This Way Home

by Wes Moore

  “Better come on in,” said the man. “We’ll talk.”

  Elijah followed him up a set of equally wrecked concrete steps and into a tiled coatroom that was surprisingly clean and ordered. A canvas jacket hung on a hook, below which stood a pair of black leather engineer boots; they looked well worn but were buffed to a low gloss. The man unlaced his running shoes and lined them up next to the boots, both pairs pointing at the door, ready for action. Elijah took his own shoes off and then followed Mr. Banks into the living room, the surfaces of which gleamed in the morning light.

  “In here,” said the man.

  They walked across oak floors that were undisturbed by furniture. And past scrubbed white walls devoid of artwork or pictures. Aside from a few cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, and an ironing board, the place appeared empty.

  “I’m Banks.” The man stopped, turned, and extended his hand.

  Elijah expected the kind of bone-crushing shake that guys often used to show how tough they were or, more to the point, how tough they thought they were. But Banks’s was in the category of solidly firm.

  “I’m Elijah.”

  Again, the man looked at him a little too closely, sizing him up. “Are you an athlete?”

  “I play basketball.”

  “Do you lift weights?” said Banks.

  “No, I just play ball. Sometimes I run home from the courts.”

  “Hmm. You any good?”

  “I think so.” Banks turned and headed around a corner to the kitchen. The fridge was empty except for beer bottles, a carton of orange juice, and a single lime. The appliance’s inside light cast the edges of Banks’s shirt in a yellow glow; he stared at the shelves, apparently unable to decide between the three choices. At last, he took the carton and poured himself a glass of juice.

  As an afterthought, he said, “You want some?”

  “No, thanks.” Despite his thirst, Elijah didn’t feel welcome enough in this man’s house to accept anything from him. Mr. Banks wasn’t desperate for his help. Suspicious was a better word. He decided that whatever this guy’s story was, it couldn’t be good. Scanning the kitchen counter, Elijah counted a dozen empty bottles—dead soldiers, he’d heard them called—and a couple of Chinese take-out cartons. There was a small framed picture, too, with a very pretty young woman in it. If it was Banks’s daughter, there was no resemblance.

  “You’re going to be big,” said Banks, still doing his looking-right-through-you trick. “How big is your father?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember him.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” said Banks.

  Elijah noted that it wasn’t exactly an apology. “I shouldn’t have asked” was different from saying “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “It’s fine,” Elijah said, even though it wasn’t fine, because now he had to contend with certain thoughts and questions that were very hard to get rid of. They had a tendency to swirl in his head and, eventually, darken his mood. He looked down at his feet, and then, hating himself for being affected by something that was so far out of his control, he glared hard at Banks. “How big is your father?”

  “He was a wiry bastard, like me, but he really knew how to throw a punch.” Absently he rubbed his chin, which was covered in gray stubble.

  “Oh.”

  In the awkward silence that ensued, Banks drained his glass and motioned for Elijah to follow. “I’ll show you what I need done. I won’t lie: it’s a lot.” They walked out of the kitchen and through the back door. “Are you afraid of hard work, like most people these days?”

  “No.”

  “Hmph.” He seemed not to believe him. “Tools are back here. The shed’s ready to fall down, so be careful; I don’t want any emergency-room trips or insurance claims.”

  THEY FOUGHT THEIR way through the backyard, which was a jungle of thornbushes and weeds. The lawn, or what should have been a lawn, was bare dirt, packed hard except where some roots and stones poked through. At the very back of the property, against a rotting picket fence, stood a crooked wooden structure built on a cinder block foundation. Its doors hung askew on bent hinges, spilling the shed’s collection of rusty shovels and hand tools onto the ground.

  Elijah hesitated, wondering just how badly his mother had set him up. Was she really expecting him to do this much work for free? That would be crazy.

  “Having second thoughts?” said Banks.

