by Omar Tyree
“You ready, man?” I asked him.
He stretched and answered, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
I traded places with him and we got back on our way. Larry would get in these moods where he wouldn’t talk while driving, and that was fine with me, because sometimes I got tired of his yapping. He never made much sense half of the time anyway. He wasn’t too much trouble either. That’s why I didn’t mind him being a part of my run team. A guy could easily drive you crazy on a three-day run, and the older I got, the less I wanted to chance driving with guys whom I may have had problems with.
After Larry was at the wheel for a while, I got tired and went inside the sleeper to crash myself. When I woke back up, abruptly, to the sound of a police siren, it was after three in the morning, eastern standard time, and Larry had gotten us pulled over for speeding.
“Shit, Larry! How fast were you driving?”
“Ninety. What are you worried about? It’s my ticket, right?”
I said, “You got that right. What state are we in anyway?”
“Georgia.”
I nodded and waited to get back on the road.
The Georgia state trooper asked Larry how long he had been driving, our destination, and asked him for his medical card. Then he asked Larry if he was by himself, and I was forced to show my face and IDs.
“Shit, man!” I snapped at Larry afterward. “If this was your damn ticket, then why did I have to get up?”
“Man, fuck that honky. He wouldn’t have done all that shit to no white drivers. All he had to do was check the logbook.”
I shook my head and went back inside the sleeper. “Just get back on the damn road. Okay?”
Larry looked me in the eye and said, “You watch how you talk to me, motherfucker. I’ll crash this damn thing.”
“Yeah, well, you better make sure that I die if you do, because if I live, I’m gonna cut off your arms, and then your legs, and then your dick, and watch you bleed to death on the side of the road.”
Larry broke out laughing and said, “You’re a sick motherfucker, man.”
I told him, “That’s right. Don’t ever fuck with an old man, young blood. It’s dangerous.”
“You ain’t that damn old.”
“Yeah, but I am old enough. Now just shut up and keep driving.”
Larry was quiet for a few minutes, then he said, “Man, I gotta get to the next rest station fast. I gotta take me a log of a shit.”
I smiled. Good thing the next rest station was only two miles away. Sometimes, you get caught in between exits and have to drive ten, twenty miles before you reach the next rest room. I thought about Larry having to take a shit in the dark woods and a deer running out to kick him in the ass, and I broke out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your momma’s buck teeth,” I told him.
I caught him off guard. All Larry could do was laugh with me. You get silly sometimes after being on sixty-hour-plus runs with a guy. Every kind of emotion you can imagine will likely pass through you. That’s why it was so important to team up with someone you could get along with.
When we pulled over to the rest station so Larry could use the toilet, I got out and stretched. Then I found myself with an urge to call Denise and ask her if she had received the roses I sent to her earlier. I knew she had. It was simply an excuse to talk to her.
Denise answered her phone on the first ring, just like I knew she would. She was a light sleeper, and she was always concerned about her image with her sons. Late-night phone calls weren’t something she condoned. Nevertheless, she had begun to bend the rules, just a little bit, for me. I guess she understood just how much it meant to me. You get lonely on the road a lot.
“Yes, Dennis, I got the roses,” she said, before I could ask.
All I could do was smile. She knew me better than I thought she did. Sisters are more perceptive than most guys give them credit for anyway.
“Did you have a rocky trip or a smooth one?” she asked me, loud and clear. She sounded as if she was expecting my late-night call. Maybe she did expect it. We had been going strong for a full year, and I had driven thousands of miles away from her and always managed to call her with expressions of love.
“It was the smoothest ride that I could hope for. The only thing that would have made it better would have been Denise Stewart in the passenger seat instead of this rock-headed Larry.”
“Hmm, maybe next time,” she told me.
“And how did your day go?” I asked her.
“It was very trying as usual. The roses made it a little better though.”
“Well, you know there’s plenty more where those came from.”
“I would hope so. I would hope that there was a whole package of sweet, chocolate muscles where they came from, too.”
I broke up laughing. I loved it when Denise talked that talk. “It’s more chocolate where those roses came from than you could ever hope for,” I responded.
She chuckled. “I hope this doesn’t turn into one of those nasty all-nighters. I have to get up early and take care of my usual business. Call me back with part two tomorrow. TGIF.”
“No problem, baby. No problem at all. It’ll be the same time and same place, after the crickets start creepin’. I wouldn’t want Larry to hear our conversation anyway. He’s too young to hear it.”
Denise laughed again and said, “Okay. I’ll look forward to the call.”
As soon as I hung up the phone, Larry climbed back into the driver’s seat and smiled at me.
“You just finished talking to that corporate sister, didn’t you?”
“First of all, the woman’s name is Denise. Denise Stewart. And secondly, it’s none of your damn business who I was talking to.”
Larry grinned. Then he tried to look serious. He said, “Old man, you better climb back inside of that sleeper and get yourself some rest. ’Cause if you keep talking that shit like you talkin’ you gon’ need every minute of it.”
I said, “You ain’t that tough, young blood,” and climbed back into the sleeper.
