The 2026 Bette Howland Prize

We are pleased to share "Young Esco" by Coleson Smith, selected by Brad Gooch for the 2026 Bette Howland Nonfiction Prize. The prize was founded in 2017 by Honor Moore to recognize the work of a graduating nonfiction writer and honor the legacy of Bette Howland (1937-2017), who had mentored Honor Moore in her twenties and with whom she had lost touch. (Honor Moore wrote about their friendship in the afterword to Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage: The Selected Stories of Bette Howland.)

Judge's Citation:

Coleson Smith’s “Young Esco” is as potent a narrative as I have read recently in any of the genres it so skillfully crosses. At its core is the unfolding of a fascinating and largely unpredictable friendship between himself and an eventually homeless young neighbor who, like Melville’s Bartleby, winds up camped out on the stairwell of the tenement where Smith lives with his very pregnant wife, and, again, like Bartleby, winds up dead, a martyr to a knifing in their rough neighborhood. If the tale is as gripping as fine fiction, reality is made palpable by close detailing that brings it all home--skull emojis, kombucha bottles, Tupac’s “Dear Mama” on a funeral chapel sound system. Coleson Smith is a strong writer whose work I wish to follow.

Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer. His memoir Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family is forthcoming from Harper. He is also the author of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. His work has also been featured in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, and others. He is a Guggenheim fellow in Biography and lives in New York City. 

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Young Esco

Yellow tape criss-crossed the front of the building next door. It was the first thing I saw as I wheeled my bike outside on my way to work that morning. Several police officers idled around the property. Riding past the scene, I saw a bloodstain running down the concrete stairs that led to the entrance. Someone had been killed.

Through news reports and talking with my neighbors, I learned a man I had known to hang out on the block had shot the mother of his children and her lover across the street. He then walked over to the steps next door and shot himself. This all happened in the early hours of the morning. I knew of the man. We exchanged hellos whenever I saw him, though I never caught his name. Later I heard someone refer to him simply as O.

My nextdoor neighbor, WK, told me he had been on his front steps when O wandered over after shooting the man and woman. Apparently O said something about not wanting to go back to jail again. WK went inside and that’s when he heard the shot.

At fifty, O was a couple decades older than most of the men who hung out in front of the building. In passing, I couldn’t help but notice he enjoyed a certain degree of deference. He was close with one kid in particular, Esco.

Esco grew up down the street but ran with the guys from our building and the one next door. I call him a kid despite him being in his early twenties—just a year or so younger than my little brother. He had long braids that hung down both sides of his face and tended to wear tapered jeans slung low on his hips and Nike sneakers. On occasion we’d find ourselves alone on the ramp leading to the entrance of my building—me smoking a cigarette, him a joint. I rolled my own. One night he saw me smoking one of these hand-rolled cigs.

“You smoking that good weed?” he asked. This might sound like the sort of stereotyped misquote one would expect from a Brooklyn transplant like myself, but he did in fact refer to it as “good weed.”

“No, it’s just a cigarette,” I replied.

“But do you smoke weed?”

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It messes with my head.” He just smiled and nodded.

From then on we were a bit more friendly with one another. I learned that he was raised by his grandparents down the street. That he didn’t keep up with his mom and he didn’t know his dad. He was an aspiring rapper. He performed under the name Young Esco and said I could find him on YouTube. One afternoon he asked me to be in one of his music videos. “You any good at acting, Cole?” he asked. I told him I didn’t think so and we both laughed.

A few days after O died Esco approached me in front of my building asking if I had any money for a candle. We walked down to the corner store and found the candles near the back. We picked out a yellow devotional one. I paid at the front and followed him down the street to the house in front of which O had shot the man and woman. He became hesitant. “Can you put it there?” he asked, gesturing toward the house.

“I’m not sure, man,” I said. “I don’t really feel comfortable doing that.” I hardly knew anything about the situation and the social repercussions of the gesture were beyond me. He took the candle and placed it on the sidewalk in front of the house. A woman happened to be taking her garbage out at the time. When she saw the candle, she shook her head.

“We don’t want that here,” she said.

“I just thought—”

“Uh uh. Don’t put that there.”

We went back to my building across the street and I told him I had to go. He understood. Later on I saw the candle in front of the building next door.

Over the next few months, Esco grew increasingly unpredictable. Early one fall evening he came walking up to my building looking disheveled. His braids had come undone and his clothes looked as though they hadn’t been washed. He muttered to himself as he passed by me. It was like he was in a stupor. He rang several doorbells before someone finally buzzed him in. He came out a few minutes later carrying a package and continued down the block.

