Nah, wouldn’t be shit without them, minus the one I’m here to meet tonight. Best customer of the bunch. Past or present.
I’m parked by the corner store, shadowed, solicitous, half a whole thing (the shit was too bulky for my boxer briefs) stuffed in a Ziploc in a paper sack that’s crammed inside my sleeve. Half a whole one is a big fucking lick, could put a nice dent in whatever down payment (no, not if but when and how much) Jude works out. This happy shit is what’s on my mind when a car pulls up in the rear and flashes its lights. Budging for headlight blinks while hitting a solo lick for a half kilo? You would think not, but … I stick my head out the window and see an arm waving me back, hear a voice, Todd’s voice, calling my name. The part of my brain that makes sound, the most sound, decisions says let him come to me and do the deal in my ride, but you know how I do.
This a new ride? I say.
Rental, Todd says.
Oh, okay. What kind? I say.
You got that on you? he says.
Fasho, I say.
Cool, he says. Let’s roll.
We pull off slow, with Todd finger-steering and the music on whisper and the wipers lulling and the dashboard lit in neons. We make a few turns to the drum of languorous rain.
This lick has got me breaking my embargo on business after sundown, but we know why, correct? Plus, as I said, me and dude go back. Way before his sucker-for-love scene, we both pledged Brothers Gaining Equality, a fledgling high school fraternity (you wouldn’t catch me pledging a college frat now, plodding campus with an ego gassed on Greek myths) made up of upperclassmen and a freshman or two. BGE held can drives, coat drives, community cleanups, spoke to kids, danced at step shows, threw parties, volunteered weekends at old folks’ homes. As it happened, Todd pledged a couple months after me and rocked with the group till years later we lost steam.
He pulls to the curb on a gloomy side street, and I give him the sack. You can feel how heavy it was when it leaves me and the shit ain’t in any way negligent.
This everything? he says. Homeboy’s redolent of high-powered chronic, got lower lids the shade of sliced peaches. Of course, I say. You know how I do. He hands me a brown paper sack with its edges rolled closed. All there, he says, a scarlet sclera dialed to me, the other scoping the road. Yeah, I know it is, bro. That’s why we do business, I say.
I open the sack expecting a bundle of big faces arranged faceup and folded but scoop a handful of fucking board-game bills!
Ha, I say. Good one.
Todd hits the locks. He hits the locks and, on God, dynamite would make less boom! The click is a brisance that shoots through my ears and into my head and stomps down my spine. What’s worse, someone springs from the backseat and chokes me around the throat. That someone smashes a gun against the side of my eye and, on my life, this can’t be true; how could it? That fast my face goes cold; that fast the rest of me does too. Don’t say one motherfuckin word! he says, and grinds the gun till the gun breaks skin. There ain’t no life flashing past. No white lights. No image of Jesus floating above my head. There’s a trickle of blood scribbling into my eye and this nigger easing off with lethal calm.
Chapter 39
I need to find him.
—Grace
Andrew’s truck isn’t out front, so I sneak around back to check if it’s garaged. I’m peeking into the garage when I hear the patio door slide open. It’s his wife.
What? I say.
Why you look? she says. She can make her eyes into swords when she wants. Or lances.
Where is he? I say.
So rude, she says.
Where? I say.
She looks into the alley and asks if I’m alone.
I need to find him, I say.
He downtown, she says. Rally at the square.
I stomp for the gate. She calls after me and I decide to stop. She comes down the steps and whisks across the patio with her arms in a gesture of peace.
This way with us, she says. It is no good.
This could be a ploy. Why here? Why now? This woman who long ago plied at Andrew to send me away. Who all these years has dug a moat between us. The hard heartbreaks don’t soften this fast.
* * *
My brother Pat used to tell me stories about Andrew, how he’d made the local paper for his role in a school board meeting, about him marching in police beating protests, how he’d sit front row at a city forum to rename a street. Times he was present for others when that presence too was at my expense. When it meant missing a recital, or school play, or a track meet. Andrew oft absent, though in this way we’ve been more alike than we have not.
