by H. M. Mann
“I can’t help you there. I just wish you had only hit him once to shake him up some. Rufus was closing in for the big squeeze, and no one would have gotten hurt.” She takes my hands in hers. “You’ll be pretty useless for maybe a couple days.”
“Hitting him once wouldn’t have been enough. He was huge.”
“Yeah, I know. While I was hoping that you would stop, I was rooting for you to win, to lay him low.”
I turn to look into her eyes. “Then why’d you say what you said?”
“Mainly because I know it won’t change a thing for anybody. That boy’s still gonna be prejudiced, maybe even more because you embarrassed him so much in public at the House of Blues, and you’re still going to be angry. Tell me, were you waiting for him to say or do the wrong thing, maybe even hoping he’d say or do the wrong thing?”
“I knew he’d say the wrong thing.” It’s only a matter of time for some people.
Rose smiles. “Maybe you ain’t Cajun at all. Maybe you got some Irish in you.”
“I doubt it. I don’t look good in green.”
Rose looks out over the river. “We may have a problem, though. There could be some trouble over this. Public place, the four of us. Rufus kind of stands out. And your hands are a dead giveaway. It wouldn’t take long for the police to trace us down if that boy decides to press charges.”
“Let him.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you could have walked away?” she asks.
“No.” Where I come from, walking away from a fight is the surest sign of weakness. “I ain’t no punk.”
“You know, he didn’t actually do anything to Penny.”
“He was all over her.”
“He’ll say he was dancing, that she shook it in front of him, that she liked it, that she wanted his attention. You know how they do. And a jury of his peers, not ours, is gonna believe him over you and her and me and Rufus. A New Orleans, Louisiana, jury, Manny. We’re not from here, remember?”
“I know.”
“And they have an excuse for everything they do, and most of those excuses are legal.”
“Because they make the laws.”
“Yep. You threw the punches, he’s the one bleeding, you go to jail, case closed.”
“Sounds as if something like this has happened before,” I say.
“A couple times. The police don’t hold the boat, though. We bring in too much money with our passengers for them to do that. But, they might show up, you know, and casually look around the dormitory …”
“The … dormitory?”
She smiles. “And since you’re not in the dormitory …”
“They won’t find me.”
She laughs. “No, officer, I never saw anyone like him in my life. He was just some guy who came to the rescue of my friend, officer. And that big guy? He sounds like someone an old lady like me would like to meet.” She rubs my back. “Just stay in your room and don’t be seen. And send Rufus down for some ice. I’ll have it ready for him.”
“Okay.”
“See you in the morning, Mighty Manny Mann.” She takes a step and turns. “You ever do any boxing?”
“No.”
“You’ve thrown some hands, though, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You got a good right cross, Mighty Manny.” She points at my tattoo. “And that white cross ain’t lookin’ too bad neither. Sleep long and wait till the boat is out in the channel before coming down to the galley, just in case.”
“Rose?”
“Yes?”
“Is there anything on earth that you can’t fix?”
She nods and presses her hands over her heart. “Just this. Other than my ticker, yeah, I can fix just about anything. I need people like you around me to fix it, so try to stick around, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, but then I start thinking about my probation officer. He’s lazy, taking this long to get to Auntie June’s house, but I’m sure he’ll file all the paperwork. I’m living on borrowed time. And now this.
Rufus won’t let me be once I get inside our room. “Who taught you to fight like that?”
“No one. I just picked it up watching older kids on the playground.” My knuckles are throbbing like a drum. “Where’d you learn to fight?”
“I’ve never been in one.”
No way. “Not even with your brothers?”
“Oh, sure. But that’s different. We usually just wrestle around till my daddy whups us upside the head. My daddy’s big.”
Bigger than Rufus? They grow them huge in Mississippi.
“Well, what happens if someone steps to you?” I ask.
“No one steps to me.” He scratches his head. “Come to think of it, no one steps to my daddy or my brothers neither.”
I guess the truly mighty never have to fight.
“But how did you hit him so fast? Manny, it was like watching lightning strike.”
I flex my fingers and wince for him, hoping he’ll get the hint. He doesn’t. “I learned to throw fast on the Hill because you never knew how many friends he had coming around to help him.”
He shoots out a few lefts. “You got to teach me how to throw some of that lightning.”
“Nah. You just keep getting close and squeezing folks until they stop what they’re doing.” I suck on my knuckles. “That way you won’t break your hands.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry. You need ice.”
“Yeah. That boy’s head was as hard as granite.”
While Rufus goes off for ice, I look around for something to do besides bleed everywhere. I can’t write, can’t get undressed, and I can barely wash the cuts in nearly every knuckle on my right hand because of the pain. I look into the mirror for a hero, but I don’t see one.
I only see me.
The door opens and closes in a hurry. “The police are here,” Rufus says, and he shuts off the light.
