by RM Johnson
“So you’re just going to give up? Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Nate said, standing, taking steps toward the living room’s exit. “Only way we get back together is if she comes to me. I know that’s never going to happen, so I’m closing that chapter of my life.”
Trevor followed him to the front door. They shook hands.
“You can come over and see my son whenever you like, you know.”
Nate smiled as best he could, then walked off.
3
Austin Harris sat up in bed. He had on boxers and nothing else. The room was dark. He was not in his own home.
A small, shapely woman slept soundly beside him.
He looked at the alarm clock: 10:06 p.m. He slowly lay back down, staring at the ceiling. An hour ago, he had had the woman twisted into a bundle of sweating, trembling flesh. She was screaming his name as Austin grunted, stealing glances at the nightstand photo of the woman and her fiancé.
In the three months that he had been coming here, it had not bothered him. But tonight, this very moment, it had.
Lying in bed, Austin placed his hand on the bare shoulder of the woman lying beside him. “Cindy,” he said, nudging her gently.
She turned to him, her eyes opening a little, a sleepy smile on her face. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” he said, pulling her to him so he could kiss her. As he did, he thought about discussing what was on his mind. The no-strings-attached sex was great, but every now and again, he wanted more.
“You leaving me?” Cindy said.
“Why? You want me to stay the night?”
She paused. Austin knew he’d caught her off guard.
“I’m playing with you.” Austin smiled, knowing that now would be a bad time to have the conversation. “You know I got work early in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Cindy smiled, relieved. “Then you better go.”
Austin climbed out of bed, grabbed his slacks off the back of the chair, and slid them on, then his shirt. He stood in the mirror. He was a tall, handsome man in good shape with medium brown skin, deep-set brown eyes, and strong chin. As he buttoned up his shirt, he saw Cindy standing behind him.
“Things have been tight again this week. If I don’t pay the electric, I think it might be cut off.”
Austin stared at her in the mirror’s reflection. Cindy lowered her head.
“Sure,” he said. “Let me finish getting dressed. I’ll give it to you before I go.”
Austin stepped out of his Mercedes still wearing the gray suit he had worn to work that morning. He grabbed his briefcase and took the stone path up to his house.
The old Hyde Park home was a big gold brick one, with a huge front porch, four bedrooms, three baths, and a full basement. After divorcing his wife ten years ago, Austin had vowed not to be one of those guys that ended up in a studio apartment. He wanted the same lifestyle he had when he was married and wanted a place for his kids to stay when they visited—even though that hadn’t happened in quite a while.
Dropping his briefcase at the door and stepping into the dining room, Austin was surprised to see his brother sitting at the table. Caleb was bent over a plate, picking at the corner of a slice of cold pizza. A glass of orange soda sat at his elbow.
“You just coming in from work? It’s kinda late,” Austin said, taking a look at his wristwatch. “Almost eleven.”
Caleb, his younger brother by four years, wore a gray short-sleeved work shirt, his name stenciled on the left breast pocket. He wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper towel before he spoke.
“Naw. Me and Blue went out for a couple of beers. Had some stuff on my mind.”
Austin frowned a bit but didn’t respond. He walked around the table to a wall cabinet, pulled out a bottle of scotch and two short glasses. He looked at his brother from behind. His hair was long. Either he hadn’t had the time or he hadn’t had the money for a cut.
Austin set the glasses down and had a seat at the table. “You know, I really don’t think you should be hanging around—”
“Austin,” Caleb said, raising a hand. “I know you’re my older brother, but you’re not my father. Pops is dead, remember?”
“Blue was the reason you went to prison.”
“I know that. I was the one that went, not you. You gonna pour from that bottle, or what?”
Austin poured a little into each glass. He grabbed a glass and set the other in front of Caleb. “Here’s to …?”
“To whatever,” Caleb said, kicking the shot back.
Austin drank and set the glass down. “You talk to Sonya lately?”
“Look, Austin, I know we said after a year I’d get out or start paying rent, but—”
“No, no, no. I was just asking how she was doing. You don’t have to go.”
“I just know that today makes a year I been here,” Caleb said.
“It’s fine. Really, stay as long as you like.” Austin stood from his chair, reaching for the bottle of liquor. “I’m gonna put this away, unless you—”
“Leave it, will you?”
“Things are gonna be all right,” Austin said. He dug his hand into his pocket, reaching for his wallet. “Till then, maybe you can use a few dollars.”
“Don’t. I don’t wanna take any more from you. I’ve already taken enough.”
Austin fingered four twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and set them on the table beside his brother’s plate. “It’s not up for debate.”
4
Three hundred dollars’ worth of loose marijuana, and three forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor sat on a table. The boys who sat there were all sixteen years old. Bug was chubby but strong, wore an expertly faded Mohawk haircut and a smile on his face. It was his garage the boys were meeting in this late at night, where they always hung out. Toomey was tall, thin, with a few chin hairs, unable to grow a mustache. He had big round eyes that made him appear younger than his sixteen years. Jahlil sat at the head of the table. He was of medium build, baby-faced, and had three shooting stars freshly cut into the side of his buzzed hair.
