Only the Strong

by Jabari Asim

  Playfair, now standing at attention, smiled patiently. “That he is, ma’am, but he didn’t work on this. This here’s a different car.”

  Artinces looked at the gleaming maroon, the shiny chrome. She cast a quizzical glance at her visitor.

  “See the top? It’s black. The other was white,” Playfair explained.

  “Oh, yes. Still, how…?”

  “I’ve got resources, ma’am. Connections.”

  Artinces considered the meaning of that. “Well, and I’ve got a full schedule, Mr. Playfair. How may I help you?”

  “Actually, I came to help you. To bring you something.” He opened the rear door on the driver’s side and carefully retrieved a large object with a light fabric draped over it. He set it on the trunk and slid the covering off, revealing a birdcage with a parrot inside.

  “Say hello to Shabazz.”

  Artinces stared. “A bird?”

  “A parrot, African Grey. Mostly I deal in parakeets, but every once in a while something special comes through.”

  “No thank you, Mr. Playfair. A bird could contaminate my office.”

  “I thought of that. That’s why I asked them to bring you out here. Shabazz is for your house.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I’m not interested in a pet.”

  Playfair laughed. “You thought Shabazz was a pet? This here is a guard bird.”

  “A guard bird?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I didn’t know there was any such thing.”

  “Oh, yeah, birds respond to training. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  Playfair turned to the bird. “Watch yourself,” he said.

  The bird said nothing.

  “Watch yourself,” Playfair repeated.

  Dr. Noel coughed softly.

  “Just a little shy,” Playfair explained, “an affliction someone in your profession might attribute to performance anxiety.”

  Dr. Noel looked at Playfair as if noticing him for the first time. “Are you an educated man?”

  “No, ma’am, I just know how to talk to people. Dropped out of Sumner as soon as I was old enough. Couldn’t sit still.”

  Artinces suppressed a chuckle. Sounds like Charlotte, she thought. The girl flits from the counter to the chair to the window as if her rear end’s on fire. Maybe the bird could be a welcome distraction, something to keep her occupied.

  She looked at Playfair. “I close my office at six,” she said. “Bring him back then.”

  Playfair grinned. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll bring you up to speed on how to take care of him.”

  Charlotte wasn’t impressed when Artinces told her about the parrot later that evening. She rolled her eyes, sucked her teeth, and refused even to look in the backseat where the bird sat quietly in its covered cage.

  “Tell me again who gave it to you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Another friend. First flowers, now birds. What kind of name is Shabazz anyway?”

  “I think it’s Arabic. Muslim.”

  “Right, like El-Hajj Malik. Just what we need, the official pet of the Nation of Islam.”

  Artinces laughed. “What do you have against the Nation? You don’t like bean pies?”

  “I used to. I would buy them from the man who stands in front of Katz Drugs. They were good. But then I heard about the Pie Lady and that was that. I’m tired of her too, though.”

  Artinces wasn’t fond of Charlotte’s complaining, but she wanted to encourage her when she showed a willingness to talk.

  “Why’s that? She seems nice enough.”

  “Yeah? Maybe she doesn’t get all in your business. When I go in there, it’s just question after question. Like I’m not entitled to a private life.” Charlotte looked pointedly at Artinces, who kept her eyes on the road. “Everybody’s got a private life. Right?” The girl acted like she knew something. But Artinces knew it was just bluster. At least she hoped as much.

  The next day, Charlotte’s sly insinuation still resonated while Artinces sat through a meeting of the Harry Truman Boys Club board of trustees. There weren’t many items on the agenda, and board chair Virgil Washburn handled old and new business with his customary dispatch. The board formally renewed club director Gabe Patterson’s contract and thanked him for his exemplary service to the underprivileged youth of North Gateway. Washburn’s baseball team was playing a home game and Washburn was eager to get to his owner’s box by the seventh-inning stretch. Rip Crenshaw was closing in on the club home-run mark and, barring any more injuries, would surely match it by August.

