Nevis-Shah sat on the unplugged refrigerator, the one his oldest brother used to keep his drink and weed in before he got shot up on Garrison Boulevard by them Park Heights niggas. Thus did the g-crib of a notorious Westside player fall into the imaginative hands of Nevis-Shah, a straight-A, book-busy student at the School for the Arts, who had no real use for his brother’s weed and drink cooler except as a seat to view the stars above the next row of houses.

Nevis-Shah was a stargazer, who sat wonderingly up in the hours between 3:00 and 5:00, examining the sky for the little gray man ship he wished would come get him some day and take him out this neighborhood named Community Action. It wasn’t safe to watch the sky until three, until after the Gs were done popping off and were settled in with their Hos. Actually, 3:00 was pushing it. Old Jomo across the street never even came out to smoke his weed until 4:00, lest he get popped like old Terrence had, for sitting out on is stoop.

In any case, on this particular night, Nevis-Shah was glad he was up at 3:00 when the night truck came. Just about the time Mamma’s man stopped banging her head against the wall in the next room, hopefully to roll over and pass out never to awaken again, the night truck came, quiet for such a big truck. The night truck was one of those trucks with the giant scuba tank on its back like fill up the gas pumps at the gas station. The truck had a still black man in the passenger seat who did not move anything but his eyes, which danced all about.

In the driver’s seat was a white man in a fireman’s outfit who barely moved his hands on the wheel and also reached out the cracked window and up onto the roof with his rubber gloved hand to worker some switch like the light switch mounted on the strip of wood on the basement wall. The neatest thing about the night truck, other than the fact that he got to see it and no one else did, was that it had a small turret on the top of the tank back, and the turret rotated back and forth like lawn sprinkler, and a nozzle attached to a hose that was running up from the belly of the truck rotated back and forth, watering the lawns and even spraying the houses.

“Wow, what a messed up city. These people can’t even keep the streets safe but send out a lawn truck to water the lawns!”

Nevis-Shah watched with fascination for a full five minutes as the truck slowly made its way down the street and turned the corner deeper into the neighborhood. The truck did make a faint vibration and could be barely detected by the window rattle when it was a block over. But five minutes after that it was gone—his private little wonder eaten by the night.

Looking back up at the stars he noticed Old Jomo come out of his front door and walk down onto the sidewalk from the porch stoop to sit on the front stoop where he liked it. He seemed suspicious of something, looking around, even sniffing the air. But after a minute or so, satisfied that no one was around to pop him, Old Jomo sat down under his dreadlocks, nodded up at Nevis Shaw, whom he could see sitting behind the second floor window on the refrigerator top, placed his blunt in his mouth, took out his box of matches, struck a light, lit up his joint and then tossed the stick match onto the sidewalk and went up in flames with the entire block.

Old Jomo looked like an animated Jamaican candle as he was engulfed in flame and his hair torched up in the nightmare of fire that engulfed the lawns, the houses—his greasy-ass head of hair—-with an audible “whoosh” that sounded like a giant version of the stove top burner catching light.

Nevis-Shah was ecstatic over the scene—even though he felt real bad about Old Jomo who was screaming as he ran around with nothing coming from his mouth. Then he felt the heat and saw the flames licking before the window and thought that he better get out the back window. As he stepped down off the refrigerator top, an enormous explosion rocked his burning world. As he got to his feet, mamma was screaming and the man she had brought home was cussing.

As he made it out in the hallway, he could feel heat from above and all around, and busted into his sister’s room to get out the window—which was engulfed in flames, the world beyond it leaping with fire in a blaze that boggled his mind.

His sister was sitting up in her bed, looking around with her mouth open. Thinking quickly, Nevis-Shah grabbed her by her little hand and said, “The basement, flames rise, the downstairs,” to which she nodded in a stunned fashion, making no attempt to resist when he dragged her from her bed and led her down the hall, as the world got hot and bright in the wake of the night truck.