We entered the hospital, Arthur with his bull-rider limp and big buckle. A few nurses smiled his way. I walked alongside him carrying the small rope, looking more like an apprentice cowboy. We entered a steel elevator with bright lights.
“Na’, Lil’ Frenchy, your daddy kinda messed up. They just put pins in him, so try not to ask him too much ’cause he gonna be tired,” Arthur advised.
Arthur’s bloodshot eyes seemed removed. He knew something or he’d lost something. Maybe both. Father was his close friend and compatriot in the rodeo circuit. Something wasn’t right.
When the elevator opened, I saw Mother leaning against the wall, arms knotted together below her bosom. She turned and looked at me. She was crying. As I approached, she grabbed me and held tightly. The last time she’d been at St. Joseph she was saying good-bye to her brother, Herman.
Then Arthur opened the door, and there he was—Frankenstein’s Creole muthafuckin’ monster.
He lay in the mechanical bed with plastic tubes stuck all over his body running to bags of various liquids and bleeping machines on stands. He had turned into a video game. Small steel rods ran along his left leg through gauze all the way up to his hip. His eyes were half open, and he was smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, Sonny,” he said in a low, weak voice, and he didn’t smile but grimace. He was in pain. I stayed by the door.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked.
I slowly walked over to him and held out the worn pinkie string, the kind he clenched in his mouth while roping calves. He truly looked Olympic when he was calf roping, bursting out of the chute, then practically flying off the horse, one hand lightly guided by the lasso tied around the calf’s neck, the other hand reaching for the calf itself. Reaching for the buckle, the applause, and the money. He’d grab the young calf and throw it on its side, then grab the pinkie string and wind it around the calf’s feet with breathtaking speed and dexterity to the amazement of the crowd. Just after he tied the knot, John Frenchy ceremoniously threw both hands in the air. He was a champion. Since 1965, nobody in the Texas black rodeo circuit had collected as many buckles for calf roping as Father.
But now, in the hospital, he scowled at the rope as he yanked it from my hand with a slight wince. The painkillers weren’t really working. He held the rope for a minute, rubbing his thumb against its ridges, then threw it across the room like a hot potato and closed his eyes.
Arthur stood by the door.
“Give us a minute, Arthur,” Father requested.
Arthur left the room, closing the door behind him.
Father stared at me, making a calculation, then—
“You got the string?” he asked.
I pulled out the red string. He motioned me over. I held out the string, but he shook his head.
“No. That’s for your hands. You gonna make nine knots in that string and I want you to do everything I tell you to do. Can you do that?” he asked.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“And you can’t never tell nobody what you about to do. Can you do that?” he asked.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“This between me and you. Now repeat after me,” he said, then sang—
O kwa, o jibile
Ou pa we m’inosan?
I repeated every syllable, every intonation. After the strange song, he instructed me to start the knots with
Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
Le Seigneur est avec vous.
Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes,
et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.
Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,
priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs,
maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort.
Amen.1
When I finished with the knots, he instructed me to tie the knotted string around his waist. I did, then stood back, not sure what I had done.
He placed his right hand over his heart, then extended it out toward me, palm turned upward—
“Merçi beaucoup, Monsieur,” he said with strange reverence; a new sound from his lips directed to my ears.
I left the room. Father Jerome was consoling Mother, who quieted when I emerged.
“Father Jerome is gonna take you to the rectory, and I’m gonna pick you up later, so behave,” Mother said.
Yeah, the same rectory that I pissed on.
Father Jerome didn’t waste any time giving me a speech on God or accidents or pissing on church property—
“How’s your new school?”
“It’s fun sometimes. We don’t have to wear a uniform, and on Fridays we have hot dogs from Coney Island. They bring ’em in. But some of the kids are mean to me.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I’m poor.”
“You’re not poor, Ti’ John.”
“Then how come them other kids say I’m poor? They all got nice stuff and nice cars. I saw a Porsche last week. You ever seen a Porsche?” I asked.
Father Jerome grinned. “Nice sports car. Real fast.”