  “I didn’t say that.” But he was certainly thinking it. He picked up a pair of clippers and tested them out. At first the arms wouldn’t budge, but when he jammed them against his chest, the hinge broke free with a small puff of rust.

  “I understand,” said Banks. “I’ll think of something to tell your mother so it will come back on me.”

  “Mr. Banks,” said Elijah. “If you don’t want me here, just say so.”

  “To be honest,” said Banks, “I don’t. I’d rather hire a professional landscaping crew. But I couldn’t say no to your mother; she was very persistent.”

  “What do you mean?” said Elijah, setting down the clippers.

  “She asked me half a dozen times,” said Banks.

  “Okay.” Elijah started to leave. “I’ll tell her something came up. It’s no problem.”

  Banks scratched his chin again. “Hold on. Hold on.” He waved his hands at the tangled jungle of his new yard. “You’re already here. Why don’t you have at it, and we’ll talk later about what I should pay you.”

  “You don’t need to pay me,” said Elijah. “My mom wouldn’t approve of that.”

  “Why not?” said Banks.

  “Against her principles, I guess.” Elijah smiled, unable to hide his amusement. Apparently his mother’s good-neighbor practices were too revolutionary for Banks’s ordered, military mind.

  “That’s nice and all,” said Banks, “but I don’t like to owe anybody anything. If you’re going to work for me, I’m paying.”

  Elijah shrugged. He picked up the clippers again and began cutting. At first, he lopped off stalks and branches at random, hitting anything close. But soon he observed a pattern and worked more deliberately.

  Banks pulled out a cigar and a lighter from one of his pockets and fired up. He stood out of Elijah’s way, looking distracted and pensive at the same time, blowing rings into the humid air and watching them float upward until they grew large and disappeared. After a few minutes, he stubbed out his cigar into the hard-packed ground and went inside.

  Elijah cut all manner of growth until his shirt was soaked with sweat and his eyes stung. When he had enough branches, he cut and broke them into arm-length pieces and piled them by the fence. Banks came out to check on him once, carrying a glass of ice water. Sweat beaded and dripped off the sides. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” said Elijah.

  “I thought you’d have quit by now,” he said. “It’s a lot of work.”

  Elijah took the glass and gulped down the water. “I’m not a quitter.”

  “Maybe not, but willingness to work is a vanishing trait. Most people these days are kind of…”

  “Kind of what?” said Elijah.

  “Lazy, and weak.” The older man took a seat on one of a pair of overturned buckets. He gestured for Elijah to sit on the other. “But I probably shouldn’t talk that way anymore. What I meant to say is ‘good job.’ So far.”

  “Thanks,” said Elijah. “I think.”

  They sat silently. Elijah remembered the painting job with the white-haired dentist; compared to Banks, that guy seemed like a gem. Still, if Elijah was going to try to tough it out, then perhaps he should make an effort to get to know Banks. “What did you do in the military? Were you a soldier?”

  “No. I was an accountant, in the army. Papers and files. Boring stuff. I sat at a desk and went to meetings, same as everyone else in the civilian world.”

  “You don’t look like an accountant,” said Elijah, observing again the ropes of muscles on the man’s neck
and arms.

  “Ha. What’s an accountant look like?”

  “Bad suit, briefcase, comb-over. A little soft in the middle.” Elijah couldn’t imagine someone like Banks buttoned up in a suit, sitting behind a desk. Then again, he couldn’t really imagine a guy like him doing anything else, either. Especially if it involved working with people, or speaking in complete sentences. Elijah drank deeply; the water was a cold shock to the back of his throat.

  “I’ve got some bad suits,” said Banks.

  “Did you get to travel?”

  “Sure, but army bases all look the same. Same food. Same people. Same rules. Same green uniforms.”

  “Sounds fascinating.” Elijah stood and picked up the clippers; he’d decided that more backbreaking work in ninety-five-degree heat would be easier than trying to make conversation.

  Banks pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Right. Here’s the list of all the things I want you to do with the house and the yard, along with how much time each one should take.”

