Smoke

by Joe Ide

  Cannon hadn’t taken another step. Maybe he was looking down at the idiot covered with dirt, watching him suffocate and die. Cannon huffed. “Well, well. Look who’s here.” It’s over, Isaiah. It’s fucking over.

  “Chief? Are you down there?” a voice said. “It’s Dickerson and O’Neal.” Isaiah heard them sliding down the incline. Cannon would probably be looking up at them. He had to take a chance. He had to breathe. His left hand was farthest under the bush. He lifted it and swiped the debris away from his mouth and eyes. Had Cannon seen him? There was a moment of quiet. Was Cannon pointing down at him, smiling and mouthing the words, he’s right here!

  “Took us a while to catch up to you,” Dickerson said, panting. “Jesus, you’re in shape. Where did he get the bike?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cannon said. “He crashed and he’s probably hurt. He couldn’t have gotten very far.”

  “I radioed everybody,” Dickerson said. “There are four more officers behind us. It will take them a while to get here.”

  “We can’t wait. Fan out, be alert, draw your weapons.” Isaiah was sucking air between his teeth. The sense of enclosure seemed life-threatening. He itched everywhere. Give up, Isaiah. You’re done. He heard the officers move away, their voices growing more distant. If he got up would they see him? I’m gonna die, I’m gonna fucking die. I’VE GOTTA GET UP! He sat up, pawing the dirt off his face, choking and gasping for breath. He couldn’t see. TOO SOON, TOO SOON, THEY’RE STILL HERE! He scraped the crud out of his eyes. They were gone.

  He sat there a moment, scraping more crud off. Once again, he’d been inches away from total destruction. Once again, he was beat to shit, alone and without resources. Why not give up? he thought. What’s the worst thing that could happen? A few years in state prison? How could it be worse than this? At least you’d get out someday. You were never getting out of this. He lurched to his feet and started walking.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been slogging. He heard the occasional buzz of an ATV, but it was far away. He stopped several times to rest. He kept going until he couldn’t go on anymore. He was about to collapse when the hardware store’s parking lot appeared. It was quiet, empty, no one thinking he’d come back here. He had change from the money he’d spent at the motorcycle shop. There was an old-fashioned wall phone in the 24-hour laundromat across the street. He’d seen it when he was doing his wash. He called Billy and told him where he was. Then he sat down against a warm dryer and fell asleep.

  He had vague images of what happened next. Billy and Ava getting him into the car, arriving at a house, the porch light on. A mailbox with ABBETT stenciled on it. Brick steps and a door with beveled glass. Stairs. Billy pulling off his clothes. Climbing into a soft bed and then nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Sweet Life

  This was the day of reckoning Cherise had dreaded. She knew at some point her husband would have to make a decision. Work nine to five or come home empty-handed. But she hadn’t anticipated Brad’s offer. A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year versus an empty checking account was a no-brainer if there ever was one. She imagined what they could do with that kind of money. The obvious things. A better this, a better that, and there would be money for Micah’s education and a savings account with something in it. The health insurance at Apex was much better than her own meager plan. Security was what Cherise prized most.

  When she was growing up, her family had very little. She had a younger brother with a learning disability and a little sister with asthma. Her mother, Gloria, taught fourth grade while she paid off her student loans. Her father delivered mattresses and dining sets for Big Sam’s Discount Furniture in Culver City. If the car broke down or somebody got laid off or the washing machine leaked, you did without or went into debt.

  The family’s fortunes were reflected in their Sunday dinners. Pot roast with mashed potatoes. Cut-up hot dogs with fried onion. Baked beans with crushed potato chips on top. A smear of peanut butter on one slice of folded Wonder Bread. The ups and downs were unpredictable, scary and shaped your view of the future. There would never be brighter days ahead. You didn’t look any further than tomorrow because it might be worse than today. The ground was always shaking, nothing was ever settled, and you were always waiting for the next disappointment. “Things are okay” was the best you could do.

