It’s a Wednesday morning. Twenty-four bullets from a National Guard .50 caliber machine gun rip into Tanya Blanding’s four-year-old body. We live a block away. Hours earlier a different National Guardsman pointed a rifle at our open front door, snapping, “Close that door now!” My aunt calls to say that her windows have been shattered by sniper fire. We leave riot-affected parts of Detroit. Suppose streets had been transposed that day, a rifle-wielding soldier on Tanya’s street issuing a warning instead of opening fire and a machine-gun wielding soldier on ours killing at least one if not all our family.
Keith Hood is a former janitor, window cleaner, and field technician for a Michigan electric utility. He is One Story magazine’s 2024 Adina Talve-Goodman Fellow.