One evening that same fall he asked if I could Venmo money to someone for a music video. He said he’d give me $50 in cash and asked that I in turn Venmo the same amount to this friend of his. The request made me uneasy and I told him no. He grunted in frustration and looked up at the sky. “Come on, man. I need to send this money tonight,” he said. I refused and went inside, wishing he hadn’t asked.

Then Esco disappeared. It wasn’t until the following spring that he showed up again in front of my building. His hair was back in braids and he wore new clothes. I never asked where he’d gone, but he seemed to have returned to his old self—quiet, shy, and polite. He didn’t come around as often, though when he did we got along just fine. I’d almost forgotten about the episodes with the candle and the Venmo request when he started living in our stairwell.

My friend, Su, and I were smoking on the ramp out front when Esco came walking up with a pink toy box under his arm. Christmas was a few weeks away. He told me it was a present for his two-year-old daughter. There’d been a toy drive at the restaurant he worked at, a soul food spot called Blossoms. When he suggested I go get something for myself, I told him I was busy.

“Could you let me inside?” He motioned to the front door. I took out my keys and pulled it open. He went in and stashed the toy in a shopping cart he kept in a little nook at the base of the stairs. The thing was packed with laundry bags stacked on top of one another. He’d been crashing in the stairwell for a couple weeks. Several times I’d found him asleep sitting up on the stairs, usually with a hoodie pulled over his head to block out the fluorescent lights that were always on. I had mixed feelings about the situation but I liked him and couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it.

A few days later, I ran into Esco on the flight of stairs just below my apartment. As we bumped fists he dropped a plastic cup containing a bright red liquid and it splattered everywhere. He said he’d take care of it. When I came back up, he was using a shirt—probably pulled from his cart down below—to wipe up the mess. I went into my apartment and fetched a handful of napkins left over from a baby shower. I had told Esco about the pregnancy months ago. It was endearing how often he checked in on us. He’d ask how I was feeling, or say something like, “only three months now,” a big grin on his face. He always had our timeline spot on.

I handed him the napkins and mentioned they were from a baby shower. “Hello Sweet Baby” was written on them in a cursive font. He glanced down at them and looked dejected.

“You could’ve told somebody about it.” He meant himself.

I didn’t know how to respond and stumbled through an answer, telling him it was an intimate gathering, that I didn’t have any hand in the planning, that it was just Kara’s closest friends who attended. He nodded and looked away.

I went back inside and sat in the living room looking at my rug. A couple minutes later I walked back out into the stairwell and regurgitated some of the same shit I had said earlier, trying to assuage my conscience. He listened as he wiped up the last of the spill.

“Are we good?” I asked. He nodded but still looked dejected. I went back inside.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I went out for a cigarette. I’d planned to work on a copyediting test that morning. When I stepped out into the hallway, I noticed the light on the landing had gone out. A voice from above asked, “Who’s that?” I looked up and saw Esco’s slim frame sitting on the higher of the two flights of stairs leading to the fourth floor.

“Cole,” I said. It was a nickname used almost exclusively by my family, yet somehow it had caught on here on the block.

“Oh,” he said. “You go to that toy drive yet?”

I told him I hadn’t, mentioning how I’d been busy with work and preparing for a visit from my relatives, who were arriving that day. My family had planned to spend Christmas in New York in the hopes of meeting our baby. The due date was today.

“You’re not gonna go,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m reading between the lines.”

“Well maybe we could come visit you sometime while you’re working. Do you have vegetarian options?” Out loud it sounded like a silly question. I felt as though I were on my back foot; the words were spilling out of my mouth.

“Why don’t you come and find out?” he asked. He was standing on the landing now and there was a mild hostility in his question.

“All right,” I said and headed downstairs.

When I walked back up to my apartment, I found him sitting on the lower flight of stairs. He was wearing a hoodie but had his arms pulled out of the sleeves and wrapped around his chest. He was shivering. I went inside and made him an americano. When I brought it out, I saw he had moved back to the upper flight. “I made you a cup of coffee,” I said. “You want it?”

“Yeah, thank you,” he said.

“You want milk and sugar?”

He nodded. I doctored the coffee in the kitchen and brought it out to him.

“Thanks, Cole.” He paused before adding, “I respect you.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right.

“I respect you,” he repeated.

I didn’t know what to say but finally muttered, “Thanks, man.”

