The Way Home

by George Pelecanos

  “No,” said Chris, staring at the money, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t even want to touch it.”

  “You don’t want to know how much it is?”

  “Zip up the bag and put it back in that hole,” said Chris. “Then seal it up again with that cutout piece. We’ll get this new carpet down and move on to the next job.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  Ben stood up, went to the window that gave to a view of the street, and opened it. He meant to cool the room, but the air outside was still, and there was no discernible relief from the heat.

  “Why?” said Ben, walking back to join Chris. “Why you don’t even want to talk about this?”

  “It’s stealing.”

  “You just told me yourself, the dude who lived here died, and he had no kin. You can see how old this bag is. Prob’ly the man who lived here last wasn’t even the one who buried it. And you know that real estate lady didn’t bury no money. Whoever put it under this floor got to be buried now, too. So how is this stealing? From who?”

  “It’s not ours,” said Chris.

  “It ain’t nobody’s, far as I can tell.”

  Chris ran his hand through his longish blond hair.

  “Forget this,” said Ben, and he got down on his haunches and reached into the bag. “I gotta know.”

  Without removing the band, he slowly counted one of the stacks of money, bill by bill. His lips moved as he mentally tabulated the sum.

  I’ve seen this movie, thought Chris. Innocent, basically good people found some money and decided to keep it, rationalizing their act because the cash belonged to no one. The money corrupted them, and they betrayed one another and were ultimately brought down by their own greed, a basic component of their human nature that they thought they would overcome. It always ended up bad.

  Ben finished counting the one stack, then counted the number of stacks in the bag and multiplied.

  “It’s damn near fifty thousand in here,” said Ben.

  “Now you know,” said Chris. “Zip up the bag and put it back.”

  Ben pointed a finger at the money. “That’s two times what I make in one year, Chris. Working on my knees. I could buy something nice for my girl, take her out to dinner to one of those restaurants got white tablecloths. I could have some real clothes, and not the off-brand shit I got now. A pair of designer shades—”

  “Put it back.”

  Ben stood up and faced Chris. He was going for confrontational, but he couldn’t get there. There wasn’t anything like that inside him. Instead, he looked hurt.

  “How you gonna do this to me, man?”

  “I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Nobody would know, so what’s the harm? You can’t tell me I’m wrong.”

  “My father gave us a chance here,” said Chris. “Wasn’t anybody else looking to hand us a decent job, was there? Someone does find out, it’s his reputation we’d be messin with. That’s his name on the truck.”

  “And yours,” said Ben.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means that I got nothin. Someday, whatever your father’s got, whatever he built up, it’s gonna come to you.”

  Chris moved his eyes from Ben’s. “I’ve never taken anything from him but a paycheck.”

  “Comes a time, you will.” Ben’s features softened. “You know I appreciate what your pops did for me. But this thing we’re talkin about here, it could change my life.”

  “It’s already changed,” said Chris. “You don’t see it yet, is all. I’m sayin, there’s no shortcut to where we’re trying to get to. Just work, every day. Same as how it is for everyone else.”

  “Don’t you want more?”

  Chris stared at Ben. “Put the bag back in the hole. Let’s finish the job.”

  “Damn, you just stubborn.”

  While they were laying down the new carpet, Mindy Kramer called and said she was on her way to the row house. She arrived shortly thereafter, just as they were finishing the installation. Mindy eyeballed the work, walked on it, questioned the bubbles, and carefully inspected the line where the carpet met the bead at the edge of the wall.

  “I guess it’s fine,” said Mindy Kramer, constitutionally incapable of telling them that their work was satisfactory. “I need a little time to let it marinate. If I have any problems, I’ll call Mr. Flynn.”

  “Any concerns you got,” said Chris, “he’ll take care of it.”

  They cleaned up the work site and packed the old carpet and padding in the back of the van. On the way out the door, Ben looked for an indication of an alarm system and saw none. He and Chris climbed into the van and took off.

  Driving down U Street, Chris said, “Hungry?”

  “You know I am.”

  “I’ll buy.”

  “That’s gonna make us late to our next job.”

  “I’ll handle my dad,” said Chris. “You earned lunch.”

  Ben adjusted his W cap on his head and slouched in the bucket. “I coulda bought a whole restaurant with what I left back there. I had what was in that bag, I could eat a hundred half-smokes every day for the rest of my life.”

  “You’d get sick of half-smokes,” said Chris. “You’d shit like a horse.”

  “In my gold bathroom.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’d have a butler to wipe my ass.”

  “Every man should have a dream,” said Chris. He pulled the van to the side of the road and locked it down.

  They walked toward the diner on U.

  “I don’t like wearing these things,” said Ben with petulance, fingering the short sleeve of his Flynn’s Floors polo shirt.

  “Neither do I,” said Chris.

  “You know what it reminds me of,” said Ben.

  “I’ll talk to my dad.”

  Ben Braswell pushed on the door of the eat house. He was hot and tired, and still thinking about the money. Chris was, too.

