November 5, 2023 • 39 mins
In this episode of the Cool Zone Media Book Club, Margaret Killjoy reads “Babang Luksa,” a short story by author Nicasio Andres Reed, to Mia.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Aol Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Book club book club book club. That's the new jingle. Hey,
I figure if I set up a bit where I
use a new jingle every single time I introduced the episode,
then I'll regret it in probably about a month. But
this is cool Zone Media book Club, which is a
(00:25):
book club run by cool Zone Media. I'm your host,
Markaret Kiljoy and with me today as my guest is
Mi a long Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hello, I am booking, I am clubbing, I am pounding
the tables going book club.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
This is an exciting moment.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, well, this is a book club kind of in
some ways it'll have we're still it'll develop as it goes.
But right now it's a story club where I read
you a story. I'm going to read me a story,
and Mia, by proxy is you the listener.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
And I feel so powerful.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I know you represent everyone. Wow, that's wild. That's a
I think that makes you more powerful than most elected officials.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I have become god. Oh no, someone must kill me now.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Okay, someone has actually come and killed Mia, so I'm
gonna have to do most of the rest of this
on my own. That was a joke, MIAs.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Still yeah, no, I'm not dead yet.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Unless you're listening to this like seventy years in the future,
in which case and we're just talking to you from
this is okay, whatever, Okay, I'm gonna read a fucking story.
And this is the first week that we are reading
a story that, you know, we started the book club
by me reading a novella of mine called The Lama
Slaughter or The Lion, and then I've been collecting stories
(01:53):
from different authors that relate to the themes of the
show It could Happen Here, that talk about people working
together or the world changing due to climate and other crises.
And I'm really excited about the story that I'm gonna
read today because I think it I think it kind
of helps set the tone for a what a slow apocalypse,
(02:17):
like what we're dealing with is really all about. And
I think we're all living through times where we're gonna
have to start blurring the lines of what is science
fiction and what is reality? You know.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
This this story is by Nicassio Andres red and it's
called Lebong Lucsa. Salt had crept in while he was away,
and now the freshwater wetlands of Gino's childhood are a marsh,
brackish and fickle. There is the soccer field where he'd
stained his knees. It had been a low, dry rise
(02:50):
of earth bracketed by mud and cord grass, and today
is impassable, a thicket of cattails and algae, skinned water,
a humming choir of insects. And here the Jiffy lube
where Gino got his first job, and a stand of
trees outside it where Gino smoked his first cigarettes. A
line of fat old maples that in the summer had
(03:11):
dropped their seeds in spinning helicopter wings by the whirling hundreds,
and in the autumn had lit up like match heads,
screaming into the sky first week of June. Now and
they're not doing much of anything, their branches almost bare, bark,
corpse gray from drinking salt water. Around the corner to
Mifflin Street, past the strip bones of the gas station,
(03:31):
up two blocks to the high tide line of the
sand bagged steps of the shop, and go the empty
lot opposite repurposed into a dock for the neighborhood fleet.
Half a dozen rowboats with their oars padlocked, a thwart
one eight seater bow rider with yellowing upholstery, one jet
ski and as they come into dock the roofed pontoon
that Gino caught a ride on, a habitat for humanity
(03:54):
donation forty Benji, the helmsman, get out of here, you know,
sucking his teeth. We got a problem, naw man nah.
Gino digs out his wallet.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Cash.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, I figured y'all get a lot of outages. Benji
counts through the ones and fives more power outages than power.
We on generators, if we on shit, Benji shakes his head.
Is what it is? You need directions? I'm good, Thanks,
I grew up around here. The boardwalk from the boats
(04:28):
to dry asphalt is made of wooden shipping pallets, new
ones stacked on top of old when they've started to
molder as the mud takes them. Gino slings his bag
over his shoulder and walks across with his eyes on
his feet, distrustful of the dark patches where it looks rotted.
Through the street is a relief, even with sedge and
woolgrass cutting up through the cracks in the pavement. For
(04:49):
the first few yards past the water line, the distance
from the stop and go to his childhood home is
the length of time it took to eat a bag
of spicy pork skins and throw the evidence in a
neighbor's garbage can, so his mom wouldn't know he'd been
ruining his dinner, but he'd measured it in a teenage
boy's appetite. And the walk seemed quicker now. The street's narrower,
(05:10):
the telephone poles shorter, the sky closer, everything more squat,
and the gritty smell of the marsh clinging on even
two blocks up the street. Still, it's late in the
afternoon and the sun on the clouds is starting to blush.
So folks are setting themselves up on front stoops and
threes and sixes, with cigarettes and beer bottles and babies
(05:31):
on bouncing knees, their friendly racket sounding to Gino something
like a first language, so familiar, unheard for years. He
gets a couple nods and throws them back, but nobody
knows him on sight. He turns the corner on South
Bosnel Street. The sidewalk is broken in all the same
spots he didn't know he knew until he sees them again,
(05:52):
and then he knows every fissure and crack, every dog
pole mortalized in wet cement. No parked cars, a lot
more boarded updoors and windows than there used to be,
although there had always been some. There were never any
front yards in the neighborhood, all the basement windows looking
directly out onto the sidewalk. Now every house on the
road that still looks occupied as a rain barrel out front,
(06:14):
and a couple have one of those larger galvanized metal
cisterns that look like fat, little grain silos. There's a
line of grass growing right down the middle of the
street s edge, probably a bad sign on what used
to be high ground. And then inevitably there is number
twenty seventeen. He's been gone almost twenty years, and it
(06:36):
looks not the same, but like a faded photograph of itself.
Gino doesn't know if it's looked like that for a while,
or if it happened all at once. If a year
ago when his father died the color drained from the
house's facade, he could still turn around. It's not that
he hasn't thought about his father's death or how it
(06:57):
would be to come home and see the place without him,
but he's been able to think about it from a
distance know it without seeing it, and that's worked for
him overall. But from the bottom of the steps and
through the screen door, there's his mother's voice telling someone
to bring out the good plates, the ones for company,
so much clearer than her voice over the phone, telling
(07:17):
him she'd understand if he couldn't make the trip, like
she was forgiving him for disappointing her even before he
did it. Gino wants very much to be someone who
doesn't need to be forgiven, so up the stairs he goes.
Gino was five years old when the bulge of the
schoolkil river met the fat and trickle of cobs creaked
to the east, and together they fingered their way west
through parkways and back yards to touch the gutted Delaware.
(07:41):
It was then declared that everything south of the Roosevelt
Expressway was officially part of the Greater Chesapeake Floodplain. The
majority of Philadelphia was under at least six inches of water,
so the entirety of it was legally classified it as inundated.
The news his folks, every adult he knew, kept track
of the losses. The city took bids on where to
(08:02):
relocate the Liberty Bell and crowd funded the removal and
transport of the arch at the foot of Chinatown, the
neighborhood threw up barriers around the Pentecostal church on Snyder
Avenue and brought up in replanted mangroves from nurseries on
the Jersey Shore. They were losing more ground than they saved, though,
for as long as he could remember. When he was eight,
(08:23):
the block half a mile away where his mom grew
up was evacuated, and his Grandpap moved in with them.
Slept on the couch. His sharp pressed slacks and red
striped shirts displaced Gino's clothes in the closet. His basketball
games and bachi club pushed Gino out of the afternoons
he'd spent with his dad, and his voice, old Philly
(08:44):
short vowels running up into each other, filtered into every
room and out the front door onto the stoop every day,
adding to the to his eulogy for the city. Grief
was the background static of Gino's childhood, every one else's
grief for a place he'd never been. Gino's family was
in West Pasiunk, a little too distant from the heart
(09:04):
of old Italian Philadelphia to benefit from the touristing nostalgia
and too black and brown for their one sob story,
among many to generate charitable donations, like for the black
folks down in king Sessing Up in Kensington. The official
plan was to leave it to rod in the water,
but the less than a mile square from twentieth Street
to twenty sixth sat on a rise known only to
(09:26):
the kids who'd biked it, pushing and sweating up one
way and gliding legs storked out down the other, while
the rest of the neighborhood went to algae and rot.
