Them

by Nathan McCall

  The men’s eyes widened bright as full moons. “Rubbers?!”

  “Yeah. The spensive kind.”

  Willie grinned. “I ain’t got no problem wit that. I jus wish she was buyin em for me.”

  Ely reared back. “You cain’t do nothin wit that. Young gurl like that would bust yore heart. You’d haveta turn her over to ol Barlowe there.”

  Barlowe beamed, thinking that might not be such a bad idea. By now, the liquor had soothed his torment some. He flung the court case from his head and turned his attention to all the rusty bravado being tossed around. He threw down another drink and talked awhile, then left the elders and started home.

  Heading up the sidewalk, his thoughts were jarred by something he picked up from the corner of his eye. There was a white man knocking at the house next door. When no one answered, the man left and paced up and down the sidewalk, carrying a legal pad. He appeared to be writing down house addresses.

  “Who is he?” Barlowe wondered, “A salesman? A detective stalking somebody on the run?”

  He watched the man a moment longer, then tossed it from his mind and rushed on home. He had an important meeting coming up.

  William Crawford stepped into the living room and stood by the doorway like he intended to keep the conversation short.

  “Sit down, Mr. Crawford.” Barlowe waved an ink-stained hand toward the couch and set a bowl of stale peanuts on the coffee table. “Have a seat right there.”

  It seemed strange saying that to the man who owned the house he rented. Still, he needed practice. This was how you did business with white people.

  Crawford sat, reluctantly, and slid a thumb and forefinger under his chin. He had no real chin to speak of, which made his face look like it was hanging on the edge of a cliff, or of a thought, perhaps pondering a way to squeeze an extra dime from some person or circumstance. A retired air traffic controller, Crawford dabbled in real estate. He owned a few houses in the Old Fourth Ward.

  “Now, son,” he said, “what can I do for you today?”

  “I asked you to come over cause I wanna talk.”

  Crawford said nothing. He took off his tinted gold-wire-rimmed glasses and wiped a sweaty brow. He didn’t really need the glasses. He used them to shade his eyes, much like a poker player. The eyes moved all the time, like he was thinking hard, always plotting ways to add a few more coins to his pockets.

  “I’m forty now,” Barlowe declared. “I been thinkin is time to start settlin down.”

  “Good.” Crawford waited, certain there was more to come.

  “Thas why I wonted to talk—about the house.”

  “The house?” Crawford slid forward and clasped his fat fingers. “What’s wrong with the house?”

  “Nothin. Nothin’s wrong with the house. I like livin here. I like this place a lot. In fact, I like it so much that I wanna buy.”

  Crawford studied him closely. Barlowe guessed he was calculating, maybe crunching numbers. After a moment, Crawford shook his head.

  “To be honest with you, Barlowe, I don’t know. You’re a good man and all, but I don’t know about breaking up my property. See, that house is parta my portfolio…I don’t think you understand how much a house like this is worth nowadays.”

  Worth? Barlowe looked into the old man’s eyes with the certain conviction that Crawford couldn’t possibly grasp the gravity of his desires. Crawford may have known the assessed value of the place he owned, but Barlowe doubted that he knew, or even cared to know, its history, which could hardly be quantified in dollar bills.

  Such was the case with the Old Fourth Ward. When the neighborhood was first built, whites lived in most of the area, especially up on the northern end of Randolph Street. In the 1920s, blacks following factory jobs moved down on the opposite end, near Auburn Avenue. To keep the boundaries clear, whites changed the name of their end of Randolph to Glen Iris Drive. When blacks kept coming, white folks hauled tail out of town. Blacks moved into the fine Queen Anne cottages, bungalows and shotgun houses and claimed the place for themselves. The main drag on Auburn Avenue eventually came to be widely known as “the richest Negro street in the world.”

  In time, though, the ward suffered as black tax dollars were steered to the white areas in Atlanta. City neglect and more integration gradually siphoned middle-class blacks from the neighborhood. As the single-family homes, duplexes and apartment buildings fell into disrepair, the Old Fourth Ward declined.