There’s a Measure Eleven protest at the courthouse square. A slew of folks shouting and stomping and waving and pounding cardboard signs tacked to sticks. There are so many of them, all that shows through the mass of feet and bodies are bits of red brick. I stand on the fringes with what seems little chance of finding Andrew inside the crush.
My eyes dart from this to that one and Andrew is nowhere to be found. I wade closer and see a man on the steps dressed in khakis and a windbreaker, a bullhorn in hand. He jumps and barks through the horn. The veins in his neck flex to tight ropes and his face blushes to the red of a fresh scratch. Police with helmets and clubs and shields show up and stand shoulder to blue-uniformed shoulder—stewing, but where don’t they?—around the sides of the square. I skirt around to Broadway to look from higher up. But there’s no sign of Andrew, so I ease down the steps and into the horde. The speaker points to the sky and the crowd roars. They spike signs and pump their fists and chant, and I sift for Andrew, feeling as if each step places me more and more in harm’s way, as if finding his dark face would be the same as seeing Christ. It isn’t long until I’m in the center, suffering bumps and nudges, with my arms stiff and my shoulders pushed tight, me on the verge of a full cardiac stop or else an organ about to burst through my ribs. It’s too much. It isn’t anything left for me to do but brace and wait for the crowd to grant me a safe distance.
The touch on my arm you couldn’t mistake. It’s a father’s touch, a kind touch. Grace, he says. What are you doing? Why are you here?
Chapter 40
So this, this, is why these niggers feel super.
—Champ
Security at the shack shakes me down at the front and turns an aphasic tower till I ask where I can find Mister. He nods towards the steps at the end of an unlit hall, steps that announce my weight all the way down. From down here you can see Mister through an archway among an ambit of gamblers, hustlers fatmouthing with fat stacks in their fists and piles of bills underfoot, an august vision when you’ve lost what I lost: thousands, in one whop! I stand by while they bicker over who’s next on the dice, who hit what point, who made what side bet, stall with no clue of what the fuck I’ll say. Mister gets his turn on the dice, and that’s when, trepid as shit, I slug inside. Mister nods. He’s got a knot of bills in his grip, money flapping out his pockets too. One of the old heads asks if I’m shooting and I shake my head no. The old head who asked about me playing ain’t the only one of them I’ve seen before, and I’m wondering which one, if any, knows what happened last night? What happened to me last night is the kind of news that travels at Mach speed, light speed, motherfucking god speed. It’s called the wire. And it’s the same kind of wire that turned these dice games into legends.
You hear of fools losing new car money in a night, losing that much and returning the next day, hear of games going all night and through the morning, shoot-outs that start with bet the dub and end with two men standing and heaps of cash. And if the games are legends, Mister’s (it’s almost impossible to beat the inexhaustible bank) the hero, mythic for winning big, for never getting duped by a scheme nor jerked on a debt.
Mister smooths his tie, brushes dust off his knee, gives Red, who’s holding his sport coat, a clutch of wrinkled hundreds. He blows on the dice and shakes them near his head. Taking all bets, gentlemen, he says. Tonight’s a good night. Tonight could
be your night. His first roll shows four and five, and he scoops the dice and rubs them together. Who else wants a shot at the bank? he says, and taunts the reluctant into wary side bets. Mister kisses the dice and shoots. He shoots and shoots and shoots. You could fall out and die waiting for him to hit his point or crap out, and, shit, I almost do. But he does—he hits it and sends Red around to collect the loot.
The hope, a foolish hope, fleets that his mood is such he might forgive what I owe. We (the we being anyone with even a toe in the streets) all know if you owe this man a cent, you pay this man that cent, or else.
