by Jabari Asim
On Sullivan Avenue, some streetlights were working perfectly. Others sputtered in and out, creating a strobelike effect. Reuben and Pristine huddled with Shom and Crisp beside the radio. Pristine’s station was playing snippets of King’s speeches between gospel songs and commentary. The couple only half-listened to the broadcast, unable to pay full attention to anything until Ed arrived. SuperMart closed at nine.
Mr. Collins rapped on the door and asked Reuben to step onto the porch. Pristine, by now familiar with that gambit, stepped out also.
The light in front of the house sputtered violently, then left them in blackness. Mr. Collins’s voice was suddenly disembodied. “The store’s burning,” he said. “They think they have everybody out, but—”
“What store?” Pristine asked, but for Reuben realization had already dawned. Fishing his car keys out of his pocket, he leaped off the porch.
“Stay away from Vandeventer,” Mr. Collins called after him. “It’s not moving at all.”
But Reuben didn’t hear him. He’d already started the car.
Pristine was silent, but Mr. Collins was certain she was crying. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’ve got to get back to Dessie.”
“Of course.”
Pristine, cheeks glistening, heard him leave the porch and cut across the lawn. She opened the door and went back inside to her boys.
Just beyond Royal Packing Company, across Easton Avenue, two paddy wagons and a commandeered travel bus lined the curb. As soon as Ed set foot on Easton, he found himself being violently herded toward the waiting vehicles. A phalanx of policemen had formed behind the group, a shoulder-to-shoulder wall of Plexiglas and impatience. Jostled and prodded and rushed, Ed moved double-time to avoid being trampled. Even so he caught an elbow in the mouth and a sharp knee in his upper thigh. He’d lost his jacket, and his shirt, once crisply white, was now tattered and stained. The Tahitian Treat fell beneath the mob. His bow tie, improbably, hung on.
Reuben’s Rambler turned the corner on two wheels. Two blocks later, it skidded to a halt. Traffic was bumper to bumper and no one was moving. He got out of the car. To his right, the plate-glass window of Hammers Cleaners had a car-size hole in it. A few people gathered on the sidewalk and waited nervously while someone inside handed pants, dresses, coats, and hats through the opening.
The fire hydrants from the corner to Fairgrounds Park had all been set loose, flooding Vandeventer. Here and there, people splashed between the cars.
“They got Natural Bridge locked down,” Reuben heard someone shout. “Ain’t no cars gettin’ through.” Reuben cursed. He locked the car—lotta good that’s going to do, he briefly thought—and set off on foot past Burk’s Funeral Parlor on Ashland Avenue. He came out at Warne Avenue two blocks later and turned left on Natural Bridge.
Back on Sullivan, Mrs. Cleveland had just sucked down a soda and sauntered out into the middle of the street. In the shadowy half-light she appeared to be leaning on a stick. She was quickly joined by Mrs. Scott, the kindly old neighbor whom everyone called Aunt Georgia. Watching from the window with Shom and Crispin, Pristine saw the women commiserating beneath a fluttering streetlight.
Pristine turned away, missing the young thug who appeared beside the two old women. Holding his crotch and spitting, he spoke in a threatening voice.
“What y’all ladies got to share? Hmm, what you bitches got?”
Aunt Georgia sighed and squinted at the boy. She said, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver, but I guess I’m just not in the mood.”
The thug moved his hand from his crotch to his scalp, still scratching. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Mrs. Cleveland raised and pumped her walking stick, which, it turned out, was a double-barreled shotgun.
“It means take one more step,” she said, “and I’ll blast you to hell, you ignorant-ass bastard.”
Out of breath, with sharp, mysterious pains in his mouth and upper thigh, Reuben arrived at the intersection of Fair Avenue and Natural Bridge. From there he could see that part of the SuperMart was still standing. He got closer and saw that most of it had been reduced to smoldering rubble. The air was thick with the funk of burning meat, scorched milk, and the dusty remnants of sugar, flour, and assorted grains. Bottles and cans of chemicals—oven cleaners and hair sprays— alternately popped and crumpled in the heat. Here and there, rough edges of brick still glowed with the orange light of living flames.