Back in my apartment, I turned the broiler on in my oven and pulled a palmier out of the freezer. I’d been periodically taking them home from the bakery I worked at. I put it on a pan and set it under the element. Then I went into my bedroom closet and found two pairs of gloves. I went out into the stairwell and asked Esco if he wanted either of them.

“Yeah, “ he said, nodding.

“Which one? These leather ones are nice, but I think the wool ones might keep your hands warmer.”

“It don’t matter.”

I handed him the wool pair. He pulled a black sweatshirt off the railing. It had a picture of Biggie on the front and “Bed Stuy Do or Die” printed on the back.

“What do you think of this hoodie?” he asked, handing it to me. I held it up by the shoulders and examined the picture.

“Biggie—the legend. It’s nice.” I felt silly again.

“Yeah,” he responded. “I’m gonna try and sell it. Get my money back.”

“All right.”

I went to check on the palmier. The bottom was still cold. I flipped the thing and waited for it to cook through. Once it had warmed, I put it on a disposable plate and brought it out to Esco.

“You want this? It’s a palmier. There’s vegan chorizo in there. It’s from my work.” I sounded more ridiculous with every word I uttered.

He thanked me but said he was good. He still had his arms wrapped around his chest for warmth. “I think I have a beanie you could have, too. You want it?”

“Yeah.”

I rooted through a little basket on top of a shelf near the kitchen and pulled out a fleece headband.

“I thought I had a beanie but it turns out I can’t find it. This will at least keep your ears warm. It’s a British brand, so you might not recognize it, but it’s good.”

“It don’t matter.” He took the headband and put it on. It looked good. His braids dangled around his face below the headband, accentuating his lean features. He pulled an iPhone out his pocket and extended it out to me.

“What’s this?”

“My phone. Can you charge my phone for me?”

I hesitated a moment before agreeing. Inside I plugged it into the charger next to my bed and settled into the chair in my office to start with the copyediting test. A few minutes passed and I heard a knock on the door. It was Esco.

“Can I come in?” He asked. “It’s cold out here.”

I paused and looked at Kara, who was standing out of his line of sight in the kitchen. She seemed hesitant.

“Yeah, sure. Why not,” I said.

He came in and stood near the counter. Kara sat down on an armchair in the living room.

“You hungry? You want some eggs?” I asked.

“Yeah, some eggs.” he said.

“How do you like them?”

“It don’t matter.”

“Scrambled okay?”

“Scrambled’s good.”

I pulled a pan down from the top of the fridge and lit the burner beneath it.

“My grandma’s favorite show was Martin,” he said.

“What?”

“Martin.”

“Okay?”

“You don’t know Martin?”

“No.”

“Everybody knows Martin.”

Kara and I shared a puzzled look. I saw her take out her phone.

“Maybe white people don’t know about Martin,” I joked, and immediately regretted it. He was standing close to me in the narrow kitchen space between the counter and the fridge.

“It came out in 1992,” I heard Kara say from the living room. She was reading something on her phone. “And there’s a character named Cole.”

“Yeah,” said Esco, looking in her direction. “Everybody knows Martin.”

“Not me,” I said with a laugh. I cracked a few eggs into a bowl and started to whisk. “Have a seat, man. Make yourself at home.” I gestured to the stool on the other side of the counter. His standing around made me uneasy. He sat down and placed a plastic bag on the countertop.

Kara sidled up to the stool next to him and inquired about his daughter. He said he had some toys for her but that he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to give them to her. I finished cooking the eggs, transferred them to a plate, and set it in front of him.

He reached for the coffee and brought it to his lips. He’d taken maybe two gulps before lunging for the trash can next to the apartment door, where he proceeded to spit repeatedly for what felt like an entire minute. Puhtew. Puhtew. Puhtew. HAHK–puhtew. Kara and I locked eyes, and I saw the worry etched into her brow. He stood up, somewhat hunched, and wiped his mouth. The blood had drained from his face.

“You got any water?” he asked.

I reached for a cup in the cupboard above the sink and filled it. He took several sips and sat back down at the counter, where he tore into his eggs. Kara and I looked on in silence. Suddenly he began laughing, inexplicably. Kara received a call from my sister and took the opportunity to step away. I watched Esco closely while he ate. He kept laughing intermittently—throaty chuckles between forkfuls of eggs. For the life of me I couldn’t ascertain what he found funny. A knot formed in my stomach.

He looked up from his plate, “You showed me the secret of life, Cole.”

“What?”

“The secret of life.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes it’s just best to stay silent.”

I didn't respond. The silence hung on everything.

“Everything’s a delusion,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” I decided to placate him.