Don’t leave, gentlemen. Please, he says. He gives the dice to an old head and signals me and I follow him into a room cordoned by a dingy curtain and stacked with dusty crushed boxes. The room is either twice as hot as anyplace or else the day’s long dread is a flame in my gut.
It’s about last night, I say.
Mister throws up his hand. So I hear, he says.
You heard? I say.
A long shadow flits past the curtain. The dice game kicks into a next round.
He moves closer and rolls his shoulders.
Did I ever tell you how well Red could swim? he says. Did I ever tell you how strong he was, how fast? Back home, we never lived more than a bike ride from the beach. We lived that close and my brother was always there, always in the water. Don’t know why, but this one day I decided to go with him. Not too long after we got to the beach, we started woofing about who could do what, and who was the best and biggest and strongest. The woofing ended with a bet to see who could swim out the farthest. On the face the bet was a no-win for me. Anyone who’d ever seen us near water knew Red was twice the swimmer I was. Red knew he was twice the swimmer I was, but I knew what he didn’t. We both dove in and right off Red was Red, out front going fast and strong, while I lagged stroking slow and steady. I kept the same pace until I passed the buoys, until I couldn’t see my brother swimming beside or ahead of me. I swam till I was out so far that the current was tugging me where it wanted. Got out that far and swam farther, swam as a matter of fact until I thought I might die. That’s when I turned and headed back. It took every ounce of me to make it to shore, Mister says. And collapsed as soon as I touched the sand. The next thing I knew, Red was standing over me shaking his head, calling me crazy, asking me how I did what I did, claiming it must’ve been a trick. He hovered until I caught my breath. He asked again and I told him yes, it was a trick. And the trick was, he swam worried the whole way whether he’d make it back to shore, but making it back was never the bet.
Mister walks over, parts a crack in the dirty curtain, and shows me his brother ghosting over the game, mute and thoughtless, a sport coat (Mister’s coat) draped over an arm. Look, Mister says. I love him, but he and I are not the same. Mister eclipses the space between us and turns to me. But the question is, which one of us are you?
Mister unbuttons his cuffs and rolls his sleeves and gapes at me and my one safe resort is to look away.
Hold tight, he says, and saunters into the gambling room. I can feel myself shrink while he’s gone, hear broken parts in the unfit machinery of me. If I were braver, I’d mention my plans to buy the house and ask/beg for tolerance. That’s what I would do if my nuts weren’t, right this very second, the size of mustard seeds.
Mister returns carrying a strap in plain view, its barrel facing the floor. He hands it to me by the grip. It’s black and sleek, with its serial number scratched off, and feels lighter than you’d imagined it would.
So this, this, is why these niggers feel super. Held this shit for all of a nanotick and now, this very instant, I’m as gallant as a nigger with nothing whatsoever under the sun of value to him to lose.
They take from you. They take from me. And we can’t have that problem, mister says. You don’t want that problem, he says. With them or with me.
I’m going to get you what I owe, I say. All of it.
Mister slaps me on a trapezium and smirks a smirk to melt my face. Sure you will, he says. Sure you will, and soon. That’s the way this works.
Chapter 41
And you don’t know what that means.
—Grace
Should’ve seen me.
In the lobby fighting myself. We can’t do this. We can. We can’t do it without him. We can. What’s different about where it will come from? Should’ve seen me a foot in and a foot out the door, riding the elevator for trips. But in the end, what else can I do?
My eldest answers dressed in a tank top and basketball shorts and this is the first time I’ve noticed his arms, a man’s arms, protective. I need you, I say, and fall into him. He catches me, holds me up, presses his chin to the top of my head. I step back and gather and we step inside. He pulls out a chair for me at the table.
Is this about Big Ken? he says. The custody?
How do you know? I say.
He mentioned it, Champ says. But I didn’t think he meant to see it through.
Well, he has, I say. Or he intends to. I’m scheduled to go to court.
Court? he says. When?
