Only the Strong

by Jabari Asim

  “You better know it. Your boy Playfair is a regular James Brown. I might like the Carpenters, but I can still get down. Check me out.”

  He raised his right arm and shook his pelvis. Then he raised his left arm and repeated the motion. “That’s the boogaloo, baby.” He hunched his shoulders and wiggled forward. “This here’s the camel walk.”

  “Watch it,” Guts advised. “Don’t trip over your bell-bottoms.”

  “Want me to show you the funky penguin? All the kids are doing it.”

  “Do I look like a kid?”

  “Well, since you put it that way. If you change your mind…”

  “I know where to find you. Play, put the tape player out front. It might get in the way of Trina’s dispatching if we keep it in here.”

  Playfair carried it out and plugged it in while Cherry and Shadrach watched from a nearby table. They were supposedly playing dominoes, but neither man had made a move in a while. Oliver paced and read the paper.

  “Can you get the ballgame on that?” Shadrach asked. “The pregame show might be on.”

  Oliver made a clucking noise. “Why don’t we see if we can get the news on there? Why a Negro would rather listen to a ballgame than find out what’s going on in the world is a riddle I can’t figure,” he said. “If Nixon escalated his troop numbers today, would any black man know or care? And that’s exactly who Tricky Dick is sending overseas: us.”

  “Oliver, can’t you ever talk about anything positive?” Cherry asked.

  “You won’t catch me smiling while the world is falling down around me. Wake up tomorrow and a whole city block might be gone. That’s how they do it, you know. It’s like these dominoes. First they closed the ballpark. Blew it up, actually. Shook dust, debris, and enough asbestos over the neighborhood to make us all fireproof.”

  “Washburn said he needed to move his team downtown,” Shadrach said. “That’s his right. It ain’t like we were working in that stadium.”

  “Didn’t cost us nary a job,” Cherry added. “Besides, they built us that nice boys club right on the spot.”

  “Carter Carburetor will be next to close up shop,” Oliver predicted.

  “It ain’t like black men are working up in there either,” Shadrach said.

  Oliver rolled up his newspaper until it formed a tight tube. He looked like he wanted to whack Shadrach with it. “Mark my words,” he said. “It’s not about jobs. It’s about control. If you’ve got no say over your food, clothing, shelter, or education, you’ve got nothing. And don’t get me started about health.”

  Shadrach grunted. “The last thing we want to do is get you started.”

  “I just call it like I see it,” Oliver said. “Carter Carburetor’s next, then the hospital.”

  Everybody laughed. “That’s crazy, Oliver,” Playfair said. “No way in hell they’ll come in here and try to take Abram H.”

  “Ain’t gon’ happen,” Cherry agreed.

  Oliver pressed his argument. “All those patients without insurance or money. It’s a drain on the city’s finances. You’ll see.”

  “That would leave a lot of hurting people on the street,” Playfair said.

  “My father died in that hospital,” Cherry said.

  “Died? Shit, find me a Negro who wasn’t born up in there,” Oliver said. “Everybody in here, right?”

  “Except me,” Shadrach said, “but only because it wasn’t open yet. I was born at home. Still, can’t imagine the North Side without it.”

  An uncomfortable silence descended until Playfair clapped his hands. “All right, let’s turn this player on and see what we got.”

  “Put it on the ballgame,” Shadrach suggested.

  Oliver began to cluck again. “Shad, haven’t you heard a word I said? Sports are just today’s bread and circuses, a sideshow to keep you from thinking about your neighborhood being stolen right from under you, about your young men being sent off to fight and die in godforsaken places.”

  “The home team’s got three of us starting in the field and one of us starting on the mound,” Shadrach said. “I’m just being supportive.”

  “Shad, you’re the oldest man in the room,” Oliver said.

  Shadrach frowned. “What’s your point?”

  “I’m just saying that you should be able to remember better than anybody just how bad the home team treated Jackie Robinson when he first came through here. They called him names, frightened his wife. Hell, they even sent a black cat out onto the field.”

  “It’s different now,” Shadrach said. “Look at Crenshaw. He’s the highest-paid player on the team.”