  Cherise was a paralegal for a law firm in downtown Long Beach. She’d been promoted to supervisor and oversaw a staff of eleven. She made what some would call good money, but these days, that wasn’t enough. Your income was under constant siege. You were stuck in your castle of regular paychecks while a growing army of financial demands were sharpening their swords right across the moat.

  When Dodson first told her about Brad’s offer, she screamed, jumped up and down and called her mother. Then she calmed herself and thought about it. Maybe Juanell would thrive, maybe he wouldn’t, but that was up to him; his determination, creativity and, most of all, luck. Yes, he could up his odds with hard work, but if you were from the hood, you knew that wasn’t enough. All you could do was get yourself to the finish line. Luck either pushed you over or tripped you up. Money was cover. It gave you a fighting chance, and that was all Cherise had needed her entire life. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t more enthusiastic. Dodson should accept the offer and launch himself on a career in advertising. That was obvious, wasn’t it? It was in the family’s best interests, and that was that. But another dictum of the hood was that that was never completely that. There was always some other consideration. There was always some loophole, ambush or unintended consequence, and there were a few this time too. Dammit.

  It wasn’t sugarplum fairies dancing in Dodson’s head. It was James Brown, Chris Brown, Prince, Usher and Taiwan Williams doing the nae nae at the Night Out Club until three in the morning. At long, long last, the ex-hustler, ex-con and chronically unemployed Juanell Dodson was gettin’ paid real money. And for what? Makin’ shit up. That’s what it amounted to. Makin’ shit up. He could do that forever and not get out of bed. He could do that, eat Doritos, watch The Godfather II, change Micah’s diaper and smoke some tree all at the same time. He couldn’t wait to tell Isaiah. He couldn’t wait to tell Deronda. He couldn’t wait for word to spread around the neighborhood. He could walk tall and know a hundred envious eyes were following him down the street. But he’d skip all that to see the look on Gloria’s face when Cherise told her the news. He couldn’t wait for her to congratulate him while every corpuscle in her worn-out body shimmied with shock and humiliation. He’d walk into her living room in his T-shirt and gold chains and give her a little gift for helping him out. Maybe a snow globe with some weed in it or a bust of MLK wearing a do-rag and then say something like, “The Chairman of the Board said his all-time favorite rapper was Overdose Willy,” and take her to lunch at Meaty Meat Burger and order the Triple Chili Garlic Burger with Gravy Fries and extra jalapeños. Something like that.

  He went dubsteppin’ into the kitchen for a Dr Pepper with a bigger smile than he’d had in his whole life. It almost didn’t fit through the door. Cherise was sitting at the breakfast table.

  “Hey, baby. Whas da what?” he said. “Why don’t we celebrate? Pick someplace and that’s where we’ll go. Maybe hit the club too. You ain’t seen my smooth game since we—” He stopped. Cherise had a look on her face, the one that said, I’m about to be a big-ass fly in your ointment so you better sit yourself down.

  “Aww, come on, Cherise,” he groaned. “Let me be happy for a goddamn minute.”

  “You can be happy all you want,” she replied.

  “Oh, really? Then why do I feel like my happiness is about to get hit with a sledgehammer?”

  “Far as I know you haven’t made a decision yet. Are you taking the offer?” He couldn’t believe she’d said that.

  “Am I—hell yeah, I’m taking it. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I’m thinking, Juanell.”
>
  “Well if it don’t matter, why are we even talking?” Dodson thought a moment; he screwed up his face and groaned. “Oh, no, you can’t do this to me, baby. You want me to turn it down, don’t you? You the one got me into this in the first damn place, and maybe you don’t remember, but you didn’t give me a choice. You gave me a goddamn command.”

  “It’s true,” she said in that thoughtful way she had. “I gave you no choice about getting off your behind. But a command isn’t a decision. Neither of us thought things would happen so soon or that you’d be offered a career.”

  “Oh, come on, Cherise, you got my head spinning so fast it just left my neck, flew into the bedroom and woke up Micah. What, goddammit, do you want?”

  “I want you to think about it,” she said evenly. “I want you to be sure. Do you really want a career in advertising? Because if you don’t, you’ll resent me for the rest our lives. You’ll go into that office every day thinking that bitch Cherise got me into this, and now I’m stuck. That’s not good for me, you or us as a family.”

