“Soup don’t work for him,” Sportcoat said proudly.
“That’s ’cause Soup was a guest of the state,” Joaquin said from his window. “Give him time. You need to go, bro, just till things cool off. You can go stay with my cousin Elena in the Bronx if you want. She’s never home. She got a good job working for the railroad.”
Miss Izi snorted. “She’s been boarded more times than the railroad too. Don’t stay there, Sport. You’ll get fleas. Or worse.”
Joaquin’s face reddened. “Tienes una mente de una pista. Una sucia sucia!”
“So does your mother!” Miss Izi said.
“All right already!” Sister Gee said, glancing around. The line of people waiting to play their numbers had quit, and most had taken seats on the stoop near Sausage to watch this theater, which was better than any numbers game. Sister Gee said, “Let’s think this through,” and as she spoke, the sound of the front door opening behind them was heard and she looked up over their shoulders, gaping in surprise. The rest followed her shocked gaze, glancing over their shoulders to a sight that brought them to their feet.
Standing behind them, Soup Lopez, a resplendent, smiling giant, in a crisp gray suit, white shirt, and splendid black bow tie—all six foot ten of him—stood on the top step, filling the open doorway of Building 17.
“Soup!”
“Soup Lopez! Back from the dead!”
“¡Sopa! ¡Comprame una bebida! ¿De dónde sacaste ese traje?”
“Home at last!” Soup roared.
Cries of greeting and handshakes all around as the crowd surrounded the big man, who towered over them. Joaquin, from his window, poured several quick whiskey shots into plastic cups, then abandoned the window altogether, emerging from the building with his guitar, followed by the bongo player of Los Soñadores, who hurriedly rushed out the building entranceway shouting in Spanish, “Nephew!” and hugged Soup, who lifted the small man like he was a pillow. Los Soñadores quickly plugged in and the horrible music began again, with even more gusto than before.
For the next hour and a half, Sportcoat’s crisis was forgotten. It was still early, and Soup greeted all his old friends by amusing everyone with magic tricks. He picked up two women in one hand. He showed everybody one-handed push-ups he’d learned in prison. He showed off his shoes, size 18S, special made by the state of New York, and impressed his old coach, Sportcoat, by taking off one shoe and using it to swat a handball three hundred yards. “You always said I had good basics,” he said proudly.
The joy encouraged a frolic, and several who were embarrassed to approach Sportcoat now came forward to shake his hand, pat him on the back, thank him for shooting Deems, and offer him drinks. One old grandmother gave him the two dollars she normally used to play the numbers, stuffing the money in his coat pocket. A young mother stepped forward and said, “You showed me how to can peaches,” and kissed him. A thick-bodied Transit Authority worker named Calvin who manned the tollbooth at the local G train subway stop ambled up, shook Sportcoat’s hand, and slipped five dollars into Sportcoat’s pocket, saying, “My man.”
The floodgates were open, and the crowd of onlookers who had fled when they first spotted him wandered back to marvel that he was still alive, gawk at him, and shake his hand.
“G’wan old-timer!”
“Sportcoat, you showed ’em!”
“Sport . . . eres audaz. Estás caliente, bebé. Patearles el culo!”
“Sportcoat, come bless my son!” a young pregnant mother shouted, her hands on her rounded stomach.
Sportcoat endured it all with a blend of awe, bashfulness, and pride, shaking hands and enjoying free drinks that were poured for him from Joaquin’s window, paid for by his neighbors, the window now manned by Miss Izi, who apparently knew enough about her ex-husband to know he didn’t give a hoot who poured the hooch so long as the fifty cents per shot was collected. Unbeknownst to him, she kept a quarter from each pour for herself. Handling charges.
The rush at Sportcoat was merry until Dominic Lefleur, the Haitian Sensation and Sportcoat’s neighbor in Building 9, appeared with his friend Mingo, a horrid-looking old man with a pitted, pimply face. In his hand was a horrible-looking homemade doll, which consisted of three tiny couch pillows stuck together with a head that looked and felt suspiciously like four size-D batteries taped together covered by cloth. Dominic slapped Sportcoat on the back, held the doll out to him, and said, “You are now protected.”
