14. 84

Eighty-four. That seems to be the number that seperates this block from all the others. Or anyone who’s lived a life or died a death that intersected with mine in any way.

I’ve never known a man who’s lived to that age. On this block, the boys all seem to embark upon their paths—never by design—at the age of thirteen, or sometime around then. You know which ones will “make it”—that is to say, get out of this place—and which ones will die here, whether physically, mentally or emotionally. About that age, the few who know how begin to prepare themselves for life after leaving. A few are guided—always by women, it seems.

But most start moving toward the commands of the immediate gratifications this block has to offer. It comes when a boy first handles, however clumsily, his capability of ending someone else’s life—or his own. Something that would’ve been nothing more than a physical scuffle only a few days earlier lands somebody on a table. If he’s conscious, the murmurs of men in gowns melt into the black cones of the victims—and the ones making assesments of, and pronouncements about, his condition.

The ones who return—well, some, anyway—make plans to die or leave. Or, perhaps, they live as if they had the proverbial three score and ten coming to them. Some women live to such an age; so do some men—though none of the young men realize that these survivors to thirteen plus three score and ten found another place, another way.

Thirteen, then three score and ten. No man who’s ever lived on this block is aware of those two stages or lengths of a life span. A few men and a few more women get to live both—but no man, it seems, endures beyond them if he’s from or on this block.

Long after I left, I learned that Judaism has a ceremony that’s like a second bar mitzvah for men who live to be eighty-three: three score and ten years after the age of thirteen. I didn’t know about it growing up: Why would Adam’ve told me? He wasn’t the only Jewish man on this block, although this was also something I didn’t realize until long after I’d left. I wouldn’t’ve cared anyway, since I never planned to practice their religion, or anyone else’s, the moment I had the liberty to make that choice.

In fact, I never expected to live long enough to reach any Biblical or other milestone. I didn’t even think I’d live as long as I have: long enough to reach this moment, the last one I’ll spend with my mother or anyone else on this block: the last time I’ll live as the person who lived among them. The boy among dead and dying men; the boy who grew old. Which is the reason why, I realize now, mother had to keep me at home, in the house, until I left.

Eighty-four still seems very, very old to me, even though I’ve since met men and women who were older. Actually, it’s the age at which one can say for sure that someone has become, or will be, an old man or woman, not simply another who’d withered or fallen, and died. The first person I met who’d accumulated that many years was the owner of a gas station near Vivian’s old town. After we were driving back to her place, she told me how old that man was. I wanted to go, to take one more look at someone eroded but not corroded, a bit stooped but still standing and walking.

Now I know what I would want to know from him. How had he made it? That might seem like the most banal question in the world—unless you’re from this block. Every man who’s survived on this block, however briefly, did so by subduing in any way necessary for victory in a fight with to the death with another man. Of course I include Coach Tigler, Moon and Jack; I include me. In order to live long enough to make the transition I’m making, I not only had to vanquish a man; I had to kill him in order to render him nothing more than a name and a set of dates and other statistics.

At eighty-four, one is no longer a statistic. Or even a name. One becomes, finally, like the seacoast in Vivian’s old town or the mountain in another: one who has the lines of the succession of storms and sunshine that no other has experienced. Nothing anybody builds around those places ever fits quite right, like the clothes on old people. One’s belly shrinks or swells; another’s shoulders sag or neck bends: simply buying a coat in a different size won’t protect them from this year’s torrents. But somehow they survive. Like the man at the gas station. Even though it’s been years since Vivian even spoke to me, let alone since we drove by him, I don’t doubt that he’s still around. But I’m not sure how I could talk to him or whether he’d want to talk to me. Or what I’d do now with his answer to that question.