Darius & Twig

by Walter Dean Myers

  Twig was starting on one of the outside lanes, but I didn’t think it would hurt him because of the distance. Still, I would have liked to see him closer to LeFebre, who was in the third lane. The skinny black guy, who I figured might have been American, was next to Twig. The two Africans were starting from the middle and I wondered if the judges had put them there to give them an advantage.

  The race started at a frantic pace, with all of the runners moving inside and getting their positions before the first turn. I looked for Twig and at first couldn’t find him. Then I saw him fourth from the rear.

  At the end of the first lap all the runners had kept their early positions, with the two Africans again taking the lead. Twig had said that the pace in the 1500 had been hard and I wondered if he should have run that race instead of the tougher 3000.

  They started the second lap at 1:01, and the field began to stretch on the turn. My mouth was so dry I had to keep swallowing.

  When they crossed the line for the end of the third lap, the runners were stretched over a quarter of the track.

  “They’re a second over three minutes,” Coach Day said. “He can’t keep this up.”

  Twig looked okay. The Africans were still working the lead, taking turns being out front, drafting off each other. LeFebre was third, four yards behind them, and Twig had moved up to fifth.

  “If one of the Africans gets tired . . . ,” I started to say.

  “Don’t bet on them getting tired,” Coach said. “It’s that fourth guy that we have to worry about.”

  “You think Twig’s got a chance?”

  “For fourth?” Coach shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t expect this pace.”

  Four minutes and two seconds. It was an incredible 1500. I could feel the excitement among the spectators. On the sidelines, pudgy guys with stopwatches were checking them and writing in their notebooks. Herb was right. If Twig could get up for fourth, he had something going on.

  At the end of the sixth lap, one African fell back to third, behind LeFebre and the other African. Twig was still fifth.

  I tried to think of something, some mental picture I could send him. Coach Day, beside me, was getting excited. He couldn’t stay still, leaning against the railing, straightening up, and then leaning again.

  “If he doesn’t tighten up, he’s got a chance,” he said.

  Twig, don’t tighten up! You’re as light as a bird. You feel the warm breeze lifting you. You’ve caught an updraft high above the cinder track. You’re lighter than air. You’re flying, flying!

  The seventh lap ended with LeFebre in the lead. The other guy from Portland was second and Twig had moved up to third, in front of the African who had been leading. I thought of how LeFebre had cut off the runner in the 1500 and wondered if Twig could get clear.

  They rounded the turn with the first three runners putting some distance between themselves and the field. Twig had a chance for third!

  On the far straightaway, they were bunched for a moment, and then Twig moved into second place. But he turned his head and looked toward the finish line. Was he done? The second guy from Portland was still on his tail and the other Africans were moving up again.

  LeFebre looked strong and I could see him swinging his arms out as he lengthened his stride. Now they were at the top of the track, with less than seventy yards to the finish. Then everybody was pushing forward, edging toward the track as Twig made his move. He was stride for stride with LeFebre; then LeFebre lunged forward for a step, slowed for a step to regain his balance, and went across the finish line a half stride behind Twig!

  Twig was on the ground. Guards and judges were holding the spectators back as the other runners finished.

  When Coach and I got to him, he was sitting up. The tears streaming down his face, his shoulders shaking from the sobs.

  “Oh, man, I am so happy!” he was saying. “Oh, man, I am so friggin’ happy!”

  “I can’t believe it!” I said. “No, I mean I can believe it!”

  Twig couldn’t walk more than five steps without stopping and closing his eyes to get into the moment.

  Some reporters were babbling to him, asking him questions about how he felt and whether he’d believed he really had a chance at the start of the race. I could see my friend struggling to find the words he needed, to find ways of getting his feelings into some kind of sense that would satisfy the mikes being pushed his way.

  “I thought maybe I had a chance—I always think—there were some really good runners in this race, and, and—” Fists clenched, eyes closed. “I am so happy!”