  “Me, you or—” Dodson sputtered. “If a hundred and twenty-five K a year ain’t good for us, then neither is a patent on hip-hop or a platinum mine in our living room!”

  “And one more thing.”

  “Oh Lord,” Dodson said. “The three worst words in the English language are one more thing.”

  “What about Stimson?”

  “Fuck Stim—I mean, Stimson is not my concern,” Dodson replied. “I can’t help it if he’s a failure. If him and Marge don’t get a Winnebago, that ain’t on me.”

  “All right, I understand. I’ve said all I have to say,” Cherise said. She got to her feet. “Do you still want to go out?”

  “How can I go out now?” Dodson said. Cherise headed for the door. “Where you going?” he said. “You leave me alone like this?”

  “A man is always alone when he’s making a man’s decision,” she said. “I love you, Juanell.”

  Aside from taking lessons from Gloria, this was the worst situation he could ever imagine. He went out on the balcony and stayed there all night, only going inside to get a drink of water and piss. At dawn, he went over to McClarin Park. Mo and the winos were sleeping under the eaves around the restrooms. Not even the pigeons were awake.

  He sat down on a bench. He wasn’t tired. The easy breeze, green grass and tall trees were comforting. It was quiet too. With Micah in the house, he’d come to believe quiet didn’t exist. He sat there quite a while but arrived at no decision. Then he realized he never would. The arguments for and against were abstract, philosophical and in your head. White people were into that, going round and round with themselves until nothing was clear and you ended up going with whatever flow didn’t flow back. That shit didn’t work on the street. If you stopped to have a conversation with yourself every time a dilemma presented itself, you’d either be coldcocked, locked up or taking a nap in a wooden box at Sunshine Cemetery. On the street, you decided when you had to, when you were forced to, in the moment and not before, and the choices you made determined what kind of man you were. If somebody is shooting at you and you jump behind your girlfriend, well, we all know where you stand on the manhood scale. Dodson couldn’t make up his mind because he wasn’t in that moment. Nothing to do now except make the moment happen.

  They met in the conference room this time. Brad was seated at the head of the long white table. He looked confident, a lazy cat who’d already eaten the rat, the parakeet and three cans of tuna. There was a stainless-steel coffee pitcher and dark blue mugs on the table. Dodson sat across from him. He still didn’t know what he was going to say. Let the shit happen, he thought. This is how we do it, bitch.

  Brad smiled expectantly. “Well, Juanell, have you made up your mind?”

  Dodson poured himself a cup of coffee and took a sip. “It’s good. Fresh brewed. What is this, French roast?”

  Brad soured. “My offer, Juanell?” Here it is, Dodson thought. The moment.

  “No, I can’t accept,” he said. He sipped his coffee. “I could use a little sugar if you’ve got some around.”

  Brad was as alarmed as he was surprised. “Just like that? No, you can’t accept? Why? You’re not doing this for that useless blockhead Stimson, are you? You’re giving up a career for him?”

  “Maybe when I was hustling I could have fucked him over, but these days I ain’t up to it.” He took another sip of coffee. “And I can’t be locked up in an office all day. Advertising is fun, but I’m already tired of it. I don’t like solving problems I don’t care about. If Skechers sells more or less walking shoes, who really gives a shit?”

  “What about your family?” Brad demanded. “Won’t they be disappointed?”

  “About the money? Yes, they will,” Dodson replied. “But they’ll be more disappointed if I ruin Stimson’s life and work at a job where I’m bored to shit. And then there’s you. If I have to listen to your weasel-ass bullshit one more minute, I’ll throw you out the window and shoot myself in the forehead.”

  “You’re a fool!” Brad shouted, coming out of his chair.