Gino's old block and the couple dozen around it became
an island in the marsh. It was almost lucky a
mile in any direction. The government offered to buy homeowners
out of their property for less than a quarter of
(09:47):
how much it would cost them to start over somewhere
further inland. Most people took it because, in the choice
between an insultingly low offer and nothing at all, they
figured it was better not to wait around for the
insulting offer to expire. Up in the neighborhood, basements flooded,
tap water went funny, electricity flickered and failed, but no
(10:08):
buyout offers came and even as everything else changed, the
old rule still held true. If you didn't get out
of the neighborhood by the time you were eighteen, then
chances were you were never getting out. Gino left when
he was eighteen. Gino's older brother, Stevie, got married at eighteen.
Stevie's in his forties now and on the couch this morning,
(10:31):
his knees as high as his chest because his spot
on the far corner has sagged under the years he's
spent there. There's a stack of dishes and cutlery on
the coffee table in front of him. He's the ghost
of their dad, heavy brows, a twice broken nose, an
ancient thick sweater despite the heat, and a smile that'll
never let you in on the joke. More hymn than
(10:53):
their mom, some more Filipino than Italian, and Gino never
pegged as either remembers again to resent him for it. Jesus,
you actually showed, Stevie says to him. There's a pause
where Gino's supposed to say something biting, but he doesn't
rise to it. Stevie shrugs. He got about a minute
to turn around and leave before the rest notice you're here,
(11:16):
Eugenio Stevie's husband frozen halfway down the stairs. Got some
fucking nerves showing up here. Kevin Gino says he hasn't
set his bag down yet. You look good, change your hair,
don't tell me how I fucking look you. Geno his
name Ricochet, is down the hall and around the kitchen,
then back out into the living room, carried on the
(11:38):
high voices of his nieces, who make him hug them.
One of them takes his bag upstairs, whispering something strident
to her dad on the way. Jasmine. Geno thinks, the
one with freckles is Jasmine. The other one is Roxy,
who's telling him about what they're making in the kitchen,
what they had to substitute in the ponset, what they
grew in the community garden. Cousins, assorted children, neighborhood aunties,
(12:01):
and their husband cycle into the room with dry kisses
and slaps on the shoulder, telling him he hasn't changed
at all, telling him he's gained weight. Kevin slips behind
them all and into the kitchen, and Gino tells everyone
that he needs to go volunteer to help out his mom.
Before word spreads that he rolled up to her house,
expecting to stand around being waited on. He steps heavy
(12:22):
down the short hall back to the kitchen, less to
give Kevin and his mom warning he's coming, and more
to spare himself whatever they were saying about him, which
might have been a sound strategy in another family. Don't know,
I bothered, Kevin is saying, from less of a distance.
Now Gino can see white in his hair, and that
pinched line between his brow never quite disappears. Kevin spots
(12:46):
Gino in the doorway and turns back to tell his
mother in law, it's a cruel thing to do to you, Francesca.
God knows he's just going to turn around and leave tomorrow.
His mom, her small hands shining with oil inflecked with
carrot skins, turns and sees him well. She says, will
you head out tomorrow? Hey ma? Nah, No, I took
(13:08):
the week off. Takes about a day to get back, though,
took a day to get here, so I can stay
a couple days. She looks him up and down, then
away just as quickly and goes back to chopping a lemon.
He adds, right now there's a break between the last
project and the shoreline thing in Maine. I don't know
if you've heard about it real. Glad you could squeeze
(13:28):
us into your busy schedule, Kevin says, about a year
late for the funeral, but it's the thought that counts right.
He leaves a heaping bowl of rice under one arm
and a pan of lasagna under the other. For a
long minute, Gino just watches his mother work, reaching for
this and that, washing her hands. There's less of her
in reality than there had been in his imagination. She
(13:51):
tells him the garlic bread is ready, and he falls
into the routine of ducking outside to turn off the gas,
grabbing the wire basket on top of the fridge, a
cloth from the drawer on the left, and plucking the
steaming slices from the oven pan, folding them under the cloth.
With the buttery smell of a thousand ancient dinners. Around
the kitchen table. There's a lot of chatter coming from
(14:11):
the front room, and someone comes in and out of
the back door to bring in the folding chairs that
have been rusting out there since before Gino was born.
Gino hovers in the middle of the kitchen. He's spent
an inordinate amount of time over the past weeks thinking
about what he'd say to her. Even in his imagination,
he never quite got it right. Finally, he asks, is
(14:33):
there anything else to do? His mom waves a hand
at him without turning around. Take those out there, okay,
and then he tries, I'm sorry, ma for what he's
wiping down the counter now piling pans and ladles in
the sink. Or Gino takes a couple breaths. He's feeling
a little sick, which isn't the same as feeling sorry,
(14:54):
but it is close enough that he's sure it is
what he should say. I should have been here last year.
His mom is brisk, business like with her hands. She
shakes her head. You were gone a long time before
that you knew you weren't coming back, she says it, plainly,
without accusation, right, Gino says okay. He carries the basket
(15:33):
of bread into the front room. Out front, there are
people everywhere on mismatched chairs, kids cross legged on the floor,
and not enough plates for everyone. A neighbor comes in
the door with a package of paper plates to make
up the difference. Stevie gestures Geno over to a spot
he's saved on the couch, and their mom comes in
and settles herself into the big, cracked leather armchair that
(15:53):
used to be their dad's. There's a moment where everyone pauses,
leaning over their plates. The youngest kid in the room
asks if they can eat now, and Uncle Lenny turns
to Gino's mom and says, hold up, Francesca, you want
to say something. She says yes and puts her plate
down on her lap. She'd insisted on taking one of
the paper plates. She runs a quick hand over the
(16:14):
arm of the chair. It's strange to see her in it.
It's strange to see her. I hear it's not always
easy to get here across the water these days, and
it's nice to see you. Who did? She nods at
some folks eu Gino didn't know had moved away. The
house is always better with a whole lot of people
in it, even if it's a little crowded. Nato and
I moved in here him a few months before Stevie
(16:35):
was born, all the way across town for an extra bedroom.
When we had Eugenio and he wanted his own room.
Nato told him, you can make a down payment, then
you get your own room. There's some laughter in Gino's direction.
His mom turns to her own brother and Lenny, you
know our dad, God rest him. He didn't like me
taking up with Nato, didn't like us moving away from
(16:55):
the old neighborhood. And we had some conversations about all that.
Lenny chuckles, incredulous that what you want to call it?
All right, she says, we had some loud conversations about
all that, But then give it ten twenty years and
him and Nato were best goddamn friends, getting up to
all sorts of trouble together here in this house. When
(17:16):
Dad passed, it was a mess, you know what I mean.
I wasn't ready for that. She looks at Gino for
a moment, then at Stevie and your father. He held
me up and gave me ways to say goodbye. We
did this for my dad the year after. And if
anyone said it was a little strange to have a
babang lusa for some old Italian from South Philly, then
(17:36):
they had to have a loud conversation with me. She
clutches a hand on Lenny's knee. This year, us of
all held me up, So let's eat and say goodbye
to Nato. Kevin and a cousin who Gino couldn't place
take charge of dishing out food. There's a massive salad
that he hadn't noticed before, weighed down by a mount
of black olives and grated parmesan. The lasagna is meatless,
(17:59):
but the pansup beyond his chicken and liver. And there's
something that smells like a dobo, even if it doesn't
look like it. Jasmine and Roxy start a folk war
over the best looking corner slice of lasagna, which Kevin
settles by taking it for himself. Gino lets mostly everyone
be served before him while he tries to unclench his
hands and his jaw from his left. Lenny shovels all
(18:20):
the olives from his own plate onto Gino's an old
joke he'd forgotten they shared. Good to have you around here,
Lenny says. Can't get anyone else to take those off
your hands, not all of them at once. I got
to do two here, three, there, hit five, six plates.
It's a logistical nightmare. That's rough man. Luckily I'm a
logistics guy. Oh yeah, you uh still with the uh?
(18:42):
What's the thing? Army Corps of Engineers yeah, Gino catches
Lenny's searching Look almost ten years now, he offers. Roxy
breaks off talking to the neighbor kids and shoots Stephen, accusing, Look,
Uncle Gino's in the army. No, Gino answers for her cors.