“Yeah, but I see you did what I told you to do,” he responded to me.
I ignored him and got comfortable for the ride. I smiled to myself and hollered, “Wake me up when we get there!”
Larry didn’t know anything of what Denise and I had together. My relationship with her was total peace and tranquillity. What I felt for her was exactly why lovestruck men think of women as mommies, no matter how old they get. She fulfilled all of my needs, from the little boy in my ticklish toes, all the way up to the scattered graying hairs on my aging head.
Another Sunday
don’t know what the problem is with black men and church, but I have to fight every Sunday morning to get these two boys of mine dressed and ready to go. It’s as if the Bible was only talking about Eve in Genesis, and there was no Adam. The funny thing is, the Muslim brothers don’t seem to have that problem at all. You see hundreds of brothers attending Louis Farrakhan’s mosque on the South Side.
“I can’t find my socks!” Walter hollered from his room.
Every Sunday it was the same thing, either his socks, his tie, his suit jacket, or his dress pants were missing. I guess he thought he could actually get out of going to church by deliberately misplacing his things, but I had news for him.
I pulled out a pair of brand-new dress socks I bought just for the occasion. I had a few extra ties in my closet just in case he misplaced them, too. I was planning on buying a couple of extra suits for him and keeping them in my closet as well.
“Wear these,” I told him, tossing the socks on his unmade bed.
Jimmy walked by and laughed. He was dressed and ready to go, with his hair brushed, and he was smelling like cologne. I turned and stared at him as he headed through the hallway toward the stairs.
“Ah, Jimmy, is something going on at church that I don’t know about today?” I asked him.
Walter started to laugh. “He thinks this girl likes
him,” he said, dropping a dime.
Jimmy looked shocked for a minute, then he just shook his head and went on about his business. I immediately thought again about having that conversation concerning sex, responsibility, and condoms with him.
I really didn’t want to bother Jimmy about it that morning, nor did I have the time, but I was curious. I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen where my giant of a son was having a quick glass of orange juice. He tried his best to avoid eye contact with me.
“So, ah, which girl is it?” I asked him. The boy was only fifteen, and I had been looking up to talk to him for three years already. I wasn’t exactly short myself, especially with heels on.
Jimmy sighed and shook his head again. “Come on, Mom. He don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. Why you listenin’ to him?”
I thought about that question for a minute. “Well, first of all, I never remember you being so eager to go to church on Sunday. You got your hair greased and brushed this morning, you’re all ready to go, and ah, is that some kind of cologne that you’re wearing?” It was obvious that something was going on inside that teenage mind of his.
He set his glass on the counter and said, “I’m just trying to help you out, Mom. Since you want us to go to church every week, I figure I might as well stop fighting it.”
I smiled, and that quickly turned into a laugh. “Is that right? You’re trying to help me out? Well, I don’t know if you know it or not, but the Lord don’t ask for you to wear cologne,” I told him.
“He don’t ask for us to wear suits and ties either,” Jimmy countered with his own smile.
He had a point, but I wasn’t through with my interrogation yet, so I pressed him for answers. “So, you’re telling me that you’re absolutely sure there’s no girl in this church who you would like to see today?”
His smile got even wider. “It’s a lot of girls in there that I would like to see. But that don’t mean nothin’. I’m going because you wanted us to go.”
“So, in other words, if I said that we’re going to a different church today, that wouldn’t bother you at all? Is that what you’re telling me? Because you’re going to church for me, right?”
He hesitated and started to laugh. “But why would you want to go to a different church? All of your friends go to this one.”
I grinned. The boy must have thought that I was born yesterday. “Mmm hmm, that’s just what I thought,” I told him. It was definitely time for our talk. I stepped close to my giant son and asked, “Jimmy, have you, ah, done the do with any girls yet?”
Walter must have snuck up on us and heard my question, because the boy laughed so hard I thought he would break his rib cage.
“What is your problem?” I turned and asked him. He was plenty immature to want to get in trouble in the streets. It was a godsend to have Walter out in the suburbs! The West Side of Chicago would have chewed him up and spit him back out.
“Nothin’,” he answered.
I decided I would talk to Jimmy again later on that evening, while Walter was over his father’s house. I had agreed that his father could pick him up after church and drop him off at summer camp that Monday. I had Walter pack two extra sets of clothes and underwear with him to take to church.
When we arrived at church that morning, back on Chicago’s far West Side on Augusta Boulevard, I watched to see who was watching my oldest son. It looked like every girl over twelve and under nineteen was eying Jimmy, and my mind was not playing tricks on me.
Walter noticed it himself and got to laughing again. I was getting tired of his silliness, so I quickly grabbed his left arm and pinched him through his suit jacket.
“Cut it out.”
“Oww, Mom!”
Jimmy looked at his younger brother and grimaced. “Sound like a little girl,” he commented.
“What?” Walter protested loudly.
I stopped walking down the aisle and grabbed both of them right there and whispered to them very sternly, “Look, I don’t need this from either of you. Okay?”
