by Marcus Burke
Nina is sitting with a bright-skinned black couple, clearly parents of one of Andre’s teammates, both wearing the same black-and-yellow team travel gear, looking as square as can be. The husband has a Boston Herald stretched across his lap and the wife is knitting something. Nina knows these people. They’re all laughing as I walk up the bleachers. The man stands up and flaps his arms open like he wants to hug me. He has a wet-looking S-curl in his hair with matching patches of gray on the sides.
“You must be Andre’s father. Charles Watson, I’m Aldrich’s dad. It’s a pleasure. Andre was just over to the house last night for the team pasta party. Some kid you got there. You must be proud.”
“I’m Eddy.” I stretch my hand out and look down at his big shiny watch. He gorilla-grips my hand and snatches me close for a half embrace. I almost spill my coffee and force a smile.
“This is my wife, Trina.” She drops the yarn balls in her lap and tilts her glasses down to see me, raising a limp hand in my direction. She smiles, showing no teeth, and gently touches two fingertips lightly on both sides of my hand and we make a shake motion, being careful not to actually touch hands. We make eye contact and her eyes open shock-wide and narrow and I look her off and say nothing and settle into my seat.
I watch as both teams’ starting fives walk onto the court, milling around slapping high fives and saying, “Good luck,” waiting for the ref to toss the jump ball. Andre’s a starter and I don’t know the last time I saw him play. Maybe when he was in grade school. The ball tips off and bounces to Andre, and immediately he attacks the hoop and gets fouled. He makes the layup and pounds his chest, yelling, “And one!” Everyone starts cheering and my head pounds harder.
Charles leans into me, bouncing his eyebrows.
“God, I love watching that kid play,” he says.
“So, Charles, what number’s Aldrich?” I ask as Andre shoots his free throws.
“He’s number seven.”
“Where’s he at?”
“The bench.” He points.
I nod okay, and say no more. It looks like this is the game to see. The gym has five ball courts of games going on but everyone seems to be packed in around this one. As the half unfolds, Charles sits telling me more than I ever knew about my son. First off, this league is called AAU. This is one of the best AAU teams in Massachusetts and all these kids are supposedly “pipelined”—as Charles put it—to play ball in college. On the weekends, more often than not Andre rides with the Watsons to tournaments.
Charles’s got Andre caddying golf at his fucking country club and they take him along with them on their Martha’s Vineyard vacations. I don’t really know how to feel about all this. But it’s more than I can do for him, so again I say nothing.
Charles says he’s been teaching Andre to play the guitar. He’s thinking about giving him one for his birthday. This sends an electric jolt up my spine. I turn and look him in the face.
“Oh, yeah? What kind of music you teaching him to play?”
“Just some rhythm and blues, a little Muddy Waters.” He tosses his hands up. “Oh, you don’t mind, Ed-O? Andre said you’re a drummer. I’d hate to step on a musician’s toe. I only play for fun.”
I don’t answer. The more Charles keeps talking the less I want to hear what his light-skinned country-club ass has to say. From the sounds of things, Andre’s better off without a nigga like me around.
I look out at Andre on the court and his eyes are still red, with the slant of sideways sunflower seeds. He might smoke a little reefer, but he’s nothing like me and maybe that’s good. I tune Charles out as he starts blabbering about the life insurance company that he runs and playing squash at the YMCA on the weekends. Now what kind of black man plays squash? I focus in on the game.
Andre’s out there tearing shit up, bullying kids, cursing out the refs, talking shit to the other team’s coach. Aldrich finally gets in and throws Andre an alley-oop right as the time expires, and Andre dunks it on a scrawny little Spanish kid as the buzzer sounds. Then he turns around and chest-bumps the kid, screaming “Penga!” in the little yellow boy’s face.
The gym erupts, everyone’s standing, the kids lining the courts are jumping up and down falling all over each other. A lanky ref runs up in his tight black pants and windmills his arms in Andre’s face and blows his whistle, spiking his hands together into a T to call a technical foul on Andre. Andre looks at the ref and starts laughing as Coach Hedgehog runs onto the court and ushers him back over to the bench, sitting the whole team down.