Mostly see, we do infrastructure projects, building stuff. They did
(19:03):
the levees downtown. You worked on that, Roxy lights up.
The levees would have been big news in the city
when she was a kid. They're half the reason their
little island is still above water. No, Kevin says, he
was long gone, but the mail still came. Then he
sent you postcards from all his little projects. When was
the levee? What year was that? Hmm? Roxy looks uncomfortable,
(19:26):
but Jasmine puts in that she was in sixth grade, right,
big year. You were in that inner city youth boxing thing, Jess.
She made the quarter finals. Where were you that time?
Eugenio Gino isn't sure what year Jasmine was in the
sixth grade or exactly how old she is now, but
he can see Kevin waiting for him to ask. Connecticut.
(19:46):
He says, coastal restoration. Oh yeah, how'd that work out
for Connecticut? Come on, keV, says Stevie. Gino says, not bad.
Last I heard, I've seen worse. Yeah, me too, Lenny says,
and jerks his chin at the front window. Everyone laughs.
Gino nods, which is close enough to laughing. Another neighbor,
(20:09):
a big guy whose name Gino can't come up with,
asks use guy's got work planned down here, and the
woman next to him, his wife maybe, says oh, they
should put up boardwalks, and somebody else we've been saying
there's plenty of high enough ground for boardwalks to connect
up to downtown. They gonna do that, Gino, They don't
really tell me that kind of thing. I just keep
(20:31):
the truck and everything running. I'm a you know what
I mean, A glorified mechanic. He trails off, and his
brother laughs. Please. Stevie says, they're not gonna do shit.
I mean, sorry, but you're not right. The levee was
what eight years back and nothing since that they gave up. Francesca,
who had been quiet eating, says they did, but that's okay.
(20:55):
Everyone is allowed to give up when they got a
from the tension in the room. A popular statement, but
nobody argues her on it. After a second someone brings
up the NBA finals and how piss Nato would have
been that the Raptors made it this far again, and
then his general grudge against Canadian teams in the NBA,
and then his earnest incompetence on the court himself as
(21:17):
a young man. And then a picture is brought out
of a shoe box, and it's Gino, perhaps three years old,
with a bowl cut and a look of childish ecstasy
up on his father's shoulders, his father's hands holding up
Gino's chubby, childlike legs, Gino's arms up at the end
of an arc, a basketball in the air, suspended in
the moment before it fell short of the net. Gino
(21:39):
ducks out to sit on the front stoop and finds
a pack of Stevie's cigarettes where he's always left them,
in the nook of the broken corner of the top step.
He lights one just as the screen door creaks open
and shut, and his brother sucks his teeth at him
and says a asshole. Gino hands him the one he's
lit and takes another for himself. They settle into their
(21:59):
old arranged Gino facing the street on the middle step,
Stevie behind him, leaning back against the railing between the
two of them, A view of the narrow street and
the intersection nearby, and all of the folks who would
wander over to shoot the shit. Nobody wandering today, Just
the distant figures of other stoop loiterers at another house.
(22:19):
A familiar view, but uncanny. It's so quiet around here,
Gino says, it's weird. It's been this quiet for hell years.
You just weren't around to notice. Gino grimaces, shakes his head.
I'm not going to keep apologizing for living my own life.
Didn't ask you to. I'm just saying right, sorry, shouldn't
(22:43):
put words in your mouth. Stevie never won to let
discomfort sit for long. Ask Gina how work is and
you've still seeing that girl, Tina Trisha Tanya says Gino.
We call it quits. It's the job. I'm somewhere for
six eight months, than a couple weeks of nothing, being
a bum on her couch, then some other place, do
(23:04):
it all over again. I like the work, get a project,
see it through, tie it up. I like that, But
I think she got sick of the whole thing. Dolan says, man,
I'm good, so who's couch you bumming on between projects? Now?
Stevie asks, you know, shrugs, just still around. Really, HQ
has some ten housing, so I'm there mostly, bro Hold up?
(23:28):
Are you homeless right now? Gino shoves back against Stevie's knee.
Fuck off, man, I just I don't need a place
as all? All right, all right. I was going to
say he could crash here, but being honest, I think
I'd have a heart attack if you said yes, and
Kevin would fucking kill you or me. Stevie grunts an agreement.
(23:48):
You wouldn't stand a chance. He's a bitter too. Gino sputters,
Come on, man, I don't even know that shit. He hesitates,
then says, you guys don't have to stay here either,
you know, Gino just saying I know what it's like
to feel trapped here, but you're not. You don't have
to stick around and watch it all sink. You know
(24:09):
I can help. We can pack up Ma, and Stevie
cuts him off. I'm the fuck on, man. You think
Ma's leaving this house? You want to pry her out
of here with a crowbar? You're gonna break her heart
with that, And who's gonna take care of her, then
you I could help you get set up somewhere. Get
the fuck out of here with that. Come on, I'm
(24:30):
just saying, I know what you're saying, but be real, Okay,
Ma's not going anywhere, and if Kevin and I leave,
there's no one to be with Ma. You're not dropping
everything and coming back. So yeah, you're not trapped because
I am. And that's not on you. I'm glad you're
out there doing your thing. You're my little brother, you know.
And you're a smart kid, Stevie. I'm thirty six. See,
(24:52):
you can count real high and everything. Stevie laughs at
his own joke. That loud on self conscious snorting that
always makes Gino smile. Jesus listen to us like we're
in therapy or some shit. I am, actually, Gino offers,
for real. Yeah, Stevie nudges Gino's back with his foot.
So he goes on work, has these folks on staff,
(25:15):
and it's free, so I figured it might as well,
you know what I mean. Huh, nice of them. I
guess what do you us talk about? Geno Crane's neck
around to glare at him. What I've never been to
therapy before I'm curious. Come on, it's personal, all right, fine,
don't tell me anything. It's like, aa, you know, it's confidential.
(25:35):
How much confidential shit could you even have? Oh? Come on,
screw you, Stevie, He laughs again, kidding, I'm kidding. Gino
finishes his cigarette and rummages in the pack for another,
offers Stevie one, then lights them both. Overhead, the sun
is behind gray clouds, and some sort of hawk or
kite is making high, irregular circles. He's cool the therapist
(25:58):
they got. Gino says he thought coming here for this
was a good idea. He's kind of a hard ass, though,
you know, calls me on my bullshit. That's a big job.
You're full of bullshit. Hilarious, I know, right. Stevie taps
a little song on the top step of his fingertips.
Inside the house, Roxy and Kevin are talking fast, back
(26:19):
and forth, loud and happy enough. So go on, Stevie says,
what kind of bullshit? Gino sighs. He gestures with his
chin back at the front door. This kind mostly for
a session we had. He gave it fifteen minutes before
asking why I kept getting angry at myself for having feelings.
Oh fuck yeah, I almost walked out, and he was like,
(26:41):
see right there, there it is again. He shakes his
head smiles. Bastard, you still do that, though, Stevie says,
with all the self assurance of someone who changed his stipers,
I do. But I notice it now, which he says
is good. Stevie blows smoke out of the corner of
his mouth and they watch the hawk drop out of
(27:01):
sight somewhere over the marsh. Is it good?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Nah?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It sucks now I get angry about being angry. Stevie
laughed so hard that both his daughters and his husband
bang out through the front door to see what they're missing,
the three of them fitting themselves into Geno and Stevie's
stoop arrangement and a new configuration that makes him feel
crowded but at least not crowded out. The kids surround
him on the steps, long teenage limbs getting everywhere. Kevin
(27:28):
even offers him a bite of a slice of pie
he carried out with him and barely makes a face
when Gino uses this fork. Gino walks with his mom
(27:51):
to his dad's grave about a five minute trip up
the street. It was Kevin who pointedly heard at his family,
and everyone else left at the house to clean things
up and follow a long afterwards. So Gino and his
mom are alone together for the time being, in the
dim late afternoon, walking through sticky air and the droning
noise of a neighbor's household generator. It's slow going, not
(28:13):
because of any infirmary on Francesca's part, but because she
walks slowly and always has an infuriating trait in a
city person. Finally at home, now that this part of
the city has been cut off, made circumstantially provincial. Gino
doesn't mind meandering, but he's not used to the sound
of his mother not talking. Stevie's girls look all grown up,
(28:36):
he says. She nods. She puts her hand on his
arm and folds it so that her hand is tucked
into the crook of his elbow, and they walk like that,
a dignified little procession. He's a good father. She says,
you're still not seeing anyone, Nah, would you tell me
if you were, Gino put docs his head. Probably they
(28:58):
come to the graveyard. Steevev had written to Geno about
the place and sent some pictures, but it's more odd
more abrupt to see it in person. What used to
be a messy six way intersection in the middle of
the neighborhood had become just so much useless space. When
the seasonal flooding stopped being seasonal and residents were cut
off from the closest gas station, now half an hour away,
(29:18):
over the water, folks brought out the sledgehammers and tore
it down to the dirt. The original plan had been
to till the soil and put in vegetable crops before
they started planting. Someone on twenty third Street died, and
all at once the residents of the Newborn Island realized
that they didn't know what to do if they're dead.