They all wore baggy jeans, extra large T-shirts, and gleaming white basketball shoes.
Small stacks of plastic wrap cut into three inch squares lay beside them, along with the forties. As the boys talked and drank, they pinched small quantities of marijuana from the pile, placed it in the center of one of the plastic wrap squares, then twisted and tied the ends into a knot.
“You ain’t answer the question,” Toomey said to Bug. “Your old man ever try to contact you?”
“Naw. He took off when I was five, and fool never looked back. Me and Moms cool without him. I help out with the money I make doing this stuff, so we don’t need him.”
“At least you knew your father,” Toomey said, twisting one of the weed-filled plastic squares into a ball and tossing it toward the growing pile on the table. “My moms said my father left the minute he found out she was pregnant with me. Why they do that, man? Think about how much better off we’d be if we had fathers.”
“All fathers ain’t good,” Jahlil said, looking up from the nickel bag he just twisted.
“Don’t always have to be good. All the stuff a grown man knows, all the mistakes he made—sometimes them just being there so we can learn what not to do is better than nothing,” Toomey said.
“Why you complaining?” Jahlil said. “You the grade A student, know everything already. What it matter to you?”
“I’d give my grades any day to have a father like you.”
“My father is worthless,” Jahlil said. “Why you think my moms kicked him out? All the years I known him, he been in and out of prison and looking for a job more than he had one. Now he thinking he’s doing something with his janitorial business. He think he ballin’ out.” Jahlil laughed and reached over to his bottle of brew, twisted the cap, and took two swigs. “You can have him.”
“I don’t know,” Bug said. “I’m agreeing with Toomey. A father is better than no father any day
.”
Jahlil shook his head and told himself his boys had no idea of what they were talking about. The reason Jahlil was twisting weed into nickel bags right now was that he had seen it done, up close, when he was eight years old.
While his father was in prison for five years, his mother had dated a drug dealer named Craig. The money was good. There were always stacks of it wrapped in thick brown rubber bands. Jahlil, his mother, and Craig lived in the hood. The crib looked like a shack from the street, but it was fancy inside, and they had everything from flat-screen TVs to granite countertops and marble floors. When Jahlil’s father got out of prison, he came looking to get his family back.
One night, Jahlil’s father busted in on Craig while he was sorting drugs and showing Jahlil how to handle a handgun. Things went bad. Craig ended up holding a 9mm to Jahlil’s father’s head.
Jahlil picked up the gun Craig had been showing him, pointed it at the back of the man’s head, and blew his brains out all over the garage wall.
There was an investigation, but Uncle Austin made sure Jahlil didn’t get put into foster care.
Not long after that, Jahlil’s father and mother got back together, and the family went back to living in poverty. They had lived that way until separating a year ago.
Jahlil vowed that he would never end up like his old man. He wouldn’t be grown and penniless.
That’s why he had taken the train up to Evanston, given the white dude with the cloudy eyes the three hundred dollars he, Bug, and Toomey had come up with, for the pile of weed. He had no idea how or where they’d sell it, but the three of them were doing anything they could to make money. One way or the other, it would get sold.
As if reading Jahlil’s mind, Bug asked, “You come up with a place to sell this stuff yet?”
“We could do it in the lunchroom at school. Get a table way in the back so no one can see us,” Toomey said.
“They catch you selling drugs at school, they’ll put you under it,” Bug said.
“He’s right,” Jahlil said. “We don’t have a choice. We gotta sell our drugs where drugs be sold.”
“Where is that?” Toomey said.
“Over there on Seventy-Seventh Street.”
“Oh, hell no!” Toomey stood up from his chair in protest. “That’s G-Stone street. They sell there.”
“Toomey right,” Bug said.
“Then how we gonna get rid of this? We spent a hundred dollars each.”
“Find another way,” Toomey said. “I wanna make our money back but don’t wanna risk my life to do it. Let’s just wait for a better opportunity.”
“I ain’t got time to wait,” Jahlil said, anger in his voice.
“You know he got Shaun to think about,” Bug said to Toomey.
“Look,” Jahlil said. “They don’t start selling till afternoon. We go in the morning. No one will see us. Ya’ll don’t even have to help, just keep an eye out for the police.”
“Well … okay,” Bug said. “That could work as long as we out before someone see us.”
“You cool with that, Toomey?” Jahlil asked.
Looking worried, Toomey said, “We get our money, and we get out of there, right?”
“Right,” Jahlil said.
5
Austin sipped from his coffee, then set the mug down.
“How is it? Need more sugar?” Marcus asked. He was Austin’s younger brother by eighteen months. Other than Marcus being two inches shorter than Austin’s six feet, a little broader in the shoulders, and having hazel eyes instead of brown, the two men looked very much alike, with their broad noses and thin lips.
Marcus had been happily married for the past eight years, but things at home had been getting a little uncomfortable since Marcus’s graphic design company had gone under.
“Coffee’s fine,” Austin said. “Thanks for letting me come by for breakfast.” Wearing a light brown suit, Austin stood and walked through the dining room, into the large living room of the modest, middle-class family home. He lifted a framed photo of Marcus’s daughter, Sophie, and smiled. “You’re lucky.”