Bum-Bum, who had faithfully stood in line twenty minutes to play her number and who had lost her place twice since the party started and the line had been reduced to a line for whiskey shots, took umbrage.
“Why you spreading haints and spirits, Dominic?”
“It’s good luck,” Dominic said.
“He don’t need luck. He got Jesus!”
“He can have this too.”
“Jesus Christ don’t need no witchery. Jesus don’t need no ugly dolls. Jesus ain’t got no limits. Look at Soup. Jesus brought him home ’cause we was praying for him. Ain’t that right, Soup?”
Soup, in his suit and bow tie, towering over the party of folks drinking shots and a few now dancing to the horrific bachata of Los Soñadores, looked uncomfortable. “Truth is, Sister, I don’t go to church no more. I’m a member of the Nation.”
“What Nation?”
“The Nation of Islam.”
“Is that like the United Nations?” Bum-Bum asked.
“Not really,” he said.
“They got their own flag, like the Stars and Stripes?” Sausage asked.
“Them Stars and Stripes ain’t mine, Brother Sausage,” Soup said. “I got no country. I’m a citizen of the world. A Muslim.”
“Oh . . .” Hot Sausage said, uncertain what else to say.
“See, Muhammad was the true Prophet of God. Not Jesus. And Muhammad didn’t use no little dolls like Dominic here.” Seeing the horror on Bum-Bum’s face, Soup added, “But I agrees with you to a point, Miss Bum-Bum. Everybody needs something.”
He was trying to be amenable, as Soup always was, but his words had a terrible effect. Bum-Bum stood with her hands on her hips, thunderstruck into silence. Dominic looked away in embarrassment. Sister Gee, Hot Sausage, and Sportcoat couldn’t believe what they’d heard. Joaquin, noting a lull in the activity among them, unslung his guitar, slipped into the front door of the building as Los Soñadores chugged on, and emerged a minute later with a bottle of brandy.
“Welcome back, Soup. I saved this for you,” Joaquin said.
Soup took the bottle in his giant hand. “I can’t drink this,” he said. “This is the white man’s way of keeping the black man down.”
“With Dominican brandy?” Joaquin said. “That’s the best.”
“It’s piss compared to Puerto Rican brandy,” Miss Izi said from Joaquin’s window.
“Get out my window,” Joaquin hissed angrily.
“I’m making money for you! Like before! Rabbithead!”
“Get out my window and take the midnight broom out of town, hussy!”
There was a fat glass ashtray at Miss Izi’s elbow. She grabbed it and tossed it at her ex-husband. It was a mild, casual toss, flung like a Frisbee. She didn’t even mean to strike him, and she didn’t. Instead, the ashtray struck a pregnant woman in the shoulder. She was dancing near the front of the crowd with her boyfriend, and she quickly spun around and slapped Dominic, who was standing behind her, holding the doll. Being a gentleman, Dominic raised his hand to stop her from striking him a second time and inadvertently clunked the young mother’s boyfriend on the head with the doll’s hard battery head. In turn, the boyfriend reached his fist to whack Dominic, but instead his elbow struck Bum-Bum in the jaw, who had stepped over to help the young mother. Bum-Bum, furious at being hit, flung a punch at her assailant and struck Sister Gee, who fell into Eleanora Soto, treasurer of the Cause House
s Puerto Rican Statehood Society, who was sipping a cup of whiskey, which she spilled down the shirt of Calvin, the Transit Authority worker who had just given Sportcoat his five-dollar lunch money.
And just like that it was on. A fight, with biting, scratching, and kicking. It wasn’t a free-for-all, but rather a series of skirmishes that exploded and quelled, breaking off here, starting again there, with referees and peacemakers scattered about, some taking knuckles in the face themselves, all on a hot morning when they should have been celebrating. Several fought till they got tired, sat down on the front steps in tears and exhaustion, and then, once they’d caught their breath, started up again, just as enraged. Others cursed out one another until one or the other got struck by an errant fist, and then they too joined the fray. Still others fought silently, resolutely, in pairs, working out old grudges they’d held for years. They were all so busy that no one seemed to notice a tall figure in a black leather jacket, Bunch Moon’s enforcer Earl, a switchblade knife in his fist, slowly working his way from the back of the crowd to the front, slipping left and right, easing toward Sportcoat, who was still seated on the front steps in front of Los Soñadores next to Soup, both of them watching the fight in wonder as the terrible band played on.