Cemeteries in South Philly had been exhumed and relocated long ago,
(29:41):
well before most of the living started to leave. If
the bereaved were so inclined and could afford it, they'd
ship their dead up to a plot in the northwest
of the city, or even to the suburbs. Churches and
mosques and synagogues pitched in, but most people, if their
faith allowed, opted for cremation. The shore had been in
flux their whole lives, and there was no assurance their
(30:03):
kids wouldn't have to dig up Grampa and ship his
bones even further inland a couple decades down the line.
Unfortunately for the remains of west passiunc However, when the
water rose around them, no crematoriums remained on dry land,
so they had the body of a young woman whose
heart gave out and a fresh field of open dirt.
They planted her in it, and then the next death,
(30:27):
and the next one. By the time Gino's dad was
buried here yet plenty of company. The graveyard has the
long triangular shape of the old intersection, enclosed by a
chain link fence to keep out dogs and raccoons. The
grass is clipped short, the regular sort of lawn grass,
instead of the mess of marsh grasses that have crept
(30:47):
in everywhere else. White forget me nots are dotted in
among the plots, and one corner of the yard is
taken up by a huge mess of purple aster. The
markers are pale wood names and dates burned into them
in a dark, neat script. Gino's mom leads him to
his dad's plot, which is catching some late light. Gino
(31:08):
knows his father is dead. He's known it for a year,
but seeing a grave with his father's name on it
feels like coming down off a high wire. Sickening and sudden.
He sits down in the grass, and after wiping some
dust and grit off the marker, his mom sits down
next to him. You should come visit him in the morning, too,
she says. A lot of bees then, and bluebirds. I
(31:32):
almost move that feeter over here, that one he put
out by the back door, But then they wouldn't come
to the house so much. They come here already anyhow.
Gino doesn't trust himself to speak yet. He hadn't known
it would feel like this. He had hoped to avoid
feeling like this indefinitely, the finality of it, and the
premonition that she would be gone soon enough too, and
(31:54):
even Stevie one day, and that this gentle garden of
the dead would flood with salt water and he wouldn't
get another chance to be brave enough to stick around.
He thought he'd buried them for himself already by leaving,
by not watching it happen. But they're still here, and
all he'd done was lose time that he'll never recover,
and let Stevie dig their dad's grave, all on his own.
(32:17):
Gino's squeezing his hands, one in the other, and his
mom rests hers on top of them. A question. He
shakes his head convulsively. Is fine, sorry, I'm fine, sorry,
I'm sorry. All right, she says. She squeezes his hand,
rubs his back. All right, you go on. He knows
(32:39):
what Stevie said, but he's got to ask. It's clawing
at him. You and all of them could come back
with me, Gino says, I can take some more time
off and find a place. Doesn't have to be that far.
There's a whole lot of Pennsylvania. We can get you
out of here. It's time to get out of here,
all of us. She looks at him like he just
(33:00):
spat in her face. Your brother can make his own decisions.
And you, baby boy, I'm happy to see your face.
But you can go any time. She nods at the grave.
But I'm not about to leave him, don't you ask
me to. I'm sorry, ma for leaving, for coming back
for the moment a few days from now, when he'll
leave again. That's all right, it's all right to have
(33:23):
things you're sorry for. Your dad lived a good, long life,
and he left, still sorry for all sorts of things.
You go on, be sorry, that's okay. A trio of
swallows have landed on the fence and are calling their
clear tittering trills into the dusk. Insects are flitting around,
and the birds take turn launching themselves from the fence,
(33:45):
diving in wild arcs, then coming back to rest, the
other two waiting chirrup, laughing, the insects droning on, oblivious
to the game that's been made of their fate. I
couldn't watch, Gino says, leaning into his mom's hand on
his back. I couldn't watch it happen dad, the neighborhood.
Her hands stills, Then she passed him briskly and stands. Stevie,
(34:09):
Kevin and the girls are coming through the gate into
the yard, chattering like birds. Well, anytime you want to
see us, we'll be here, his mom says, whether you're
watching or not, that's the story.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Right before he died, Mike Davis gave this interview where
he was talking about one of the sort of like
giant struggles that people do in America, and the thing
he was talking about was the story of people sort
of fighting tenaciously to stay in their home, and something
I've been thinking about a lot more. I mean not
just from you know, it's people losing this fight, and
(34:47):
this has been you know, this is in essence, this
is the story of America, right, is the story of
people fighting to stay in the place they love him losing.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, And you know, each successive cycle of people gets
driven further and further and further and further until you know,
the places they love are gone and there's nothing of them,
well little of them left, And you know, I think,
I don't know, it's something I think I like about
this story a lot is like there's you get that,
and you also get this sense that sort of you know,
(35:17):
is the apocalypse is you know, it's slow, it happens
through yeah. Yeah, but also that you know, like this
isn't the first time this has happened. Yeah, and it's
you know and like yeah, like the sort of horror
of it, right is like it will it will keep
happening and people will live.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
On and it will sort of just keep rolling.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah. No, I I read this story and I kind
of like there's a bunch of other stories that I'm
also really excited about to shine with everyone, but I
like really wanted this one to be first, because I
I really wanted to talk about the way that the
apocalypse is not just slow but like a reflection of
(36:06):
the way that everything changes and everything ends, and like,
you know, and I'm really like interested in the idea of,
you know, the son who moves away, who like the
family accepts it, but it's kind of going to give
him shit forever for it. And like, yeah, I don't know.
I think it's just a really human thing and I
(36:28):
think it helps like because also, like, Okay, this hasn't
happened to Philly yet, right, This has happened already many
places in the world, and will happen many places more
places in the world. Like that is an inevitability at
this point, right, and just like we need to start
grappling with that, you know. Okay, So I'm gonna I'm
(36:48):
gonna read his bio the author's bio. Nicassio andras Read
is a writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared
in venues such as Strange Horizons, Light Speed on Canny Magazine,
and Shimmer. A Philadelphia resident until age nine, he now
lives in Tagateay in the Philippines with four dogs, some
family and the occasional uninvited monitor lizard. He's the poetry
(37:09):
editor at the dead Lands and is working on a
novel about the history of Filipino migrant laborers in Alaska.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
And then.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I asked, I basically asked him, since he's not on
here to plug things people already know. Miya Wong, you're
the host of the podcast whose feeds are probably in
statistically and if not go listening could happen here. But
I asked, I asked Nico, and he said and for
an additional plug, I don't have any recent pubs, and
(37:39):
I feel slightly bad about Wetlands being the de facto
bad guy in the story, So I'd love to shout
out the Society for the Conservation of Philippine Wetlands, which
is at Wetlands p. The Philippines is one of the
most dangerous places in the world for environmental activists and
land defenders, who are often red tagged, that is, publicly
labeled as members or supporters of the armed communist insurgency.
(38:00):
For many years now, it's been open season on red
tagged individuals, State forces and private corporate armed groups alike
kill them with impunity, almost always in the name of
land grabbing. At the same time, we are one of
the countries facing early and extreme effects of climate change
and the damage that these land grabbing entities due to
our natural resources is making things worse fast. A healthy, diverse,
(38:23):
resilient wetland barrier to typhoons is one of the most
vital things for us, for us to rebuild and protect.