“Yeah. It’s not real.” He took a few bites of his eggs. “Something big’s gonna happen today,” he said, his mouth full.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just feel it. Something big’s gonna happen.”

Kara returned to the kitchen. “You think we’re gonna have this baby?” she asked, touching her belly and smiling.

Esco looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

We sat in silence for a while. Esco finally broke it, “You gotta play the numbers. That’s how you win big. You gotta play the numbers.”

I took a look at my phone and pretended to read a text. “Oh, it looks like they need us now, Kara.”

She picked up immediately. “Oh, already?”

“Yeah, like, we gotta go now.”

I turned to Esco. “Sorry, man, we gotta get going.”

“Can I finish my eggs?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go for it. We just gotta go soon.”

I went into the bedroom, grabbed his phone, and set it next to him on the counter. Kara and I put on our coats near the front door.

“We really gotta go, Esco.” He’d stopped eating. I put his eggs onto a disposable plate and handed him a plastic fork. He collected his things and put on his jacket and stuffed the Biggie hoodie into the plastic bag.

“Merry Christmas,” we said to him as we all made our way out the door.

“Merry Christmas!” he yelled after us. “And thank you!” He had a big smile on his face. “Y’all made my day!”

We hurried down the stairs and out the front door. Kara was in tears. I held her close a few doors down. Icy snow crunched beneath our feet.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“No, no. It’s not your fault. You were just being kind.”

“I should’ve been more cautious. He’s unwell.”

“He wasn’t making any sense.”

“I know. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“Did you see the knife?” She asked.

“What?” The worry I had seen on her face took on new meaning.

“The knife. The pocket knife he put on the counter. I didn’t know what to—”

“Kara, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I must’ve missed it.”

“I was so worried.”

“Damn it. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

She took my hand and we walked to the supermarket around the corner to pick up a few things. When we got back, Esco was standing in the entryway. We said hello and made our way past him to the stairs. The way he followed behind me made me tense. He was practically breathing down my neck. At the base of the stairs I turned to face him.

“I don’t got nothing,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and stepping back. He had this deadpan look on his face. He started walking back to the entryway.

“Okay,” I said, waiting for him to create some distance between us.

On my way up, I heard him mutter, “It’s all a delusion.”

That afternoon I texted our upstairs neighbor, Jermaine. He had lived in the building practically his whole life. I figured he might know something about Esco.

“He seems homeless,” he wrote. “Been camping out in the halls for like over a month. Young kid, grew up across the street. I guess his parents kicked his ass out.” So I wasn’t the only one who thought of him as a kid. I responded by telling him about the interaction in our apartment.

“Yeah I wouldn’t let him into your house.” he replied. “Sat with him in the car for a bit the other night trying to just offer him a chat n a smoke ya kno. But he started crying n shit.. Making nonsense like you said. Told him, he needs to go to a shelter.. He refuses. O, who unfortunately committed suicide outside the building.. Esco was the first to him [skull emoji], they were close.. He hasn’t been the same since.”

At a check-up a few days after New Year’s, the doctor found that Kara’s blood pressure was slightly elevated and told us to make our way to the hospital down the street for an induction. Our daughter, Alia, was born forty-four hours later, after a long and grueling labor. We spent the next two days in the postpartum wing before returning home.

The last time I saw Esco was on January 13, 2025. I was out front having a cigarette. Esco was near the door when I exited and we exchanged greetings. I watched him retrieve his shopping cart from the bottom of the ramp. It was still packed to the brim with stuffed laundry sacks and plastic bags.

Near the door, he shouted, “Hey, Cole! I like that hat.”

It was only a green wool cap, military surplus. Rather nondescript.

“Thanks,” I yelled. “I appreciate it.”

He nodded and I went back inside.

A little over a week later, I was walking out front for a smoke when I ran into Jermaine. We were both on our way out. He turned to face me. “You know that kid, Esco, you were asking about the other day?”

“Yeah.”

“He got killed a couple days ago.”

Several people were standing near the entrance talking loudly. I almost didn’t hear him.

“What?”

“I guess some people ran up on him trying to get his scooter and he didn’t give it up,” Jermaine said. “They stabbed him.”

I looked at the ground. “Is that why there are so many people around today?” I was referring to the group gathered near the door. I didn’t recognize them.

“Yeah—maybe,” he said. “It’s why things have been so sad around here lately.”

Outside he sent me a New York Post article before getting in his car and driving off. When I went back upstairs Kara was sleeping on the couch. I woke her to tell her the news. She put her face in her hands as Alia cooed on a mat on the floor.