I flip it back on with my left pinkie, the only finger not bleeding. “We’ll be all right. They’ll only check the dormitory. Where’s the ice?”
“Oh, Manny, I didn’t have time to get it. You want me to go back out?”
“No. I’ll be all right.” I’ll just have to run cold water on my hands for a couple hours.
“What if they, uh, what if they find you?”
I sit on my bed. “I’ll be arrested, booked, fingerprinted … and sent back to Pittsburgh.”
“Sent back? Why?”
“I’m on probation. I wasn’t supposed to leave Pittsburgh.” But if I didn’t leave, I’d be dead by now, which is a pretty even exchange. It makes no sense. In order to save my life, I have to break the law. If I keep the law, I die. Crazy sure keeps making more sense the longer I travel.
“How much time will you get?” Rufus asks.
“I’ll have to finish out my sentence, so at least six months. They kicked me loose since I was a non-violent offender.” Which really means that they thought I was only a threat to myself.
“You? Non-violent? They don’t know you very well.”
Neither do I.
“Wait till the folks back home know that I’ve been rooming with a fugitive from justice.”
Seems like I’ve been a fugitive my whole life. “Yeah. Hey, uh, thanks for stopping me. I was having some trouble stopping, like my mind just turned off for a few seconds.”
“I have trouble like that sometimes.”
He doesn’t have an evil bone in his entire body. “You?”
“Oh, it ain’t my temper. It’s whenever I’m eating.”
I laugh, and the throbbing hurts worse. “You must not think a lot.”
Rufus flexes his arms. “I ain’t all flab and fat, now.”
“No, Rufus, you’re not.”
And one day, I know that Rufus will become someone’s hero.
“You, uh, think maybe I …” He stops. “I wish I was the one who came to Penny’s rescue.”
“But you did, Rufus,” I say. “You carried us both to safety.”
He rolls his eyes. “But I didn’t settle nothin’ with that boy like you did. Penny must think I’m soft.”
“No she doesn’t.”
“Well, I know she’d much rather be with you than with me.”
Oh no. “How do you know that, Rufus?”
“I heard what she said, about you bein’ her hero and all.”
Even Penny’s whispers are loud. “Look, she might be attracted to me, but it’s only an attraction. I’m spoken for, right?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“There’s no connection between us, Rufus. None. If anything, she’s connected to you.”
“Me? Nah.”
“C’mon. You dress sharp, you dance smooth, and you like to have a good time. You two have a lot in common.”
“Well, maybe.” He looks up. “You think, she, um, could ever be attracted to me?”
“Why not?’
“Well, I’m kinda big, you know, and she’s so pretty and small.”
I smile. “She’s already attracted to you, Rufus.”
“How you know?”
“Didn’t you two spend the whole day together up in Memphis?”
“Well yeah, but … All we did was go shopping.”
“Yeah? I’ll bet she tried stuff on and asked you how she looked.”
He nods. “Yeah. She asked me that a lot.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told her she looked beautiful.”
“And how did she respond?”
He looks at his hands. “Don’t know. I was, um, kind of afraid to look at her when I said it, you know, cuz I’m shy.”
Shy giant meets party girl. “Well, look at her next time, like tomorrow. Tell her she looks beautiful tomorrow, and I’ll bet she looks away from you. She has a shy streak, too, Rufus.”
“Nah. Penny ain’t shy. I was carrying her bags, you know, and she just latched onto my arm like she does it all the time.”
I smile. “She took your arm?”
He looks at me. “Yeah.” He squints. “She did.” He scratches his head. “You think it means somethin’?”
I get into my bed. “Only one way to find out.”
“What?”
“Ask her if it meant something.”
“I can’t do that! What if she says it didn’t mean a thing? Then what?”
I fold my hands above my heart to keep them from throbbing so bad. “It meant something, Rufus. Trust me. You went shopping all day in Memphis with a girl on your arm, you danced most of the night with her tonight here in New Orleans, and you even carried her out of danger. You’re meant for each other.”
“We … are?”
“Yeah.”
He has this lost look on his face. “And I didn’t even know it. Thanks for tellin’ me, Manny.”
“You’re welcome.”
He goes to the door, a shy little smile on his face. “Think she’s still up?”
“Don’t know. She sometimes gets a smoke at the Calliope.”
He opens the door. “I might have to stop off there before I go on my shift. See you later.”
Yep, Rufus is going to be Penny’s hero, after all.
I can feel it.
12: On the American Queen, New Orleans to Memphis
And in the morning, my hands are feeling it.
“We’ve got to keep you and your hands out of sight,” Rose tells me when I finally arrive at the galley around ten. “No more serving. Can you wash dishes?”
“I doubt it.”
She examines my right hand, squeezing the biggest knuckle. “Does this hurt?”
“Yes!” I try to pull my hand away, but she keeps on squeezing, moving from one knuckle to the other. One thing I know for sure is that pain makes you taller.