So that is the plug for this episode and we
will catch you next week on the cool Zone Media
book Club.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Copy
Aol Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Book club book club book club. That's the new jingle. Hey,
I figure if I set up a bit where I
use a new jingle every single time I introduced the episode,
then I'll regret it in probably about a month. But
this is cool Zone Media book Club, which is a
(00:25):
book club run by cool Zone Media. I'm your host,
Markaret Kiljoy and with me today as my guest is
Mi a long Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hello, I am booking, I am clubbing, I am pounding
the tables going book club.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
This is an exciting moment.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, well, this is a book club kind of in
some ways it'll have we're still it'll develop as it goes.
But right now it's a story club where I read
you a story. I'm going to read me a story,
and Mia, by proxy is you the listener.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
And I feel so powerful.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I know you represent everyone. Wow, that's wild. That's a
I think that makes you more powerful than most elected officials.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
I have become god. Oh no, someone must kill me now.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Okay, someone has actually come and killed Mia, so I'm
gonna have to do most of the rest of this
on my own. That was a joke, MIAs.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Still yeah, no, I'm not dead yet.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Unless you're listening to this like seventy years in the future,
in which case and we're just talking to you from
this is okay, whatever, Okay, I'm gonna read a fucking story.
And this is the first week that we are reading
a story that, you know, we started the book club
by me reading a novella of mine called The Lama
Slaughter or The Lion, and then I've been collecting stories
(01:53):
from different authors that relate to the themes of the
show It could Happen Here, that talk about people working
together or the world changing due to climate and other crises.
And I'm really excited about the story that I'm gonna
read today because I think it I think it kind
of helps set the tone for a what a slow apocalypse,
(02:17):
like what we're dealing with is really all about. And
I think we're all living through times where we're gonna
have to start blurring the lines of what is science
fiction and what is reality? You know.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
This this story is by Nicassio Andres red and it's
called Lebong Lucsa. Salt had crept in while he was away,
and now the freshwater wetlands of Gino's childhood are a marsh,
brackish and fickle. There is the soccer field where he'd
stained his knees. It had been a low, dry rise
(02:50):
of earth bracketed by mud and cord grass, and today
is impassable, a thicket of cattails and algae, skinned water,
a humming choir of insects. And here the Jiffy lube
where Gino got his first job, and a stand of
trees outside it where Gino smoked his first cigarettes. A
line of fat old maples that in the summer had
(03:11):
dropped their seeds in spinning helicopter wings by the whirling hundreds,
and in the autumn had lit up like match heads,
screaming into the sky first week of June. Now and
they're not doing much of anything, their branches almost bare, bark,
corpse gray from drinking salt water. Around the corner to
Mifflin Street, past the strip bones of the gas station,
(03:31):
up two blocks to the high tide line of the
sand bagged steps of the shop, and go the empty
lot opposite repurposed into a dock for the neighborhood fleet.
Half a dozen rowboats with their oars padlocked, a thwart
one eight seater bow rider with yellowing upholstery, one jet
ski and as they come into dock the roofed pontoon
that Gino caught a ride on, a habitat for humanity
(03:54):
donation forty Benji, the helmsman, get out of here, you know,
sucking his teeth. We got a problem, naw man nah.
Gino digs out his wallet.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Cash.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, I figured y'all get a lot of outages. Benji
counts through the ones and fives more power outages than power.
We on generators, if we on shit, Benji shakes his head.
Is what it is? You need directions? I'm good, Thanks,
I grew up around here. The boardwalk from the boats
(04:28):
to dry asphalt is made of wooden shipping pallets, new
ones stacked on top of old when they've started to
molder as the mud takes them. Gino slings his bag
over his shoulder and walks across with his eyes on
his feet, distrustful of the dark patches where it looks rotted.
Through the street is a relief, even with sedge and
woolgrass cutting up through the cracks in the pavement. For
(04:49):
the first few yards past the water line, the distance
from the stop and go to his childhood home is
the length of time it took to eat a bag
of spicy pork skins and throw the evidence in a
neighbor's garbage can, so his mom wouldn't know he'd been
ruining his dinner, but he'd measured it in a teenage
boy's appetite. And the walk seemed quicker now. The street's narrower,
(05:10):
the telephone poles shorter, the sky closer, everything more squat,
and the gritty smell of the marsh clinging on even
two blocks up the street. Still, it's late in the
afternoon and the sun on the clouds is starting to blush.
So folks are setting themselves up on front stoops and
threes and sixes, with cigarettes and beer bottles and babies
(05:31):
on bouncing knees, their friendly racket sounding to Gino something
like a first language, so familiar, unheard for years. He
gets a couple nods and throws them back, but nobody
knows him on sight. He turns the corner on South
Bosnel Street. The sidewalk is broken in all the same
spots he didn't know he knew until he sees them again,
(05:52):
and then he knows every fissure and crack, every dog
pole mortalized in wet cement. No parked cars, a lot
more boarded updoors and windows than there used to be,
although there had always been some. There were never any
front yards in the neighborhood, all the basement windows looking
directly out onto the sidewalk. Now every house on the
road that still looks occupied as a rain barrel out front,
(06:14):
and a couple have one of those larger galvanized metal
cisterns that look like fat, little grain silos. There's a
line of grass growing right down the middle of the
street s edge, probably a bad sign on what used
to be high ground. And then inevitably there is number
twenty seventeen. He's been gone almost twenty years, and it
(06:36):
looks not the same, but like a faded photograph of itself.
Gino doesn't know if it's looked like that for a while,
or if it happened all at once. If a year
ago when his father died the color drained from the
house's facade, he could still turn around. It's not that
he hasn't thought about his father's death or how it
(06:57):
would be to come home and see the place without him,
but he's been able to think about it from a
distance know it without seeing it, and that's worked for
him overall. But from the bottom of the steps and
through the screen door, there's his mother's voice telling someone
to bring out the good plates, the ones for company,
so much clearer than her voice over the phone, telling
(07:17):
him she'd understand if he couldn't make the trip, like
she was forgiving him for disappointing her even before he
did it. Gino wants very much to be someone who
doesn't need to be forgiven, so up the stairs he goes.
Gino was five years old when the bulge of the
schoolkil river met the fat and trickle of cobs creaked
to the east, and together they fingered their way west
through parkways and back yards to touch the gutted Delaware.
(07:41):
It was then declared that everything south of the Roosevelt
Expressway was officially part of the Greater Chesapeake Floodplain. The
majority of Philadelphia was under at least six inches of water,
so the entirety of it was legally classified it as inundated.
The news his folks, every adult he knew, kept track
of the losses. The city took bids on where to
(08:02):
relocate the Liberty Bell and crowd funded the removal and
transport of the arch at the foot of Chinatown, the
neighborhood threw up barriers around the Pentecostal church on Snyder
Avenue and brought up in replanted mangroves from nurseries on
the Jersey Shore. They were losing more ground than they saved, though,
for as long as he could remember. When he was eight,
(08:23):
the block half a mile away where his mom grew
up was evacuated, and his Grandpap moved in with them.
Slept on the couch. His sharp pressed slacks and red
striped shirts displaced Gino's clothes in the closet. His basketball
games and bachi club pushed Gino out of the afternoons
he'd spent with his dad, and his voice, old Philly
(08:44):
short vowels running up into each other, filtered into every
room and out the front door onto the stoop every day,
adding to the to his eulogy for the city. Grief
was the background static of Gino's childhood, every one else's
grief for a place he'd never been. Gino's family was
in West Pasiunk, a little too distant from the heart
(09:04):
of old Italian Philadelphia to benefit from the touristing nostalgia
and too black and brown for their one sob story,
among many to generate charitable donations, like for the black
folks down in king Sessing Up in Kensington. The official
plan was to leave it to rod in the water,
but the less than a mile square from twentieth Street
to twenty sixth sat on a rise known only to
(09:26):
the kids who'd biked it, pushing and sweating up one
way and gliding legs storked out down the other, while
the rest of the neighborhood went to algae and rot.
