The next morning the phone rang. “Uh-huh, yes, I’m Melvin’s mother.” Ready to deal with whatever it was that her son had dun this time, my mom’s pointed finger stabbed me across the room, directed me to stop in my tracks. “Boy, don’t you move!”
I froze and listened fast to overhear what I was caught for this time, searching for an alibi. These were routine everyday calls. In this area, too, Momma always prided herself on not being one of those mothers who covered up for her sons. I always had a defense, a denial, or an excuse ready. At this part of the “Mrs. Carter, your son …” telephone call, there’d be “Uh-huh! Yeah, I bet that boy did it! Melvin, come here! Boy, don’ you lie to me. I hate a liar and a thief.”
But this time there was none of that. Suddenly her entire demeanor changed. When she hung up, her face swelled up, tears trickled, words caught in her throat as she tried to speak. “Melvin, this woman says her son was beaten almost to death last night and would have gotten killed if you hadn’t fought off the attackers, then carried him three blocks away to safety. She said you are an angel and called to thank you for saving her son’s life.” Mom beamed at me with a new pride I didn’t know existed.
Well, that account of the story was kind of true. Before the fires, when me, Henry, ’n’ Thee Boyz were leaving the football game, the Agents and the Ascots, led by good ol’ Pitbull, were stomping an Irish kid into the pavement. I recognized this kid from band class. Didn’t know him and presumed he wouldn’t recognize me. Maybe out of the goodness of our hearts, maybe as an excuse to cheap-shot some wannabe self-appointed rival, I, along with Jay Jay, John Gee, and Henry, jumped in and pushed back the attackers. Pulling the kid’s arm over my shoulder, I ran a few blocks north, dropping him off just past Selby Avenue. Besides, in those days’ unwritten unspoken codes, you broke up fights when enough was enough.
The only name the police had during the investigation of this incident was mine. Monday morning I was called to the principal’s office. I claimed not to know the names of the attackers. The interview turned into an interrogation. But Mr. Mann, the neighborhood’s cop and the only Black cop I knew, was outraged and came to my rescue. I left the office and that was the end of that. The next day’s newspaper articles were about Mayor Vavoulis’s daughter being attacked in the violence.
But somehow, I loved being the good guy. It felt so much better than the old “Melvin, right now I’m ashamed to call you my son” routine. In fact, this felt way-way better, to the point that I was ’bout to get addicted.
8
Turnin’ Points
Shoulda known this day was comin’! More and more frequently, Stevie, John Gee, and Arlan talked about breaking into a house. Up to this day, I could talk them out of it. But not now!
One bright summer midafternoon, trying to be quiet, Arlan broke the side basement window of a house over on Central Avenue. The quieter he tried to be, the more it sounded like a trumpeted burglar alarm. Klink, tinkle went the glass. Shh!
Avoiding the broken glass, Arlan reached inside, unlocked and opened the window, and disappeared for a brief eternity. Loving Arlan like a brother, I held my breath, hoping not to hear gunshots. Eventually, he appeared in the back door and waved the rest of us to come inside.
After all, Thee Boyz had a covenant to back up one another, no matter what the circumstances. “If you’re in, I’m in!” Especially after a few sips of Thunderbird (dirt-cheap rotgut wine), the conversation always evolved to, “Anybody fucks with you, they’re fuckin’ with me!” We’d drink to that and pass the bottle around … “and don’t spit in it!” It was understood that we had each other’s back no matter what. Whenever anyone went underground or was on the run, we had a network of hiding and feeding each other.
But this I wasn’t feeling at all. I went inside, ran through the house, and looked around. Me ’n’ Victor grabbed both ends of a two-hundred-pound wooden TV/stereo cabinet and headed out the back door. The vision of carrying it down the street in broad daylight, with no place to take it and no means of transporting it, triggered more thought.
I always had some kind of excuse, alibi, or reason in advance when getting into trouble. “No, Mom, Dad, see, um, it wasn’t like that! See, they thought it was me because … blah, blah, woopty-woo.” No, how about, “See, it was cold outside, and we had to get food and shelter?” No, how about, “I thought it was Readus’s house and he was inside needing help!”
