The Benders 1

Ten and a new neighborhood.

This was still poor white. A few blocks south was a neighborhood run by a phantom gang. I knew little about them. One day when I was eleven there was a march to their turf by the Benders to settle a robbery that had happened in our neighborhood. They met in the street, but before things got going, Demon Duck told us to run.

We obeyed.

The Benders ran our blocks. There were not many of them but they were mean. They were a group of about fifteen kids between the ages of twelve to twenty, and they were the authority in our small little section of Milwaukee.

One day while our parents were at work, even though we were not allowed outside, my sister and I left our little brother in the house and we crossed the street to visit Beauty.

She was tall for a girl and thin. Had curly red hair and dressed like she had just walked off the set of a heavy metal poster shoot. She was gorgeous, the sexiest, most entrancing girl I had ever seen. We sat on her porch while she played her boombox and Less asked her what was wrong.

Beauty was dressed in a sweat shirt and shorts. Had her hair mussed and was damn near the point of crying. She pouted a bit and shook her head. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

She turned up Led Zeppelin. We didn’t push, but when Beauty did start sobbing, Less took her hand and asked again. “Girl, what happened?”

“I walked by Joshua’s house three times today, back and forth, and he didn’t call out to me or whistle or anything,” Beauty said. “He thinks I’m hideous.”

The Benders were run by a guy named Joshua Bender. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, had long hair, big like a rockstar with a white streak that ran through it. He was everything beautiful about being a teenager. Everything I wanted to be. Everything badass and strong. He sat his porch most days, smoking and listening to his radio, and he was a girl hound.

Beauty’s one desire was to be his next conquest, but she had yet to snag his attention. “I ought to take Jesse over in front of his house and kiss him and let him grab my boob. Maybe then Joshua would notice me.”

“And kill Jesse,” Less said.

I looked at Beauty, thinking death might not be such a bad thing under those circumstances.

We did walk past their house together that day. Beauty holding my hand while my heart pounded, Less strutting beside her shamelessly shaking her hips. Joshua stared and finally did whistle. To Beauty, he was whistling at her. She was a junior in high school and could have taken him on without issue. He might have been whistling at Less.

She was in sixth grade. Much younger, prettier, and more aggressive about the things she wanted. It was possible Joshua was whistling at her. But she didn’t care. Her eye was for his younger brother. All she cared about was Demon Duck.

Demon Duck was smaller, not as beautiful, with short dung-colored hair and acne. No one knew why he was called Demon Duck. He had a shirt he wore often with a red cartoon duck with horns on its head and a spear-tipped tail. I don’t know if the shirt came after the name or because of it.

Demon wore shades everywhere, the big ones that you would see on cops in the eighties. He was thin and did not look like much to be afraid of, but the streets whispered the name Demon Duck with a bit of a tremble. I once saw him pull a switch blade on a black man walking our neighborhood. Saw him stomping a girl who came by our house selling coke. He was a force to be reckoned with, a monster Joshua kept on a loose leash. Of every tough and criminal who surrounded these two brothers, every one of them paled in ferocity and viciousness to Demon Duck.

He was to my knowledge Joshua’s closest advisor, and when he gave Joshua a nod, it was decided. Demon scared me to no end. He was capable of anything, and together him and Joshua kept everything in our neighborhood in line.

When Christmas came and we were low on groceries, Demon came with a few bags while my parents were gone to work. He dropped off a few vegetables, a few cans of beans, some rice and a whole chicken. Joshua handed me a twelve pack of beer and a carton of cigarettes for my parents.

When my stepdad’s car would not start, Joshua, Demon, and Cringle pushed it until my stepdad could pop the clutch. They helped Carny’s dad paint his house. They helped Beauty’s mom rehang her screen door after it had been kicked in by a rival.

We found that rival stomped behind a dumpster out back of the Lutheran church on the corner. His teeth had been shattered and he had been stabbed three times in the gut.

The Benders stole my generic bike, stripped it of parts, stripped it of paint, and resold it. When I asked Demon Duck about it, he said he would replace it with a BMX next summer. He promised mag wheels and hand brakes. There was nothing cooler than mag wheels and hand brakes. We moved before he could make good on his promise.

The Benders ran everything back then. Joshua went to church every Sunday and shook hands with the priest. The priest took his money and preached salvation to the Benders. They baptized their children. They blessed Joshua and Demon Duck every time they marched out to face a rival gang.

And The Benders kept the church safe. When the little old ladies came to the church for their sewing circles, they never worried about being jumped in the parking lot. The Benders wouldn’t allow it. When the church held bingo nights, they never worried about being robbed on their way to the bank. The Benders would not allow it. Every Sunday Joshua escorted the priest to the bank to drop off the collection. Every event held by the church, the Benders were there.

The day we followed them into the territory of the rival gang, they came back bloody but victorious. There was no stopping the Benders. They were a solid wall that ran its way around our neighborhood.

The only thing that could end their dynasty was drugs and sex. The only weaknesses they had were the vices that kept them feared. But that fall would not come until I was gone. Would not threaten the Benders until I was out of Milwaukee. It would come back to me  as rumors and hearsay. While I was there, Joshua and Demon Duck and their Benders kept us all safe.