“Hold still, Emmanuel.”
I’m almost on my tiptoes. “C’mon, Rose, ow!”
“Doesn’t seem to be anything broken.”
I yank my hands away. “All my knuckles hurt. I can barely bend my fingers.”
“Hmm. About the only thing you can do is moan and groan and get in the way down here. Why don’t you go rest up and take the day off?”
“I need the hours.”
“You need to rest, now go on.”
“What about the laundry?”
She shrugs. “First day out from port, probably not as much to do. Please, Emmanuel, just get some sleep and stay out of sight.”
I want to tell her that I had been doing that for far too long to continue doing it now. “I am fairly useless, huh?”
“No, you’re not. Just keep ice on and be back to work in the morning, okay?”
“Okay.”
And then I find out what monotony is. Monotony is sitting in a rectangular room watching TV, sleeping, watching some more TV, sleeping, turning off the TV, using the bathroom, icing my knuckles, and sleeping some more. Except for the icing of the knuckles part, I suppose I’m just the average American now. And if I didn’t have the TV, I’d be a prisoner in solitary confinement.
When my fingers finally loosen up enough to hold a pencil, I write out some of my frustration onto the page:
They cut the trees at Crawford and Centre
to make more light in a dark place
to keep life light in a dark place
But really, they cut the trees at Crawford and Centre
to keep the deals light in a dark place
to keep the killings light in a dark place
They cut, trimmed, and ripped trees
so we don’t cut, trim, or rip each other
You’ll be safe they say
Well let’s go trim some of their
old oak trees in Shadyside
so they will be safer too
I don’t know why that matters now. Urban renewal, or whatever they call it, cost the Hill trees. Yeah, some of the buildings had to go, but why the trees? They could have built around them. I’ve seen it done in white neighborhoods. I’ve even seen on the TV how fast the camera crews get to those white neighborhoods when there’s a storm and trees are down all over the place, sometimes sticking out of a house worth more than I’ll make in my lifetime. Maybe it’s the trees’ revenge for our sakes.
All this makes me think of this guy on my block they used to call “The Reaper” because that boy was tall, dark, skinny, wore dreadlocks, and had branches for arms. And he was crazy. He wasn’t crazy like Dante Taylor was crazy. He was … I don’t think there’s a word for the kind of crazy he was, and “nuts” is too plain.
We always said to him, “The Reaper’s gonna get you,” and he always said, “The Reaper got to catch me first.” There wasn’t anything you couldn’t bet The Reaper to try. When we were kids, he’d run out into traffic and dare cars to stop. He got sideswiped a few times, even rolled over a few hoods, but he was always able to limp back over to us to collect his money. He was the kid who pulled the fire alarm right in front of the principal, the kid who snorted the chalk dust from the eraser right in front of the teacher, and the kid who set a trashcan on fire in the faculty men’s room while some teacher was doing his business in the stall. He wasn’t dumb, and he wasn’t necessarily bad. He was just bored. I may as well try to rhyme this one. I have nothing on my hands but ice and time. What rhymes with “reaper”?
this is the story of the reaper
i shoulda been that brother’s keeper
cuz he was alive and now he’s a sleeper
it ain’t simple it’s a whole lot deeper
a whole lot deeper . . . much deeper
reaper led a harmed life an armed life yes
fire-stealing boy cursing his own darkness
skying, whying in the ghetto wilderness
white society couldn’t care less
no it couldn’t . . . no it couldn’t care less
sometimes when you’re broke there’s fire
be careful what you desire
Whoa. Where did those last two lines come from? We were all broke. And why is this
starting to sound like R&B? I re-read what’s on the page. Am I writing about him or me? Maybe all us boys were interchangeable on the Hill.
reaper skipped school cuz he thought it was a bore
and then you could hear his cue stick roar
reaper let loose the gods of metaphor
stuck to his guns tipped a 40 to a war
on the poor . . . it’s all-out war
reaper met a good girl she gave him what he need
she was a church girl a very rare breed
but reaper had another love its name was weed
made reaper do stupid things you can hear her plead
don’t boy, i’m beggin’, please don’t
you know when you’re broke there’s fire
must be careful what you desire
This is freaking me out. Reaper and I kind of led parallel lives for a while until he walked straight into a city bus coming down Centre. The folks that were there swear Reaper’s last words were, “I won that bet, now gimme my money.”
That could have been me.
More TV, more sleep, and all I have to show for almost a whole day is a bag of cold water and two little poems. The boat has stopped, too. The passengers are probably out exploring some plantation or other, trying to get in touch with their glorious, racist pasts. They actually give tours of plantations, institutions created to keep my people down, and they wonder why we’re so angry. I don’t feel like writing, and despite the throbbing in my hands, I feel like punching something. I need the hours, I need to be working, and I don’t need to be by myself. This really—