Without conversation, without seeking understanding, I set my end down, pivoted on the ball of my foot, fled due east for a half mile, staying between houses, jumping fences, diving in bushes. I turned north in a zigzag route for another half mile, then finally back westward to my home, shut the door, and locked myself inside. From that day forth, even though I still hung with those guys, my position shifted me from a ringleader to an outsider. This was the turning point. They had chosen their direction in life, and though it seemed just one incident, I too had selected a path, making perhaps the most definitive choice of a lifetime.
It was a fine autumn Friday night. Excitement was in the air. We begged Aunt Rhoda to let us—Thee Boyz—throw a party in her vacant downstairs apartment. After repenting and taking responsibility for what had happened the last time, we persuaded her to reluctantly agree. This time I promised her with all my heart that there would not be one single fight.
Well, just like all Thee Boyz parties, it started swangin’. Temptations & Four Tops—swoonin’!—the Supremes—chirpin’! Martha Reeves and the Vandellas boldly called to all boys and girls around the world to be DANCIN’ IN THE STREETS. She said that all we need is music, sweet music, there’ll be music everywhere. There was finger poppin’ and the floor was rockin’.
Then came an undercurrent of rumbling and whispers from the other room. Get Melvin! The Agents and the Ascots were encamped outside across the street. Arlan, one of my closest and most beloved friends for life, had recently defeated TB in one of the best fair ’n’ square sho’ ’nuff knock-down-drag-out after-school cleansing fistfights. I needed to prevent the rest of the Boyz from finding out that our turf, the corner of Fuller and St. Albans, had been breached. Last thing I needed was for both Big Jay Jay and John Gee to find out that the sanctity of our stronghold was being violated!
So I snuck out the back door and circled around the side of the house undetected to where the self-appointed rivals aligned themselves along the wall across the street. “Look, you guys. Can we please postpone this? Aunt Rhoda let us have this party because we all promised her there’d be no shit! Come on, ya’ll, please, not tonight!”
Lurking, hostile, deep-set eyes in a broad face, pronounced jawbone, massive shoulders, barrel chest, ham-hock arms, and sledgehammer fists stalked from the back of the crowd, drawing closer and closer. Goldilocks was all alone in a deep, dark forest, scary eyes glaring out of the bushes. No place to run; no place to hide. Pure raw sincere hostility with a tangible need to smash my face stepped up, mumblin’ somethin’ ’bout “been waiting to kick your punk ass.” Predator encroached. Backpedaling trembling fawn assessed situation.
Dis is bad! Real bad! No! Of all the dudes I hated to fight, scared of, ain’t mad at, tried to be his friend, never done anything to … Pitbull! Claimed he was just playing with me at first, but now he was really just gonna go ahead and kick my ass. We already had had two fights in the shallow waters of Snail Lake, at Ober Boys Club Camp. Even though he gave me more than I could handle and it was broken up still in the heat of the brawl, it always seemed that I was just about to get the upper hand. Usually after the fight, the combatants would shake hands, make up, even become friends. But no … !
Suddenly I stopped in my tracks, lips moving. “Might as well! Ain’t no big thang! Don’t mean nuthin’!” Stalling with fake courage, I looked around. “Somebody hold my shit!” Ceremonially, I handed my new stingy brimmed straw hat to an outstretched hand. The temperature hovered just above freezing. Ritualistically, I took off my fine Ban-Lon shirt and cashmere sweater. “Let me hold
your shirt!” a bystander offered. Certain protocol forced Pitbull’s restraint while I daintily and meticulously folded up my shirt, then my sweater, and passed them to the bystander.
“Let ’em fight!” a crowd official commanded. Pitbull stepped up, invading. Rapidly backpedaling, I put up my dukes, privately blessing Fatso’s dad, Mr. Nins. “Watch him, Melvin! Read his mind. What does he think you think? Is he right-handed or left-handed? Is he bringing brute strength or speed? Focus on his center of gravity. If he’s attacking you for no reason, he’s a bully. Bulls always charge in a straight line. He can head fake all he wants, but if he moves this way, then you move that way. Or if he does this, then you do that.” Mr. Nins would demonstrate moves and maneuvers on the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling of his basement, then show me. “You gotta know what he’s thinking before he does! When a man hates you for no reason, you are already inside his head. Once inside his head, you can control him, use his own anger against him, see?”