The parking lot looked like the triage unit of an emergency ward. Bits of words rode the hot winds like ashes and embers. Flakes of language—“collapsed lungs,” “burned beyond recognition”—tortured Reuben’s ears. He approached the least wounded, those reclining on the ground, propped up on elbows or sitting calmly beside the ambulances and fire trucks.
“Have you seen Ed? I’m Ed’s dad. Have you seen him? Ed Jones?”
The shock was deeper than it seemed. Ed’s co-workers were somber, uncommunicative, unable to meet Reuben’s eyes. He felt his temper getting the best of him.
Helpless and bellowing, he tore through the yellow crime scene tape, headed straight for the smoky wreck of the Super-Mart. Two cops collared him before he got very far.
“Back off, buddy,” one warned. He turned to his partner. “Fucking looters,” he said.
“It’s my son,” Reuben yelled. “It’s my son! It’s my son! It’s my son!”
The larger cop yanked Reuben’s arm behind his back and twisted it upward. His partner thrust his baton—hard—into Reuben’s sternum. At best it would leave a bruise. At worst he’d cracked a rib.
“You crazy fucks wanna burn yourselves up, go right ahead,” the short cop said. “But do it somewhere else. Don’t let me see your ass around here any more tonight.”
He withdrew his baton. The big cop released Reuben’s arm and shoved him to the ground.
Dazed and delirious, Reuben staggered home through a world he no longer recognized. Along Vandeventer, the streetlights blew out one by one, like birthday candles.
Handcuffed, sitting haunch to haunch in an overstuffed bus full of young, sweaty, violent, angry colored men, Ed found himself recalling Rev. Miles Washington’s many sermons about the fiery pits of hell. Trapped amid the pandemonium, he gave up on the possibility of hearing his own thoughts. He wondered if he’d even retain the ability to hear anything at all.
The police had turned the interior lights all the way on, coating everything and everyone in a sick, mustardy glare.
“What they gon’ do next, gas us?”
“Nigger go out for chitlins, look where he end up.”
“This shit’s illegal. Don’t let my black ass get hold of a lawyer.”
“Damn, ain’t they got bathwater at your house?”
“Bet we make some noise, they’ll let us out.”
A chant rose up: “Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!”
The bus began to rock from side to side.
Ed closed his eyes and slumped back in his tiny patch of seat.
Pristine and the two younger boys met Reuben at the door. He had been gone roughly an hour. Limping, dirty, wet, sooty, and bruised, he looked like a soldier returning from a long and brutal war.
They sent the boys to their room. She helped Reuben to the kitchen and guided him into a chair. She slid his shirt gingerly from his limbs. She ran warm water in the sink and sponged his sore chest. The house was silent except for the gentle drone of the radio.
She hadn’t asked her husband a single question. When he was ready, he would talk.
“Not much of the building left,” he finally said. “Everybody’s not accounted for. Some folks … some folks … they couldn’t recognize.”
Pristine held Reuben to her chest. He sobbed like a drowning man hungry for air, desperately, without sound. He calmed, and they clung together, immobile, until the sound of tinkling glass opened their eyes. They found Crispus pouring red soda—Tahitian Treat—into a glass.
> He looked at his parents. “Ed will be thirsty when he comes,” he told them.
“Let us out! Let us out!”
The noise abruptly ended when the bus doors opened with a hiss. Ed looked up to see a black detective step onboard, accompanied by two uniformed officers. The voices on the bus, so raucous before, remained respectfully subdued.
“That’s Grimes,” someone whispered. “That black-glove-wearin’ muthafucka is crazy to the bone.”
Grimes strolled all the way to the back of the bus, then reversed himself, causing the two uniforms to stumble and collide. They quickly righted themselves and waited to see what he would do next. Grimes turned his head neither left nor right, but no one doubted he would find the one he came for.
Ed was completely surprised when Grimes stopped before his seat, lifted his chin with his gloved hand, and looked him in the eyes. He nodded to the uniforms. They moved forward and unlocked Ed’s cuffs.
“Come with us,” one of them said.
