Them

by Nathan McCall

  “Good! Good! I’ll take you to an area that’s just starting to show some signs of coming to life.” He winked. “The prices are still real low, but I’m telling you, it’s about to explode. It’s got awesome potential, and marvelous skyline views…”

  Less than four miles away, Barlowe came home from work and lurched to the curb. A tire sank into a huge, crater-sized pothole that rocked the car. He got out and checked for punctures. In the past few years, he’d lost two decent tires to potholes. It led him to join a feeble community push to force the city to patch the neighborhood’s ragged streets. During election time, promises flowed like confetti from City Hall, but nobody ever came afterward to make repairs. So drivers around there learned to zigzag and swerve, like police trainees on an obstacle course. They dodged potholes and waited for change that they doubted would ever come.

  Barlowe had checked the tires and started toward the walkway, when a faint screeching noise sounded from a distance up the street. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that sound. It was the squeaky wheel on Ricky Brown’s Winn-Dixie grocery cart. Coming from the end of Randolph near Irwin Street, Ricky walked casually in the middle of the road, with that squeaky wheel vibrating in a spastic fit.

  Ricky wore dingy tennis shoes, Air Jordans, with no laces. As he walked, the long tongues of the sneakers flopped from side to side, like the distended tongues of thirsty dogs.

  Flop, flop, flop, flop.

  Barlowe wasn’t exactly sure where Ricky lived. He often saw him pushing the cart through the streets, collecting bottles, cans and anything else that helped him scrape up enough money to buy a sandwich and a pint.

  Like Viola and The Hawk, Ricky was a drunk, but he didn’t rate high enough to drink with them. At some point in their cloudy pasts Viola and The Hawk had been respectable citizens, with driver’s licenses and jobs that carried insurance benefits. But Ricky had never held a go-to-work-every-day job, so he was deemed a lower class of drunk.

  Ricky parallel parked his cart like an automobile and sidled up to Barlowe. Call it insight or just plain intuition, but something told Ricky there was money in that man’s wallet, and maybe even some cash for him.

  “S’cuse me!” He spoke loud, like he was yelling at somebody up the street. “I rake your yard for few dollas!”

  “Naw,” said Barlowe. “I’m gonna do it myself.”

  “I do a good job! You’ll love my wurk!”

  When Ricky spoke, two rusty teeth peeked out from between ashy lips. Barlowe studied him closely and reconsidered.

  Ricky wore dirty blue jeans, a grease-stained shirt (with an ink pen hung proudly in the breast pocket) and a thin, oversized nylon jacket. A black-and-white do-rag covered his shaggy head. The do-rag was ringed by an elastic band, with words printed in italics: Jesus Saves.

  He also sported mod sunshades, one of the many gems he’d come across rifling through garbage cans.

  Ricky and Barlowe were about the same age, but Ricky appeared a full ten years older. His face, a medium brown, was sallow, with pock-marked skin. Patches of coarse hair were scattered across his mug like sagebrush blown over a dusty plain. He looked like he’d been shoved through a meat grinder, twice, and left for dead.

  Barlowe finished the sly inspection and thought to himself: There’s a thin line between me and him.

  He steered Ricky up the walk. “Now, Ricky. If I let you do the work, how much you gonna charge me?”

  Ricky peered toward the sky, as if consulting some heavenly pricing chart. Then he glanced down at Barlowe’s work shoes. The shoes looked pretty sporty; had a nice shine, too.

  “Gimme thurty-five!”

  He glanced at Barlowe over the top of his sunshades and quickly looked away.

  “Ricky. I know you can do better.”

  “I do a good job!” He smiled, flashing his dirty teeth.

  “Yeah,” said Barlowe. “I got somethin that might help us out. Wait right here.”

  He hurried around to the back of the house and returned carrying a leaf blower and a red gas can. He handed them to Ricky.

  “You can use this blower on the light stuff in front. You won’t have to do much rakin at all…Now how much you gonna charge?”

  Ricky concentrated hard, making mental computations for a price adjustment—allowing for use of the man’s leaf blower, of course.

  “How bout les do thurty!”

  “Ricky. Is my blower.”