Well, it ain’t hard to figure out how a raging bull is going to charge. Any genius can already see that the train will attack on the railroad tracks. Words came out of my mouth: “Might as well kick your ass! Ain’t no big thang! Don’t mean nuthin’!” Knowing I was going to get hit and get hit hard. Head faking stutter-stepping to his right, I made my real moves to his left, sacrificing a glancing blow to the side of my face from his weak side. “What! That all you got?” He lunged again and missed. “You too slow!” Backpedaling in syncopated zigzag patterns and rhythms, needing to take advantage of his hatred, almost feeling guilty, I fed red meat to his insanity, giving him targets and taking them away, making him pay for his inaccuracy, but most of all for his miscalculations. Heavy-duty haymakers glanced and grazed off my face, but never flush—otherwise they would have finished me off.
“That ain’t shit! You should have never stepped up to me!” Fists flashing, timing backward motions also helped me extract some sting of his power, helped me to remain upright. I struck him again and again. “You should never have messed with me! Now amma’ hafta do ya! Yo’ ass belongs to me! Yo’ ass is mine!”
Being inside his head was like a card game where you can see his cards, but he can’t see your hand. My deliveries were significant but nowhere near his sledgehammers. But my every strike mounted a cumulative impact. I had led him up and down Fuller Avenue. So by the time I was finally cornered, forced to fight on his terms, enough had been taken out of him for me to have a chance for survival.
Almost back in front of Aunt Rhoda’s house, where we’d started, I was clutched in his grasp. As he picked me up, weightlessly my feet began to leave the ground, positioning me for a body slam on the freshly repaved gravel street surface. But my foot was wedged between his legs, and that halted my involuntary ascent. Somehow, twisting, maneuvering, and fighting, I brought my feet back to the ground.
Inexplicably, a reversal had happened. Now I had him. He was mine, once and for all. The price for attacking and missing is severe. I cradled his body, holding him in a chest-high body-slamming position. I slammed both our bodies across freshly resurfaced sharp-edged gravel. I rode and rolled him like a toboggan, leaving skin from his shoulder, back, and torso on the pavement. Although some of the skin on the pavement was my own, the spider had been captured by the butterfly, the hunter captured by the game.
I mounted him, about to finish this thing once and for all. Then maybe we could be friends. Maybe we could talk, and I could find out why he hated me so bad. But no! Aunt Rhoda pulled me off, broke up the fight, sent everyone home. Rumors of the fight had already trickled into the party. A hush and all eyes were upon me when I came back inside. When asked, gloatingly I made the announcement—“I kicked his punk ass!” Cheers echoed and reverberated. The music turned up. The bubbles bubbled, and the party was on!
This was Friday night. The next day, Aunt Rhoda called and told my folks about the fight. Momma said I had a death wish. Dad gave me a lecture. “Boy, you’re getting too old for all this fightin’. You can’t fistfight your way out of everything. At the rate you’re going, you won’t reach twenty-one. You gotta find other ways of …”
“But Dad!”
“But nuthin’! I’m tellin’ you right here and now not to fight!”
I knew Dad was right, and this could be done. All my life I’d watched him carry himself with dignity, give and get respect, and never fight. All my life, I’d wished to be like my dad—tall, tolerant, reasonable, and, most of all, practical. Then, maybe then, I’d someday achieve the status of having good sense, whatever that was.
So right then and there, I committed—commanded myself, determined to never ever fight, no matter what! That’s it! I’m done! I was seventeen, and if I ever was going to be like Dad, get some good sense and be acceptable to him, now was the time. Besides that, of all people I never wanted to fight with, Pitbull was in first place. It always took too much out of me. Not fighting this time was a commitment to myself!
The following Monday I ditched school and hung out with cousins Henry, Gregory, and Jeffrey in Aunt Rhoda’s vacant downstairs apartment, the scene of Friday’s party. Sippin’ some Thunderbird from the bootlegger, my cousins glared in disbelief as I explained this new “no fighting” thing. My sippin’ turned into slammin’ and gulpin’. In a matter of a few hours, I got drunk, then partially sobered up with a hangover.