  “You mean highest paid slave,” Oliver said. “That’s all they are, slaves. Just ask Curt Flood.”

  The door swung open and a tall, graceful man strode in. He was dressed in the latest fashions and sported aviator sunglasses and thick muttonchop sideburns. A dull bruise sat high on his cheek. He looked around and smiled. “Afternoon, fellas,” he said.

  The men of the cabstand just gaped. Finally Cherry found his voice.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “You’re Rip Crenshaw.”

  The newcomer grinned and flipped off his shades. “That’s what folks call me. Here to see my man Guts.”

  “Of course you are,” Shadrach said, getting up and moving toward Guts’s door. “Our Guts, always rubbing elbows with the bigwigs. He’s right through that door. I’ll show you.”

  Shadrach tapped lightly on the open door. Guts looked up.

  “Um, excuse me, Guts,” Shadrach said. “Mr. Rip Crenshaw here to see you.”

  Crenshaw had put his sunglasses back on. He smiled at Shadrach. “Thanks a lot, brother.”

  Shadrach just lingered and stared.

  “Shadrach,” Guts said. The old man didn’t move. “Shadrach,” he said again, more forcefully.

  Shadrach answered without taking his eyes off Crenshaw. “Hmm?”

  “Leave us.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Sure, no problem, right away.” He left and closed the door behind him.

  Guts eyed the ballplayer. “I thought you were going to call first,” he said.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Crenshaw replied. “So I decided to stop by.”

  Right, Guts thought. He said nothing.

  “So,” Crenshaw said. “I hear you’re stone cold.”

  “Not hardly,” Guts said.

  “I hear you’ve slaughtered men and eaten their hearts for breakfast,” the ballplayer said. He smiled. Guts didn’t.

  “And I hear any pitcher with a decent curveball can make you his bitch,” Guts responded. “But that don’t make it so, right?” He smiled. Crenshaw didn’t.

  “I’m usually treated with more respect,” Crenshaw said.

  “Same here,” Guts said.

  Crenshaw looked at Guts a long while before bursting into good-natured laughter. “You ain’t no ass-kisser, are you? Brother, that makes two of us. You all right with me.”

  He extended a hand across Guts’s desk. Guts took it, but replied, “My boss and your boss might be friends, but that don’t make us friends.”

  Crenshaw studied Guts. His face brightened as if he’d discovered something. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “A while since what?”

  “Since you had some.”

  “Ah, that’s a good one.”

  “Mr. Goode said you can show me how the North Side rolls.”

  “I ain’t been rolling much lately, but I’ll do what I can.” Better get it over with, Guts thought. “You got time tonight?”

  “Naw, big man. We play the Cubs in a couple hours. Then we have a five-game road trip. Mets and Phillies. Don’t you read the sports pages?”

  “Not until football season.”

  Crenshaw nodded. “I should have figured you for the gridiron. I’m no stranger to it myself. I rushed for close to 900 yards my sophomore year of high school.”

  “Why did you choose baseball?”

  “It chose me. A $60,0
00 signing bonus when I was 17. Besides, I was clearly too pretty for the pigskin. How about I look you up in a week or so?”

  “All right. So I take it you’re off the injured list?”

  “Yeah, but I’m sitting out tonight. Hangover.”

  Guts stared at Crenshaw’s bruised cheek. “Heard you took a foul ball to the jaw. Looks like it got you pretty good.”

  “That’s the official story. Between you and me, I got into it with some rednecks in a South County bar. I was kicking ass too, til this joker blindsided me with a pool stick.”

  “You were way on the wrong side of town.”

  “Guts, you ever been to South County?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Then you know they have pussy there, too.”

  Guts sighed. “You looking for white women, you don’t have to go that far. You could have been killed.”

  Crenshaw winked and flexed a bicep. “You should see the other guys,” he said.

  The All-Star wasn’t able to escape the cabstand without some friendly jawing with the regulars. Not that he had tried very hard to get away, in Guts’s opinion. He had hesitated for a moment when Cherry offered him a beer from the tottering old Frigidaire, then politely declined.