  In the late ’80s, a smattering of blacks began trickling back. By the time Barlowe Reed showed up, twitchy and desperate, a decade later, blacks had begun a sturdy push to revive the ward.

  Barlowe moved onto Randolph Street. Randolph was a classic street, with sidewalks that people actually used each day, and modest yards and even some driveways leading to cozy houses owned by families with long ties to the ward.

  Through generations, they worshipped at churches, frequented bars, celebrated births and mourned deaths; they raised children who sprouted tall and were sent off to colleges and wars and penitentiaries; they fed their dogs, attended parties and wept at weddings—all in a swatch of land spanning less than one square mile.

  With the few pesky crack and liquor houses operating, the ward remained a work in progress. Still, in his years living there, Barlowe had found it to be a fine retreat. In fact, it was more than a retreat. It had become a need. It was the kind of place where a man could get genuine conversation and a sincere smile.

  These were his people; these weren’t the pretenders, the self-absorbed buppies, puffed-up over fancy houses and big-shot careers. These were his people. He liked talking with them, exchanging notions about life and the world. And their dreams; he especially liked hearing them talk about their dreams. Their dreams were simple and straightforward, like his own: They wanted to get along in life and do all right.

  For Barlowe, there was something else special—something mythical—about living in the Old Fourth Ward. In Atlanta, where Martin Luther King sits in glory on the right hand of God, the neighborhood boasted a prominent claim to M.L.K. He was born there; his birth home and tomb were there, preserved for the stream of tourists who came daily in double-decker buses and Bermuda shorts to gawk, snap pictures and reflect on “The Dream.”

  Living amid all that rich history and driving past King’s crypt on his way to and from work every day inspired in Barlowe a sense of hope sometimes.

  Now hope was the thing he clung to as he sat in the living room, meeting with William Crawford.

  “How much money you got saved?” the old man asked.

  “Well—” Barlowe had exactly $138 in his bank account. With his shaky credit, no mortgage banker in his right mind would extend him a loan. But he had read in the papers that you could sometimes lease a house with the intention to buy.

  “You got enough for a good down payment?”

  Whas a good down payment? Barlowe had to be careful. If there was a way to cheat a man in this world, then a man would be cheated, and William Crawford was just the one to do the cheating.

  “Well. Right now I’m startin mostly with an idea, and then I thought, dependin on what you said, I’d work from there.”

  “An idea? An idea won’t get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.”

  Crawford stood, signaling he was ready to leave. He had no more time to waste. He turned to the door, then something happened that gave him pause: Tyrone appeared from the back bedroom. He had showered and gotten dressed in a spiffy outfit, accented by shiny things. He wore a Kangol cap and a blue suit, with a matching shirt. He wore a fake-diamond-studded ring in one ear, and a thick gold chain around his neck. He had on a pair of black alligator shoes, shining so bright you could see your face in them.

  He smiled broadly. “Hey, Mr. Crawford!”

  Crawford’s face lit up like a big marquee. “Hey, Scooter!”

  Crawford fondly called him “Scooter.” He liked to hear Tyrone brag about the you
ng women he had bedded. He liked to soak up stories about wild adventures in the fast lane, which, being old and married with grown children, Crawford could visit only in his dreams.

  “Where you on your way to, Scooter?”

  “Me and a dude goin over to the nekkid club.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, they got a new girl dancin there now…Albino!” He whistled and rolled his eyes around in his head.

  The two men chatted a moment, then Tyrone rushed out the door. Crawford prepared to follow. Before leaving, he stopped and turned to Barlowe.

  “Tell you what, son. Let me get back to you on this business about the house. I’ll think about it and let you know what’s on my mind.”

  “Thas all I can ax, Mr. Crawford. Sounds fair to me.”

  When the old man left, Barlowe sat down and crossed his legs. He crunched a few peanuts and considered the way the brief talk had gone. Crawford had made no promises, true. Nor had he flat-out turned him down. Which meant he could be persuaded.