  Elijah took the paper and saw a bunch of tasks written in careful black print that looked like it had come from a typewriter. The letters were so small and uniform that he could hardly believe a person had penned them. Across from each odd job, Banks had listed the number of hours he expected the task to take.

  Clearing out shrubs

  10 hours

  Spread topsoil & seed back lawn

  8 hours

  Mow and edge front and side lawns

  1 hour

  Clean gutters

  2 hours

  Power wash house

  6 hours

  Power wash garage

  3 hours

  Break up concrete drive

  5 hours

  Stack concrete chunks

  2 hours

  Lay new pavers

  10 hours

  “I’ll pay you a dollar an hour over minimum, cash, at the end of each day. If you finish everything on the list and do a good job, you get an automatic raise of another dollar an hour. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds fine,” said Elijah. “But I still can’t take your money.”

  Banks looked at him and scowled. “That’s not negotiable. I’m paying. You decide what to do with it and what to tell your mother. Donate it to charity. Set it on fire. That’s your business. How early do you get up?”

  “I’m done with school now, so I can get here by nine.”

  “Make it seven-thirty,” said Banks. “You can have half an hour for lunch. Quitting time will be four-thirty, and make sure your work area is cleaned up and the tools put away in the shed before you leave. Those are my rules.”

  Elijah stared. “Seven-thirty? That’s pretty early.”

  “It’s not even close to early. Five o’clock is early. And if you’re late, even once…”

  “I won’t be late,” said Elijah.

  “We’ll see,” said Banks. “You had enough for one day?”

  “I can work a little more.”

  Elijah stopped at seven o’clock and put the tools back into the shed. He stood for a moment, regarding the product of his efforts: a pile of sticks, limbs, and root clusters that towered above his six feet and four inches. The yard looked completely different, like it had been tamed. He slung his pack over his shoulders and made his way around the side of the house, then hit the pavement in a loose jog, taking note of the little red Fiat ragtop that had just parked out front.

  “Look at you!” Banks called to someone—not him—from the crumbling front steps. His voice was unusually loud and cheerful.

  Elijah jogged backward, watching the tall, pretty girl stepping out from behind the car door, and Banks walking toward her.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, throwing her arms around Banks’s leathery neck.

  Banks looked like a statue, but after a moment the hug softened him. He wrapped his arms around his daughter, and then lifted her off the ground. “Hi, baby. I’m so glad to see you. Come on, let me show you the house.”

  ELIJAH STOPPED AT Antonio’s for two slices and then crossed the street to the Battlegrounds. He checked the string of texts from Michael: “Where are you, man?” “Dylan’s at my house watching some TV.” And “My moms made lasagna. Come on over.”

  Elijah ate his pizza while waiting his turn on the bench. He joined a pickup game with a bunch of beefed-up older guys who threw as many elbows as they did shots. The most vicious of the bunch was well known at the Battlegrounds as Bull, on account of his thick neck and the gold nose ring.

  At the start of the game, Bull purposefully matched up against Elijah and got in close enough to whisper, so that no one else could hear. “You ain’t nothing, you feel me? This is my court.”

  Bull’s story was that he’d been recruited to play for the University of Maryland but had been promptly thrown out for assaulting the coach—and the team’s star forward. Ever since, he’d been hanging out at the Battlegrounds dishing out threats to every talented young player with the audacity to stand against him. Elijah offered a slight smile. Like it or not, goons were plentiful, and trash talk was a part of the game. Among his own crew, Michael was the reigning champ. Elijah seldom participated; the way he figured, talk was energy, and he wanted all of his energy to go into the game.