  “I’ma do a good job! You gon love my wurk!”

  Barlowe weighed the counteroffer. For him, such negotiations amounted to a kind of charitable game. The goal was to donate and inspire, without giving handouts. The intent was to be tough but fair, to avoid being taken advantage of and, at the same time, taking care not to wound the recipient’s pride.

  The recipient—in this case, Ricky Brown—had his own simple goal: to maximize profit. That required a certain rough-hewn shrewdness, the ability to spot the angle on a negotiating edge. Ricky was very experienced at this, ever watchful for signs of fear, a bleeding heart or, best of all, profound guilt. On a good day, any one of those factors could bring a full ten dollars more than the asking price.

  But Ricky could see right off that Barlowe had been a few times around the block. This dude was not one to be intimidated or fooled.

  “Tell you what, Ricky. Les do twenny and call it a day.”

  “Okay, twenny! I’ma do a good job! You gon love my wurk!”

  Ricky unscrewed the leaf blower cap, then opened the gas can lid and looked at Barlowe with surprise.

  “Ain’t no gas in dese! You need gas!”

  “I know. I’ll go get some.”

  “Thas all right! I git it! I git it! Gimme fi dollas and I run up the street and git it right quick!”

  Barlowe paused. He thought that he should go, but he was tired. He had run four big jobs at the print shop that day. Looking at the front door to the house, he pondered: There was a six-pack in the fridge. He could almost hear it calling. And there was a claw-foot tub waiting, too, with outstretched arms.

  He reached in his wallet, pulled out a five-spot and reluctantly handed it over.

  Ricky grabbed the money and glanced above the top of his sunshades. “I be right back!” He tossed the gas can onto the trash heap in his cart. “I’ma run up the station and fill this up!”

  “Ricky. Is easier if you leave the cart…I’ll guard it. I promise.”

  Ricky hesitated. “Oh! Yeah! I leave it here! I leave it here!”

  He pushed the cart into the bushes, then walked to the middle of the yard and studied the shrubs, making sure it was out of sight. He didn’t want to risk losing all his fine trash collections to competitors or thieves.

  Once he felt assured of the safety of his garbage loot, he scooted off with the crisp five-dollar bill clutched in his fist.

  He rushed up the street, the tongues of his sneakers flopping from side to side.

  Later, Barlowe stood in the living room, peeping through the open blinds. He caught sight of pretty Lucretia Wiggins. She had left the Auburn Avenue Mini-Mart, and now switched up the sidewalk, toward her mama’s house. He studied her backside as she went indoors.

  Tyrone came into the living room and saw his uncle staring outside. “What you lookin fo?”

  “Ricky Brown.” Barlowe quickly shut the blinds. “He was sposed to clean up the yard.”

  “You paid im first?”

  “Gave him five dollars to get gas for the blower.”

  Tyrone rolled his eyes. “Damn, man; why you do dat? Why you pay that nigger fore he did the job?”

  Barlowe kept quiet, thinking.

  “You won’t see him no mo til he spend it up. Then he gonna come back wit a long story…You watch.”

  Tyrone set down two packages on the kitchen table. Barlowe peeked at the goodies. One bag contained a bottle of expensive cognac. The other held a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  “What you got goin here?”

  “Gonna git wit this gal I kn
ow,” said Tyrone. “We goin to Piedmont Park for a li’l bullshit picnic. Then is off to her place to knock some boots.”

  When the horn sounded, Tyrone rushed outside, taking giant strides like a person scaling a stairway, two steps at once. Barlowe closed the blinds and sat down in the living room. That night, when he went to bed, a familiar jolt of loneliness shot through his bones. He hadn’t been on a date in a while. He wondered if maybe he should start going out on the town, putting himself in places where he might meet some women.

  He considered phoning Diane, a redhead he’d met a while back. Diane would come over in a heartbeat, if it wasn’t her night for choir rehearsal.

  But Diane was too tame. Barlowe craved someone edgy, wild—like Nell.

  The image of Lucretia Wiggins returned to him. He fluffed the pillows, stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. He softly touched himself. He touched himself like he would want to be caressed if Lucretia or Nell was lying beside him now.