Gino's old block and the couple dozen around it became
an island in the marsh. It was almost lucky a
mile in any direction. The government offered to buy homeowners
out of their property for less than a quarter of
(09:47):
how much it would cost them to start over somewhere
further inland. Most people took it because, in the choice
between an insultingly low offer and nothing at all, they
figured it was better not to wait around for the
insulting offer to expire. Up in the neighborhood, basements flooded,
tap water went funny, electricity flickered and failed, but no
(10:08):
buyout offers came and even as everything else changed, the
old rule still held true. If you didn't get out
of the neighborhood by the time you were eighteen, then
chances were you were never getting out. Gino left when
he was eighteen. Gino's older brother, Stevie, got married at eighteen.
Stevie's in his forties now and on the couch this morning,
(10:31):
his knees as high as his chest because his spot
on the far corner has sagged under the years he's
spent there. There's a stack of dishes and cutlery on
the coffee table in front of him. He's the ghost
of their dad, heavy brows, a twice broken nose, an
ancient thick sweater despite the heat, and a smile that'll
never let you in on the joke. More hymn than
(10:53):
their mom, some more Filipino than Italian, and Gino never
pegged as either remembers again to resent him for it. Jesus,
you actually showed, Stevie says to him. There's a pause
where Gino's supposed to say something biting, but he doesn't
rise to it. Stevie shrugs. He got about a minute
to turn around and leave before the rest notice you're here,
(11:16):
Eugenio Stevie's husband frozen halfway down the stairs. Got some
fucking nerves showing up here. Kevin Gino says he hasn't
set his bag down yet. You look good, change your hair,
don't tell me how I fucking look you. Geno his
name Ricochet, is down the hall and around the kitchen,
then back out into the living room, carried on the
(11:38):
high voices of his nieces, who make him hug them.
One of them takes his bag upstairs, whispering something strident
to her dad on the way. Jasmine. Geno thinks, the
one with freckles is Jasmine. The other one is Roxy,
who's telling him about what they're making in the kitchen,
what they had to substitute in the ponset, what they
grew in the community garden. Cousins, assorted children, neighborhood aunties,
(12:01):
and their husband cycle into the room with dry kisses
and slaps on the shoulder, telling him he hasn't changed
at all, telling him he's gained weight. Kevin slips behind
them all and into the kitchen, and Gino tells everyone
that he needs to go volunteer to help out his mom.
Before word spreads that he rolled up to her house,
expecting to stand around being waited on. He steps heavy
(12:22):
down the short hall back to the kitchen, less to
give Kevin and his mom warning he's coming, and more
to spare himself whatever they were saying about him, which
might have been a sound strategy in another family. Don't know,
I bothered, Kevin is saying, from less of a distance.
Now Gino can see white in his hair, and that
pinched line between his brow never quite disappears. Kevin spots
(12:46):
Gino in the doorway and turns back to tell his
mother in law, it's a cruel thing to do to you, Francesca.
God knows he's just going to turn around and leave tomorrow.
His mom, her small hands shining with oil inflecked with
carrot skins, turns and sees him well. She says, will
you head out tomorrow? Hey ma? Nah, No, I took
(13:08):
the week off. Takes about a day to get back, though,
took a day to get here, so I can stay
a couple days. She looks him up and down, then
away just as quickly and goes back to chopping a lemon.
He adds, right now there's a break between the last
project and the shoreline thing in Maine. I don't know
if you've heard about it real. Glad you could squeeze
(13:28):
us into your busy schedule, Kevin says, about a year
late for the funeral, but it's the thought that counts right.
He leaves a heaping bowl of rice under one arm
and a pan of lasagna under the other. For a
long minute, Gino just watches his mother work, reaching for
this and that, washing her hands. There's less of her
in reality than there had been in his imagination. She
(13:51):
tells him the garlic bread is ready, and he falls
into the routine of ducking outside to turn off the gas,
grabbing the wire basket on top of the fridge, a
cloth from the drawer on the left, and plucking the
steaming slices from the oven pan, folding them under the cloth.
With the buttery smell of a thousand ancient dinners. Around
the kitchen table. There's a lot of chatter coming from
(14:11):
the front room, and someone comes in and out of
the back door to bring in the folding chairs that
have been rusting out there since before Gino was born.
Gino hovers in the middle of the kitchen. He's spent
an inordinate amount of time over the past weeks thinking
about what he'd say to her. Even in his imagination,
he never quite got it right. Finally, he asks, is
(14:33):
there anything else to do? His mom waves a hand
at him without turning around. Take those out there, okay,
and then he tries, I'm sorry, ma for what he's
wiping down the counter now piling pans and ladles in
the sink. Or Gino takes a couple breaths. He's feeling
a little sick, which isn't the same as feeling sorry,
(14:54):
but it is close enough that he's sure it is
what he should say. I should have been here last year.
His mom is brisk, business like with her hands. She
shakes her head. You were gone a long time before
that you knew you weren't coming back, she says it, plainly,
without accusation, right, Gino says okay. He carries the basket
(15:33):
of bread into the front room. Out front, there are
people everywhere on mismatched chairs, kids cross legged on the floor,
and not enough plates for everyone. A neighbor comes in
the door with a package of paper plates to make
up the difference. Stevie gestures Geno over to a spot
he's saved on the couch, and their mom comes in
and settles herself into the big, cracked leather armchair that
(15:53):
used to be their dad's. There's a moment where everyone pauses,
leaning over their plates. The youngest kid in the room
asks if they can eat now, and Uncle Lenny turns
to Gino's mom and says, hold up, Francesca, you want
to say something. She says yes and puts her plate
down on her lap. She'd insisted on taking one of
the paper plates. She runs a quick hand over the
(16:14):
arm of the chair. It's strange to see her in it.
It's strange to see her. I hear it's not always
easy to get here across the water these days, and
it's nice to see you. Who did? She nods at
some folks eu Gino didn't know had moved away. The
house is always better with a whole lot of people
in it, even if it's a little crowded. Nato and
I moved in here him a few months before Stevie
(16:35):
was born, all the way across town for an extra bedroom.
When we had Eugenio and he wanted his own room.
Nato told him, you can make a down payment, then
you get your own room. There's some laughter in Gino's direction.
His mom turns to her own brother and Lenny, you
know our dad, God rest him. He didn't like me
taking up with Nato, didn't like us moving away from
(16:55):
the old neighborhood. And we had some conversations about all that.
Lenny chuckles, incredulous that what you want to call it?
All right, she says, we had some loud conversations about
all that, But then give it ten twenty years and
him and Nato were best goddamn friends, getting up to
all sorts of trouble together here in this house. When
(17:16):
Dad passed, it was a mess, you know what I mean.
I wasn't ready for that. She looks at Gino for
a moment, then at Stevie and your father. He held
me up and gave me ways to say goodbye. We
did this for my dad the year after. And if
anyone said it was a little strange to have a
babang lusa for some old Italian from South Philly, then
(17:36):
they had to have a loud conversation with me. She
clutches a hand on Lenny's knee. This year, us of
all held me up, So let's eat and say goodbye
to Nato. Kevin and a cousin who Gino couldn't place
take charge of dishing out food. There's a massive salad
that he hadn't noticed before, weighed down by a mount
of black olives and grated parmesan. The lasagna is meatless,
(17:59):
but the pansup beyond his chicken and liver. And there's
something that smells like a dobo, even if it doesn't
look like it. Jasmine and Roxy start a folk war
over the best looking corner slice of lasagna, which Kevin
settles by taking it for himself. Gino lets mostly everyone
be served before him while he tries to unclench his
hands and his jaw from his left. Lenny shovels all
(18:20):
the olives from his own plate onto Gino's an old
joke he'd forgotten they shared. Good to have you around here,
Lenny says. Can't get anyone else to take those off
your hands, not all of them at once. I got
to do two here, three, there, hit five, six plates.
It's a logistical nightmare. That's rough man. Luckily I'm a
logistics guy. Oh yeah, you uh still with the uh?
(18:42):
What's the thing? Army Corps of Engineers yeah, Gino catches
Lenny's searching Look almost ten years now, he offers. Roxy
breaks off talking to the neighbor kids and shoots Stephen, accusing, Look,
Uncle Gino's in the army. No, Gino answers for her cors.
Mostly see, we do infrastructure projects, building stuff. They did
(19:03):
the levees downtown. You worked on that, Roxy lights up.