In a month, I say. Champ, I thought I could do it on my own but I can’t. I can’t keep fighting this fight by myself.
You’re right, he says. So what now?
We need a lawyer, I say. Can you pay for one?
He sighs from someplace other than himself. He drops his head and rubs above his eyebrows. He lifts his eyes and looks away and looks at me.
What’s wrong? I say.
Timing, he says. You wouldn’t believe this timing.
So do you have it? I say.
No, I don’t, he says. But how much do you need?
Forget it, I say. I’ll find a way.
No, you won’t. I will, he says. How much?
He leans into a shaft of light and you can see a tiny scab on the high side of his face, see flecks of red in the white of an eye. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know, I say. Whatever you can spare and I’ll make do.
He ventures into his room. There’s the sound of the closet door sliding open, of Kim murmuring. This while I jitter in my seat and wonder whether I should stay or leave, whether this is yet another test of what I sacrifice every time the time comes. Champ slugs out and plops in his seat. Let’s start with this, he says, and slaps down the key to the Honda. It’s attached to a silver key chain. That and now this, he says. He takes out a knot, counts out a stack, and lays it in front of me. I don’t pick it up to count. Whatever it is, it’s what I need. What I should know not to accept.
My God, I say.
Mom, let’s leave Him out of this, this time, he says. You came for help and here it is. My help.
Son, thank you for this. For all you’ve done.
We listen to what wafts in from the street, a motorcycle revving by, the shrill voices of kids. Kim, in leggings and a tentish shirt, totters over to us and she lifts the bills off the table showy and sets them down. Wow! Looks like you won the lotto, she says.
I scoop the money off the table and dump it in my bag. How’s my grandbaby? I say. How are you?
Me, still instasick every morning, Kim says. But she’s just fine.
Did you say she? I say.
Yes, she says. He didn’t tell you? Your son will soon have a baby girl to care for. He might want to start practicing now.
I throw Champ a look and he shrugs and says that he’s sorry, that he meant to mention it sooner.
Kim wanders over and checks herself in the hall mirror—pinches her thigh, turns this way and that way—and groans. She takes out a jacket and wrestles on the sleeves. Oh, I sooo can’t do this, she says.
You sooooo can’t do what? Champ says.
Look! she says.
Why don’t you quit complainin and get some that fit? he says. It’s simple if you ask me.
She toddles over and poses. All right, Mr. Simple, she says. You must be feeling generous today.
What about what I gave you last week? he says.
&nbs
p; That was last week, she says.
He looks to the ceiling. This isn’t a good time, he says.
Oh, so you don’t care if I feel like this another week? she says.
He thumbs what looks like less than he gave me and holds it up for her to grab. Take care of me, you take care of her, she says. She pecks him above his eye and dodders out, the sweetest scent in her wake.
He apologizes for Kim, but I shrug it off. He asks if I’m hungry and tells me to stay put and goes into the kitchen. He fixes us breakfast—sausage, eggs, toast—which is more than I thought he could do. He makes me a place setting and serves me with that gap-toothed grin of his and sits across the table with his back against the chair and his elbows off the table just like I taught him when he was a boy.
Since when did you start cookin? I say, forking a mouthful.
Since I live with a girl who scorches meals on the reg, he says.
A man can only stand but so much suffering.
She’ll get better when the baby comes, I say. And the baby will be here before you know it. How are you two doing otherwise?
You just seen it, he says. And that’s been for weeks.
Hormones, I say. The first time’s the toughest. Be kind. Be patient.
Yeah, the estrogen attitudes I get, he says. But she’s been talking marriage.
Has she? What’s wrong with that? I say. That is how it’s supposed to be done.
Says who? he says. Not for me. A father now, yes. But a husband, hell no.
Champ, that’s foolish, I say. And selfish. Don’t be so selfish. You’ve got to learn to give, son. More than what’s in your pocket.
The Residue Years Page 22