  Gabe Patterson was anxious too. His wife, Rose, was nearly eight months pregnant and he didn’t like to leave her by herself for long. Still, he risked pausing to soak up the moment. After shaking hands and accepting congratulations, he stood near the window in Washburn’s stately conference room and enjoyed its imposing view of downtown Gateway. A longtime activist, he still had trouble believing he was working from within the halls of power instead of challenging them from the outside. Not very long ago, he was handing out pamphlets and speaking at rallies. Now he was looking out over the entire city, watching the last streaks of sun dip behind the Old Courthouse. Rose was so proud of him. She was always curious about these meetings, full of questions about the black movers and shakers with whom he rubbed elbows, the folks whose faces she saw each week in the Citizen. If he had to describe the night’s proceedings to her with just one word, though, he’d choose “weird.”

  His renewal was unanimously approved; not a single person spoke against him. However, tension occasionally flared when Dr. Noel and Ananias Goode seemed to speak against each other. In each case, they were essentially saying the same thing, a fact recognized by everyone else in the room. Yet they continued unaware, somehow managing to twist each other’s arguments into unrecognizable shapes.

  Their hostility, barely contained, made the others uncomfortable. Everyone was relieved when Washburn finally adjourned the meeting. Gabe Patterson shook his head as he watched the gangster and the doctor continue to hassle each other while they all waited for the elevator to the underground garage. They were still arguing when he drove away. In Gabe’s rearview mirror, Goode appeared to be sneering while Dr. Noel pinched her lips in disapproval. Her posture suggested that the gangster had body odor or a communicable disease.

  Goode paused. Although his eyes were on Artinces, he didn’t fail to note Gabe’s exit. When he was sure Gabe was gone, he relaxed, letting his sneer change into an affable grin.

  After Artinces settled behind the wheel, Goode leaned through the open window. “When will the doctor be in? Because I really need to be in the doctor.”

  “Keep talking dirty and I may have to discipline you.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  Placing her hand on the back of his broad neck, she yanked his mouth to hers. Her strength always surprised him.

  Goode stepped back to catch his breath. Lipstick traces were smeared around his mouth. “Can I get some more of that?”

  Artinces smiled. “Wait til Wednesday,” she said. She winked and drove away.

  Goode pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed it across his lips. Pressing it against his nose and breathing deeply, he stared after her, watching her car until its taillights twinkled out of sight.

  LUTHER NOEL WAS A SIMPLE MAN. Warmhearted and plainspoken, he had little interest in finery. Each morning he stepped into one of his two pairs of overalls, the daily wardrobe of every dirt farmer in his part of Kentucky. His boots were scuffed and his knuckles were rough and battered. “I’ve got no use for shine,” he had been fond of saying to Artinces, his only child. “You and your mama are all the sparkle I need.”

  In his view, it would have been downright foolish to waste his precious pennies on baubles. “Why a diamond’s worth more than a turnip is a mystery to me, Pepper Pot,” he’d said more than once. “They both come out of the same dirt.” The starched white shirt he wore under his overalls to Sunday meeting was
his one concession to propriety.

  Artinces had considerably more resources, yet she still couldn’t help feeling improper whenever she purchased a little something to help discard the tensions of the day. She counted jewelry, lingerie, and rare books among her guilty pleasures.

  And, despite her father’s resonant voice echoing in her brain, she was especially drawn to dazzlement. Some people and things happened to reflect light in a way that caught her eye. A polished grand piano, gold bracelets, Harry Belafonte. Her attraction to radiance probably accounted for her fearlessness when she first encountered Ananias Goode.

  On that day, she had just locked the back door of her office and removed the key when she heard a voice. “Hey, good looking.”

  She turned and saw a man leaning against the fence, faint rays of sunlight framing his head like a crown. He had an elegant topcoat draped across one shoulder. Underneath it, a beautiful pinstriped suit showed a luminous weave of navy and gray. His hat was angled rakishly over one brow. The man looked immense, dangerous, golden. And he seemed to know it.