In the detective’s car, Ed shook the feeling back into his wrists. “I remember you,” he said. “You came to the Black Swan.”
Grimes drove in silence.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
Ed brightened. “For real? Why?”
“I owe your father.”
Ed couldn’t help grinning. He clapped his hands and laughed out loud. “You mean my old man has access? Damn.”
Tahitian Treat
our parents had allowed us downstairs again. They sat silently in the kitchen, waiting for bad news to come in and make itself at home. Mom had wrapped Dad’s chest in a broad white bandage and helped him put on a clean shirt. He slumped a bit in his chair and stared out into space. In the background, Rev. Josiah Banks was talking about dreams and mountaintops. I wondered when the minister found time to sleep.
The television in the living room was on, but the volume was turned down. Neither Shom nor I complained as a succession of talking heads told the nation how to feel.
I stood up.
“Where you going?” Shom demanded.
“To the third floor.”
“Like hell,” Shom said. “You’re too scared to go up there. You ain’t nothin’ but a pun____”
“Shut up or I’ll call the zombies,” I blurted.
Shom stared, shocked.
“That’s right, you heard me. I’ll tell them where you live. On a night like this, who could stop them? Who would even notice? Anything else?”
Ashen, Shom shook his head.
“I didn’t think so,” I said, and I turned for the stairs. I had no time to savor my rare triumph. I needed to get Ed home. I entered his room in the dark, trying not to look at the grotesque skull glowing on the wall.
I went over to the bureau. I knew Ed hadn’t thrown away his Murray’s and his stocking cap, even though he told everybody that he had. He’d stuffed them in the corner of his bottom drawer while telling me exactly why Marvel was so superior to DC. I fished around and got them out. I headed for the door, then changed my mind.
Stocking cap and pomade in hand, I stood in front of the skull. If you looked at it long enough and from the right angle, its greedy, gaping mouth turned into a friendly smile, like Casper’s.
“That’s right,” I told the skull. “Sir Crispus the Pure-Hearted rides again.”
Downstairs, I stood in front of the mirror for longer than I’d ever dared. I rubbed a dollop of Murray’s between my palms like I’d watched Ed do a million times. I slathered it into my hair, smoothed it carefully with my hands, and put on the stocking cap.
I walked downstairs and sat in front of the Tahitian Treat I’d poured. It was going to need some ice. Without turning, I could feel my family staring at my new look. “It reminds me of Ed,” I said.
The light was slowly returning to my dad’s eyes. He reached out to pat my shoulder and tell me that he understood when something else caught his attention. I turned and saw it too, through the living room window: flashing lights in front of the house.
My parents rose, gripped hands, and headed for the door. My dad groaned—an awful, horrible sound, like an animal trapped at the bottom of a well—and my mother prayed. Loudly. Swiftly. Furiously.
The doorbell rang. My mother opened the door and screamed. A black policeman, a detective, was standing on our porch. In front of him stood Reuben Edward Jones Jr., home at last.
We all hugged Ed, making him ache even more than he already did. But he didn’t seem to mind. Between his blubbering and our blubbering, bits of information filtered through. We said stuff like love, missed, and happy. He said stuff like Harvard, interview, and access.
“Dad has access,” he kept saying.
It would, we agreed, make better sense in the light of day.
While we babbled, Dad walked the policeman to his car. Later he told us he had asked Detective Grimes why he rescued Ed.
“You gave me my daughter back,” he replied. “I owed you one.”
We settled in the kitchen. Mom began to stir up something tasty while we sipped Tahitian Treat.
“The King of Love is dead,” said a voice on the radio.
My mother crossed the room and switched it off. “Reverend King has passed on,” she said. “But love? Love’s not going anywhere.”
Stretching her slender arm, she passed her hand above the heads of all her sons. She ruffled Ed’s growing wool. She teased Shom’s soft curls. She tickled my beanshots, stocking cap and all. Releasing a small, defiant yelp of joy, she sat on my father’s lap and pressed her nose to his. Then she pulled back to look into the eyes she’d loved since she was a teenager in bobby socks.
“God is good,” she said. Then she kissed Dad on the mouth.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Jabari Asim
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59005-3
v3.0