Coach Hedgehog’s pulling at his collar, his face is tomato red, and all the kids on the sidelines are reenacting the dunk and laughing. Nina is more embarrassed than amused, but Charles is right, I am proud.
That’s my boy out there and who’da knew, he’s got Battel blood in them veins after all. Charles can take him wherever he wants, but I made him and he’s my son. Andre looks across the gym and we make eye contact and I smile and give him the thumbs-up. But then I realize he’s looking at Nina, who’s fanning her arms up and down, puffing out her cheeks, telling him to breathe. She nudges me.
“So, where we going to lunch?” she asks.
“You don’t want to see the second half?” I ask.
“Get with it, Daddy, these things go all day. The Killer Bees got four games this afternoon. We’ll see him play.”
Charles gets up and walks over to the team bench after Coach Hedgehog finishes yelling at them. He has a Gatorade in his hand for Aldrich. I follow behind him empty-handed because I guess this is what fathers are supposed to do. I don’t know what to say, so I just sit down next to Andre on the bench. I look across the gym and see three white girls holding signs that say “Battel’s Babes.” Again I feel strangely proud.
“You doing your thing, man.” I look at him.
He’s huffing and puffing, looking down at the floor. Some kind of energy on the guy. Seems I’m the only one with the nuts to be within ten feet of him.
“You need anything?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer me.
“You thirsty?” I ask again, and again he doesn’t answer.
I want to punch him in the side of the head. Fuck’s he so mad about anyway? Look around, he’s got a cheering section and every dad in the gym stiff-dicked wishing he was their kid. The whole place is watching his every move. Such a fucking ungrateful little bastard. He’s got it a whole lot better than me when I was his age. I get up and walk back over to Nina and we head out the door.
We pull out of the parking lot and again I can feel Nina looking at me. “What are you in the mood for?” I ask her but then see a Dunkin’ Donuts and pull into the drive-through. The sour look on her face says she was expecting more, but shit, I still need to get right today. We both get coffees and breakfast sandwiches. We cruise around for a bit looking for a place to park so we can eat, Nina’s eyes burning on me from the passenger seat.
“Daddy, can I ask you something?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “What’s your life like? I just wanna know. Really, what is it you do out there when you’re gone?”
I stare at the road ahead. I hate it when she does this shit and for some reason her voice feels like acid melting my insides and I don’t know what to say. The answer isn’t good enough. It’s too simple: I’m a fuck-up. What am I supposed to tell her? I turn tricks for the devil? Niggas like me just don’t learn. I been caught up in this tumble cycle and can’t seem to stop.
“You don’t have to answer me today but I do deserve that much …” she continues.
Back in the day I would’ve popped those overgrown words back down her throat, but she’s not wrong to want to know. I turn the tape deck back on.
“Aw, baby, come on. Why don’t we talk about the good times, ya know?”
“What good times, Daddy?” She’s yelling now. “They’re all dead and cold. Why don’t you care, Daddy?” Her eyes are glassing over with tears and my heart’s racing.
“Baby, I’m sorry.” It’s about
the only thing I can offer.
“Yeah, you are sorry. You sure are sorry, Daddy! You sure are.”
Now I’ve apologized and bought the girl a meal and she sits here insulting me. I am her father and she is my daughter and she needs to know her place in the world. I grip the wheel and look at her.
“Since everyone seems to be so curious this morning, why don’t I ask you some questions, Nina? When’d you start wearing your jeans paint-on tight and smearing makeup all over your face like a blinking raggedy nightwalker, huh? When did you get your belly button pierced like a little hoochie mama?”
“So that’s what you care about?” She lifts the flap of her shirt over her belly button and rips the ring out. “It’s a magnet!” She throws it at me and spills her coffee down her lap and throws her breakfast sandwich against the windshield. She’s sobbing. The magnet hits my neck and I swerve a bit looking over at her as we pull past a gray Crown Victoria stopped in the entryway of a mobile mart.
It pulls out after us and I don’t know what the hell we did wrong but he’s turned on the red and blues. I reach into my back pocket and realize my wallet must be back at the house and wonder if I have any warrants.