  “You got what I need,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Artinces was still wearing her lab coat. She slipped her hand into her pocket. “Mister, all I have is a scalpel and I know how to use it.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “That makes no sense at all. I’m warning you. Take one step and I’ll slash you to ribbons.”

  He smiled. Slowly, he pulled open his suit jacket to reveal a red circle just to the right of his tie.

  “How about that?” he said. “Somebody beat you to it.”

  Artinces spun around so quickly that at first Goode thought she had failed to take notice of his injury. But she was only unlocking her door. She swung it open, then turned and looked expectantly at Goode. The sun was just over his shoulder, forcing her to squint.

  “Well? Come on,” she urged.

  In her examination room, Goode hung his coat and hat carefully on the coatrack before settling onto the exam table. If he was in pain, he didn’t show it. Artinces scrubbed her hands at the sink, put on latex gloves and laid out an array of instruments. After helping Goode ease out of his shirt, she went to work.

  “Private practice,” he murmured. “No partners. I figured you for the kind of boss who ain’t satisfied unless you batten all the hatches and empty the register your damn self. I’m of a similar philosophy. I also figured you’d be locking up right about now.”

  Artinces, focused on treating his wound, said nothing.

  “How you like having your own shingle? Different from running the baby ward at Abram H., I bet. What’s it been, about 10 years now?”

  Artinces stopped, eyebrows raised, and looked into her patient’s eyes.

  “I read the papers, believe it or not. I remember the picture of your ribbon cutting in the Gateway Citizen. Back in 1950, but I remember it. It was a big deal. You’re a big shot for such a tiny woman.” Such a fine woman, too, he thought, but he was saving that.

  “Never mind all that,” Artinces said. “You’ve been stabbed.”

  “Naw, just nicked. Stitches ought to do it.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

  “No luck about it. I just let him nick me so that he’d think he had the advantage. I ain’t slim, but I ain’t slow either.”

  “Where he is now, the man who ‘nicked’ you?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Shouldn’t a man like you have protection? Muscle—isn’t that what they call it?”

  “‘A man like me.’ What kind of racket do you think I’m in?”

  “Racket…that says a lot. Sneaking up to my back door instead of walking through the front door of an emergency room says something too.”

  “So I’m a back-door man. That ain’t a crime.”

  He waited to see if she caught the joke. He continued when she didn’t look up. “My best man’s detained at the moment.”

  “You mean in jail?”

  “Why you got me on the witness stand? You’re a doctor, not a lawyer.”

  “I’m doing you an immense favor, mister. The least you could do is tell me a few things. Including your name.”

  Now it was Goode’s turn to arch his eyebrows. “You’re serious? You don’t know who I am?”

  Artinces shook her head.

  “Ananias Goode. You’ve never heard the name?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she replied. “I wish I could say I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Goode. But I’d be lying.”

  He laughed. Artinces would never forget that moment—the first time she heard his laugh. The phrase “how sweet the sound” entered her head. She wasn’t the prayerful type, but she knew what sin felt like.

  “Be still,” she warned, “or you’ll make things worse.”

  Goode obeyed, letting his eyes linger. She had a cute, round little nose and rich, full lips. Her brown eyes were large and fringed with long lashes. They were the kind of eyes you saw on children before their other facial features caught up. At the same time, her unblinking gaze suggested a fiercely determined woman, one disinclined to put up with bullshit. She had an air of superiority about her, something they had in common. He was going to enjoy seducing this tight-assed, siddity female. Damn straight.

  “Where you from?”

  “Honey Springs.”

  “Kentucky. Damn, a Southern girl.”

  She decided to ignore his vulgar tongue. “You’ve heard of it?”

  Goode nodded. “I may have hopped a freight there once.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “I thought I was on my way to something better. Ended up here.”

  “Gateway City’s not so bad.”

  “I guess not, if you’re a rich doctor.”

  “You think you know me.”

