Heartache and Wind

They tore down an old heartache on Cahal Avenue this morning. The bulldozer worked carefully, gently toppling the deserted two story brick building. But heartache, especially old heartache, is nearly impossible to demolish. Its rubble becomes dust and the dust gets up into the wind and whatever is left is hauled away and buried in memory. The building had been empty since 2007 when a fourteen year old boy wanted cigarettes he could not afford. He wanted to be older and tugging on a Camel, he thought, could make him feel like a man. Like most young boys, there was a lot he did not have. He didn't have a lick of sense or any idea how quickly life can change. He had no understanding of how fragile a future is or how unforgiving the world can be. And he had no care for life, an old woman's or even, as it turns out, his own. Still there were other things he had. Things most boys carry. He had a first job waiting on him, a first kiss too, and that first kind of youthful hope still unsullied by experience and loss. He still had a future and time to grow into it and his mama’s devotion. And he had his daddy’s gun that he found unlocked at home. Classie Wilson looked after her East Nashville neighborhood like it was a garden. She pulled everyday at the weeds of worry and hunger. Before Dollar Trees sprang up like kudzu across the South there was Classie Wilson, offering mercy by the bite to the eyes and bellies of Cahal Avenue. When anyone came in hungry she would listen and nod, smile sadly then offer store credit. A cup of coffee. A baloney sandwich. But a 14 year old boy trying to become older, wanting to ruin his lungs, was not mercy. And so Ms. Wilson shooed the boy away. “Don’t be in such a hurry. Go on home and be 14,” she said. “Being a man’s got a weight in it you don’t understand.” But the boy wasn’t having it. His daddy’s gun, he thought, could make up for too much of not enough. It could put a hole in most anything that got in enough’s way. Even an old woman’s mercy. That day Classie fell and died alone on the first floor market of that small dark house. And the boy, suddenly older, ran away with the most expensive pack of cigarettes the world has ever seen. It cost 35 years at Brushy Mountain. It cost an ocean of his mama's tears and every bit of light he ever would have in his eyes. The neighbors cried and watched the city padlock heartache inside the dark store. Then they took their hunger to Dollar Trees and waited for Time to cover the wound with months and years. The boy was arrested the following day at his middle school where he confessed to wanting to be older and not knowing a blessed thing about life or death. He was found guilty of wanting things he could not afford and sentenced to what he would never become. And now, a grown man, he sits paying off the debt of a 14 year old boy. Paying in time for the smoke that his life has become. On Cahal Avenue a woman stood and watched the bulldozer try to demolish heartache. She talked to a stranger trying to explain why she had come. “My mother was shot dead there,” she said. “My daddy lived another ten years, but he was never right. Stroke that finally took him but I think is was the grief.” She looked away. “My brother died three weeks ago. I’m all that’s left now. I decided it’s time.” "What will you do?" the stranger asked. “I think maybe a coffee shop,” she said. “My mama would have liked that.” There is too much and not enough in America now. Both have found there way down into streets like Cahal Avenue. There is not enough of what this small sophisticated Southern city used to be. There is not enough decency and not enough space. Cranes loom and the city goes vertical because sky is cheaper than dirt. And there are boys with not enough good sense or time to grow or perhaps love. But there is also too much. Too much anger and innocence and bad judgement. And there are far too many guns in the wrong hands. In the right hands a gun is a fine tool. Guns have put more food in bellies than Dollar Tree ever will. But it’s getting harder to see which hands are right. And sometimes even right hands go wrong. Here in Nashville an unstable young woman bought some guns and broke a city’s heart. First responders, drilled to expect a war on the most innocent among us, ended the threat. The city padlocked the school doors trying to keep heartache from spreading, but too late, it was already in the wind. You can see it in most eyes here, if you know how to look. This week, the last responders, our lawmakers, once again tried to draw the border between right and responsibility. And once again they told us there is nothing to be done. They hand out specious rationales, a different kind of baloney, to those hungry for change. And so before long there will be another school massacre and another boy with too much of not enough. And then another and another. Up and down East Nashville streets like Cahal Avenue the spacious past is being torn down. The future feels smaller now. And like all those new houses, the future is always bright and shining and crowded. It tries, like a bulldozer, day after day to demolish old heartbreak. But heartbreak is hard to bury. Its rubble becomes dust. The dust gets up into the wind. And just keeps circling around us all. WLM