Little Preston was panicking inside now, not so much for the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and collard greens, which were always delicious, but for the lemon meringue pie and ice cream that they were going to have for dessert. He swallowed hard, sitting there waiting for his father to continue.
“That was a pretty little girl sitting on the porch around the corner, son. What’s her name, anyway?”
Little Preston was truly perplexed at this line of questioning and the cheerful, almost playful tone in his father’s voice.
“Huh . . . ahh,” said Little Preston.
“What’d you say, son? Her name’s what?”
“Romaine, Daddy.”
“You like her, son?”
“What?”
“Do you like her, Preston Junior?”
Little Preston looked over at his mother for help, but her back remained turned to the conversation.
“Ma . . .” pleaded Little Preston.
“I believe your father is speaking to you now, Preston Junior. So, don’t call me until he’s finished.”
“Son, I asked you if you liked her.”
“I guess.”
“So you think she’s pretty and you like her, is that it?”
“I guess.”
“You think she’d make a nice little girlfriend, son?”
Little Preston was really squirming in his seat, now. “Mama . . .”
“Don’t call on your mother for help, son. Only you can answer these questions. So, please answer.”
“I don’t know, Daddy.”
“What do you mean you don’t know, son? Is this not something you’ve thought about before?”
“I guess.”
“So, is that why you were trying to beat up on your friend Jeremy like that?”
Even Mattie stopped what she was doing to absorb the weight of the question.
“Preston Junior, I’m talking to you. Is that why you were hitting your friend Jeremy?”
“Wha . . . I don’t know what you mean, Daddy.”
“Do you think by beating up on your friend Jeremy, you’re gonna make Romaine think that you’re something special?”
“Huh? No. No, Daddy.”
“Are you sure, son?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
“Okay, let’s go into the living room.”
Once in the living room, he motioned for Little Preston to remain standing, and began speaking.
“Boys, friends are special people. Now that you are friends, you will always be friends. And you have to always treat one another like special people. That means that you never try to hurt one another. And if one of you makes the other mad, you don’t fight each other. If you can’t talk it over, because maybe you’re still too mad, you should just walk away until you’re not mad any more. Do you understand?”
In unison, “Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure you heard that, Preston Junior?”
Fat Head almost giggled, and Little Preston gave him a quick, mean stare. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Okay, we’re getting ready to eat now, so Stephen, Jeremy, the boys’ll see you after dinner, okay?”
17
Washington, D.C., late Summer 1957
The summer went on almost like a fairy tale for the Downs family. Mattie and Preston Sr. became frequent hosts in an invigorating social scene. And though his parents didn’t drink or smoke, Little Preston could tell they really enjoyed their new friends, who all seemed to drink and smoke. And talk about a young Southern preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. They were glad that a Negro leader was finally standing up and telling the truth about American racism and not getting ruined like Paul Robeson who had once sung on stage with Butch’s mother. “It’s like they’ll always want us to be riding in the back of the streetcar,” Prez heard one of the adults remark.
For his part, Little Preston and his friends had a completely different relationship with streetcars. It had to do with the streetcar tracks.
The craze that summer was roller skating and all the kids had skates. It was a common sight to see a father gingerly guiding his wobbly child along the pavement until there was a little momentum built up. “Alright, there you go. Don’t be afraid. Just be steady, nothing fancy. Keep your feet pointing straight. Straight! Not all cockeyed. Keep your feet pointing straight, will you? Steady now. That’s right. Nice and steady. See. There you go. Alright, are you ready? I’m gonna let go. Just be steady. You ready?”
And then there were Little Preston and his skating buddies, led by Putt-Putt. They were a galloping herd that ripped all around the neighborhood at breakneck speed. They never skated on the sidewalk. And because their neighborhood did not contain any big thoroughfares, all the traffic was local and the parents knew what to look out for when they were driving. Their skating had a certain aura of derring-do, like they had no concern in the world for their own safety, like they were invincible.
From right after breakfast to just before dinner they’d skate all around the neighborhood. But jumping the streetcar separated the leaders from the pack by racing parallel to the tracks, jumping in and out between them while doing forward and backward scissors. There were only two other skaters besides Putt-Putt who could lead the pack: Little Preston and Shaggie. But Putt-Putt was the true leader, because he could do something no one else they knew could do—rolling backflips.
#
It was mid-August and the weathermen on TV were alternating between “sweltering” and “suffocating” to describe the humidity-drenched heat that had descended upon the capital city. Prez was alternating between trying to sleep on his right side and his left, having a sore back from a failed rolling backflip.
In the middle of the night he and Gussie were awakened by their mother’s gut-wrenching wailing. Little Preston ran over to Gussie’s bed to put his arms around him because Mattie’s crying made Gussie cry. Their Uncle Cadgie was the first to enter their bedroom. He was crying. Then came Rolando and Troy. They were all crying. All three uncles came over to the boys and hugged them. Cadgie and Rolando kept looking at their faces and smoothing back the boys’ hair with their tear-soaked palms. Troy couldn’t look at them without saying, “They’re just like him. Those boys are full o’ their daddy.”
