Macon exhaled short and shallow through his nose, approximating a laugh. “No racial apocalypse needed. Individuals face individual moments of reckoning. And most bitch out.”
“How ’bout John Brown, Harpers Ferry?” suggested Andre.
Nique rolled his eyes. “Leave it to Dre to pull a heroic white man out his ass.”
Macon sat forward and cracked his knuckles. “You know why John Brown tried to free those slaves? His old lady left him for a slave owner. The whole thing was a crazy, ill-conceived act of revenge. Fuck John Brown.”
Nique rocked in his chair and clapped his hands. “Oh, man,” he said, clutching Macon’s shoulder as if he was about to present him with a trophy. “ ‘Fuck John Brown.’ I love it. So you’re it, huh, dog? The downest whiteboy in history.”
“I didn’t say that,” Macon protested, declining to counter with a name.
Andre’s eyes were narrow. “I never heard that shit about John Brown.”
“They don’t teach it in school.”
“True.” Nique nodded with quasi-comic vigor. “True indeed. Feeding the black man nothing but his-story, tricknowledgy, and sinformation. Locking him away in the library, where the white man buries the lies.” He elbowed Andre in the ribs and Andre knocked his arm away, not in the mood.
“And charging him an arm and a leg for it,” Macon added, trying to lane-merge with Nique’s flow, play deacon to his pastor.
Nique took the cue. “Yes indeed. Causing the black man to fall deeper and deeper into financial bondage until he is forced, despite his fancy degree, to return to the ghetto from whence he came and sell poison to innocent black babies, just like whitey planned. Because the only B.A. worth a damn in this world, brothers and sisters, is your Black Ass.”
“Amen,” said Andre dully. “Can I get another beer, Minister Farrakhan?”
Nique opened the mini-fridge with his foot. “Help yourself.”
“Much obliged.” Dre popped the cap with his lighter.
“Don’t mention it. So listen. For real, though: You kids wanna make some cash?” Nique crossed his legs, downshifting into a Nino Brown impression that had, over time, grown almost indistinguishable from his actual personality. “Come work for me. I’m makin’ moves this year.”
“That’s my middle name,” said Macon. An old joke. “Macon Moves.”
The abrupt crackle of Nique’s laughter tickled him. “This motherfucker is all right, Dre,” Nique said, then turned appraisingly toward Macon. “Might be able to do business, Moves. Don’t worry. I’m an equal-opportunity employer. No Crow Jim laws here.”
“What is it, exactly, that you do, Nique?”
“Give you a hint, dude. I’m a young black entrepreneur from the ghetto who can’t rhyme or run ball. What does a lifetime of media saturation tell you I do?”
“Sell drugs?”
“Give the man a prize.”
Andre crossed his arms and snorted. “Nique’s been talking this high-roller street pharmacist shit since he was selling fools oregano nick bags in high school. He ain’t got no game.”
Nique splayed a hand in Andre’s grill. “Whatever. That was then, son. Your boy is on some shit now. Besides, I had clientele even when I was slinging oregano. Don’t hate. Congratulate. Anyway.”
He lowered his voice. “Over the summer I landed this gig manning a tollbooth on the highway out in Queens. Now, you may ask yourself, ‘What does a big pimpin’ motherfucker like Dominique want working a tollbooth like an asshole?’ ” He paused rhetorically, winked garishly, resumed. “Unsupervised hand-to-hand transactions, baby. Feel me?”
A molasses grin spread over Macon’s face. “You’re pumping from a tollbooth?”
“Drive-through service, baby. You hit me on the cell and I tell you which terminal I’m at. No fuss, no muss. Gone in thirty seconds.”
Andre shook his head. “I gotta give it to you this time,” he conceded. “That shit’s kinda brilliant.”
Nique beamed. “I know.” He turned to Macon. “It’s getting so I need occasional assistance of a clerical slash product-managerial nature. If you’re interested, perhaps we can schedule an interview.”
Macon couldn’t tell if Nique was serious or fucking with him. Not that it much mattered. “I don’t think I have the curriculum vitae you’re looking for,” he said.
