For a long time, he had hated himself. For a long time, he had drunk simply to feel nothing, simply to make the voices shut up and leave him in peace. In a sea of cheap wine, he had tried to drown his capacity for humiliation. Where others walked past him and shook their heads or went tsk-tsk at the miserable straits into which his life had fallen, Willie had learned to accept those straits, to embrace them, and to want nothing more. There was, he had found, an invigorating freedom in not wanting more. He took life as it came, let tomorrow worry about itself. So he could not remember the last time he had felt humiliation.
He felt it now, though, trudging back toward the old warehouse.
You fucked it up, you miserable fuck! Can’t you do anything right?
Mc k ng. ng x v ng na!
Willie jammed his hands over his ears. “Stop it,” he whispered aloud. “Stop it, please.”
Find those cops, dumbass. Make them listen to you. Kill them if you have to!
“Not going to do that,” Willie said. “Not going to do that.”
Still, he could not deny the dismay he’d felt watching the officers go. It was as if God or whoever had allowed him some reminder of what it was like to be a man people saw, a man they listened to. Then that glimmer of respectability had been snatched even as he was admiring it.
And now, Willie just felt…low. Lower than he had felt in more years than he could recall.
Useless. Stupid motherfucker. Need to just kill yourself.
“Corporal William Washington,” he had told them. And what had possessed him to draw himself up like that, to give them his full government name and the rank he had not used in a half a lifetime? Pride, maybe? Some stubborn determination to make them see him?
Bây gi ông mun gì, thng cha lính kia?
This was asked in a voice of quiet solicitude.
“Ain’t but one thing I can do,” he answered.
Willie had seen what he had seen. He knew that. And now, the only way to vindicate himself—not to mention the only way to get his stuff back from inside that building—was to handle this alone.
Fine. That’s what he would do. Wasn’t he a trained infantryman? Wasn’t he a soldier in the United States Army? It had been a long time ago, yes, and he had lost a lot of himself since then to wine and hard living and the cruelties of age. But surely whatever remained was more than enough to take care of some 400-pound white boy who looked like he couldn’t move quickly even if you stuck a cattle prod up his ass.
Willie giggled at the image.
In the next block, he passed a favorite liquor store and paused there, looking with longing toward its neon signs and advertising posters of happy people smoking cigarettes and drinking drinks. It was like coming upon an oasis in the desert. And he had a little change in his pocket, too, thanks to those people who had given him coins when what he had really wanted was attention. He could afford to buy himself a little taste. It would make the voices go away.
You might as well, you stupid motherfucker. What can it hurt?
But no. He had to be strong. He had to be clear-headed for this. Later, after he had rescued the brother being held hostage, after he had been interviewed on the local TV news and they had gushed over him and asked him how he did it, after the two cops Smith and Jaworski had apologized for treating his Army rank like a joke, then he would have a drink to celebrate. But only then.
He continued past the liquor store, crossed a bridge over the river, came again to that warren of warehouses beneath where the expressways met. Willie climbed onto the loading dock of Funn Toys and peered tentatively through the broken window.
Nothing had changed. The brother was still chained—handcuffed, actually—to a chair. The white boy was doing something on a laptop computer and the two of them seemed to be talking, calmly.
“Told you I saw it,” he said.
He found himself wishing he had one of those spaceship phones like that crazy bitch who’d knocked him down. Then he could call this in and just sit here and wait for the cops to arrive. But he didn’t have such a phone and Lord only knew where there was a payphone. They didn’t have those so much anymore.
He would have to handle this himself.
You’re just going to fuck it up, you stupid fuck!
“No, I can do this,” he said. He said it again, whispering. “I can do this.”
Willie lowered his head from the window before the brother could see him and start making demanding faces. He could not rush this. He had to think. He had to plan.
He wished he had a drink.
A preppy white man in a red, white, and blue bowtie had replaced the blonde with the fire-engine-red lips.
“President Bush is keeping a low profile this Election Day,” he said. “The president spent the weekend at Camp David before returning to the White House where, according to aides, he will celebrate the First Lady’s sixty-second birthday and, later, watch election night coverage. This is in keeping with the campaign itself, during which the president, whose approval rating is mired in the mid-20s, has been conspicuous by his absence.”
Pym was eating cold chicken from a red-striped bucket. An image of the president walking across the White House lawn flashed on the screen and he flipped his chicken wing at the laptop. “There goes ol’ fuck nuts,” he said, chuckling. “Boy, Dwayne hates that guy.” The chicken wing bounced onto the keyboard and he swiped it to the floor, then plucked another from the bucket.
“Most observers,” continued the man in the bowtie, “think Republican Senator John McCain faces an uphill struggle to surmount Democrat Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s lead in the polls. But in the face of that daunting reality, the former Navy flyer was upbeat and combative at an Election Day rally in Colorado.”
McCain appeared on the screen. “I feel the momentum. I feel it, you feel it, and we’re going to win the election,” he told a cheering crowd. The bowtie-wearing man’s voice came on over the image of the Arizona senator. “McCain’s defiance was in sharp contrast to the gloomy tone struck by his own campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, while talking with reporters on the flight back to Arizona.”