The officer walks up to the window and it’s Officer McDevitt, one of them South Boston Irish good ol’ boys. We know each other from more encounters than I care to speak of. He looks down at me, braces back smiling, thumbs in his belt loops. He squints his eyes looking at Nina and the mess she’s made.
“Everything okay in there?”
“McDevitt, whatchu want?”
“You know the drill. License and registration.”
That’s when I pause. “I don’t have my license on me but I know my license number.”
He shrugs his shoulders and his eyebrows raise. “Without a license how am I to know who you are? Out of the car!”
“For what? I didn’t do you nothing. Why you even pull me over?”
“Red rejection registration sticker. I smell marijuana. Out. Of. The. Car! Battel!”
“Bullshit you do. Ain’t nothing in this car.”
“Oh, mind if I look around a little bit?”
This is when I hear the sniffer-dog barking and know I’m tripping. How could I not realize he had the fucking dog with him? But shit, it’s Ruby’s car and I felt a tinge of confidence.
“Not a problem.” I look over at Nina. “This won’t take long, baby.” She folds her arms and looks away from me. I step out of the car and stand beside McDevitt’s cruiser with my hands crossed behind my back “for safety reasons,” with another backup officer standing next to me.
A woman cop arrives as more backup and walks Nina to her cruiser and they stand there waiting for McDevitt to start the search. He takes the German shepherd out of the cruiser and walks it up to the station wagon. He walks the dog around the car as he opens all the doors, and then lets it off the leash. It goes berserk and springs into the backseat. The dog jumps back out of the car, chomping down on Andre’s gym bag, trying to rip it in half. McDevitt looks at me and grins, then speaks into his radio as more backup officers arrive.
“Good boy, good boy. Who’s a good boy?” McDevitt pets the dog and takes the bag from him and returns it to the car. He unzips the back pocket and, sure enough, the motherfucker pulls out what I figure to be four ounces of weed.
“Click, click.” McDevitt looks at the officer next to me.
“You fucking planted that shit! No way you’re getting me on that.”
The officer steps behind me and I feel the bite of the handcuffs chomping down on my wrists. At this point pleas are for a later time and the officer pushes my head forward and takes a step.
“No no no no no no no … Officer, please!” The officer pushes me toward the cruiser and I jump up and buck back at him. McDevitt rushes in, slide-tackling my legs out and I start kicking at him. More backup crowds around and they are pig-piling on top of me. I feel a gust of wind and they’re carrying me now, chanting, “Stop fighting!” I watch the female officer restraining Nina.
“Jesus Lord!” Nina screams. She’s giving the officer a run for her money too. They slide me into the cruiser and the door slams. My skull is bleeding somewhere, I can taste it in my sweat. I sit up and look out the window at Nina as I pull away, and in some weird way this seems like one of the better things that has happened to me lately. I’m a piece of shit, it ain’t hard to tell. Maybe it’s time for this prostitute to pay his pimp.
10
Slipping
I’d riffled through every bag of nuts, bolts, washers, and screws twice looking for my stash and found nothing. Maybe I shouldn’t have smoked that joint on the way home. My wristwatch beeped. I only had ten minutes until Drop Everything and Read time was over and my midday absence would be noted by my fourth-period science teacher, who would alert the office, whose secretary Mrs. Agnes would pass the message along to Ma and the assistant principal. Fuck, I muttered to myself rapid-fire as I rummaged my hands through the darkness inside Papa Tanks’s toolshed. Detention, suspension, or an ass whooping? Trouble’s a-coming, I know, but it don’t matter none ’cause I ain’t going nowhere without my trees—considering my last lapse in accounting for them, and how it resulted in Pop being accounted for ’round-clock by guard, iron lock, and key.