“Really, to have lost my job and have my wife look at me as though she’s questioning why she ever married me,” Marcus said. “Don’t think I’m that lucky.”
“I’m talking about this,” Austin said, setting the photo down and spreading his arms. “Family. Home. Cooking pancakes in the morning. I miss that.”
“Yeah, well …” Marcus said, clearing some of the dishes from the table and taking them to the sink. “Things aren’t always what they seem. I know you know that, being divorced and all.”
“Everything okay with you and Reecie?”
Marcus turned on the faucet for dishwater, then turned to his brother. “We’re making the bills. But there’s a point where a woman feels she should not be the breadwinner in the family. She says she has a problem being the man. I tell her she’s not being the man. I still am. She says, ‘Really?’ Like she doesn’t know. I do everything around here, and she doesn’t appreciate any of it. I’m getting tired of this.”
“So it sounds like you have a problem being the woman.”
Marcus laughed, slipping on a pair of pink rubber dish gloves, holding up his hands as though he were about to perform surgery. “I am not the woman.”
“But you two are fine, right?”
“Yeah, we’re dealing,” Marcus said, shutting off the water. “How about you? You seem kinda down.”
“I’m educated, successful, forty-five, and handsome.”
“Really?” Marcus said. “Don’t know about the handsome part.”
“But I’m lonely. I want what you have—a family again.”
“Well, your kids hate you for not spending time with them over the last four years. And Trace has been remarried for that same period of time, but technically, they’re still your family. Problem solved.”
“Think she’d dump John and take me back if I asked?” Austin said, grinning, grabbing his coffee mug from the kitchen table.
“You’re joking, right?”
It took him a moment to answer. “Of course I am.”
“You got someone you’re seeing, don’t you? What’s her name? Cindy. How about her?”
“She’s just something to do.” Austin turned up his mug, finishing the coffee. “My son’s birthday gathering is tonight. You and Reecie coming, right?”
“Yeah. You’ll be there?” Marcus said, holding a soapy skillet, sounding surprised. “I’m shocked you got an invite.”
“I know. Troy doesn’t want to see me,” Austin said, sounding disappointed. “But Trace thinks I should show anyway.”
“I think you should too,” Marcus said, pulling off the wet rubber gloves. “Is Bethany driving up from school?”
“No, final exams she told her mother, but I think she’s just trying to avoid seeing me.”
“They can’t be mad at you forever. You’re their father.”
“They have a new one of those, remember?”
“Whatever.” Marcus walked out into the dining room and gave Austin some dap, and pulled him in for a half hug. He held him there a moment. “But you’re good, right? Sometimes I worry about you, man.”
Austin felt concern in the embrace and the question. “Yeah. Perfect,” he said.
6
Caleb sat in a small wood-paneled office. He felt uncomfortable about his appearance. He wore old jeans, work boots, and his gray work shirt. His hair was longer than he liked. The curls would soon grow into a baby afro. He wanted to get a cut and shave off the patchy beard that had started to grow on his face, but he told himself he would save the few dollars Austin gave him for something more important.
Caleb glanced down at his watch. It read 8:00 a.m.
Last night, Caleb’s former longtime girlfriend of almost twenty years and the mother of his child had called him.
“The principal said he wants us to come up there tomorrow morning for a meeting.”
“About what?” Ca
leb said. He had been in the middle of working, cleaning yet another office he didn’t feel like cleaning.
“About your son.”
“Is he in trouble again?” Caleb asked, praying that he wasn’t.
“What do you think, Caleb?” Sonya said, as though he should’ve known. “Eight o’clock, and don’t be late.”
This was what had been on his mind last night, why he had had to call Blue to go have some beers.
Caleb looked over at Sonya, who sat in the chair beside him.
She remained thin after all these years, wore her hair the same way—pulled back in a ponytail—and no makeup other than lip gloss and eyeliner. She wore jeans and heels, one of which she nervously tapped against the floor.
Caleb pressed his palm on her knee.
“Relax. It might not be that bad.”
Sonya gave Caleb a sarcastic look. “Where is this man? I want to get this over with.”
That moment, a boyish-looking man no older than thirty-five walked into the room. He wore glasses, a corduroy blazer, and a smile. His name was Mr. Burke. He extended his hand to Sonya.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. and Mrs. Harris.”
Sonya took the man’s hand and shook, neither Caleb nor Sonya bothering to correct him on their marital status.
“Mr. Harris,” the principal said, offering Caleb his hand. “I know we’re all busy, so I want to get right to the point. Jahlil has been missing school.”
“I kept him out a couple of days last week, because he was sick,” Sonya said.
“I understand, but he’s missed a little more than that.” Mr. Burke slid open his desk drawer, pulled out a folder, and examined a page. “Last month, Jahlil missed … eight, nine,”—the man counted to himself—“eleven days. This month, it’s thirteen, and we still have a week to go.”
Sonya shook her head. “I’m sure there has to be some sort of mistake. I’ve never heard anything about this.”