Schmidt now appeared, a bald, burly white man. “We did our absolute best in this campaign in really difficult circumstances,” he said. “We had some tough cards to play all the way through, and we hung in there all the way.”
“Sounds as if he thinks the election is already over,” the anchor said, turning to his partner.
Pym muted the volume and made a sound of disgust. “It’s over, all right,” he said. He turned toward Malcolm and added, “Like that time Jordan was with the Wizards, scored just 6 points, lost by 27. You remember?”
He grinned, waiting for Malcolm’s response. Malcolm stared at him, silent and cold.
Pym tried again. “You remember that game, right? December 27, 2001. Dude should never have come back a second time, am I right?”
Still, Malcolm gave him nothing but a stony stare. He was dizzy with the sheer absurdity of the question.
Pym’s grin shrank and it was as if he had read Malcolm’s mind. “You don’t have to be that way,” he said in an accusing voice.
“So what are we supposed to be now?” demanded Malcolm. “Friends?”
To his surprise, the big man looked stung. “Well, no,” he said, “but I just figured, since we both got to be here, we might as well pass the time friendly-like.”
It was too much. “We don’t ‘have’ to be here!” cried Malcolm, rattling the chains that held him to the chair. “We’re here because you and your numb-nuts friend chose to kidnap me and bring me here.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” said Pym, and Malcolm gaped. The big idiot was pouting now. “It’s getting so a white man doesn’t have a chance in his own country,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to know how that feels.”
Malcolm shook his head. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Dwayne talks about it all the time, how you niggers are taking over. Fuck
ing affirmative action and shit. I mean, look at you: gettin’ paid to write your racist bullshit, write your books and whatnot, living in that big mansion, driving that fancy sports car. And here I am, driving a piece-of-shit van, living with my mom. It’s not right. You can’t tell me, deep down in your heart, you think that’s right.”
“So your life didn’t work out the way you want and it’s my fault?” Malcolm was finding it difficult to breathe past his fury.
“It’s niggers’ fault,” said Pym. “Dwayne says that all the time.”
“‘Dwayne says this, Dwayne says that.’ You got a brain in that fat head of yours? What do you say?”
Pym stared at him for a long moment. His smile came slowly. “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “You don’t get between me and Dwayne. Might as well stop wastin’ your time.”
Malcolm met his eyes. “Oh? Maybe I was wrong before. Maybe you two are fags.”
He was hoping for a reaction, something he could work with. But Pym’s eyes just frosted over. “Told you about that,” he said. “We’re friends.”
“Yeah,” said Malcolm. “Special friends.”
Still Pym refused the bait. He rolled his eyes and turned back to the computer, unmuting the sound. A famous African-American civil rights leader was framed in a box next to another box containing the white man in the patriotic bowtie. The civil rights leader was heavy lidded, with graying temples and a distinguished mien, and he spoke with ponderous solemnity. “The election of Senator Obama to the presidency would be a watershed moment in the tortured racial history of this country,” he was saying, apparently in response to some question, “but we would be foolish and premature to believe that, in and of itself, it represented the full redemption of Martin Luther King’s dream.”
The bowtie man arched an eyebrow in a practiced imitation of shock. “But Reverend, how can you say that? During King’s lifetime, what might happen tonight would have been unthinkable. Surely you are not denying the country has changed dramatically for the better in matters of race.”
“As I said,” the civil rights leader responded, “the election would be a watershed. But we must avoid the trap of treating the extraordinary as if it were the representative. On the day after Brother Barack’s election as on the day before, an African-American family would still face a disproportionate chance of living in poverty, an African-American man would still face a disproportionate chance of being jailed for drug crimes, an African-American woman—”
Pym muted the screen again with a snort of disgust. “Oh, please don’t start that shit,” he told the civil rights leader.
“What are you talking about?” asked Malcolm.
Pym glanced at Malcolm. “I’m talking about that ‘poor, pitiful me’ shit you niggers always shovel.” He made his voice a nasal whine. “‘Oh, we is treated so bad,’” he mocked, eyes rolling piteously to the ceiling. “‘Us can’t do no better. De white man be keepin’ us down.’”
“Well, isn’t he?”
Pym reached for another chicken wing. “I look like I been keepin’ anybody down, dumbass?”
Malcolm glared at him. “You’re sure as hell keeping me down.”
Pym almost chuckled. “You know what I mean,” he said. “You people don’t want to do anything, want to lie on your asses shitting out babies and collecting welfare. That’s what Dwayne always says.”
“Really? And what does Dwayne do for a living?”
Color rushed into Pym’s cheeks. He stopped chewing. “Dwayne’s not working right now. He’s had issues with drugs, okay? I already told you that. But he’s cleaned up.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, well at least we’re not out there slinging drugs and knocking people in the head.”
“No,” said Malcolm, his voice even as a blade. “You’re just kidnappers.”
“We’re not kidnappers!” Pym was indignant “We’re not some damn criminals.”
“Last I heard,” said Malcolm, his voice still even, “kidnapping was a crime.”
