"Hey, man, I wanna be cool with you. We get'n ready to play football. You wanna play?" "Yeah," I said, and ran inside to change clothes. Instantly, the space right there in front of my house became a football field. Telephone poles in front of each church became end zones. It was tackle on the strips of grass that bordered the street and two-hand-touch in the street itself. When we didn't play football, we roamed the neighborhood, which was filled with fruit trees. There were cherries in the Kellys' yard, apples in the Clemons', peaches at the Lillys', plums at the McCains', and a garden in a field grew watermelons. At the end of the block was the cemetery where we played, collecting snails, frogs and small snakes. It was always Johnny that led the way on the run through the cemetery. We became good friends. But once we reached high school, I saw changes in Johnny. It started with car thefts, then robberies. Next it was drugs. By age forty, Johnny had spent more than half his life in prison. Now, a steel-grey casket held his body. We had always dreamed of becoming sports stars, but I became a police officer and Johnny became a homicide victim. Lying in his casket, he was still a beautiful dark chocolate brown, with his long, straight hair slicked neatly back. He wore a dark suit with a smart-looking striped business tie. Near his body was an old picture of him in younger days, handsome and self-assured; a young lion with a huge afro as his mane, wearing a v-neck sweater. In the background of the picture were a multitude of books on a shelf, as if he were in a study. The hint at intellect, however, was overrun by the power of two words stamped on the picture: "True Soldier." The war couldn't be denied. Flint, Michigan had become one of the nation's most dangerous cities, and black men made up the majority of the casualties. We could never have
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