Cadgie picked Little Preston up and Rolando picked Gussie up. They went downstairs and beheld a strange sight. Their mother and grandmother were sitting on the sofa together, holding each other and crying on each other’s shoulders. Their grandmother had not been over to their new house since they moved out of her place. And they had never observed the two women show any form of affection toward one another. Even Gussie noticed, looking quizzically at Little Preston before saying, “Look, Press, Mommy and Grandma love each other.” Little Preston looked at them with amazement.
“Put me down,” said Little Preston to his Uncle Cadgie after he surveyed the living room and saw no sign of his father. “C’mon, Uncle Cadge, put me down.” His uncle didn’t want to because the adults had not figured out what to say. But Little Preston squirmed and kicked his feet so much that his uncle put him down. Little Preston ran into the kitchen. No daddy. He looked out in front, and didn’t see his father’s car. “Where’s Daddy?”
His mother and grandmother began to cry even harder then.
His uncles started sobbing more. “Where’s Daddy?” he demanded. He looked at all the adults in the room again, looked at Gussie crying in his Uncle Rolando’s arms, and ran into the kitchen, took a long-handled scrub brush from under the kitchen sink and began beating the floor with it.
“Where’s my father? Where’s my father?”
Cadgie rushed into the kitchen, snatched the scrub brush from Little Preston, swung him around by his shoulders, and knelt down in front of him.
“Your daddy is dead, Preston Junior. He’s dead . . .”
Tears
streamed down Little Preston’s face. They gushed. But he made no sound. His body became rigid, his eyes were squeezed shut. His fists were clenched.
“Those white men killed him, didn’t they, Uncle Cadgie?”
Cadgie marched him back into the living room where for a brief moment everyone’s weeping had stopped long enough to look at Little Preston to make sure he was alright. “Those white men killed my father, didn’t they?” he asked of the adults in the room. Something was happening inside of him as he realized that at this time in his life when he needed them to give him answers they were failing him. He steeled himself, wiped his face and went over to his mother.
“It’s okay, Mama, I’ll be big one day and I’ll take care of you and Gussie. And I’m going to kill the men who killed my father.”
Just as he was about to take off running back into the kitchen to grab that brush again to do some more smashing, his Uncle Cadgie grabbed him.
“Listen, boy, nobody said anybody killed your father. What are you talking about killing someone? Your father would not like you talking like that. Not at all. You don’t really mean that anyway. You’re just mad and confused.”
“Can you tell me that those white men didn’t kill my father? Can you tell me?”
The truth was that his father had been found in a hotel room, seated in a chair with a bullet hole through his head. The hotel was owned by one of Stein’s associates who owned a string of sleazy hotels, all of which had special rooms set aside expressly for gambling. And the hot game had become Russian roulette. Slip a single bullet into the cylinder of a gun, spin the cylinder, place the barrel of the gun to your head, and pull the trigger. Each trigger pull was worth $500. The final pull, number five, was worth a thousand dollars. If you were lucky, you could walk away from a game $3,000 richer. If you weren’t, you’d end up like the popular young Negro singer Johnnie Ace, who shot himself backstage at the Howard Theater.
*
At the funeral Mattie and Denie could not stay away from the coffin. They kept getting up to go look at Preston, stroke his face, smooth his hair, and kiss him. Gussie kept falling asleep. Little Preston sat perfectly erect throughout and never looked at the coffin, never acknowledged the presence of a single living soul.
The sermon, preached by the ever-militating Reverend Josephus Clark, spoke of the gallantry with which Preston had represented dark Washington during his forays into the world of amateur and professional boxing. “But Preston Downs carried the heavy burden of regret. When the unfortunate accident occurred in his bout with Heathie Nettles and that boy died, Preston came to me with tears in his eyes asking me to help him beg God for forgiveness, because he never intended to take that boy’s life. His heart was so heavy. And you know why, because he was angry in that fight. By the time he finally got Nettles pinned into that corner in the ninth round, Preston couldn’t make himself stop punching. He said it was the screams of Heathie’s wife at ringside that finally snapped him out of it. Let us not carry anger in our hearts because it will cloud our minds, blur our vision, and lead us down the path to unrighteousness. You may recall, Preston laid the championship belt he won from Heathie Nettles across his coffin; ‘laying a champion to rest.’
“I know many of you are angry. None of us believe Preston would gamble with his life. But there is no one we can point a finger at anyone and say, without hesitation or doubt, ‘you are responsible for the death of our beloved Preston Coleman Downs.’ We’re about to lay a champion to rest. It is not the boxing champion I refer to here, but the champion husband, the champion father, the champion son, the champion brother, the champion friend, and we’re going to honor his memory by championing life as he did by putting anger to rest.”