  “I still got a bit of a buzz from last night,” he explained. “And I’m headed to the stadium. You’ve probably heard that I’ve already got a strike against me.”

  Among the many stinks Crenshaw had stirred up, the most pungent involved a widely circulated photo showing him quaffing a brew in the dugout during the middle of a closely fought duel with the hated Cubs. Crenshaw had tried to make light of it, pointing out that the beer he was drinking was one of the team owner’s brands. But Virgil Washburn was not amused and neither was Nick Schumacher, the squad’s longtime manager. Crenshaw had served a three-game suspension and paid a hefty fine.

  Shadrach nearly wept when the slugger offered him a pair of tickets to a future game with seats along the foul line, just a few feet from where Crenshaw patrolled first base. He would be on hand when Crenshaw hit home run number 34, breaking the club record.

  Playfair excused himself just long enough to go to his car and return with a baseball card. “You mind signing this for me?”

  Crenshaw took the card and whistled. “Man, this is my rookie card from when I broke in with the Phils in 1964. Where’d you get this?”

  “From my car,” Playfair replied. He gratefully accepted the signed card and slipped it into one of the zippered pockets on his safari vest.

  “Your car?”

  “Yep. My trunk.”

  “What else you got in there?”

  Oliver, Cherry, Shadrach, and Playfair all answered at once. “Anything a brother needs,” they said.

  Their cocky boast still resonated when Guts went out to pick up a freshly stenciled taxi at Reuben Jones’s garage a few hours later. The radio broadcast of the ballgame played in the background while Reuben and Lucius finished up. Guts mostly listened while the sign painters reacted to the announcers’ comments about Crenshaw’s unfortunate encounter with a foul ball.

  Reuben was incredulous. “A little old foul ball is all it takes to put him down? Sounds like he hasn’t been eating his Wheaties.”

  Lucius laughed. “A man that rich should never have to settle for cold cereal. I know I wouldn’t. And neither would you.”

  Both men were married to outstanding cooks. Lucius’s wife, Irene, perhaps best known as the Pie Lady, sold her legendary lemon pies and other delicacies at Stormy Monday’s, her popular eatery on Goodfellow Boulevard. Reuben’s Pristine knew her way around a kitchen too. Reuben could almost smell the pork chops that he knew were simmering to perfection under Pristine’s careful gaze. Later that evening, he would push himself away from her table and head to his basement studio. There he would begin work on the paintings that would make his reputation, a series of portraits inspired by his favorite book, Notable Negroes. He and Lucius had not yet become acclaimed fine artists, and the Black Swan sign painters had not yet become the Black Swan Collective, subject of documentaries, dissertations, and traveling exhibitions. At the moment they were just two men completing a job.

  Their next job the following day was in Fairgrounds Park, where they joined the rest of the Black Swan crew to hang banners at the entrances announcing Afro Day in the Park, a daylong festival of black culture that would take place in July. On a typical day, they might have crossed paths with Guts for the second time. But while the sign painters hung their handiwork amid the resplendent greenery, Guts stood in Goode’s living room, watching Rev. Washington pace and fume. A determined scowl had replaced the cool demeanor he had displayed the day before. He spat his words as if they tasted bad in his mouth, and his scar seemed to pulsate as he spoke.

  “Fish was on my deacon board,” he said. “I derive no consolation from knowing he’s in heaven.”

  Guts nodded sympathetically. He had noted Fisher’s white-gloved presence every Sunday, holding the door open for arriving worshipers. Guts rarely stepped inside the church, but he drove one of its vans, rain or shine. After a brief memorial service at Good Samaritan, Fisher’s body was to be shipped back to Mississippi per his wishes.

  “You mean you hope he’s in heaven,” Goode said. He was holding a glass of bourbon but had yet to take a sip. “Fish was my friend, a good friend, but he was no angel.”

  Guts had come by to report that he’d turned up nothing so far. He wasn’t sure why he was doing it, since Goode had all but excused him for the time being. He was retired, after all. Sort of.

  Goode looked at Guts. “He used to hold cash for me. Sometimes he used to clean it up, too.”

  Aha, Guts thought.