“This is my fault,” Soup admitted. “I shoulda stayed upstairs and watched television.”
“Oh, the cotton and weeds comes together from time to time but it ain’t nothing,” Sportcoat said. “These things is good. They clears the air.” As he watched the scrambling, cursing mob, it occurred to Sportcoat that Joaquin’s unopened bottle of delicious Dominican brandy, standing on the bottom step just a few feet away, looked lonesome, with nobody to keep it company. He also realized he’d have to get moving soon. He had to do some yard work for the old white lady over on Silver Street who needed him in her garden planting. He usually went on Wednesday, but he’d missed last Wednesday because . . . well, because. He’d promised to come today, Monday, and the old lady didn’t fool around, which made him determined. He’d even decided to skip playing Joaquin’s numbers that morning and head straight out to the old lady’s house, but Joaquin’s lousy band woke him up and derailed him. Now he had to get moving.
Still, seeing the lonely brandy by itself on the bottom step, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick nip. Nothing wrong with getting a little daily relief before the job.
He stood up and stepped down the stairs to grab the brandy on the bottom step. As he reached, someone kicked the bottle onto its back and it skidded onto the plaza and into the melee, unbroken but spinning on its side, stopping a few feet away. He followed it, wading into the crowd. Just as he reached it, the bottle was kicked again and slid between the legs of Sister Billings and the young pregnant mother, the two still tangling as Dominic and the woman’s boyfriend sought to separate them. He followed it, only to watch it get kicked again. This time it took a bouncing, flipping ride before sliding past the feet of Sausage and Calvin the transit worker, slowing to a miraculous, agonizing, twirling stop between the legs of two women who were grappling with one another, each cursing and threatening to rip the other’s wig off.
The bottle spun ’round and ’round beneath their legs, slowly coming to a stop.
Sportcoat crouched low, swiped it up, and was about to unscrew the lid when the bottle was suddenly swiped from his hand.
“This is the white man’s poison, Mr. Sportcoat,” Soup said calmly, holding the bottle. “We don’t need this stuff ’round here no more.”
He tossed the bottle casually over his shoulder, away from the crowd.
Soup, as a kid baseball player, never had much of an arm. But as a giant he had velocity. Several sets of eyes followed the bottle as it made a long, slow arc into the air, high up, twirling end over end, arching a bit as it reached its apex, then falling back to earth in a long, lazy, crazy spiraling curve—boinking Earl, Bunch’s hit man, right on the noggin.
Amazingly the bottle remained intact after pinging off Earl’s head, then struck the pavement before finally smashing into pieces. Earl fell next to it, crumpling to the ground like a paper doll.
The crash of the shattering glass and the sight of the fallen man stopped everyone. The crabbing and scratching ceased and everyone hustled over, gathering around the prostrate Earl, who was out cold.
In the distance, a police siren was heard.
“Now y’all did it,” Joaquin said gloomily.
Everyone realized the crisis instantly. Joaquin’s apartment would be searched. He’d be closed for days, weeks, even months. That meant no numbers. Even worse, Soup was on probation. Any kind of trouble would put him back in the clink. What a mean world!
“Everybody git,” Sister Gee said calmly. “I’ll take care of this.”
“I’ll stay too,” Dominic said. “It’s my fault. I got Bum-Bum stirred up.”
“Can’t no man stir me up, Dominic Lefleur,” Sister Billings snapped defensively. “I don’t need no man to stir my drink!”
“That depends on the straw and the man,” Dominic said, smiling. “I’m the Haitian Sensation—emphasis on ‘sensation.’”
“Don’t try that scalawag sweet talk on me, mister! I know you don’t mean it!”
Dominic shrugged as if to say “What do I do now?”