Maybe half an hour later I got a text from Jermaine: “We’re about to light some candles out front. Run down if you got a sec I’ve got one for you.”

I found Jermaine and a few guys from the block gathered near a dozen or so candles placed on the sidewalk in front of the gate to the vacant lot next door. The gate’s three panels formed an unlikely triptych above the candles and bottles gathered below them. Someone had spray painted “RIP Esco” and “FOREVER GREENE AVE” on the center panel. Jermaine broke down a box and used the cardboard to shield the candles from the wind. We had to keep lighting them, as the wind that night was strong and bitter. I pulled my coat closer around me and struggled to think of something to say. I had never attended such a ritual, though I’d seen these shrines dozens of times throughout the neighborhood.

“He was always asking about our baby,” I said. “Before she was born. Anytime I saw him, he asked how she was doing. He remembered the due date and everything.” My words garnered a few nods.

“He was a good dude, man. I can’t believe this shit,” said my neighbor, Cal.

We stood in silence watching the candles burn. We started having trouble keeping them lit with our butane lighters on account of the wind. I ran upstairs to get an electric lighter my mom had gotten me for Christmas. While I was up there, I took several flowers from a bouquet a friend had given us to celebrate Alia’s birth and placed them in a kombucha bottle I found in our recycling bin. I went back outside and set the flowers next to the shrine.

“Good looking, Cole,” said Jermaine.

I took out the electric lighter, and showed the guys. When you pressed a button, a small bolt of electricity lit up blue between two prongs at its end.

“Someone’s been shopping on Temu,” said Jermaine.

I knelt down and lit the remaining candles. We all stood quietly for a while. One of my neighbors, Mac, finally spoke up, “I keep thinking this is a prank. Like, he’s gonna come out of nowhere and say it’s not real.”

We stood in silence watching the candles flicker for a few more minutes. Then—and I’m not sure what prompted it—the guys suddenly began exchanging goodbyes. I shook hands with two I didn’t know and briefly hugged the ones I did. Then we all went our separate ways.

A few days later, Jermaine texted saying the service for Esco was at a funeral home in the neighborhood, just a fifteen minute walk from my apartment.

The morning of the funeral Alia was scheduled for her one-month check-up. I left our apartment alone, planning to meet Kara and Alia at the pediatrician’s office afterward. When I arrived for the service, I found a chapel to the right of the foyer and walked in, taking a seat in an empty pew. Tupac’s “Dear Mama” was playing and a TV hung on the wall showed photos and clips of Esco. As I waited, a man handed me a program. On the front it listed Esco’s birthday: January 4, 2001. I couldn’t believe it. It was the same day as Alia’s.

Esco was laid in an open casket wearing a suit. Large flower wreaths were placed around him along with a picture board. A man began playing a hymn on an electric organ at the front of the room while one of Esco’s music videos played on the TV above him. The money fanned out in hands, the bullet-proof vests, the trigger-pulling, the middle fingers were so incongruous with the reverential tone of the room. Then the service began. There were hymns sung and some scripture readings. Both grandfathers spoke. The first, the one who lived down the street from me, spoke of how Esco’s father, his son, had died the same way: a stabbing when he was only twenty-five. He pointed to the casket: “This here is a baby. I got him when he was a baby.” He paused. “And I hate what they did to him.” He let the words hang in the air.

The service ended with a viewing. I stood at the side of the chapel in a line of people waiting to pay their respects and watched Esco’s mother standing at the front. She wore a gray fur coat and matching hat. Large, black sunglasses covered most of her face. In truth, I hadn’t recognized her by her face but by her prominence there near the casket; the way others attended to her. Despite the circumstances, she appeared poised—regal almost, in all that fur.

When it was my turn I walked to the casket and looked down at Esco. His features looked wooden and had an unnatural sheen, but I could still make out his high cheekbones, his wide mouth that lit up so beautifully when he smiled. Behind me, the line had begun to bottleneck near the organ and so I took one last look at Esco and then exited the chapel. As I walked out onto the sidewalk, the wind felt like ice at the corners of my eyes. I pulled my hood tightly over my head and braced myself against the cold.

The original draft of this piece contained paired photographs throughout. I’ve included them here to corroborate and contextualize the narrative.

E and WK sit on the landing in front of the building next door.

The ramp at the front of my building.

Esco’s nook.

Stills taken from the music video for “Perkied Upp” by Young Esco.

Esco’s shrine.

The funeral program.

Coleson Smith is a student in the New School's Creative Writing MFA program. Originally from Michigan, he moved to New York City just before the pandemic. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.