1st Piece Written For, and Performed at Beat Night 8-21-14 (Those Kids)

Those Kids

Those Kids

who,

when waiting

for the school bus

just past dawn,

and having no thought

for those of us still sleeping

in the rest of the complex,

were loud.

As one of their grandmothers put it

“Talking like everything they say

is the most important thing anyone ever said.”

The boys would brag about stupid things

they’d done,

and the girls would call the boys out

telling them

they were liars

or stupid.

Because Those Kids

were kids, and kids do that.

My ex taught art in the complex

and Those Kids loved her classes,

and her,

and called her Miss Heather,

which made her feel weird.

Neo Nazis, both kids

and parents,

threatened to attack

Those Kids

after school one appointed day,

in the name of

white pride.

Those kids mostly stayed home that day.

The attack never came.

But I saw,

one day soon after,

on the dirt road behind the complex,

a young white guy,

sitting in an old car,

Diligently and nervously

at work on something in his lap.

And the next day I found

a pipebomb that had failed to go off.

I called the police.

The officer who arrived

confirmed pipebomb,

and said to me

with a knowing tilt of the head

(that I’d begun to take to mean ‘between us whites’)

“Those Kids probably did it.”

I tried to say something to the effect that,

had any of those kids done it,

we’d have heard about it

from them

while they waited for the bus.

I mentioned the white guy in the old car.

“Nah. It was those kids.”

It reminded me of the night

We were robbed

while out at the doctor,

Returning to find

the security chain on the door,

a window open,

and my guitar gone.

The detectives got the facts,

and one said with a conspiratorial

tone

“It was one of Those Kids.”

I wanted to know which one he thought it was,

because,

when Those Kids heard Miss Heather had been robbed,

They all showed up,

surrounded our apartment,

a couple of boys with baseball bats,

Just in case the thief was still inside.

So I wanted to know

who

in particular

the detective

suspected.

He could only repeat
“It was one of Those Kids.”

Weeks later

the thief was caught, in another town,

by another Police Department.

I saw pictures of him.

Though

redfaced,

he was white as me.

The detective returned my guitar,

saying nothing else

about

Those Kids.

Chris Walters,

August 7, 2014