  For a long while, Barlowe sat there and stared up at the ceiling, thinking. He had turned forty, and it had occurred to him that in all his life he had never been committed to much. He’d always known what he was against: He was against Caesar and taxes and stuff like that. But up until now he hadn’t given much thought to what he was for. He had latched onto something concrete now.

  If Crawford cooperated, this place would be his; he would become a property owner, an official resident of the Old Fourth Ward.

  Tyrone came in later, staggering a bit. His eyes were glassy, and his hat was cocked so far to the side that it looked like it would fall off if he moved an inch. His right hand was wrapped in a bloody rag.

  Barlowe was relaxing on the back porch. He had taken a nice, long bath. He had spread newspaper on the floor, beneath his bare feet. He was bent over, clipping his toenails, and lost deep in thought about something he had seen earlier, after he let Crawford out the door. He’d seen another white man. Dressed in nylon shorts and a T-shirt, the man came jogging past and trotted down Randolph Street. Barlowe had studied him closely. The white man turned left onto Edgewood Avenue and disappeared.

  Except for tourists who were lost or turned around, white people rarely ventured on foot to that end of Auburn Avenue.

  “What you thinkin bout so hard?” Tyrone disrupted his train of thought.

  “Nothin,” said Barlowe. “What happened to your hand?”

  “Got in a scrap with that punk Black Sam, down at the Purple Palace. We was shootin dice and the nigger tried to say I cheated. Had the nerve to act like he wonted some a me. We took it outside, and everybody stood back and let us go, heads-up.”

  Using his good hand, he inspected the birdcage, checking the food and water. The pigeons fluttered against the cage, clamoring to be set free. When he released them, they flew straight next door and settled in the big oak tree. He had taped red I.D. tags to their legs, in case they got lost.

  Moments later, the birds returned, their heads bobbing as they scooted in the cage. Tyrone closed the door, then held up his bloody knuckle and examined it some more, thinking about Black Sam.

  “I dusted im off, good. Gave im a country stompin…Made me hurt my damned hand, though.”

  Barlowe kept on clipping nails. After a while he sat up straight and faced Tyrone.

  “Listen. I had a li’l talk with Mr. Crawford.”

  “What fo?”

  “Bizness.”

  “What kinda bizness?”

  “House bizness,” said Barlowe.

  “It gonna mean payin mo rent?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Me, too. I’m po as a broke-dick dog.”

  Barlowe regarded his nephew pensively, as if trying to decide whether to let him in on a secret. Then he started: “I axed Mr. Crawford to sell me the house.”

  He felt a surge of pride when he said those words. Tyrone, however, was unimpressed.

  “You wanna buy this ol thang?”

  “Yeah. This ol thing.”

  “Why you wanna do that fo?”

  Barlowe’s face sagged with the weighty impatience of having to explain something that should already be understood. He looked squarely at his nephew. “Ty, I’m forty.”

  That was all he said. It was all he could think to say.

  Tyrone responded with a blank expression. Living with Barlowe he’d learned to keep harmony, mainly by tuning his uncle out when the need arose. Whenever Barlowe started talking high-minded or paranoid Tyrone would simply blast away; he’d send his mind racing right through the door.

  Barlowe recognized the vacant look and instantly discerned its meaning. He went back to clipping nails.

  With the foolish house-talk abated, Tyrone casually reached in his waistband and pulled out a gun. It was a gleaming .38, an old-school standard, with a white pearl handle. He held the gun aloft, admiring it like it was a pretty girl.

  “I started to pistol-whip Black Sam.”

  Barlowe looked up from his toes, wondering how long he could keep his nephew away from trouble. “Be careful, Ty. Be real careful with that. Remember. You still on parole.”

  Tyrone stuffed his gun away. “Don’t worry, Unk. I got everthang under control.”

  He went toward his bedroom and disappeared.

  Barlowe balled up the newspaper with the clipped toenails and threw it in a trash can near the door. Sitting there, he weighed the potential for things to shape up some. If he got that house, he thought, he would dig right in. He would find a good woman—maybe a “house girl” like the one Tyrone described—and build a real life for himself.