Yesterday the gig would have grouted a wide chink in Macon’s self-image, satisfied the slice of him that needed to be linked to illegality somehow. Outlaw was an occupation, not a mind state; you couldn’t claim it if you didn’t hustle, and you couldn’t be denied it if you did. Players might like you if you weren’t one of them, but they wouldn’t respect you unless you lived by wits and broke the law. In Boston, graffiti had been Macon’s entrée: an unprofitable crime, a gray area at best, but it still carried some cachet. He didn’t have the time, skills, or energy to paint in New York, though. World-class writers from organized crews dominated the few piecing spots, simple street bombing was thankless and dangerous, the community of writers was secretive, political, and caustic, and the vandal squad was no joke.
Just who these hustlers were that Macon sought to impress was another story: a pantheon he’d downloaded from books and movies and his past who traveled with him still, whose approval kept him honest, gritty, and real despite their being largely imaginary. Mental saloon doors swung open and Macon sauntered past Priest from Superfly and Goldie from The Mack to bum a smoke off Butch Cassidy and sweep a waiting beer from the bartop. Never mind that Macon had hardly held a burner before last week—only the one time when the drug dealers who hung on Aura’s block got so drunk outside the liquor store that they’d started brazenly comparing pieces, passing them around and chatting about weight and range with the enthusiasm of longtime ruddy-faced sportsmen. In the dark thieves’ den of Macon’s mind, he’d always been a major mover. Pimps he’d crossed the street to walk past, drug dealers he’d lingered outside stores in Boston to observe—sipping soda with one leg cocked back against the wall and one knee jutting forward until his empty can and pointless loitering had embarrassed Macon into moving on—looked up from their billiards games to nod hello. Macon raised his bottle in solidarity.
“Honest answer, Mr. Moves.” Nique’s hand swept toward him and Macon braved a familiar instant of panic before he caught it in a satisfyingly well-executed pound. Botched handshakes made him feel lastingly lame, the flustered white dude stumbling through the Negro Greeting Ritual. He checked his watch: 9:10. Time to get in the wind if he was gonna make the show.
What you need to do is go someplace quiet, sit down, and think this robbery shit through, Macon’s brain chastised. But he wasn’t the type to break plans, even with himself, and he liked to do his thinking in stolen snatches of time: between songs, during conversations and commercials, while asleep. Besides, Macon had been waiting years to peep the Nuyorican, to be able to say he’d rocked the mic at America’s most famous poetry spot. He drained his brew, said his good-byes, and stepped.
“Well,” said Nique, lifting his bottle to salute the door Macon had just closed behind him, “at least your boy there’s trying. More than you can say for most of them.”
Andre shook his head. “Heroes. It’s always about heroes.”
“Shit,” said Nique. “My new hero is this motherfucker they got on the news tonight. You seen this shit?”
Andre shook his head. “Nah.”
Nique waggled a finger. “This is why I love our people. Only niggas do some shit like this. My man’s a cabbie, right? And for whatever reason, he just flips. He’s put up with enough bullshit from white folks or whatever, and he just flips and robs these two yuppies at gunpoint. Dumps them on the FDR and skates. Channel Nine said he ‘unleashed a racial tirade’ while he jacked them.”
“Macon drives a cab,” said Andre.
“Word? Maybe he knows this guy. Course, the only description they have is that the dude is black. Narrows it down to like ten thousand cats. Then again, knowing Macon
, they’re probably drinking buddies.”
Andre jowled one cheek. “Please. Macon barely knows himself. Two words for you, Nique. Harley Koon.”
Chapter Four
Dennis Lavar flicked his wrist and banished the live coverage of Rodney King’s desperate can’t-we-all-get-along news conference from his modest living room. He turned from the television slowly, ran his palm over the close-cropped bristles of his beard and the meat of his lips, and then dropped it to his side and let the gold-link bracelet slide and settle. For hours now, he’d been imagining he heard the riot rounding the corner of their quiet Compton block.
“I know you think I’m being hard on you, Dominique, but it’s for your own good. Nothing but trouble out there.”