  In time, he drifted off to sleep. He was roused later by a noise outside. It sounded a bit like rustling brush. When it sounded again, he lifted his head, straining to hear. He rested his head back on the pillow. His eyelids felt heavy. He needed sleep. He had a busy printing schedule the next day.

  He finally drifted off to the sounds of the night: the sound of an old hoot owl’s mating call; the sound of a freight train rumbling by; the sound of floppy tennis shoes, and a squeaky grocery cart being pushed, fast, down Randolph Street.

  Chapter 7

  Sean and Sandy Gilmore met at Joe Folkes’s Midtown real estate office on a Saturday morning. They got in his Cadillac and cruised to the Old Fourth Ward. The first house Joe pointed out was a recent sale.

  “One of our clients. Happy as can be. No children; no worries about crappy schools.” He looked at Sean. “You don’t have children, do you?”

  “No. No children,” said Sandy, speaking from the backseat. (She had told Sean before they left home, she didn’t want to sit near that man.)

  The house was impressive, a freshly painted, two-story, columned Victorian. Huge bay windows and a wraparound porch. Two flags hung out front. One, a large American flag, somehow struck Joe Folkes as out of place. Hanging from another column, the smaller flag was fluorescent orange, red, yellow, blue and purple. Over the next half-hour, they ran across two other houses decorated with multicolored Gay Pride flags.

  “A good sign,” observed Joe. “I hear there were two more recent sales around here.”

  He drove on, reciting the history of the Old Fourth Ward, emphasizing its ties to Martin Luther King. After a quick strategic pass by The King Center, they swung around to a vacant house on Randolph Street. Joe drove slowly, making sure the Gilmores got a good look at the Atlanta skyline peeking just above the treetops from where they were. When they pulled in front of the house, Sandy’s eyes brightened. It was similar to the one they’d just seen. The yard was unkempt, and the roof clearly needed repairs, but overall, the structure appeared sound.

  Joe smiled and toyed with his suit lapel. “A good paint job and some cosmetic work, and she’ll be good as new.”

  Sandy noted the nice, long porch facing downtown, providing a fantastic frontal skyline view.

  “This one’s a gem,” said Joe. He leaned over, whispering as though sharing a secret. “And the owner is very motivated, actually pressed, to sell.”

  Sandy wasn’t sure why, but a wave of guilt passed over her.

  They got out of the car and scanned the block, as a stray dog crept past along the walk. Across the street, several men sat out next to the Auburn Avenue Mini-Mart. Off in the distance, Ricky Brown pushed his cart up the block.

  “How safe is the area?” asked Sean.

  Joe beamed. “Safer than a fat bank on payday.” He ushered them a few steps along the walk, to the point where Randolph Street intersected with Auburn Avenue. He pointed down Auburn.

  “There’s a police precinct less than five blocks away, and the area is crawling with federal park rangers. They protect The King Center and live right here in the neighborhood.

  “Now.” He dabbed at his do. “Let’s take a look at this gorgeous house.”

  At the moment, Barlowe was lounging out back, on the screened-in portion of the porch. He had gone to the mailbox earlier and gotten his mail. As usual there were piles and piles of paper from advertisers vying for his attention. One brochure featured the smiling face of some clown running for a city council seat. Then there was a letter addressed personally to Barlowe, from the president of Chase Manhattan Bank. Did Barlowe know, the Chase president asked, that he had been approved for a new credit line? Fixed introductory APR, for up to 15 months!

  There was harassment from others, too: Home Depot, Sears, a lighting store; a whole useless, overwhelming pile of paper.

  But that wasn’t the thing that bothered him most. The thing that bothered him most was the time devoted daily to ripping up every piece of junk mail sent his way; it was just one of the many time-consuming rituals that wear on the soul.

  But he did it, dutifully. He tore up paper ads, one by one, making sure to rip his name and address apart lest somebody sift through the garbage and use his information to buy a computer, furnish a house or go on the vacation Barlowe had always wanted to take.

  When he was done shredding, he drank a beer. He had begun dozing off, when three white people appeared around the side of the vacant house next door. At first he thought he might be dreaming. Then he heard the tall, funny-looking man talking loud, pointing this way and that, as though conducting a tour.