A cold breeze whistled the shed doors open and I thought I heard some rustling behind me. I turned around but didn’t see anything moving and in my high haze I dismissed it. The doors wheezed shut. Usually I could nose out my weed simply by rustling the bags. Frustrated, I began to throw and kick through the clutter of bags on the floor until I heard a few more distinct thuds behind me and I froze. With the shed doors closed, beams of lights broke through the cracks in the wood. Everything else was tar black. I turned around and took a few steps, reaching out in front of me. Feeling nothing, I resumed my search and attributed the sounds to a mixture of the blowing leaves crunching outside and my own stomping around—until Papa Tanks clicked on his flashlight, spotlighting my face, breaking his stealth. He lunged at me and snatched me by the base of my neck, kneading his tamarind-thick fingers into the collar of my polo shirt.
“Andre, you crazy ’r wha?”
He thundered his hand across the back of my head. Neon fireworks exploded into my vision and I jolted forward. Papa Tanks spun me around gripping my chest, balling my shirt around his hand, and slowly pulling me closer to him. The veins in his forearm pulsed out his rage. He peered down at me and his eye smoldered. He held me still as I wavered away from him like a little turtle suspended in the air by its shell. Papa Tanks tightened his grip to a choke and continued to tighten it until I rasped out, “Pa-Paw, I can’t breathe,” and tried to squirm away. He took it as an act of aggression.
Papa Tanks drove a hand into my sternum, knocking the wind out of me, and I doubled over. He grabbed me up with both hands and pulled me in close and squatted back gathering his momentum and charged me back into the wall like a lineman. Yoked up on my tippy-toes, I felt my legs give out and I clutched at his forearm for balance. His eyes popped wide, the wrinkles around his temples looked like clenched fists. He reached behind me and rustled free a tire iron and held it above his head. My eyes snapped shut, cheeks quivering with anticipation. After a short pause I peeked at him and he bashed the tire iron into the wall next to my head, splintering the wood onto my cheek. My arms flailed out and Papa Tanks pushed me to the ground.
“Mussy-be dis. De reason yu mashing up de whole place!” He spiked a crinkled brown paper bag off my chest. The aroma wafted out and I felt a fucked-up sense of relief.
“Mari-Juana! Andre! Why? You nah t’ink I see what you a’do. Me grun-sun running roun’ actin’a Al Capone, like we nah have bread in’ayawd? In truth, we all mus’ tek up our life wit’ God. Jus’ ’memba, an honest man’s sardine taste betta den any devil-steak.”
Shaking his head, he turned and walked away.
“Pa-Paw,” I called after him.
He ignored me and kept walking. He was a bos
s back home in Costa Rica. He didn’t repeat himself. The flashlight clicked off and he slammed the doors and the room returned to black and he was gone, leaving me clutching my product, lying on my back panting and bewildered. I sat up and glanced into an old mirror leaning against the shed wall but couldn’t see myself through the dust caked all over it. The wind flapped the doors again and I flinched.
“Fuck!” I grumbled. I punched the floorboards, stood up, and stuffed the weed in my pocket. I let out a long sigh. I slowly ran my hands down my face. Time to pull it together. Shit’s all fucked up—it always is—but for a change I sort of wished someone would save me from myself. All I wanted was a summer day when everything tapered off and I could run ball at Kelly Park all day and nothing really seemed to matter.
As I walked out of the shed, the rain stopped and the sky shattered itself into a sunny day. Me and Papa Tanks both know I know better, but the fact remains: morals can’t override hunger. Besides, I can’t stop hustling anyway. Not since Pop blew back into town, fucking my flow in true Pop fashion.
As I started walking up over the hill back toward school the silver spoiler on Smoke’s Honda Civic emerged from a blind spot over the hill like a shark in shallow water. I wished I could go up inside their house and chill with Beezy, but Beezy’s at school. Plus, since Tunnetta, shit ain’t been the same. She Beezy’s girl now, even though I still touch her from time to time. When I reached the top of the hill I saw the ends of Smoke’s cornrows dangling out from the back of his Red Sox cap in the rear window. My heart sped up and I stopped and turned down a side alley leading to the avenue. Smoke wasn’t being very friendly these days.
Once the high school basketball season was over and AAU ball got under way, I realized I could extend my clientele—until Pop left my basketball game trying to convince Nina he wasn’t a piece of shit. He got himself bagged. If he had his license on him or simply kept his ass at the gym, nothing would have happened.