  At the top of the key, Elijah dribbled loosely. He could feel the other players—on both teams—watching, waiting for someone to twitch and make his move. It was like a fight scene in the old Bruce Lee movies he and Dylan used to watch, where Bruce and the most cold-blooded bad guy would square off in mortal combat. Elijah had always admired how cool and relaxed the martial artist was, like his fear had been surgically removed, leaving only the calm resolve of a righteous badass dealing out lessons. Elijah hoped that someday he could play ball with that kind of attitude. So, like Master Lee, Elijah flexed his neck from side to side until a vertebra popped, all the while working the ball slowly, effortlessly, like a rhythmic invitation for Bull to charge.

  The big man held his ground, but the tension in the air was palpable and growing with each second. Elijah let the ball drop from his outstretched hand slowly, inexorably, like a piece of fruit, detached and falling from its branch. Bull lunged, but Elijah was slippery with movement and skipped the ball neatly around his back. He anticipated the impact from Bull’s shoulder and, at the last possible moment, rolled away from it without any loss of momentum. He banged the ball, two quick punctuations off the pavement, and then glided underneath the steel for an easy layup.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” said one of Elijah’s teammates, slapping skin.

  Bull’s teammates tried to console him, only to have their hands shoved away. “Man, get off me.” His flaring, ringed nostrils seemed to promise the delivery of a fistful of pain on the next possession.

  “Make it, you take it, baby.” One of Elijah’s teammates handled the check-in and then fed him a short pass. Elijah feigned a jumper but never got to finish it because a crushing elbow dropped him hard onto the blacktop. Elijah rolled onto his side, tasting blood.

  “My court,” said Bull. “You’ve got game but no heart.”

  Elijah felt around with his tongue for any loose teeth; the inside of his mouth seemed to be in order but was pulsing from the impact. He felt consumed with anger and the incomprehensible need to hit somebody. Sure Bull was bigger and stronger, but so what? He couldn’t foul him like that and get away with it. But then he heard a quieter, calmer voice from deep inside. What are you going to do when someone fouls you in the tournament? Fight and get disqualified? And never make it to the finals? No, you’ve got to be the bigger man and play your game. Use your anger to get stronger. Better.

  Elijah rose slowly. And rather than getting up swinging, or standing chest to chest trading insults with the ringed, muscle-bound fool, he looked Bull in the eyes and slapped him lightly on the shoulder, as he would one of his friends. “Nice defense.”

  “Ha!” howled one of the guy’s teammates. “You hear that?�
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  The game restarted with a new level of intensity. It was no longer about the winner or the score—if it had ever been. It all came down to a single question: Who was going to emerge as the top dog of that particular square of asphalt? Who was going to own it?

  Elijah answered by nailing a clean three-pointer. Moments later, he followed with a fast drive up the middle. He dribbled toward Bull’s weaker left side, but before he could break through, a thick muscled forearm came out of nowhere and caught him under his chin. Elijah’s body whiplashed backward. He went down hard, hands clamped reflexively in the universal gesture of someone who is choking.

  “How do you like that defense?” asked Bull.

  Elijah dragged himself to his knees. He sucked the pain down deep, to a place where there was no room for calmness or reason. Instead, there was only reaction, the primitive urge to lash out and fight. He delivered a perfect straight punch, the muscles along his wrist, forearm, and triceps locking together at the precise moment his fist connected with Bull’s balls.

  “Oaf!” The big man lost his air in a quick rush and doubled over at the waist.

  The blood was rising within Elijah, pumping up his arms and shoulders so that they could finish the job. He knew it had to be finished, because someone like Bull would have no respect for mercy.

  “Get him,” offered one of Elijah’s teammates.

  “Yeah,” said another. “We’re sick of his crap.”

  Think, said the calm voice. You need to think your way out of this.

  Elijah knew what the situation demanded of him, what most guys on the court would do. He was supposed to beat fear into his enemy. But he didn’t care about Bull, nor was he interested in having people fear him; all he wanted was to be respected for his skill and ability on the court. Slowly Elijah uncurled his fingers and gave Bull a gentle shove; the big man fell over and lay still, knees tucked protectively into his chest like a little boy hurt on the playground.