  ALI CARTER sat in a rickety chair behind an old metal desk, manufactured and used by federal government workers before he was born. On the other side of the desk, in a chair just as suspect as Ali’s, sat a young man named William Richards. He wore a Bulls cap, Guess jeans, a We R One T-shirt, and Nike boots. Richards was seventeen, full nosed, slightly bug-eyed, and annoyed.

  “Mr. Masters said you been fighting him on the uniform shirt,” said Ali.

  “That shirt stupid,” said William.

  “It says you work for the company. It identifies you so when you do those events, the clients and the kids know who you are.”

  “That shirt got a picture of a clown on it. And balloons. I can’t be walkin down the street wearin that mess.”

  “The clown’s part of the logo,” said Ali with patience. “You work for a company that sets up parties for kids. That logo is what makes people remember the business.”

  “The younguns where I stay at be laughin at me, Mr. Ali.”

  “So put the Party Land shirt in a bag and wear another shirt to the job. When you get to the site, change up. That’ll work, right?”

  William Richards nodded without conviction and looked away.

  They were seated in a storefront office situated on a commercial stretch of Alabama Avenue, in the Garfield Heights section of Southeast. Ali was a junior staff member of Men Movin on Up, a nonprofit funded by the District, local charities, and private donors. Though there were many such organizations, set up in churches, rec centers, and storefronts, to help young men find their way and stay on track, Men Movin on Up was specifically designed to work with offenders, boys on parole or probation and boys awaiting trial. Its director, Coleman Wallace, was a career social worker and activist Christian who had grown up poor and fatherless in Ward 8. A lifelong Washingtonian, he stayed in contact with many locals from his generation, and he put his hand out to those who had made it and asked them without shame to donate their money and volunteer their time to help young men who, like them, had come up disad
vantaged. This group occasionally brought the boys to their places of work, counseled them, coached them in rec basketball, and took them on day trips to ball games and amusement parks.

  Occasionally they made a difference in the boys’ lives. There were many disappointments, failures, and setbacks, but Wallace and his friends had long ago stopped laboring under the illusion that they were going to save the collective youth of the city. If they could reach one kid, plant a seed that by example might grow into something right, they felt they had achieved success.

  Ali was the sole staff member on the payroll. Coleman Wallace had hired him right out of Howard, where Ali had earned a bachelor’s degree at the age of twenty-five. Coleman was attracted to Ali’s intelligence and commitment, and also to the fact that Ali had done time at Pine Ridge and made the complete turnaround from incarcerated youth to productive member of society. He was smart and accomplished but also had the cachet of the real. His history bought him respect from the clients.

  Also, Ali’s relative youth was an attraction. Coleman Wallace was well aware that many of the boys he counseled could not relate to him, a middle-aged man. Most of them didn’t even know that the organization’s name, Men Movin on Up, referred to the Curtis Mayfield lyric. Or that the hand-lettered lyrics framed and hung on the office wall were from Coleman’s favorite Curtis composition. Nine out of ten in this current crop didn’t even know who Mayfield was. To these young men, Ali Carter was go-go and hip-hop, and Coleman Wallace was slo-jam, tight basketball shorts, and way past old-school. Coleman needed an Ali Carter to help him connect.

  Ali’s focus was on getting the young men jobs and making sure they held them. To do this he communicated with parole officers, defense attorneys and prosecutors, and the staff of Ken Young, the recently hired reform-minded director of the District’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. He dealt with the members of the District’s Absconding Unit, who tracked down kids who had skipped supervision, and he reached out to potential employers throughout the area, in particular those who had seen some trouble in their own youth and were willing to give his kids a try.

  Without realizing it or having it in mind, Ali Carter was becoming connected and making a name for himself in the city. He liked his work and tried to forget that he was earning little more than minimum wage, which left him close to the poverty line.

  “Any other problems?” said Ali.

  “That man just aggravate the shit out of me, man,” said William Richards.

  “Mr. Masters?”

  “Mr. Slavemaster. He always tryin to tell me what to do.”

  “He’s paying you ten dollars an hour. It’s his right to tell you what to do.”

  “I don’t need that job.”

  “He’s trying to introduce you to the culture of work.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Masters knows how hard it is to come back from jail time. He doesn’t want you to have to go through that. He’s trying to teach you how to work so that work becomes routine for you.”

  “I don’t need him to teach me that. I know how to work and I damn sure can make some money. That’s one thing I can do.”

  “Listen to me. It’s important that you have a legitimate job right now and keep it, so that when you go to your hearing, you can stand before the judge and say that you’re gainfully employed. Do you understand, William?”

  “Yeah.” But his slack posture and lack of eye contact said that he did not.

  “Did you get your paycheck?”

  “Here in my pocket.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Take it that check-cash place round my way.”

  “They charge you big for that, don’t they?”

  “So?”

  “I been tellin you, you should open a checking account at the bank. They charge much less than that store does. And they’ll give you an ATM card. You can manage your money better and get to it any time.”

  “My mother got to take me to that bank, right?”

  “To open the account? Yes.”

  “She too busy.”

  “You asked her?”

  “No, but I’m about to. Next week.” William stood abruptly out of his chair. He drew his cell from his jeans, opened it, and checked it for text messages.

