A Good Killing by Allison Leotta Read Free Book Online Page A

that sort of thing. Once I lost my leg, that was over. But there are a lot of people here that need stuff as badly as they need it in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
    “What do your mom and dad think? Are they worried about you, out here all by yourself?”
    “Sure. But my mom was worried before I moved out here. After I came home from Afghanistan, she was always hovering, doing everything for me, trying to help me around. I had to get out and show I could take care of myself.”
    “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” Jody said.
    He smiled. “People like to use this city as a punchline. But Detroit today is home to one of the greatest urban experiments in the world. After everything is lost, there’s freedom, a space to try new things. Today we’ve got musicians and artists, hipsters and farmers, city planners and community activists, all sorts of creative thinkers figuring out how to find beauty and meaning in the ruins.”
    “That’s a very optimistic way to think of a city that’s declared bankruptcy and can’t reliably pick up the trash,” Jody said.
    At the edge of the orchard, Cooper stopped talking and stood strangely still. His eyes narrowed as they scanned the orchard, and his hand went to his waist. As he pulled up his shirt, Anna saw that he had a gun holstered there.
    A moment later, two kids emerged from the trees. They looked to be about sixteen, both wearing black skullcaps and baggy pants that displayed several inches of underwear. The bigger one had a menacing silver grille covering his front teeth. Anna tensed up.
    “Yo, Coop!” said the kid with the grille.
    “De’Andre, Lamar, hey!” Cooper took his hand off his gun. “I wasn’t expecting you guys so early.”
    “It’s six o’clock. We’re right on time.”
    Cooper glanced at his watch. “So you are. It’s been a busy day.”
    “I see,” said the kid, grinning appreciatively at Anna and Jody. “You gonna introduce us to these lovely ladies?”
    Cooper did. The kid with the grille was De’Andre; the shyer one was Lamar. Lamar smiled at Anna, then studied her shoes. Cooper explained that they were students at Cass Tech, a nearby high school, and were working on his farm for minimum wage and internship credits. They were here to pick up some produce for a farmers’ market the next day. They went into the shed, where crates of fruits and vegetables were stacked. Anna helped the guys load the crates onto an old red Ford pickup truck. The doors sported a circular logo: a cartoon cherry tree in front of a cartoon Renaissance Center. “Bolden Farms” was written in cherries on the tree.
    When it was all loaded up, De’Andre got behind the wheel of the pickup and Lamar sat in the passenger seat. De’Andre called out the window, “Ladies, if he don’t treat you right, call me!”
    Cooper smiled and shook his head as they drove off.
    Anna said, “You let teenagers drive your pickup?”
    “They’re good kids. Plus I can’t drive it anyway.”
    Because of his prosthetic leg? Anna remembered skinny thirteen-year-old Cooper driving his dad’s huge John Deere tractor around the fields. Driving at a young age was a farm thing. She had a hard time picturing Detroit as one big farm, despite all the empty land.
    He was several steps ahead, opening the back door to his house. Inside, the place was a testament to glorious architecture fallen on hard times. Tall ceilings were spotted with water stains. Beautiful woodwork abutted peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster. Stained-glass windows remained where bars covered them; anything else of value on the exterior, Anna guessed, had been stolen. A majestic curving staircase dominated the foyer, dangerously missing its iron handrail, which had probably been taken for scrap. The foyer floor was covered in a white tarp, on which stood a stepladder, tools, and paint cans.
    “Sorry for the mess,” Cooper said. “I’m renovating. Slowly.”
    “You’ve been here, like, five years,”