  Coach and I finally got Twig away from the reporters. We went into the locker room, and there were just one or two reporters hanging out and drinking sodas. LeFebre was also there and came over and shook Twig’s hand.

  “Nice race,” he said without moving his lips or looking directly at Twig.

  Twig nodded in return.

  The rest of the day was crazy. When we got back to the hotel to pick up our bags, Herb, Sean, and Willie were in the lobby talking to some other guys and a tall blond woman. The woman had her clipboard in front of her, scribbling as fast as she could. Herb had Willie standing and was talking about his wrists when we came up.

  “He’s got the wrist of a fully grown man!” he was saying. “That’s all going to translate into pure fucking power one of these days.”

  “How’s his joints?” the woman asked. “I had a kid from Iowa who ran a nine-nine and was out for the season the first time he was hit.”

  “Tight as a drum!” Herb replied. “Tight as a drum.”

  Willie was smiling all over himself, but I started thinking they were trying to sell my man, not get him a scholarship.

  “He won!” Coach Day said, interrupting Herb’s spiel. “Passed LeFebre in the last fifty and took the whole thing!”

  Herb looked at Coach Day and then over at Twig. “He won the 3000?” he asked, as if he didn’t believe it.

  “It’s going to be on the news this evening,” Coach said. “The newspeople were all over him. He ran the best race of his life.”

  Willie grabbed Twig and started hugging him, and Herb was immediately on the phone. Then he was on two phones and telling one of the other guys who to call.

  Twig was a hero.

  Sean, the hurdler, had lost his race and was working hard to keep smiling.

  Herb kept Willie in Delaware while he made more calls and Coach, me, and Twig got a cab back to the Amtrak station and headed home.

  For the whole two hours we were on the train, Coach couldn’t shut up, and Twig couldn’t talk, but you could see how good he was feeling just by looking at his face. It was wonderful.

  I got home and told Mom and Brian as much about the race as I could remember. I told them that Willie had done all right, too. When the phone rang, I almost knew it was going to be Twig.

  “Yo, Darius, you know how happy I am and stuff?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. “I really do.”

  “Darius, I’m happy, but in a way I’m not happy,” Twig said. “It’s like there’s a different me than anybody sees that’s happy. You know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither, man, but it’s almost the same thing so I’m not worried about it,” Twig said. “You know what my grandmother said? She said she was going to pray for me, but then she figured I didn’t need it. What you think about that?”

  “Grandmothers are always cool, Twig,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s true,” Twig said. “You know, you’re getting to think like a real Dominican. Maybe next year you’ll learn how to dance.”

  chapter twenty-four

  Mom warned me again about being so high on Twig winning. She reminded me that my friend, and not me, had won the race. But in a way, I felt that I had won it, too. Twig had done something from way inside himself and had been successful. But even more, he had shown it could be done.

  Mom was strutting the edge. She was right and she knew it, but it wa
sn’t working for me. She had to know that, too. She was dealing with me as if I was a kid and she was the wise old owl. Yo, Mom, I can think for myself! I’m not a kid anymore! What she didn’t know was just how far away from being a kid I was. Being a kid wasn’t how old you were, it was what you were dealing with in your life. I was dealing with Twig calling me and saying it wasn’t him that was so happy, it was another Twig, but it was almost the same. I didn’t get my head around it all at once, but it was like right on the edge of my thinking. As if all I needed was some light, or to squint my eyes, and I would see it.

  I kept running the race through my head. It always came out the same way, with Twig catching the lead guy at the end and running past, so I let myself go through it over and over. But then I kind of figured it out and I called Twig. He was eating supper and I told him I’d call him later.

  “No, I can talk,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “You remember saying how you were happy but not happy at the same time?” I asked.

  “I remember.”

  “The Twig who ran, who worked for that race, that’s the happy Twig,” I said. “That’s your best Twig. The other Twig, the one who has to deal with Midnight and Tall Boy—”

  “And my uncle.”