  Whities! Barlowe ducked indoors and out of sight. He went to the kitchen window and peeked through the blinds. Whities! Right next door!

  The seventy-year-old house next door was owned by an old woman named Hattie Phillips. It was a solid, spacious place, a once-fine Victorian that had fallen into disrepair. When the bills and burdens of living there became too much, Hattie Phillips went to live with her daughter and put the house up for rent. Lacking funds to renovate, she rented it to tenants as it was: with a few doors hanging loosely on squeaky hinges, and a leaky roof that required a rain bucket on the kitchen floor. The maintenance problems kept rents low and limited Hattie’s tenants to people like Vincent and Irene Benton—the last family to lease before it would be placed on sale.

  Unlike some of the more rowdy clans that had lived there, the Bentons were pleasant, hard-striving folks who always seemed one day late in life and two months behind on rent. Irene, a mousy woman, worked as a cook at Deacon Burton’s soul food spot. Vincent, who was muscular and quiet, worked as a laborer. The family enjoyed brief periods of near-stability whenever Vincent got steady work.

  Barlowe sometimes saw Vincent leave home early mornings, dressed in heavy industrial boots and camouflage fatigues. He wore a red bandanna tied around his head, which bobbed as he trudged with his lunch pail toward the bus stop on Irwin Street.

  The Bentons were peaceful people, except in those anxious periods when Vincent was unemployed. Then things got stormy. Irene would get so uptight that she could be set off by most anything—a stray ball landing against the flimsy front screen door, or a broken window they couldn’t afford to replace.

  She’d explode, attacking their three children. “Git in this house fore I kill you, boy! I tole you to be careful with that stupid ball!”

  The children would disappear inside, amid Irene’s profane bursts. The commotion would die down until Vincent came home. Then a second wave of attacks would follow, more fierce and sustained than the first.

  Barlowe could tell whenever Vincent was out of work. That’s when the children came knocking at the door. “My mama said can we borrow some bread and milk till nex week?” Too young and naive to feel ashamed, they begged casually, as though asking for the time of day.

  To offset the parents’ humiliation, Barlowe sometimes knocked on the Bentons’ door to borrow eggs or butter he didn’t need. Irene showed her appreciation by playing along.
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br />   One winter evening, Vincent himself showed up at Barlowe’s door, wearing a dingy T-shirt and that red bandanna.

  “The lectricity been cut,” he said, plainly. His eyes dropped to the ground as he struggled to hold up under Barlowe’s gaze. “I went downtown to pay the bill, but the lady tole me I had to ketch up the udder months, too. My money was a li’l short, so they cut off the power till I git the rest.”

  It was dark outside. The winter moon, full and bright, looked like a great big lantern in the sky. Standing in the doorway, Barlowe felt a chilly breeze whip across his face. He glanced at the side window to the Bentons’ house and thought he saw the glimmer of a candle. He imagined Irene and the children huddled in a single room around that single candle, trying to keep warm until the weather broke.

  He looked at Vincent and thought to himself: There’s a thin line between me and him.

  “What you need me to do?”

  For weeks, an orange industrial extension cord ran from one house to the other. Barlowe provided electricity to the Bentons until well after Vincent got another check.

  The Bentons lasted a full three months after that. Barlowe came home from work one day and found their furniture and other belongings tossed along the curb. The family was nowhere in sight. Two street urchins had come upon the crumpled heap and begun patiently sorting the secrets of the Bentons’ lives. The men worked in silence, stopping now and then to appraise a clock or try on a sweater. Sifting through the possessions, they looked like eager scavengers feasting on fallen prey.

  And so it went with the house next door. People came and people went. Tenants hung on as long as they could before a frustrated Hattie Phillips was forced to drive them off.

  The Bentons were gone. Now there were white people walking around outside the house, peering into windows like nosy ghosts. They headed back to the front, where the tall man used a key to open the door.

  Barlowe studied the strangers as they went inside. “Huummmph!” He couldn’t count the number of times he’d walked through their neighborhoods and had cops roll up on him. “Huummmph!”