“Real fast. It goes vrrooooom! Shoot! I’ma get me one of those one day when I grow up,” I exclaimed. He just focused on the road, even though I wanted him to share in my excitement.
“I started counting stuff at home to see if we poor,” I admitted.
“If you can count all you own, then you don’t have much,” Father Jerome advised.
“Hunh?” I asked again, not understanding his poetry.
“It’s not about how much stuff you own, Ti’ John. A man can be rich without material things, cars, houses, clothes . . .”
“Video games?”
“Even video games,” said Father Jerome with a light chuckle.
I still didn’t understand, my mind driving a Porsche down MLK on a Sunday headed to MacGregor Park to hang out. Faces looking, fingers pointing. There go Ti’ John. Oooowee, his car is clean. Can I get a ride, Ti’ John? How fast that car go? Boy, you must be rich.
We slowed down at the corner of MLK and Bellfort. Mike’s daddy stared at me from a placard on a bus stop bench. Ghetto.
“A man like that needs to go to church,” said Father Jerome.
At the light, the Median Man jogged in place wearing sweats and a pair of combat boots painted yellow that were so bright they damn near glowed.
Three Months Later . . .
Father was still in the hospital. Mother didn’t know what to do. Her entire married life revolved around his schedule, so she worried, not knowing what to do with this temporary freedom. She worried that Father would lose his job. She worried that we wouldn’t have enough money for the mortgage, groceries, and utilities. But Father was well-respected in his circles, and soon enough, slick-looking brothers from Local 24 at the ship channel arrived at the house to drop off money and food stamps. We were going to make it.
After several weeks, I learned that Father was going to be in the hospital a little longer. Mother made arrangements for me to stay with Father Jerome and the good brothers at the rectory because she quickly took a night-shift job at Foley’s. I think she tired of the Local 24 guys coming on to her when they dropped off money and food stamps. Moreover, I think she had to fill the excess time she’d spent dealing with Father with some form of labor.
Now I’d have to return to the scene of the crime: the rectory. I didn’t know what to expect with the priests. What did they do all day when they weren’t preaching? I wondered. Read the Bible? I figured they knew the Bible by heart. Maybe they practiced miracles or sewed sequins on their costumes like Mardi Gras Indians. I tried not to think about it while my class sat on the floor watching The Hobbit.
I decided to focus my energies on making friends at school, but Mike was countering every move I made. I had no choice but to focus on my lessons because the kids still weren’t playing with me. However, in the sand-filled playground, I noticed something. Mike was stealing other kids’ Hot Wheels cars by hiding them in the sand right before recess would end. The target kid would search in vain
for his toy, Mike even helped him look for it, but soon the teacher would call us in. At some point during the day, Mike would excuse himself for the bathroom and recover the buried treasure. A week later, Mike would magically “find” the trove and claim it. He was such a politician, like his father. He’d actually convince the crying kid that the toy now belonged to him, and those kids bought it. He had money, but he was stealing. My theory about poverty and theft was wrong.
At the water fountain, I waited while Mike sucked down most of the cold water.
“I saw what you did,” I said. He ignored me, quaffing cold Houston tap like Flavor Aid.
“You been stealin’ them cars.”
“Nawh-unh,” he responded, head still hovering over the fount.
“Yeah, you was. I saw you,” I continued. Nobody was around but us.
Without even rising from the fount, he reached in his pocket and handed me a Hot Wheels car. The General Lee.
“Don’t tell nobody,” he said, then dashed off to play kickball.
While everybody played kickball, I ventured into the wooded area near the train tracks looking for frogs. Low-hanging oaks draped in visiting Spanish moss hugged the fence line, loaded with four-foot-high thickets and brush. Curious St. Andrew’s alumni had carved a worn walking trail along the fence line that led to a clearing beneath large, majestic pines near the train tracks. Frogs required water, and I hoped that the awnings provided by tree cover allowed a small collection of water to host tadpoles. But I only found a few wandering wood rats and a dead possum. As I slowly crept toward the clearing, I could see an adult squatting in the center. Vagrants were known to frequent St. Andrew’s lot, particularly the wooded area. Transients moving along the tracks, dope fiends seeking sanctuary from cement, urban boogeymen, Bloody Mary, Mad Pierre, all rumored to lurk along the fence. I stopped. Mr. Brooks’s whistle sounded at the kickball game far away—too far away.