Jimmy started to smile, but Walter was still pissed at being called a girl. I couldn’t argue with it myself. I was used to seeing much more physical and tough-minded boys, but that’s not the kind of thing a mother could tell her son. I just hoped that he would pass through his many developmental stages and turn out all right. One thing was for sure, Walter would not last one minute in Chicago. I was almost certain of that. I sheltered him as much as I could and he didn’t have the street smarts that most city kids have. Jimmy, on the other hand, knew how to conduct himself in the streets, and since the skill of playing basketball was so well respected in Chicago, so was he.
We sat in our usual seats on the left side of church, next to Camellia, Monica, and Levonne. I wondered if Jimmy ever thought of Monica as a girlfriend. She was only a year older than him, and most young guys considered her attractive. She was already wearing the fancy hats and matching gloves to church, and getting the extra attention that it afforded her. However, I realized that Monica and Jimmy were too close to being cousins to seriously think about dating each other.
Anyway, Jimmy sat down right next to Monica, and they immediately started acting giddy and secretive. I didn’t hear a word Reverend Gray said that morning. He was usually pretty loud, but I was busy eavesdropping on Monica and my son.
I was planning to ask Camellia all the details about the chat she had with her daughter. Usually, I stayed out of their business, but after I saw how Jimmy and Monica were carrying on, I was dying to know what they thought they knew. Fortunately, we attended the early, shorter service. Otherwise, we could have been in church for three hours or more.
“You know, you two were really carrying on today,” I told them after church.
“Mmm hmm, and the church ain’t the place for gossiping,” Camellia grunted with a frown.
I gave her a look. She knew better than that. It was more gossiping going on in church than at your average high school. The bigger the church, the more the gossip. But that would never stop us from going.
When we walked out, Walter’s father was double parked out in front, and on time as usual.
“What do you think about his wife?” Camellia whispered to me.
I gave the tall, thin sister a nod while she sat in the passenger’s side of Walter’s silver Lincoln. The car was too big for the man if you asked me, but it was perfect for a Napoleon complex. “I have nothing against her,” I answered Camellia. I couldn’t lie to myself and say that I wasn’t at all jealous of her, because I was. Nevertheless, my jealousy had more to do with the fact that she was married than anything regarding Junior. She would have her hands full with him. I didn’t envy that liaison at all.
Then my son started with his usual pouting. “I hate going over his house,” he mumbled with his overnight bag in hand. “It’s always boring over there.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just what you need, some quiet time to calm your behind down and think,” I told him. “Now give me back my car keys.”
“How was church?” his father asked me as he walked over. He and his wife were dressed for church, too. I never bothered to ask, but they probably went to some white Catholic church on the North Side that let out after only an hour of service.
“It was fine,” I told him. I’m not saying that it was right, but I rarely had many words for the man. I just didn’t know what to say to him half the time.
He spoke to Camellia, her two kids, and then to Jimmy.
“How’s basketball coming, Jimmy? I know you can dunk by now, right?”
Jimmy nodded to him and smiled. “Yeah, I can dunk.”
Too bad you can’t, I was too mature to comment to Walter. I did think it though, and that was bad enough. At only five foot nine, he was easily the shortest brother I ever dated. Everything about him was unusual for me. I had always been attracted to tall, rugged men. Walter Perry Jr. was short, well-groomed, and extremely pretentious. I hated to think it, but his son was following r
ight in his footsteps, no matter how hard he tried to rebel. Maybe Walter III knew that better than anyone, which made his rebelliousness more meaningful to him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mom,” he said to me as he climbed into the backseat of his father’s car. It was his little joke to always let his father know that he would be coming back to me.
I smiled at my son and watched the silver Lincoln as it pulled off, heading east on Augusta.
“You’re thinking about the custody thing, aren’t you?” Camellia asked me. She knew me too damn well.
I nodded to her and said, “Yeah. I’m just wondering how he would turn out.”
“Probably just like his father,” Jimmy said with a chuckle. “He already act like him now. Look like him, too.”
“Yup. He does,” Camellia’s son Levonne agreed.
Camellia said, “Yeah, and you don’t act or look anything like your father, Jimmy. The only thing you got from him is his height,” she responded to my son.
I said, “His father played basketball, too. He almost made it to the state championship during our senior year,” I told Camellia. I don’t believe I ever mentioned it to her before. It wasn’t one of my priorities.
Camellia gave me a devilish grin. “Don’t tell me you’re reminiscing.”
I shook my head and said, “Not hardly.” Then I looked to my son. “No offense, Jimmy, but I loved your father a lonnng time ago. It almost seems like another lifetime.”
Camellia laughed and rumbled all over. “Erykah Badu,” she responded. “That’s my girl!”
“Mmm hmm,” Monica hummed with an eager nod. “I like her songs, too.”
Levonne was ready to go home. He hadn’t said much all day. He was thirteen and a frail boy who had been suffering from sickle-cell anemia, so I guess I was always concerned about his health.
“Are you all right, Levonne?” I asked him.
He nodded and said, “Yeah, I’m just tired.”
“That’s because he was up late last night, watching videos,” Camellia snapped. “He knew he had to go to church in the morning. He’ll know next time.”