Nique threw a leg across the leather sofa and settled himself for the lecture. He’d grown up on Pop’s politics like home cooking, ransacked his father’s bookshelves as a way to understand the old man and discovered Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown— found the entire movement wedged between the cinder-block bookends of his father’s workroom. He’d studied up and watched his father watch him, proud of his father’s pride. It was just the two of them, and Nique understood how much his father had at stake in raising his son.
They went through Pop’s records on Sundays, Dominique DJing and Dennis sitting on the floor, back up against the couch, fingers interlaced behind his head, legs spread under the coffee table, telling Nique what songs to play and where to find each slab of vinyl. Dennis had been collecting albums for thirty years, and there were easily a thousand lined up in cream-colored milk crates along the base of the living-room wall, ordered according to a system only Dennis understood—really just randomness Nique’s pops had memorized.
Dominique learned all the words, began to feel the dusty testaments belonged as much to him and his time as to his father and the past. They were streaked with power, these sonic artifacts; they came alive as soon as stylus hissed against vinyl: James Brown popcorn-strutting through the new new heavy jungle funk, chopping down whatever vegetation swayed before him with a hah! soul brother number-one machete: I’m Black and I’m proud. Give it up or turn it loose. I don’t want nothing from nobody. Open up the door, I’ll get it myself. The Last Poets standing on the runways of Babylon with flare guns to the skies to lure the revolution into landing: black people, what y’all gonna do when you wake up and find that you’re dead, with maggots and roaches eating the pus out of your prostituted minds and white deathly hands massaging your hearts with red-hot branding irons? Speak not of revolution unless you are willing to eat rats to survive. Albert Ayler clawing at the speakers, bleating and screeching, witches and devils swirling from his sweating horn bell and that white-heat beard streak shooting from his chin to lower lip like a bolt of lightning, electrifying the jacket photo.
Dennis fisted his hands and propped them on his hips. “I remember the last time folks here tried this, Nique, in ’65. I watched black folks burn down their own neighborhoods, smash windows and grab TV sets out the white man’s stores and act like they were winning somehow. Brothers carrying stereos back to houses that are charcoal when they get there.”
Dennis dropped his pose and went back to pacing the living room, glancing in turns at his son and out the window. “Here we are almost thirty years later, doing the same shit again. That makes me madder than the verdict. I knew those fools would get off, video or not. A black man versus six white cops? Please. I’m old enough to remember Emmett Till. Thought maybe folks would know better than to loot their own neighborhoods this time around, though.”
“Nobody’s touching anything black-owned, Pop. Just the white stores and the Korean ones.”
Dennis stopped pacing and screwed his eyes at Dominique. He never raised his voice; he never had to. Nique was a handful to everyone else, teachers and coaches and the like, but a stare from Dennis cut right through him. Andre and every other friend of Nique’s who’d spent time at the house thought Dennis should win Father of the Year.
“Those stores are still in our part of town, Nique. You destroy them, how are folks supposed to eat next week? This is a party to you kids.” He swept his palm across the neighborhood. “We had a movement going. Cats were reading, organizing. We were talking revolution.”
“And where did all that talking and reading and organizing get you, Pop?” Nique stabbed his chin at the window. “Like you said. Shit is still the same.”
“The hell it is.” Dennis sat down so his leg touched Nique’s. “I got a son in one of the best preparatory schools in Los Angeles. Couple years you’ll be in college. You’re gonna have access, Dominique. That’s revolutionary.”
“Huey woulda called it selling out.”
Dennis stood and faced the window, folding his hands behind his back. “And where is Huey now?” he asked softly.
“Not on the curriculum at Princeton-Eastham Prep, that’s for damn sure.”
“But he’s on yours. And if you can get what you need from P-E and still keep your priorities in order, that’s a revolutionary move. Not running around screaming ‘Rodney King’ until somebody zaps you with a tazer. This war isn’t gonna be fought in the streets, Nique. Revolutionary thrills without revolutionary skills will get you killed.”