  Dodson’s eyes flared. “I’m not one of your flunkies. You better sit your ass down. You disrespect me and I’ll choke you to death with that fucked-up tie.” Brad wilted and sat back down. “It takes people to survive in this life,” Dodson said, “but you hate people and they hate you. One day, you’re gonna reach out for a helping hand and won’t get nothing but your hand back. No one’s gonna have your back or get you out of a jam like I did with Stimson, but I’ll bet you can think of all kinds of people who’d backstab you with a bayonet and have a party while you bled to death. Did I tell you the coffee was good?” Dodson got up and moved to the door. “See you on the downside, muthafucka. Adios.” He glanced back at Brad. He looked beaten and empty, staring at the tabletop, a long white road that went on and on and ended in the blank screen of the monitor.

  He didn’t say goodbye to Stimson. He didn’t want or need thank-yous. Stimson and Marge would get their Winnebago and God bless ’em. He drove home, went out on the balcony and popped open a Dr Pepper. He thought about East Long Beach and all the people he knew. This was home. He was a beat in the heartbeat here. Cherise was partially right. You can take the brutha out of the hood, but he’ll bring the hood with him.

  Cherise came home. She came out on the balcony, put her arms around him and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Well, I guess the advertising world can live without you.”

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “Because I know my husband. My husband wouldn’t make the best choice. My husband would make the right choice.” She held him tighter and kissed his neck. “I’m proud of you, baby.” She left, and he was glad, his tears falling on the roof of his car. He spent a quiet minute or two. He felt good about himself, and that hadn’t happened in a while. Cherise came back and gave him the phone.

  “It’s Gloria. She wants to talk to you.”

  Next morning, Cherise went to work. Dodson was taking care of Micah and enjoying himself. He looked at the boy and felt his heart open. Hard to believe he even got to participate in making something as beautiful as his son. Look at him, he thought, stumbling around, laughing, happy, pointing at shiny things, moving things, and the love in his daddy’s eyes. Dodson took him to the park. They walked down the path holding hands. Mo and the winos were waving and smiling as they came toward him. “Let us see this son of yours,” Mo said.

  Dodson stepped in front of his son. “You muthafuckas better stay right where you are. You think I want your nasty alcoholic breath on my boy? He might get cancer or a rash on his ass.” The winos stopped, disappointed. Anything new was potentially entertaining. “I heard one of you got TB,” Dodson said.

  “Yeah, but I’m only coughing now,” a wino replied.

  “Go away.”

  “We ain’t animals, you know,” Mo grumbled. “We ordinary folks just like you.” As they walked off he added, “Must be nice. Staying home with a bab
y all day. That’s a sweet life if I’ve ever heard of one.”

  Dodson left the park. Mo’s remark bothered him but he didn’t know why. He’d been asking himself why way too often these days. He never had to do that when he was hustling. The question was never why, it was always how. How do I con this sucker out his rent money or some variation thereof? As he neared home, he felt worse and worse. Mo’s “sweet life” was another way of saying he had nothing of substance to do except babysit. He was right back where he started. Adrift, directionless and useless.

  Later, he drove over to Deronda’s to get his check for his help with Bobby James. “Thanks,” he said, putting the check in his wallet. “Much appreciated. It’ll keep me from working at one of your food trucks for a while.”

  “I’ve been thinkin’ about something,” Deronda said. “You know that stuff you did for me and Grace?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “You remind me of that lawyer who worked for the president.” Deronda laughed and shook her head. “I don’t remember his name, but that was a shifty muthafucka right there. I’ll tell you one thing, that boy knew how to work shit out.”

  “Uh-huh, I’ve gotta go.”

  “That dude was a fixer,” Deronda said, as she followed him to the door. “That’s what you are too.”

  “I’ve been called all kinds of things, but that’s a new one on me.”

  When Dodson returned to the apartment, he opened a new box of Cocoa Puffs. He got the kitchen scissors and neatly cut off the top of the bag. He had noticed over the years that the bowl you used altered the taste. Plastic was unthinkable. There was glass, of course, but the sound the spoon made clinking against the sides was too high-pitched. Ceramic was best. Heavier than glass so it sat solid on the table and the clinking sound was midrange and pleasant. He poured in the milk, sat down at the breakfast table and began to eat. A sudden realization that made him choke and spit cereal all over the floor.