He slowly stood upright. Tall. My feet tingled again. He turned around slowly to face me, wearing a dirty old suit and hat. I couldn’t make out his face, but he stuck out one brown bare foot, took off his hat, and made a deep bow at the waist, long, stringy hair falling before him. This was him—the regal man I’d seen in the field when Father and I were headed to the rodeo in Angleton a while back. He’d followed me.
“Hey! What you doin’ back here?” I stopped and yelled, but the figure didn’t move.
I glanced over my shoulder. My classmates resembled blurry brown action figures following the ball. Kick it. Catch it. Throw it. Roll it. Dodge it.
“Hey! Why you back here? You gonna get in trouble,” I exclaimed with the deepest voice I could muster. He could snatch me and hop the fence; nobody would ever know. Maybe it was that guy who killed those kids in Atlanta—kids who looked like me. Maybe the guy had escaped, jumped on a train, and landed in Third Ward. Wayne Williams. The whole summer he was on the news. Big afro and eyeglasses. Most blacks thought the Klan did it and pinned it on Williams. Black folks just weren’t buying the idea of a black serial killer, reasoning that black folks just didn’t do those kinds of things. I should have been scared, but he spoke—
“J’ai venue pour te ’oir,” he said.
“Argggggh!”
Mike yelled several yards behind me. I whipped around and took off running. Mike was on the ground holding his bloody foot. He’d stepped on a nail. I looked back toward the clearing, but the stranger was gone.
Mike’s face reddened, his sarcastic grin reduced to a desperate frown. A blood-covered, rusty nail sticking out of a dry wood panel lay next to him. Tetanus shot. He was crying and weak. I threw his arm around my shoulder and helped him to the office where the nurse was stationed. Mrs. Queen, the kindergarten teacher, filled in for the nurse and treated Mike’s wound with bandages, but his mother was called to take him to the hospital for the shot. He was freaked out.
I considered for a moment whether I should help him with my secret prayers but . . . that didn’t take long.
Many tales had been spun regarding tetanus shots, shots in the stomach or forty shots in the ass. And if you stepped on a rusty nail, the very thing adults always warned you about, you could get gangrene and have your foot amputated or lockjaw. Mike was hysterical, but I talked him down with summaries of The Benny Hill Show. He’d been watching too. Then I heard Mother in the principal’s office explaining that she’d be late with tuition. Mike listened too.
“Mrs. Boudreaux, you don’t have to worry. We have scholarships for special students.”
“I won’t accept charity.”
Kinda. She wouldn’t accept charity from white folks, not Margaret’s child.
“It’s not charity, Mrs. Boudreaux. We sent a letter out yesterday. John is gifted.”
Mike turned to me—
“Nigga, I’m smarter than you.”
“Oh yeah? ’Cause they didn’t send your momma no letter.”
“Well, at least my momma can pay for school.”
My eyes darted to the ground. Ghetto.
“Hey, Ti’ John. I didn’t mean it,” Mike offered with his right hand.
I stared at him for a minute, then shook his hand with “And I know you been stealin’ them lunches too.”
“Man, don’t tell nobody,” he pleaded.
I still held his hand, but I gripped it tighter and offered the deal—
“Then quit fuckin’ with me.”
He nodded as his mother rushed in and swept him away to Hermann Hospital for the shots.