It was a line that had been floating around the community for forty years, and Nique felt as histrionic hearing it as Dennis did saying it. Nique shot his father a look far from acquiescence, a shade short of defiance. Only in the past few months had he dared turn such eyes on his pops. It was a development that was not lost on Dennis.
He rejoined his son on the couch, sitting farther away this time. “I spoke to Andre’s mother on the phone,” he said. “After school tomorrow, you’ll go home with him. I’d rather have you there than here until things cool down.”
Dominique scowled. “I’m not allowed to come home?”
“Not through a war zone, no. This time tomorrow they’ll have called in troops.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m gonna work from home tomorrow.”
“Can’t I just stay home from school?”
“No.”
Nique stood up, walked to his room, and slammed the door. He lay on his bed, imagined the mood tomorrow at school, and shuddered in distaste. The skylights built into the ceilings of the forty-million-dollar main campus building allowed plenty of sunlight to filter in, but they blocked rage. The riots would be just another current-events quiz to his classmates. They’d slouch placidly in their seats and it would be business as usual. He and Dre would try to sit by themselves in the cafeteria, hunched over their trays, and as soon as they began to talk, some goofy white kid, one of their friends, would plop down next to them and start flapping his gums about the Lakers game or some chick he wanted to bone.
Nique didn’t think he could handle the burden of acting like everything was cool tomorrow. He didn’t remember Emmett Till like Pop did; this was the sharpest slap justice had taken in his lifetime. He wanted to cry and lash out, but most of all he couldn’t stand to be alone, to sit at his desk or in the living room with Pop, watching the violence on TV in grim, hot silence. He wished he could sleep for a week, wake up and stretch like a cat in the sun and have all this over with. And yet he never wanted to forget this feeling of impotent, sad, restless fury.
Nique turned onto his back, hid his face in his elbow crook, and let imagination place him in the middle of it all, inside the rage and release of the burning streets. Behind closed eyes he saw brotherhood surging, an army of black men roaring up and down the streets and him among them, one with every other newborn soldier, toppling cop cars and pumping fists in a synchronized instinctive dance clipped from a music video. He opened his eyes and sighed until his lungs were empty, feeling he was missing the defining moment of his generation, the call to arms, the fire.
Nique stood up and flipped through his music collection, looking for a tape to listen to. His father scorned hip hop, but rap’s aural-ideological DNA helixed throu
gh Dennis’s record crates. His music was the raw material hip hop had diced and recycled, twisted and reformatted, thrown on a conveyor belt and squeezed through compressors, samplers, and sequencers. The black sounds of the seventies had been fattened for slaughter, intimidated and distorted, chopped and untuned and unkeyed and unpitched, stripped like an abandoned car and rebuilt like a cyborg. Rappers raped music of its musicality, threw a few cents’ retribution and a deadpan nod of respect to its parents and then saddled up, riding the unholy metal-work contraption toward the apocalypse as it bucked and snorted fire underneath them. This shit ain’t even music; the argument was dead to Dominique.
“Who gives a fuck if it’s music?” he responded, turning up the volume.
“They’re just stealing other people’s shit.”
“Yeah, yeah, welcome to America. Just listen to the lyrics.”
Generation gap in full effect. Dennis grudgingly admitted that rap had potential, but he remained disdainful, found no inspiration in the lyrics of Ice Cube or KRS-One. “Irresponsible bullshit rhetoric,” came the pronouncement. “These guys are entertainers pretending to be leaders.”
Nique put on his headphones, cushy foam-and-leather joints that sealed him off from any other sound, and reflected that Cube had predicted what was going on outside his window at this very moment: the City of Angels up in flames again, cops versus niggers round infinity just under way beneath the whirring propeller blades and laser searchlights of the ghetto bird, and the odds set at four billion to one in favor of the boys in blue.
“Pop got me thinking last night,” he told Dre the next morning as they sat in homeroom, perched on the radiator by the window. From behind her desk, Ms. Gardner gave them the same scorn-and-pity look she did every morning. How sad, her face said, that they insisted on hiding behind those sullen, put-upon demeanors, refusing to acknowledge their good fortune at being at an institution of this caliber, wasting this wonderful opportunity. As always, they ignored her.
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