Little Preston had listened and had heard no mention of his father being asleep. And he had listened hard through the wheezing noise of his own breath, through the merciless throbbing of that bass drum in his chest and through the electric pulses continuously stabbing at his fingertips and toes. His whole body felt like it might explode. He watched as two deacons began to close the lid on the coffin, and the brothers, along with two cousins and two very close friends of Preston’s from his boxing days rose as pallbearers, and he bolted towards the coffin and screamed, “Don’t close it, my daddy’s in there. Leave him alone!” He started kicking and punching the two deacons. His uncle Cadgie grabbed him, lifted him off his feet, and began to carry him out. He let out such a piercing wail that some covered their ears. He heard his mother scream, “Oh, my lord, Preston Junior! Preston Junior! Stop it! You hear! Stop it!” He looked over at his grandmother and she looked away from him in disgust.
#
Almost immediately after the funeral, his mother moved them into a new apartment in another part of town on A Street, Northeast, near the intersection of East Capitol Street, which was the boundary line separating Northeast from Southeast Washington, and Seventeenth Street. Down the street from their front door was Eastern High School and down the back alley was Mount Moriah Baptist Church.
The new neighborhood may have been more populous with larger residences, but their apartment was a tiny one-bedroom unit. There was a long narrow hall with entrance ways to a front room crammed with a sofa, coffee table, and end table; next, the one bedroom stuffed with two double beds; a bathroom looking like it had been installed in a closet; and at the end of the hall a kitchen littered with a fuse box, hot-water tank, a small stove, refrigerator, and rust-laden sink. They ate and did homework at a very small square table pushed up against a wall.
On Sundays he could hear the rollicking choir and band. He often saw youth activities taking place in the church yard. One day he overheard his mother talking to his aunt and telling her that for the first time since before she left home to go to college, she felt the need to belong to a church. Practically the next day they were churchgoers.
They didn’t have a lot, but what they had was clean and neat. Little Preston and Gussie would often hear “cleanliness is next to godliness” from their mother. Every Saturday morning was clean-the-house day. After that it was off to the laundromat. And while the clothes were in the machines, off to the grocery store. Their sole vehicle, a red wagon, was a beloved addition to the family and Preston felt it was his responsibility to pull it no matter how heavy. He had to take care of his mother and little brother.
18
Washington, D.C, Spring 1958
Whack! Thump-thump-thump! “Oh shit, man!” Thump. Whack-whack-whack! Crash!
“Oh shit, man. C’mon! I’m down. I’m down, man. Oh shit. What the fuck! I can’t breathe outta my nose.”
The leader of the Anacostia Destroyers lay in a heap amongst a pile of garbage cans in the back alley behind Mount Moriah Baptist Church. This invasion by the Anacostia Destroyers was literally in Prez’s own backyard.
“I told you Anacostia punks not to be coming around here starting trouble.”
Prez had filled out over two years. He was a regular at the YMCA on Seventeenth Street. He went there to box and lift weights. His self-discipline effectively checked his temper most of the time, but he had no tolerance for the bullying of gangs. He was fighting more on the street than in the gym.
“And you tell your brother, that punk-assed Catfish, that I’ll kick his ass, too, a lot worse than this.”
Prez figured it must have taken him about ten whole seconds to kick Kingfish’s butt. It all happened so fast that Kingfish’s boys didn’t have a chance to get there and gang up on Prez; nor did the customary circle of Eliot Junior High chanters, taunters, and screamers that formed around street fights and crawled up and down streets and alleys like some kind of huge amoeba with the fight in the middle. By the time the first of the crowd showed up Prez was helping Kingfish to his feet.
“Hey, man, what’s going down?” the crowd shouted. “What happened, Prez? Kick his ass, man!” “It’s over? What da ya mean, it’s over?” “Fight, fight, figh
t, fight!” The crowd could be insatiable. But Prez would have none of it.
“It’s over, I said. Me and Kingfish have decided to be friends, you know. No more fighting. No more us being worried about the Destroyers coming around for anything but a good time. Ain’t that right, Kingfish?”
Of course, Kingfish had agreed to no such thing, but if he wanted to get out of that back alley with his brains not scrambled up, and walking under his own power, he knew he had to agree. Some members of his gang were there now, but the crowd would never allow them to gang up on Prez. There was one thing that still mattered among them: honor. All fights must be fair. No weapons, and no ganging up on anyone. And a word given was a word not broken. Prez was in top form, giving his opponent an honorable way out. Now Kingfish understood why they called him Prez. He acted like he was some kind of president, going to war on your butt one minute, then holding out a hand of friendship the next. Prez wondered where he got the name “Kingfish.” He hated it but would not hold that against him.
What wasn’t known was that this was only part of the story as to how Preston Coleman Downs, Jr. came to be known as Prez. All anyone had to do was to look under Prez’s bed at the stack of old 78 rpm records Prez had inherited from his father via his Uncle Cadgie. These were some of the same records his daddy used to play when they would sit out on the front porch during those wonderful summer nights on Sherman Avenue. They’d be sitting there with the music coming through the window and drifting up into the air all around them. The tenor saxophone had such a big, round, full sound without being overpowering. One minute it would float, the next it would hop, skip, and jump, while the next, it would sprint a little; all the while dripping honey.
“I like that, Daddy,” Little Preston would say as his father would sing the words, “I just can’t get started with you . . .”
“Oh, do you now, son? You didn’t know I could sing, did you?”
Exile Blues Page 10