“But we’re revolutionaries!”
Malcolm laughed. “Okay, Che Guevara. You could have fooled me.”
“Stop laughing!” Pym came up off his seat, the forgotten chicken wing clenched in his fist. “Stop laughing at us!”
Malcolm met his eyes. “Dwayne got any kids?” he asked. Some glimmer in Pym’s gaze told Malcolm he had struck pay dirt. “He does, huh? Is he married? Probably not. He take care of his kids at least?”
There was a telling silence. Malcolm laughed. “So let me get this straight. Your buddy is an unemployed junkie, he’s a criminal, and he’s got kids he doesn’t take care of. Hell, I don’t know why you and him hate niggers. You are niggers.”
“We’re not niggers!” Indignation thundered through Pym’s voice. A silence followed. When he spoke again, he did so softly. “We’re white men,” he said. “That’s the difference.”
Malcolm regarded him for a moment. Pym’s chest was heaving. His face was florid. And were those tears in his eyes?
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Malcolm.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Pym.
Malcolm lifted his manacled right hand. He spoke almost gently. “I could ask you the same question,” he said.
“Already told you why,” said Pym.
“Yeah,” said Malcolm. “But it doesn’t make any sense. And you know that.”
“Don’t know nothin’ of the sort.”
“Yes, you do,” said Malcolm.
Pym sank back onto the chair. “Just shut up,” he said. He was almost pleading. Belatedly, he realized he still had the chicken wing in his hand. He threw it across the room. “Just shut up,” he repeated. He sounded tired.
Malcolm shook his head. “I look at you, all the crazy bullshit you spout, and I wonder what the hell has happened to this country.”
Funn Toys had been a regional maker of children’s playthings: sporting equipment, model cars, dollhouses, and action figures of obscure superheroes. Never a Mattel or a Hasbro, it had nevertheless endured for many years, its profits respectable but never spectacular. But the company, which never bothered to develop an electronic games division (“It’s a fad,” Benito Funicelli always said, “it’ll pass.”), had declined through the ’90s, its already small market share shrinking even further as children put down plastic bats and obscure action figures and began to spend all their playtime in front of the television with “Tekken,” “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto.”
Ben Funicelli (“It’s Ben Funn!” read his business cards) had eventually bowed to reality, liquidated a business he had inherited from his immigrant father, padlocked his building, and retired to Boca, where he died two years later, heartbroken, still wondering how children could have changed so much. His own children had been trying to sell or lease the property since he died, without success. It sat on that corner of the warehouse district, as forgotten as dollhouses and model cars, except by the occasional junkie or squatter or homeless, alcoholic Vietnam veteran who drank to keep from hearing voices.
Now Willie Washington scrambled up the fire escape to the second floor.
Using his elbow, Willie broke a pane out of the yellowed old window of what had once been, although he did not know this, Ben Funicelli’s office. He poked his head through, waiting to see if the sound brought any reaction from below. All he heard was the dull murmur of voices from the warehouse floor. Satisfied that no one had heard, Willie pulled his head back, reached in, unlatched the window, and pushed it open. With a glance around to make sure no one was watching, he hoisted himself through.
It took a moment. His lumbago was acting up. He wasn’t as young as he used to be.
Finally Willie landed, with less than catlike grace, in the gloom of the old office.
Too loud, you stupid fuck.
“Shhh,” he admonished the voice in a hissing whisper, hunkering low to a floor littered with scraps of paper and bits of glass. He waited again, listening for any
indication he had been heard from below. There was none.
After a moment, Willie straightened. He felt a peculiar tickle at the nape of his neck as he began to look around. He had never been up here before. The room was wood-paneled like something out of the 1970s, draped here and there with cobwebs. There was a door leading to a small private bathroom. Willie poked his head in. The plumbing fixtures were gone—scavenged, most likely, though the ceramic top to the toilet tank lay in two jagged pieces, one large, the other small, on the floor.
Thieves must have dropped it and broke it, so they couldn’t sell it.
“Yeah,” said Willie, “that’s probably what happened.”
Shut up, you stupid fuck. They might hear us.
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Willie.
He went back to looking through the office, but there wasn’t much to see. The floor was littered with some junkie’s things—an old spoon burned black, a short length of yellowed hose, cigarette butts and beer cans and a blanket that reeked of piss. Of the original occupants there was little evidence, except for a warped old desk they had apparently thought too little of to move and a banged-up gray metal file cabinet, its four drawers standing open and empty.
There was also a white banner hanging from the wall, primary color images of birthday cake, scooters, baseballs, dollhouses, and clown faces spelling out the words, “It’s Ben Funn!” The banner had gone grimy and dull with age and neglect. It struck Willie as one of the saddest things he had ever seen.
Slowly, he edged his way into the outer office. It was also empty. In the rust spots and scratches on the old tile floor, he could read the placement of cubicle walls long gone. The ceiling was torn open, a tangle of wires hanging down. Thieves looking for copper and other valuable metals, he supposed. Willie made his way forward, toward the door marked Exit. He opened it upon an enclosed stairwell. The rectangle of light at the bottom was the warehouse floor.
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