  “I got an idea.”

  Artinces tugged the last of the sutures through his flesh and knotted it. She looked at him, impassive. He stared back. “You don’t. You couldn’t possibly know me.”

  “Not in the biblical sense, so far. But I’m working on it.”

  Artinces suppressed an impulse to tremble. “You don’t strike me as a man who spends much time with Scripture,” she said.

  “Didn’t say I was. But I’d read the Bible with you anytime.”

  “Liar. Good thing for you I don’t own one.”

  “Do tell. I figured you’d have a big crucifix on your office wall.”

  Artinces could almost taste his breath. He smelled as if he’d been drinking something sweet and forbidden.

  “I do,” she said, “but it’s for my patients. Helps them feel safe.”

  “How about you? You ever want to feel safe?”

  At that moment, Artinces knew that safety was the last thing she wanted. She wanted to flirt with risk, indulge until she was flush and satisfied. She wanted to run breathless to the edge of a cliff, with no idea what waited below. Looking into the stranger’s eyes, she decided to jump.

  Neither of them spoke as he closed the gap between them. He was close to kissing her before she abruptly turned away and began to fuss with the supplies in her cabinet. She grabbed a roll of medical tape just like the roll she had already laid out. Gently, she covered his wound with gauze and bandages. “You’re patched up now,” she said in a voice she recognized from years before, a voice heavy with restrained lust. “You need to be on your way.”

  He didn’t move. Artinces took his hat and set it softly upon his head. She shifted it until it sat at the same rakish angle as before. Goode was still naked to the waist.

  “At least let me pay you for saving my life,” he said.

  “You exaggerate,” she said. “Just promise me you’re going to stay out of danger.”

  “Why would I say that, when right now danger is all I’m thinking about?”

  Instead of answering, she retreated and faced her supply cabinet. He stared at her delicate back, willing her to spin around and look at him ag
ain. When that failed, he got up and, wincing, put on his shirt and suit jacket.

  “I have to say,” he said, “your bedside manner was much better than I expected.”

  Artinces remained at the cabinet until she heard the door shut. She went to her chair and sat in in it, gripped its arms, and placed her feet firmly on the floor. She breathed deeply, the first full breaths she’d taken since Goode surprised her behind her building.

  For most of her adult life, she’d had a ready answer for anyone who asked her what she wanted most in the world. “To save every child,” she’d reply. She wanted to keep every baby not just alive, but healthy, no matter the cost. To the mothers and fathers of the North Side, she was a genius with a stethoscope who’d stop at nothing to rescue their children from whatever ailed them. To public health officials, medical school faculty, and hospital administrators across the city, she was a hard-headed colored woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer, an uppity upstart who had apparently forgotten that if she’d been born just a few years earlier she’d be swabbing the halls of Abram H. with a mop, not patrolling its pediatric ward with a clipboard and a six-figure budget.

  Whenever something like loneliness or doubt or fatigue tugged at her lab coat, she revived herself with her mantra: Save every child. Save every child. Save every child. She rocked herself to sleep at night with that simple, impossible phrase ringing in her brain. And she had done her best, through the long hours and late nights, the battles with bureaucrats, the stalwart standoffs with stubborn epidemics, the wars waged against infections with few weapons at her disposal besides penicillin, ice baths, and cough syrup. She’d had her moments when impatience overwhelmed her, when nothing could subdue her existential torment but a round of shopping followed by wine, the comforting coolness of silk lingerie, and Belafonte’s velvet rasp on the hi-fi. But those moments of weakness had been rare and mercifully brief. In the morning she’d shake off her hangover, wash her self-pity down the shower drain, and march unswervingly toward the next round of patients, clueless bean counters, and germs.

  She hadn’t thought about saving herself for years, despite Billie’s warnings that she was just wearing herself out. Billie left every day at precisely six p.m., an unlit cigarette between her lips and her handbag dangling from her wrist just so. “Work ain’t everything” was her mantra.