo won't go to the lot, because he's too afraid.
    And he knows he needs to say Hail Marys or else that Con Edison-Omar kid for sure will tell on him, tell who did that to his eye and then he'll get expelled. He could wish to the Egypt-god Bast, maybe, like he did this morning. Wish Con Edison doesn't tell on him. Omar.
    He wants to cry but his face feels so tight it's as if someone put a blanket on him.
    The block is so empty it doesn't feel like his block anymore. He can smell fish cooking from the windows overhead. The man in the window with the screwdriver stares across the street at Cian, shaking his head. Soon Ma will stick her head out. She'll scream, "Get yourself inside and washed, Cian Robert," repeating it so angry he won't want to go. And plus Ma hates Paolo. And Paolo's mother. Gia. No one really likes anyone, which is like knowing every word everyone says is fake-liking.
    It's cold out, now.
    Ma said that once it snowed on Easter. She said the heavy snow knocked down the laundry lines because the rope iced over and the ice weighed so much even some trees collapsed. Clothes fell into the alleys and froze over with ice as if people were wearing them. It was beautiful, Ma said, the shimmering but ridiculous, snow on Easter, and such dangerous ice. She said that freak- storm-stuff happens because the radio said the sun is moving further and further away from the earth. But he remembers that yesterday she'd said it was the opposite, that the sun was getting closer and closer. He could ask her at supper which direction the sun is going, far away from earth or too close to earth? But she might not want to hear questions, just like yesterday she didn't, because she wanted to have the greatest day shopping. And after church today she asked him did he enjoy the Stations of the Cross and he lied and said he did. But that's okay because who cares? It's just words, dogs barking. He rubs pebbles off the bottoms of his thumbs. There's still light out so the sun is out, the sun's always out somewhere. The clouds are blue and it's getting pink further down there where the sky ends and hits buildings too small to see.
    If the sun is moving away from earth, then everything will be ice and cold, soon. Cold as now. But even colder, snow-cold. Because that's what happened to the dinosaurs, Sister Ruth taught once that their dinosaur feet got stuck in the ice and they couldn't move to go get food and starved in the snow. And then for nearly forever it was never sunlight, just a moon every day, in a place quiet like this, a place where nighttime never stopped and everything got extinct.



About the author:
"Omar" is from Tim's widely excerpted novel That Strange Flower the Sun. His book of poems Alphabets of Elsewhere is out this fall. He is working on a second novel and a second book of poems called Something Classical in Three Chords. He lives in New York City. More info at www.timkeane.com.

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