* * *
1. Hail Mary prayer in French.
fourteen
trickin’ the dice
Channel 39, Saturday Morning, 11:39, 1983
Paul Boesch announced the main event: Junkyard Dog vs. Butch Reed for the North American wrestling title. ¡Llame Mr. Norman! Two months I had waited on this match, and I would’ve seen it if Father hadn’t started throwing dishes at Mother at approximately 11:37 A.M. He hadn’t been home two hours and had already managed to start some shit. He was arguing with somebody who wasn’t in the room. He did that a lot when he was drunk. By 11:00 A.M., he had popped enough Valium and Vicodin to sedate an elephant. And of course, he washed it down with Wild Turkey, no glass, no ice, straight from the bottle. And what was the argument about? Mother didn’t bring him a coat hanger quick enough. His left leg was in a full plaster cast that stretched almost to his hip. The bottom of his left foot was itching, and he needed to slide the hanger between his cast and leg as a scratcher. The hanger refused to make a hard turn at his heel, so he suffered, which meant Mother suffered. He grabbed his crutches, got to his feet, and tried to lunge toward her, but she sidestepped. She knew he’d have the cast on for four months. And for four months he wasn’t going to lay a hand on her. Not because his infirmity would soften his choler, oh no, but because she knew he wouldn’t be able to catch her. Not with that Frankenstein cast. Over fifty steel pins held his bones in place. Metal and muscle living and loving together to mend a good cowboy’s leg. But it hurt like hell, and he had begun a comfortable habit of popping painkillers like candy.
Mother told me to play outside. Shattered glass, ceramic, and porcelain covered the kitchen floor. Father returned to his warm seat at the dining room table and stared at the floor. Men like him weren’t meant to be physically impaired. They were meant to conquer with action and movement, their intentions executed with the muscle and the soul. Strangely enough, the drugs didn’t dampen his desire to commit action. Rather, the drugs made him antsy and the alcohol mocked his immobility, so he resigned himself to staring a hole in the floor.
“Stop laughing at me,” he yelled at the gray indoor/outdoor carpet.
“Ain’t nobody laughing at you, John,” Mother pleaded.
“I told you to quit laughing at me!” he yelled, and that’s when the dishes started flying.
And while Mother was certain that Father was aiming the dishes at her, that particular Saturday afternoon had awakened an old-timer that John Frenchy hadn’t see
n in years.
“Stop throwing dishes at me, John!” I heard Mother yell.
“I ain’t throwing no dishes at you, woman! Get outta the way!” he yelled as he hobbled toward the front door.
He stared at me bewildered from the door, then hobbled closer. I was scared.
“Don’t hurt him, John!” Mother yelled from the house.
“I ain’t gonna hurt him, woman. Clean up the damn house and leave me the hell alone!” he answered.
He moved closer, still staring like this was the first time he’d ever seen me.
“Lemme see your hands,” he said gruffly.
I held out my hands, and he examined them closely.
“How old is you now, Sonny?”
“Ten.”
“You got you some pussy yet?”
“Don’t ask him that, John. He’s a little boy,” Mother commented from the kitchen.
“He ain’t no little boy,” Father responded.
By dusk, Father and I were driving around South Park headed absolutely nowhere but one place. He was still high, but his driving didn’t show it. He had changed clothes, beige polyester pants with the left leg cut off. A gold chain with a bullhorn pendant dangled around his neck. Strong, deliberate cologne rode shotgun. His eyes were alert. A straightened coat hanger rested between us. Bobby Womack said he wished you didn’t trust him so much. I had been there before, the place we were going. The gambling shacks on Stassen Street in a neighboring companion ghetto called Sunnyside.
Stassen Street was something akin to a low-budget Vegas strip hosting houses of various levels of ill repute, but primarily gambling. No neon signs nor valet. Park your car on the narrow street of broken asphalt and find failure or fortune. The street was lined with several quaint run-down homes that had running water and electricity. The Devil paid the mortgage, but the utilities were strictly an affair for the living. Aubrie Manning ran a respectable card game on most nights. His son, Lil’ Aubrie, hosted a high-stakes dice game next door, complete with one or two girls from the Butt-Naked Club in Third Ward that serviced the willing on filthy mattresses with clean sheets stolen from the Alphonse Motel. Slow-talking Johnny McAllen kept the felts clean and the racks tight at his pool hall across the street, where nine-ball was going for fifty dollars per ball and absolutely no Amen shots afforded. Over the years, Father had worked that street from corner to corner, depending on who was playing and what kind of money was sitting on the table.
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