Foots, Cable Man and Peanut, West Memphis, AR
Wednesday morning, misty and gray, outside Bull’s Market in West Memphis, Arkansas. A rotating card game between Foots, Cable Man and Peanut. Various neighborhood women coming and going. Jokes, cards slapping on the bench between the men, nods and huffed comments.
And gunshots.
They came in quick succession. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Six or seven in total. I didn’t count, but Cable Man did. “Shit. Someone gotta problem.”
One of the women, who wandered up only moments after the shots, hadn’t even heard them. “What happen?”
“Someone playing guns again. Over westside.”
There were both nods and shaking heads, but no surprise of any sort. Cable Man threw down a pair of cards. Peanut unwrapped his desert cake and took a bite. Foots glanced quickly from card to card, contemplating his next play.
“This happen every day?” I asked.
“No, every two day or three,” Foots said as played several cards in quick succession.
“Cowards,” said Cable Man, “used to be when we had a problem, we stood toe to toe and got it over with.” Now it was caps, not knuckles.
The mist continued, as did the cards slapping down on the bench, but no more gunshots. The conversation was loose, and the subject of the gunshots didn’t last any longer than talk of the weather. Guns were all around the east side of West Memphis, no need to discuss them.
Like so many me-too cities – East St. Louis, East New York – West Memphis shares a name and proximity to its namesake big city, but few if any of the big city benefits. There is no revamped downtown, no conglomerate-branded arena, no must-see hipster neighborhood. There are lots of liquor stores, used car lots, storefront payday lenders. There is decaying housing stock, little meaningful employment, much crime.
House on South 11th Street, West Memphis, AR
But more than that, West Memphis displays a split personality, one that reflects, in microcosm, the great split personality of America. Foots, Cable Man and Peanut live in the distressed east side of town. The east side is a grid of streets populated by run-down housing, empty lots, and trash. Also by crime.
On the west end – west of North Missouri Street, say – things are decidedly more suburban. On this side of town houses line clean streets fronted by green grass lawns. There are public parks and a private golf club. Homeowners tend to there yards, and children play Little League baseball. Life is decidedly quieter and easier on the west side than on the east.
Chandler and Lanna, West Memphis, AR
The data for West Memphis reflects this divide, too. The median household income in West Memphis is just north of $30,000, above the household poverty line, if only barely. Yet 30% of West Memphis lives below the poverty line. These competing data points reflect a West Memphis populated by both the haves and the have-nots. It is home to as many households above poverty level as below — home to those living amidst gunshots and those with Little League.
And such is the microcosm of America that West Memphis comprises. In West Memphis, the haves and the have-nots, the advantaged and the downtrodden, live in spitting distance from each other. They share a common – if bifurcated – community, a common government, common geopolitical boundaries, a common West Memphian identity. But they differ from each other, too. On the east side residents face the crime and decay that poverty brings. On the west side, the crab grass and Little League drama of suburbia. And in the east, the gunshots.