  “Right, that Twig’s a different person,” I said. “That’s like your history and your neighborhood and shit, and you can’t change that part of you. But the part you could change, the getting into condition and finding the heart to take the pain, that’s got to be wonderful.”

  “That could be, Darius,” Twig said. “I’m going to have to run it around the track a little bit, but that could be. Now I got to go eat. Shall I eat for two Twigs?”

  “Twig, that is so stupid.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. I could imagine his smile.

  In school some of the freshman girls started a thing, pointing at Twig. It was cool—they would just stop where they were in the hallways when they saw him, hold out their arms, shoulder high, and point at him. Soon all the girls in the school were doing it and some of the guys, too.

  Some of the black girls started pointing at Willie, but all of the girls pointed at Twig. He was a little embarrassed at first, but he was liking it at the same time.

  “That dude Herb called me,” Twig said. We were drifting toward the media center to see a flick on insects that eat other insects. “He said I shouldn’t talk to anybody who calls me who says they heard about me winning in Delaware. He says it’s illegal.”

  “But he can call you?”

  Twig grinned. “I guess.”

  “How you like being a star?”

  “The star part”—Twig shook his head—“it’s not me, but I like it.”

  I saw Tall Boy and Midnight in the hallway and wondered how they would react. I thought they would screw up, and I was right. Midnight brushed by Twig, pushed him into the wall, and kept walking as if he hadn’t noticed him. He had noticed him, all right.

  Twig didn’t let it get him down, but it messed with me. There were people who didn’t want any of us to get away from the crappy little universes they had created for themselves. I wanted to say something to Twig about Midnight and Tall Boy, but I didn’t want to stay with it any longer than I had to. Meanwhile, Twig kept saying that his winning the race wasn’t all that much, but he couldn’t stop talking about it. That made me feel good.

  chapter twenty-five

  “So he’s tapping his head with his finger,” Twig said. Him, me, and Brian were walking past the bank toward the valley on 145th. “Like this.” He made a squinchy face and touched the side of his head very slowly.

  “Your uncle?”

  “Yeah, and he’s telling me the only reason he didn’t want me to run before was that I wasn’t thinking,” Twig went on. “But now I’m thinking so he’s behind me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “But meanwhile, my grandmother is behind him making the same face and tapping her head the same way he’s doing it, and I’m trying not to crack up because she’s so funny! And she can imitate anybody! So I’m looking at him and trying to keep a straight face, but it’s okay because he don’t see anybody except himself anyway.”

  “I bet one day he’s going to want to race you,” Brian said.

  “He can’t run,” Twig said. “He smokes so much, he can’t even walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing and stopping to catch his breath.”

  There was a small knot of people in front of the entrance to the park, and I nudged Brian and pointed across the street. “Let’s cross,” I said.

  “Isn’t that Midnight?” Brian asked.

  I didn’t want to look, but I had to. We were less than twenty feet away from where Midnight was standing against the black iron bars. There was an older man standing in front of him. The guy was heavy, with a gut that hung over his belt.

  “You said you were going to give her the money for the rent!” Midnight’s voice was high, pleading.

  “What you in my face for?” The man’s voice was husky, slurred. “Why don’t you get a damn job?”

  “Why did you say you were going to give her the money if you weren’t?” Midnight said.

  “Go on home, kid,” another man said. “Let it go! Let it go!”

  “What you want me to tell Mama?”

  The punch came fast and hard. It caught Midnight square in the face. I felt Twig’s hand on my arm.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Johnny, let it go, man.” The man who had told Midnight to leave was trying to calm the older man down. “Let it go, man!”

  The second blow came, and the third, in quick succession. Midnight tried to twist away, but the man kept punching him in the head and the back of his neck.

  “Yo, that’s your kid, Johnny,” the peacekeeper said. “Let it go before you hurt him.”

  A police siren sounded, and a black-and-white slowed down. The small crowd that had gathered began to disperse quickly. I watched Midnight slide along the fence and then begin to go down the hill. The man who had been trying to prevent the incident put his arms around Midnight’s father and turned him away from his son.