The levees would have been big news in the city
when she was a kid. They're half the reason their
little island is still above water. No, Kevin says, he
was long gone, but the mail still came. Then he
sent you postcards from all his little projects. When was
the levee? What year was that? Hmm? Roxy looks uncomfortable,
(19:26):
but Jasmine puts in that she was in sixth grade, right,
big year. You were in that inner city youth boxing thing, Jess.
She made the quarter finals. Where were you that time?
Eugenio Gino isn't sure what year Jasmine was in the
sixth grade or exactly how old she is now, but
he can see Kevin waiting for him to ask. Connecticut.
(19:46):
He says, coastal restoration. Oh yeah, how'd that work out
for Connecticut? Come on, keV, says Stevie. Gino says, not bad.
Last I heard, I've seen worse. Yeah, me too, Lenny says,
and jerks his chin at the front window. Everyone laughs.
Gino nods, which is close enough to laughing. Another neighbor,
(20:09):
a big guy whose name Gino can't come up with,
asks use guy's got work planned down here, and the
woman next to him, his wife maybe, says oh, they
should put up boardwalks, and somebody else we've been saying
there's plenty of high enough ground for boardwalks to connect
up to downtown. They gonna do that, Gino, They don't
really tell me that kind of thing. I just keep
(20:31):
the truck and everything running. I'm a you know what
I mean, A glorified mechanic. He trails off, and his
brother laughs. Please. Stevie says, they're not gonna do shit.
I mean, sorry, but you're not right. The levee was
what eight years back and nothing since that they gave up. Francesca,
who had been quiet eating, says they did, but that's okay.
(20:55):
Everyone is allowed to give up when they got a
from the tension in the room. A popular statement, but
nobody argues her on it. After a second someone brings
up the NBA finals and how piss Nato would have
been that the Raptors made it this far again, and
then his general grudge against Canadian teams in the NBA,
and then his earnest incompetence on the court himself as
(21:17):
a young man. And then a picture is brought out
of a shoe box, and it's Gino, perhaps three years old,
with a bowl cut and a look of childish ecstasy
up on his father's shoulders, his father's hands holding up
Gino's chubby, childlike legs, Gino's arms up at the end
of an arc, a basketball in the air, suspended in
the moment before it fell short of the net. Gino
(21:39):
ducks out to sit on the front stoop and finds
a pack of Stevie's cigarettes where he's always left them,
in the nook of the broken corner of the top step.
He lights one just as the screen door creaks open
and shut, and his brother sucks his teeth at him
and says a asshole. Gino hands him the one he's
lit and takes another for himself. They settle into their
(21:59):
old arranged Gino facing the street on the middle step,
Stevie behind him, leaning back against the railing between the
two of them, A view of the narrow street and
the intersection nearby, and all of the folks who would
wander over to shoot the shit. Nobody wandering today, Just
the distant figures of other stoop loiterers at another house.
(22:19):
A familiar view, but uncanny. It's so quiet around here,
Gino says, it's weird. It's been this quiet for hell years.
You just weren't around to notice. Gino grimaces, shakes his head.
I'm not going to keep apologizing for living my own life.
Didn't ask you to. I'm just saying right, sorry, shouldn't
(22:43):
put words in your mouth. Stevie never won to let
discomfort sit for long. Ask Gina how work is and
you've still seeing that girl, Tina Trisha Tanya says Gino.
We call it quits. It's the job. I'm somewhere for
six eight months, than a couple weeks of nothing, being
a bum on her couch, then some other place, do
(23:04):
it all over again. I like the work, get a project,
see it through, tie it up. I like that, But
I think she got sick of the whole thing. Dolan says, man,
I'm good, so who's couch you bumming on between projects? Now?
Stevie asks, you know, shrugs, just still around. Really, HQ
has some ten housing, so I'm there mostly, bro Hold up?
(23:28):
Are you homeless right now? Gino shoves back against Stevie's knee.
Fuck off, man, I just I don't need a place
as all? All right, all right. I was going to
say he could crash here, but being honest, I think
I'd have a heart attack if you said yes, and
Kevin would fucking kill you or me. Stevie grunts an agreement.
(23:48):
You wouldn't stand a chance. He's a bitter too. Gino sputters,
Come on, man, I don't even know that shit. He hesitates,
then says, you guys don't have to stay here either,
you know, Gino just saying I know what it's like
to feel trapped here, but you're not. You don't have
to stick around and watch it all sink. You know
(24:09):
I can help. We can pack up Ma, and Stevie
cuts him off. I'm the fuck on, man. You think
Ma's leaving this house? You want to pry her out
of here with a crowbar? You're gonna break her heart
with that, And who's gonna take care of her, then
you I could help you get set up somewhere. Get
the fuck out of here with that. Come on, I'm
(24:30):
just saying, I know what you're saying, but be real, Okay,
Ma's not going anywhere, and if Kevin and I leave,
there's no one to be with Ma. You're not dropping
everything and coming back. So yeah, you're not trapped because
I am. And that's not on you. I'm glad you're
out there doing your thing. You're my little brother, you know.
And you're a smart kid, Stevie. I'm thirty six. See,
(24:52):
you can count real high and everything. Stevie laughs at
his own joke. That loud on self conscious snorting that
always makes Gino smile. Jesus listen to us like we're
in therapy or some shit. I am, actually, Gino offers,
for real. Yeah, Stevie nudges Gino's back with his foot.
So he goes on work, has these folks on staff,
(25:15):
and it's free, so I figured it might as well,
you know what I mean. Huh, nice of them. I
guess what do you us talk about? Geno Crane's neck
around to glare at him. What I've never been to
therapy before I'm curious. Come on, it's personal, all right, fine,
don't tell me anything. It's like, aa, you know, it's confidential.
(25:35):
How much confidential shit could you even have? Oh? Come on,
screw you, Stevie, He laughs again, kidding, I'm kidding. Gino
finishes his cigarette and rummages in the pack for another,
offers Stevie one, then lights them both. Overhead, the sun
is behind gray clouds, and some sort of hawk or
kite is making high, irregular circles. He's cool the therapist
(25:58):
they got. Gino says he thought coming here for this
was a good idea. He's kind of a hard ass, though,
you know, calls me on my bullshit. That's a big job.
You're full of bullshit. Hilarious, I know, right. Stevie taps
a little song on the top step of his fingertips.
Inside the house, Roxy and Kevin are talking fast, back
(26:19):
and forth, loud and happy enough. So go on, Stevie says,
what kind of bullshit? Gino sighs. He gestures with his
chin back at the front door. This kind mostly for
a session we had. He gave it fifteen minutes before
asking why I kept getting angry at myself for having feelings.
Oh fuck yeah, I almost walked out, and he was like,
(26:41):
see right there, there it is again. He shakes his
head smiles. Bastard, you still do that, though, Stevie says,
with all the self assurance of someone who changed his stipers,
I do. But I notice it now, which he says
is good. Stevie blows smoke out of the corner of
his mouth and they watch the hawk drop out of
(27:01):
sight somewhere over the marsh. Is it good?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Nah?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It sucks now I get angry about being angry. Stevie
laughed so hard that both his daughters and his husband
bang out through the front door to see what they're missing,
the three of them fitting themselves into Geno and Stevie's
stoop arrangement and a new configuration that makes him feel
crowded but at least not crowded out. The kids surround
him on the steps, long teenage limbs getting everywhere. Kevin
(27:28):
even offers him a bite of a slice of pie
he carried out with him and barely makes a face
when Gino uses this fork. Gino walks with his mom
(27:51):
to his dad's grave about a five minute trip up
the street. It was Kevin who pointedly heard at his family,
and everyone else left at the house to clean things
up and follow a long afterwards. So Gino and his
mom are alone together for the time being, in the
dim late afternoon, walking through sticky air and the droning
noise of a neighbor's household generator. It's slow going, not
(28:13):
because of any infirmary on Francesca's part, but because she
walks slowly and always has an infuriating trait in a
city person. Finally at home, now that this part of
the city has been cut off, made circumstantially provincial. Gino
doesn't mind meandering, but he's not used to the sound
of his mother not talking. Stevie's girls look all grown up,
(28:36):
he says. She nods. She puts her hand on his
arm and folds it so that her hand is tucked
into the crook of his elbow, and they walk like that,
a dignified little procession. He's a good father. She says,
you're still not seeing anyone, Nah, would you tell me
if you were, Gino put docs his head. Probably they
(28:58):
come to the graveyard. Steevev had written to Geno about
the place and sent some pictures, but it's more odd
more abrupt to see it in person. What used to
be a messy six way intersection in the middle of
the neighborhood had become just so much useless space. When
the seasonal flooding stopped being seasonal and residents were cut
off from the closest gas station, now half an hour away,
(29:18):
over the water, folks brought out the sledgehammers and tore
it down to the dirt. The original plan had been
to till the soil and put in vegetable crops before
they started planting. Someone on twenty third Street died, and
all at once the residents of the Newborn Island realized
that they didn't know what to do if they're dead.