  “We straight?” said Ali.

  “Huh?”

  “Look at me, William.” Ali stared into his eyes. “You’re good with this job, right?”

  “Yeah,” said William. “But I’m not wearin no clown shirt. That ain’t me.”

  Ali watched William slip out of his office. He didn’t reflect on William or strategize on what to do with him next. At seventeen, William was at a point in his life where he had to choose a path for himself. Ali would be there for him if need be, but he wouldn’t spend an inordinate amount of time on him if he continued to display his current level of resistance. Ali had many boys, and though they rarely expressed it verbally, some of them recognized the value in the hand that was being offered to them. It was unproductive for Ali to focus on one who was not willing to meet him halfway.

  For the next hour, Ali made some phone calls. One was to a midlevel manager at the new baseball stadium, where Ali had been trying to get a couple of his boys put on. He knew that there were plenty of workers needed at the concession stands as well as less-desirable positions of the janitorial variety. Thus far the stadium officials had been unresponsive. The manager had said something about the need to present a more polished face to the public. Ali actually understood this from a business standpoint, but he vowed to be persistent. He’d call Ken Young. Young had direct dealings with stadium officials and the ear of the mayor, who had hired him from out of town.

  There was a cursory knock on the glass storefront door, and a man pushed through it. Almond-shaped eyes, skin that in some lights looked yellow. He now wore his hair in braids. He was twenty-six but looked ten years older. Ali could see that he was high.

  “ ’Sup, Holly?” he said.

  “Lawrence.”

  “Can’t your boy visit a minute?”

  Ali nodded warily as Lawrence Newhouse crossed the room.

  TWELVE

  DAMN, BOY,” said Lawrence Newhouse, looking around the office. “You oughta fix this joint up some.”

  “We got no money to speak of,” said Ali. “None extra, anyway.”

  “Still,” said Lawrence.

  The space consisted of two desks, one for Ali, one for Coleman Wallace; a computer with slow dial-up service that they shared; and file cabinets. Also in the room were a foosball table with a cracked leg, a television set with no remote, a roll-in blackboard, several chairs, and a ripped-fabric couch. Ali did his best to make it a place where the boys would feel comfortable hanging out. Everything had been donated. It wasn’t nice, but it was good enough.

  “What can I do for you, Lawrence?”

  “Wonderin why I stopped in, huh.”

  “Been a while.”

  “Bet you think I’m lookin for work, somethin.”

  “No, I didn’t think that.”

  “I got work, man. Got this thing where I detail cars.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What you doin here, it’s for young men at risk. You know I’m not at risk.”

  “And you’re not that young,” said Ali.

  Lawrence chuckled and pointed a finger at Ali. “That’s right.”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “It’s about my nephew. Marquis Gilman?”

  Ali knew him, a nonviolent boy of average intelligence, funny, with lively eyes. Marquis was sixteen, up on drug charges, a recent dropout of Anacostia High School. He had been picked up several times for loitering and possession. His heart wasn’t in his work. He was a low-level runner who didn’t care to run.

  “Marquis is one of my clients,” said Ali. “I’m tryin to help him out.”

  “He told me. Want you to know, I appreciate it. He stays over there at Parkchester, with
my sister and me. She’s havin a little trouble containing him. You know how that is. Boys that age just don’t think right. They wired up stupid in their heads.”

  Ali nodded. He wouldn’t have put it that way, but Lawrence had the general idea. No one knew more about teenage brain scramble and bad decisions than Lawrence Newhouse.

  “I’m lookin out for him, though,” said Lawrence. “I got no kids myself, so he as close to one as there is.”

  For a moment, Ali thought of his own uncle and shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?” said Lawrence.

  “Nothin,” said Ali.

  “So let me tell you why I’m here. Marquis said you tryin to hook him up with a job.”

  “I’m trying. So far we haven’t had much luck.”

  “What, you tryin to put him in a Wendy’s, sumshit like that?”

  “At this point, we need to find him a job anywhere. Then, if he doesn’t want to return to school, I’ll get him started on earning his GED. Get him used to work and study. Change his habits. Marquis has all the necessary tools.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin. He’s better than some fast-food job. I mean, he could do better right now. I been talkin to Ben Braswell. You know I still stay in contact with my man.”

  “And?”

  “Ben workin with White Boy, laying carpet. Both of them make good money at it. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to see Marquis get into. Learn a trade, and I’m not talkin about operatin no deep fryer.”

  “I don’t think Marquis is ready for that right now. It’s a man’s job, for one. Heavy lifting and hard work. And it’s a trade that requires experience. You have to know what you’re doing.”

  “White Boy’s father got the business, right?”

  “Chris’s father owns it,” said Ali. “That’s right.”

  “Then he could put Marquis on. I mean, shit, he put Ben on, and you know Ben ain’t no genius.”

  “Chris’s father already hired some guys from our old unit. Remember Lonnie and Luther? Plus Milton Dickerson and that boy we used to ball with, Lamar Brooks. Lamar’s the only one who worked out, and he left to start his own thing. It was me who asked Mr. Flynn to give them a try, so I can’t go back to that well right now.”