  “But that was a long time ago,” Rev. Washington said pointedly. “He had never wanted to do it. He got dragged into it.” He glared at Goode. Guts had never seen anyone stare at the man with such open disapproval. On other occasions, Rev. Washington had dared to criticize Goode from the pulpit at Good Samaritan. He obviously had immunity.

  Goode said nothing.

  Guts broke the silence. “Maybe somebody thought he was still banking for you.”

  Rev. Washington laughed bitterly. “You think?” He picked up his bourbon and drained it.

  After another long silence in which Rev. Washington stared at Goode and Goode stared at the floor, Goode turned to Guts. “You have to excuse us. We’re grieving.”

  Guts nodded and turned to leave.

  “Guts,” Goode said.

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Thanks for coming by.”

  “No problem,” Guts said.

  He continued to spend a part of each of the next several days nosing around for answers, but had no luck. He’d nearly forgotten about Rip Crenshaw until the ballplayer caught up with him and they agreed upon a time to meet.

  Crenshaw was staying at the Park Plaza. He came out dressed to party. Guts’s idea of cleaning up included putting on a crisp plain shirt and clean slacks and a pair of slick Florsheim loafers. Pearl had finished her shift at Aldo’s and come over to help him get ready. She bathed him and polished his shoes. She tried and failed to talk him into wearing cufflinks. “But you have such a beautiful collection,” she said. She had the box open and was sifting through them.

  “Uh-huh,” Guts said. “Just put that box back on the closet shelf where you found it.” She stuck her tongue out at him and replaced the box.

  “You’re spoiling me,” he had told her as she buttoned his shirt.

  “It’s not spoiling,” she said. “I call it caring for you like you deserve.” Against his better judgment, Guts left her at his house. She promised to lock up when she went out to spend the evening with some girlfriends. The security-minded Guts thought it was a bad idea. But it was getting harder and harder for him to tell her no.

  Pearl had told him he looked like a movie star, but he felt like a hick from the sticks next to the slugger, who sported a silk shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest
, bell-bottoms, and platform shoes. And jewelry. Guts couldn’t help staring when Crenshaw opened the door and slid into the car.

  “What?” Crenshaw asked.

  Guts shrugged. “You got more chains than a runaway slave.”

  Crenshaw shook his head. “The first thing a runaway slave would do is get rid of all his clunky iron. He wouldn’t know nothing about this gold I’m wearing. Now enough with the ancient history. Let’s party.”

  “You must have had a good road trip.”

  Crenshaw pushed his aviator shades down to the edge of his nose and peered at Guts over the top of them. “You really don’t read the sports pages, do you? I had three homers and knocked in eight runs.”

  Their first stop was the Zodiac, an intimate place on North Grand. Guts eased his Plymouth into the lot underneath the Zodiac’s oversized sign, which featured multicolored renditions of horoscope symbols painted by Reuben Jones. Apparently the sign was the busiest thing about the lounge that night, because the parking lot was less than half full.

  “Maybe we’re a bit early” was all Guts could come up with when Crenshaw shot him a questioning look. Inside, the ballplayer grabbed a beer while Guts claimed a stool where he could see the small dance space and the door. Crenshaw leaned back on the bar and surveyed the dimly lit room. “It’s a Shame” by the Spinners was playing on the jukebox.

  That song gave way to “Love On a Two-Way Street” by the Moments, a sweet ballad with butter-smooth vocals. Crenshaw began to mouth the lyrics and sway to the tune. Across the room, a woman Guts recognized as Gladys, a Zodiac regular, began to do the same. Guts watched as the two began to eyeball each other.

  “What’s her story?” Crenshaw asked.

  “Name’s Gladys. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  Crenshaw went over and led her to the dance floor. They moved around a bit and Crenshaw leaned over and whispered in her ear.

  Seconds later, they parted. Crenshaw said something softly, prompting a smile from Gladys.

  Crenshaw looked at Guts and gestured toward the door. Guts met him at the threshold. “All right,” Crenshaw said, “let’s see what else the North Side’s got.”

  They walked in silence to the car. Guts started the engine.