Cemeteries in South Philly had been exhumed and relocated long ago,
(29:41):
well before most of the living started to leave. If
the bereaved were so inclined and could afford it, they'd
ship their dead up to a plot in the northwest
of the city, or even to the suburbs. Churches and
mosques and synagogues pitched in, but most people, if their
faith allowed, opted for cremation. The shore had been in
flux their whole lives, and there was no assurance their
(30:03):
kids wouldn't have to dig up Grampa and ship his
bones even further inland a couple decades down the line.
Unfortunately for the remains of west passiunc However, when the
water rose around them, no crematoriums remained on dry land,
so they had the body of a young woman whose
heart gave out and a fresh field of open dirt.
They planted her in it, and then the next death,
(30:27):
and the next one. By the time Gino's dad was
buried here yet plenty of company. The graveyard has the
long triangular shape of the old intersection, enclosed by a
chain link fence to keep out dogs and raccoons. The
grass is clipped short, the regular sort of lawn grass,
instead of the mess of marsh grasses that have crept
(30:47):
in everywhere else. White forget me nots are dotted in
among the plots, and one corner of the yard is
taken up by a huge mess of purple aster. The
markers are pale wood names and dates burned into them
in a dark, neat script. Gino's mom leads him to
his dad's plot, which is catching some late light. Gino
(31:08):
knows his father is dead. He's known it for a year,
but seeing a grave with his father's name on it
feels like coming down off a high wire. Sickening and sudden.
He sits down in the grass, and after wiping some
dust and grit off the marker, his mom sits down
next to him. You should come visit him in the morning, too,
she says. A lot of bees then, and bluebirds. I
(31:32):
almost move that feeter over here, that one he put
out by the back door, But then they wouldn't come
to the house so much. They come here already anyhow.
Gino doesn't trust himself to speak yet. He hadn't known
it would feel like this. He had hoped to avoid
feeling like this indefinitely, the finality of it, and the
premonition that she would be gone soon enough too, and
(31:54):
even Stevie one day, and that this gentle garden of
the dead would flood with salt water and he wouldn't
get another chance to be brave enough to stick around.
He thought he'd buried them for himself already by leaving,
by not watching it happen. But they're still here, and
all he'd done was lose time that he'll never recover,
and let Stevie dig their dad's grave, all on his own.
(32:17):
Gino's squeezing his hands, one in the other, and his
mom rests hers on top of them. A question. He
shakes his head convulsively. Is fine, sorry, I'm fine, sorry,
I'm sorry. All right, she says. She squeezes his hand,
rubs his back. All right, you go on. He knows
(32:39):
what Stevie said, but he's got to ask. It's clawing
at him. You and all of them could come back
with me, Gino says, I can take some more time
off and find a place. Doesn't have to be that far.
There's a whole lot of Pennsylvania. We can get you
out of here. It's time to get out of here,
all of us. She looks at him like he just
(33:00):
spat in her face. Your brother can make his own decisions.
And you, baby boy, I'm happy to see your face.
But you can go any time. She nods at the grave.
But I'm not about to leave him, don't you ask
me to. I'm sorry, ma for leaving, for coming back
for the moment a few days from now, when he'll
leave again. That's all right, it's all right to have
(33:23):
things you're sorry for. Your dad lived a good, long life,
and he left, still sorry for all sorts of things.
You go on, be sorry, that's okay. A trio of
swallows have landed on the fence and are calling their
clear tittering trills into the dusk. Insects are flitting around,
and the birds take turn launching themselves from the fence,
(33:45):
diving in wild arcs, then coming back to rest, the
other two waiting chirrup, laughing, the insects droning on, oblivious
to the game that's been made of their fate. I
couldn't watch, Gino says, leaning into his mom's hand on
his back. I couldn't watch it happen dad, the neighborhood.
Her hands stills, Then she passed him briskly and stands. Stevie,
(34:09):
Kevin and the girls are coming through the gate into
the yard, chattering like birds. Well, anytime you want to
see us, we'll be here, his mom says, whether you're
watching or not, that's the story.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Right before he died, Mike Davis gave this interview where
he was talking about one of the sort of like
giant struggles that people do in America, and the thing
he was talking about was the story of people sort
of fighting tenaciously to stay in their home, and something
I've been thinking about a lot more. I mean not
just from you know, it's people losing this fight, and
(34:47):
this has been you know, this is in essence, this
is the story of America, right, is the story of
people fighting to stay in the place they love him losing.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, And you know, each successive cycle of people gets
driven further and further and further and further until you know,
the places they love are gone and there's nothing of them,
well little of them left, And you know, I think,
I don't know, it's something I think I like about
this story a lot is like there's you get that,
and you also get this sense that sort of you know,
(35:17):
is the apocalypse is you know, it's slow, it happens
through yeah. Yeah, but also that you know, like this
isn't the first time this has happened. Yeah, and it's
you know and like yeah, like the sort of horror
of it, right is like it will it will keep
happening and people will live.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
On and it will sort of just keep rolling.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah. No, I I read this story and I kind
of like there's a bunch of other stories that I'm
also really excited about to shine with everyone, but I
like really wanted this one to be first, because I
I really wanted to talk about the way that the
apocalypse is not just slow but like a reflection of
(36:06):
the way that everything changes and everything ends, and like,
you know, and I'm really like interested in the idea of,
you know, the son who moves away, who like the
family accepts it, but it's kind of going to give
him shit forever for it. And like, yeah, I don't know.
I think it's just a really human thing and I
(36:28):
think it helps like because also, like, Okay, this hasn't
happened to Philly yet, right, This has happened already many
places in the world, and will happen many places more
places in the world. Like that is an inevitability at
this point, right, and just like we need to start
grappling with that, you know. Okay, So I'm gonna I'm
(36:48):
gonna read his bio the author's bio. Nicassio andras Read
is a writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared
in venues such as Strange Horizons, Light Speed on Canny Magazine,
and Shimmer. A Philadelphia resident until age nine, he now
lives in Tagateay in the Philippines with four dogs, some
family and the occasional uninvited monitor lizard. He's the poetry
(37:09):
editor at the dead Lands and is working on a
novel about the history of Filipino migrant laborers in Alaska.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
And then.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I asked, I basically asked him, since he's not on
here to plug things people already know. Miya Wong, you're
the host of the podcast whose feeds are probably in
statistically and if not go listening could happen here. But
I asked, I asked Nico, and he said and for
an additional plug, I don't have any recent pubs, and
(37:39):
I feel slightly bad about Wetlands being the de facto
bad guy in the story, So I'd love to shout
out the Society for the Conservation of Philippine Wetlands, which
is at Wetlands p. The Philippines is one of the
most dangerous places in the world for environmental activists and
land defenders, who are often red tagged, that is, publicly
labeled as members or supporters of the armed communist insurgency.
(38:00):
For many years now, it's been open season on red
tagged individuals, State forces and private corporate armed groups alike
kill them with impunity, almost always in the name of
land grabbing. At the same time, we are one of
the countries facing early and extreme effects of climate change
and the damage that these land grabbing entities due to
our natural resources is making things worse fast. A healthy, diverse,
(38:23):
resilient wetland barrier to typhoons is one of the most
vital things for us, for us to rebuild and protect.
So that is the plug for this episode and we
will catch you next week on the cool Zone Media
book Club.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
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