“We’re wasting time,” Sister Gee said. She turned to the crowd. “Get moving, y’all,” she snapped. She turned to Calvin, the subway toll collector. “Calvin, you and Soup stay. You too, Izi.” To the rest she said, “Hurry up, y’all. Git.”
The crowd vanished. Most ran inside their buildings or hurried to work. But not everybody. Sportcoat and Hot Sausage returned to the stoop, where Joaquin and Los Soñadores were hastily packing up. Sausage nodded at the band. “If they was the O’Jays, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“Bongo music,” Sportcoat agreed, shaking his head. “I never did favor it.”
“Is you gonna wait here to be arrested?” Sausage asked.
“I gotta get to work.”
“Let’s get a snort before we set out,” Hot Sausage said. “I got some Kong in the workshop. We can take the back door and cut through the coal tunnel under Building Thirty-Four. That’ll puts us back at Nine.”
“I thought that coal tunnel was closed up.”
“Not if you the boiler man.”
Sportcoat grinned. “Doggone it, you’s a good rooster, Sausage. C’mon then.”
The two disappeared inside. Behind them, Sausage noticed Soup hoisting Earl over one shoulder and trotting out of the plaza. By the time the cops rolled up minutes later, the plaza was deserted.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Earl came to and found himself on a bench on the platform of the Silver Street subway station. Seated on one side was the biggest Puerto Rican he’d ever seen, and on the other a handsome black woman in a church hat. He felt his head. He’d been struck on the same spot where the errant baseball had hit him days before. He had a lump there the size of Milwaukee.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“You was hit in the head with a bottle,” the lady said.
“Why’s my clothes wet?”
“We doused you with water to get you up.”
He felt in his pocket for his switchblade. It was gone. Then he noticed the handle of the folded knife poking out from the closed fist of the giant Puerto Rican, who had a face ugly enough to belong to a cadaver. His blade, Earl realized, wouldn’t do shit on that Spanish elephant motherfucker but tickle him. Earl glanced nervously around the subway platform again. It was completely empty.
“Where’s everybody?” he asked.
“We seen from papers in your pocket you is from Gates Avenue out in Bed-Stuy,” the woman said. “So we is putting you on the train that way.”
Earl started to curse, then glanced at the giant, who stared back at him, his eye steady.
&
nbsp; “Seems to me,” the woman began, “you favors a preacher I once knew over in Bed-Stuy. Reverend Harris at Ebenezer Baptist. A nice man, the reverend was. He died some years back. You any kin to him?”
Earl was silent.
“A good man, Reverend Harris was,” she repeated. “Worked all his life. Janitored over at Long Island University, I do believe. I recollects when my church visited Ebenezer that Reverend Harris had a child or two that favored you. Of course this is going back a ways. I’m forty-eight. I can’t remember nothing no more.”
Earl stayed silent.
“Well, I do apologize for whatever misunderstandings you has had in the Cause,” she said. “We seen from your wallet papers where you was from, and being God-fearing people, we brung you here so you could get home without no trouble from the police. We takes care of our visitors in the Cause.” She paused a moment, then added, “We takes care of our own too.”
She let that one sit a moment, then got up. She nodded at the giant. Earl watched in awe as the stoic man in a neat suit, bow tie, and crisp white shirt, clearly a member, he realized now, of the feared and respected Nation of Islam, stood up. Up and up he went, unfolding like a human accordion, his giant fist still clasping the switchblade. When he stood up to his full height, his head nearly scraped the lights of the subway platform. The giant opened his big palm and, with two massive fingers, gently placed the blade on the bench next to Earl.
“Well then, we bid you good day, son,” the lady said. “God bless you.”
She moved toward the stairs, followed by the lumbering giant.
Earl, still seated on the bench, heard the rumble of an incoming train and he looked down the tracks to see the graffiti-covered G train curving out of the tunnel toward him. When it stopped, he rose as quickly as he could manage, slipped gratefully aboard, and watched through the window as the woman and her giant, the only two souls on the platform, stood at the top of the stairs watching the train roll out.
Deacon King Kong Page 14