  The black-and-white sounded its siren again, waited until the crowd had broken up more, and then began to roll slowly up the hill.

  chapter twenty-six

  “Today we are going to discuss how Shakespeare created characters to symbolize different aspects of his themes but also reflected his time and culture. In particular, we are going to examine the symbols represented in The Tempest by two different characters, Antonio and Caliban. Mr. Elliot, assuming that you have read the assigned text, will you begin our discussion?”

  “Yeah, Prospero forgave his brother, Antonio, even though the dude messed him over and really tried to murder him. I think he forgave his brother because he wanted to get back to Europe and get into the good life again,” Jimmy said. “He didn’t forgive Caliban because he was still mad at him because he was trying to do the nasty with his daughter. So the symbolism is if you’re white, you’re all right, but if you’re black, you got to stay back.”

  “I don’t see why you have to bring race into everything,” Sara said. “Shakespeare didn’t care about race. He was making a point about how people could change. Antonio changed because Prospero gave him his duke position back, but Prospero said Caliban couldn’t change. Remember that line about his nurture couldn’t affect his nature? Something like that? He couldn’t forgive Caliban because Caliban was always going to be who he was.”

  “What do you think, Darius?” Miss Carroll asked.

  “The fact that Shakespeare didn’t care about race—if that really is a fact—doesn’t mean that he didn’t have attitudes about people based on race,” I said. “So what’s the difference?”

  “Well, I don’t think Shakespeare was a racist,” Miss Carroll said. “But can we get away from name-calling and get to the text we’re supposed to be studying?”

  “Yo, Teach, if you’re going to fight wi
th Darius, can I be the new suck-up?” Jimmy asked.

  “Jimmy, that is so pathetic,” Miss Carroll said, shaking her head. “Darius has a right to think what he wants. What he needs to do in this class is to organize his thoughts coherently so that they become clear in the context of our studies.”

  “Hey, Darius, you got that?” Sara asked.

  What did I think? I thought about Caliban in the forest of the ghetto, teaching Prospero how to survive, how to hold his child up to the new moon and give her a name.

  Call her Miranda, call her love.

  What did I think of Prospero looking at Caliban’s dark form and thinking him only half human?

  “You said you were going to give her the money for the rent!”

  Even if the money had been forthcoming, it was too little, too late, to touch the nature of Caliban.

  chapter twenty-seven

  “They arrested DaSheen!” Heavy-hipped Wanda was sitting on the stoop, yelling into her cell phone. “They caught him with that man’s phone and picked him up this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Um-hmm. He’s saying he bought it from somebody. They had cops all over the place this morning. They even snatched some guys from the barbershop. You don’t be stealing a phone from no white man when they can track it down.”

  The “white man” was a young Chinese doctor who worked down at Harlem Hospital. He had been confronted by “three hoodies” and stabbed twice in the leg and arm when he tried to resist being robbed. That had been Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, they arrested DaSheen.

  DaSheen Willis was all right. He was nineteen and hung out on the corner most of the time. Sometimes he worked for the Latino furniture store on East 125th Street, delivering furniture, and sometimes he hustled weed, but generally he seemed like a nice guy. I was surprised that he was the one arrested with the phone, and even more shocked when he was released late Friday night.

  On Saturday morning, he was shot and killed on his front steps.

  The police, in full attack gear, flooded the neighborhood. All the rituals of death started immediately. Mrs. Willis, DaSheen’s mother, wailed on the street corner with his aunt, like a two-person Greek chorus. People who hardly knew DaSheen had begun building little memorials to him. Someone had an old picture of him, which was propped against a streetlamp and surrounded with cards and squat colored candles. Signs reading R.I.P. and DASHEEN, WE LOVE YOU were carelessly put against the base of the light so that they looked like a crudely made quilt. A news team showed up, and several of the young people pointed out DaSheen’s family, but the camera people weren’t interested in the family. They were still pursuing the robbery of the doctor.