I had just stepped out the side door about to go home when someone whispered, “Here come the Agents! And there’s Pitbull!” I gave him the good news. The fight is canceled. I was out of the fightin’ business. You see, my dad told me not to fight … I was explaining the orders from my dad when my head repeatedly snapped back, forward, and back again like a speedy punching bag.
“Come on, man! I ain’t fightin’!” The next was a powerful blow to my throat. Coughing, gagging, and choking, I backed up, finally putting up my dukes, already knowing it was too late.
The sun was about to set when this fight started. I recall the fight going to the alley and back up and down Fuller Avenue and evolving back to the front of the house again. Some said it was a “good fight!” But by the time Aunt Rhoda pulled him off of me, the sun had long set. This time, there was none of that “leading him around in his mind” stuff.
Mr. Dawson, the man across the street, drove me home. I snuck into the house, up the back stairs past family members so no one could see me, and went straight to bed. Terrie barged into my room, turned on the light, screamed, then turned around, ran, and got my parents.
Next thing I knew I was in St. Joseph’s Hospital emergency room getting my face and head X-rayed. Half my face was disfigured, one eye swollen completely shut. In my delirium I could tell that Pitbull and his boys were still out there on our corner when Momma called Aunt Rhoda from the ER. Henry and Gregory found out I was hospitalized and went on the attack. Over the phone, I could hear Aunt Rhoda yelling and screaming for them to stop fighting. My cousins Henry, Gregory, and Jeffrey were out there gettin’ ’em real good.
I was scheduled to graduate high school in two years, as a twenty-year-old. By this time I had enough emotional and psychological complexes to amaze bleachers of shrinks. Even worse, Henry, Fatso, and them were about to graduate and abandon me. I decided to complete eleventh and twelfth grades in one year, Central High School by day and night school at Mechanic Arts.
Night school was not free. “Dad, will you pay my tuition?” I asked.
“Are you kiddin’, boy? I’ll get you a job!” Next thing I knew, I was bustin’ suds down at the coffee shop inside the train depot downtown. I raced out the front door to catch the Selby-Lake bus to get to work on time. I hit the porch, pushing the screen door open, about to leap the flight of stairs, when Dad yelled, “Just be yourself!” An ice-cold bucket of freezing water chilled down my back. Feet screeched to a halt and turned me around.
I used my Polaroid to take a selfie with Arlan, December 1967.
Humbly, meekly, without words, I asked: A self? You mean I have a self? W
hich self should I be? The street-corner, dozens-playin’, loud-talkin’, tryin’-to-be-tough self? The self scared to sleep, afraid of nightmares and demons? Or the overly sensitive crybaby? Do I have a self that can go downtown and give and get respect from these Paddies? I mean, why do they talk to me like that? I looked to Dad to answer the inaudible inarticulate questions right now so I could get to work on time, but he could only return the puzzled look.
So I went to day school and night school and washed dishes four nights a week, with only Monday, Saturday, and Sundays off. By the process of elimination, I barely had time to get into trouble. I did still try to cling to Thee Boyz, but things changed rapidly.
Friday night. I slung dishes and slammed pots and pans, swept floors and mopped. Had everything sparkling clean. The Fabulous Flippers were playing at the Prom Center on University Avenue. Thee Boyz was s’posed to be fightin’ whoever it was that was lookin’ for us.
Highly excited, I knew this was my chance to build my rep. Problem was, I didn’t get out of work until ten-thirty PM, and the University Avenue bus, my only transportation, didn’t depart until eleven. I raced, rushed, and hurried on the outside chance of an earlier bus. The bus driver hardly lifted his eyes from a newspaper as his arm lethargically pulled the lever to let me in. I sat forever, the only passenger on the bus, waiting, clock watchin’, pattin’ my foot.
“Come on, man!”
The bus pulled off in slow motion, me in my seat rocking it forward faster. “Come on, man!”
Lazily the bus approached. I counted six ambulances, two fire rigs, and several police cars aligned in the street in front of the Prom Center. All eastbound traffic was blocked off. I was devastated, shattered. Oh no! I missed it. It must have gone down! I missed the action!
Diesel Heart Page 7