  That’s what he wanted: Something he could put his hands on.

  Chapter 4

  A month after the talk with Barlowe, William Crawford showed up at the house to oversee delivery of a new refrigerator. After sputtering and groaning and hanging on for years, the old fridge had finally given up the ghost. Crawford replaced the thing with one he’d picked up from the Sears scratch-and-dent sale. It would be ages before he’d come out of his pocket to upgrade anything else. So the visit doubled as a dedication without a ribbon cutting, a chance for Crawford to publicly commend himself.

  When the deliverymen left, Crawford jangled his car keys, signaling that he, too, was about to go. Barlowe stopped him. “Wait a minute, Mr. Crawford. I wanna pick up where we left off before.”

  Crawford furrowed a thick brow, feigning puzzlement. “Huh?”

  “The house,” said Barlowe. “You said you were gonna think about the house.”

  “Oh, that.” The old man sat down and wiped his forehead. He hadn’t come here for that. Which meant he hadn’t prepared a suitable lie. He wiped his head again. “This neighborhood is historic, you know, with Martin Luther King here and all.”

  There it is, Barlowe thought. There’s the play to jack up the price.

  Crawford wiped his forehead once more. “I just dunno…I’m fine having you as a tenant…That refrigerator in there”—he pointed at the kitchen—“I don’t do that for everybody. But I like you. You pay on time. You keep things quiet. I kind of like the way things are.”

  Barlowe stuffed his hands deep in his pockets and tried not to let his disappointment show. But it was there. It was there, and it ran deeper than he cared to admit. Since the idea of buying the house took hold, cravings had bubbled up inside him from places he hadn’t even known about. He had become vaguely aware of being swept along by desires rooted deeper than his capacity to control. So he had progressed from wanting that house to needing that house. He hadn’t considered the distinction before.

  For a moment, he held that need inside like a man holding his breath underwater. Finally, when he couldn’t hold it anymore, he let go:

  “Mr. Crawford. Please.”

  He hadn’t known what else to say, but as soon as he uttered that word, please, Barlowe instinctively knew he had gone too far. He knew he’d breached some barrier, built up over years with painstaking care; he’d
flung open mighty gates to some deeply private, sacred fort.

  It wasn’t the word alone that bothered him. It was the slight inflection in his voice, the hint of a subtle pleading, and to a white man, that left him shaken. He hadn’t intended that at all, at least not consciously.

  The word spilled out on its own and whisked him back some thirty years. He was a young boy, maybe ten, when the “officials” of Milledgeville came to the house to talk to his daddy. His daddy was a lease farmer who had taken over from his daddy, a sharecropper before him.

  Barlowe and his four brothers were weeding the field when the white men showed up. The men rode in an official car, with an official city seal on the side door. A picture of the flag shone beneath the seal.

  The men got out, leaned against the car and folded their arms, waiting for Barlowe’s daddy to come to them.

  He went. They talked.

  Barlowe couldn’t hear what was being said. He figured it was serious, because his daddy mostly listened. He listened and nodded now and then as the men addressed him in hushed, paternal tones.

  Their business done, the white men politely tipped their hats and turned to leave. His daddy took one step forward and raised his voice after them in a desperate plea.

  “Sir. Please!”

  The man standing closest to him whipped around. He jabbed a finger in his chest and sharply chastened him. That done, the men climbed into their official car, with the official seal and the red, white and blue flag painted on the side door. They drove away, sending a cloud of dust swirling high as the treetops.

  When Barlowe’s daddy turned around, his face was ashen. He looked like he’d aged fifty years.

  He plodded over to his sons. “They say we grown too much crops. We gotta burn half the field.”

  The boys, stunned, destroyed the family’s good yield like they were told. In the years that followed, the family struggled, hard. Barlowe’s daddy was never the same man after that.

  Please.

  Now having used that word, Barlowe hated himself. He hated himself and Crawford, too. In fact, he hated the whole world. He hated the world and everybody who had ever lived in it since the beginning of time. He wished like hell that he could take back that word. He wished he had never allowed it to slip from his tongue: