From the Local Headlines

Yesterday afternoon:  the thick wet snow from Monday still coats everything in this quiet corner of the city. It's sunny but cold, that unique white light you get when sunshine bounces off snow.  Sound seems slightly deadened, too. 

As I worked on my computer in the mid-afternoon, I heard the suddenly loud sound of a low-circling helicopter--whut whut whut whut.  I couldn't see it from my home office, but it was certainly close--kept going, too, hovering, moving away and getting fainter, coming back louder and nearer.  And my mind went through a little dance of guesswork. 

In Northwest DC,where I lived for the last decade, a low-flying helicopter could have signaled any one of a number of things: a police chase, but also, could be political air traffic to the Vice President's home at the Naval Observatory, or military headed across the river to Virginia--not to mention news copters attracted like buzzing bees to the rich mess of parades, marches, celebrity kabuki of all sorts often staged in the capitol.

But here in Roslindale? One of my standard party jokes about this neighborhood is how often people say:  "Roslindale? oh, yeah, I drive through there on the way to . . . "  Certainly, no dignitaries here, nobody famous, no big events, no military base. 

And in our day in an American city, if there's no parade, no visible engine of fame or political power or celebrity at work pulling down media eyes, then the technology of Big Attention probably means  . . . violence. 

And it probably means spilled milk, or rather spilled blood--as in, something that has already taken place, because lord knows we don't call out the copters and the squad cards and the mayor and the news agencies to *prevent* mayhem and sorrow and suffering in this land. 

I tried telling myself that I was being paranoid.  Helicopters are useful things.  Couldn't there be some peaceful, useful, civilian purpose, related to our ordinary lives, for someone to hover nearby in a chopper: weather? traffic? mapping?

Nahhh.  Police it was.  Three young men shot in broad daylight about a half mile away: one died. Couple blocks from my aunt's.

From the Globe:

The worst of yesterday's violence occurred in Roslindale. The victims, whose ages range from 17 to 23, were targeted while being driven in a gray sedan from the funeral of Darrion Carrington, who was fatally shot Jan. 7 as he waited for takeout in a Dorchester restaurant.

About 1:30 p.m., the car was pulling up to the intersection of Poplar Street and Metropolitan Avenue, in a hilly neighborhood of longtime residents, when someone began firing into the car, police said.

The driver, who was not harmed, sped off and stopped a few blocks away near Beech and Washington streets, a few feet from Phineas Bates Elementary School. He flagged down a firetruck and asked for help, police said. Firefighters administered first aid to the three wounded men until police arrived. One of the men, whose age and name were not released, was later pronounced dead at a hospital. One man, who was shot in the chest, was in critical condition, and the third was shot in the leg, an injury that was not life-threatening, police said.

A city official with knowledge of the investigation said the driver was not cooperating with investigators.

In Roslindale, Phineas Bates and George H. Conley Elementary School were locked down for at least an hour, said Boston police Superintendent.

It's funny--and yet not--how the news article is composed ritualistically as well.  For example, it makes no mention of race.  Or irony. Or class.  Or culture. Or family or anything, well, human, really.

It does tell us that the car full of people that got shot up were coming from the funeral of one Darrion Carrington, and if you take a few minutes a quick Google search turns up just enough about Darrion to sum up his whole short life.

Seriously, you know what the freakin' URL of this story on boston.com  was?

"/news/local/articles/2008/01/09/just_days_out_of_prison_man_is_fatally_shot_in_dorchester/"

He was 18, just got out of prison, and was shot to death in a Chinese takeaway last week.  And also we find Darrion's obituary which in its few bare sentences paints you a picture of a family:  mourned by his mother, grandparents and great-grandparents; funeral at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church in Roxbury. His *great grandparents.*

So there they are, the poor old ones who lived long enough to see this cold day, standing in their church hats and Sunday suits at a Baptist church near Fields Corner, yesterday at 11:00.  The young ones are there too, the friends and relatives Darrion's own age, four of whom get in a car together afterward and drive up this way.

Poplar Street is a long, steep, winding street closely lined with trees and tidy wooden houses, public schools and the occasional church.  Up at this end, it's all residential--no liquor stores, bars, shopping strips and so on--just block after dense block of humble, of tidy homes secured with the paychecks of store clerks, school teachers, bus drivers, social workers and other the like. White snow fills up the neat little yards and caps the caps the mailboxes and chain link fences.  The friends of Darrion, they're not driving very fast, because the street is narrow and winding, lots of lights and stop signs. At 1:30, they're at the otherwise unremarkable intersection of Metropolitan Ave and Poplar Street, and that's when it happens.

Somebody followed them from the funeral home, maybe?  I guess it's also possible they encountered someone they knew in the neighborhood.  Someone walking or driving, who decided that this  post-funeral accidental intersection of paths was the just the right moment to make some shit happen--
that this, this moment, a quiet bright noon-time on a Wednesday in January, was the time to pull out their guns and shoot this car's travelers full of bloody holes.

The driver with the car full of bleeding friends screeched away, until he flagged down help at the corner of Beech and Washington--that's five blocks from here, if you know the neighborhood, which you probably wouldn't, except to drive  through--that nondescript block by the Beech Street project and the taco place and the hair salon.

Nearby, the elementary school kids, with their bright winter jackets and mittens and backpacks full of squashed crayon drawings, had to go through a "lockdown", but they're all OK! (Just seven or eight years since the guys in the car were those kids).

Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis has ordered more patrols in Dorchester and Roslindale. Officers will hand out pamphlets about the department's anonymous tip line.

Stay tuned, I reckon, for the funeral of the guy who got shot after the funeral of Darrion Carrington.  And so on.