Blood on the Grass

Eli Brown had to come see for himself. “Oh my,” he said. “Oh my.” He surveyed the yellow carnations arranged on the sidewalk around three candles and a cardboard sign that spoke of hope. “That’s where it happened,” he surmised. He pointed to a small patch of wet, sticky grass. “Look,” he said. “There’s some blood there. Look at the flies on the blood.”

This was Tuesday morning. On this spot, 36 hours before, three more innocents had been taken to the slaughter. All were barely teen-agers. They were good kids. “Meek” was how one policeman described them. They had been walking home Halloween night. Two men leaped from behind bushes and sprayed them with bullets from semiautomatic weapons. Who knows why? The youngsters died where they fell, sacks of candy at their sides. Witnesses reported hearing laughter as the gunmen drove away.

And now, in the aftermath, came the curious and the grieving. A neighbor showed a news photographer where each had fallen; he demonstrated how one boy had gripped his head as he staggered into the ivy. A woman knelt and prayed. A grandmother brought two toddlers to see the makeshift memorial. A boy from across the street came by to relight one of the candles. “I am very confused,” was all he said.

Brown, a 50-year-old railroad conductor, had driven from his home about a mile away. As people drifted by, he would point out the blood spot on the grass. “Look out for that blood,” he would say. “There’s fresh blood there. See those flies?”

*

He was not being morbid. Rather, he seemed to be in shock. This had happened close to his community, his home, his life. “It could have been one of my boys,” he said, again and again. “It could have been my Darius or my Devin. One is 10 years old. The other is 12 years old. This could have been them. This could have happened on our street.”

I could understand. Until a few months ago, when obligations of work and family required a move to another part of California, this had been our neighborhood too. The shooting occurred about six blocks from our old house. I had carried my kids in backpacks and pushed them in strollers up and down this very block.

We had liked the neighborhood a lot. It’s a handsome, albeit modest, piece of Pasadena, filled with turn-of-the-century bungalows that, one by one, are being restored. Our neighbors came in all colors, cultures and income levels. The mayor of Pasadena lived on our block, and so did city maintenance workers, movie people and truckers.

In short, the neighborhood had the feel of what is supposed to be Southern California’s future--a bit of everything, all thrown together, and more or less happy about it. At our new place, before we learned of the attack, we had been remembering with some regret Sunday the happy chaos of last Halloween at our old house--kids of every age and costume bounding up our steps all night long with candy sacks.

The neighborhood was called “Bungalow Heaven,” but this seemed a bit of a stretch. It could be rough around the edges. For instance, I once saw a small kid peddle away from the park holding a pistol, and graffiti taggers would work the playgrounds. And the block where the shootings occurred was close to the fringe, where houses are not quite so fine. Still, as Brown said: “It’s not like this is the ghetto or something. This kind of thing you just don’t expect around here.”

*

Now I am aware that people who live in certain parts of Los Angeles must find something morbidly ironic in all this hand-wringing over three more killings. In certain parts of Los Angeles, the blood of innocents has flowed for more than a decade. And the people who live there have pleaded, pretty much in vain, for the whole city to pay attention.

Although racism often is blamed for the callousness, I’m not so sure it isn’t more a function of geography. Let them start killing children for a laugh in your neighborhood and you take notice. Until then, you might pity the faraway victims, might even pay lip service to strategies for stanching the bloodshed, but mainly you thank the Lord that it’s not on your sidewalk.

Of course, this is no one’s idea of how a perfect world should spin. It is simply the case. And in any event, the point is fast becoming moot. More and more, the terrible violence that racks so many corners of this city, this state, this country, no longer seems a question of distance. Rather, it is a matter of time. There is a monster on the loose and--unless we find ways to pounce on it, together, with all the energy and courage and money and cops and wisdom and speed we can muster--it will make its way soon enough to your neighborhood, maybe even your street.

“Look at the blood on the grass,” Eli Brown said. “Look at the flies.”