by Randy Alcorn
He locked up his bike to a bench. “Double caramel mocha.” Clarence popped the chocolate bean in his mouth and set the coffee on a table to cool a little, went back and used the restroom, then sat long enough to drink the mocha and scan the Trib. Then he was off again, cutting back across Powell and tying into the trail.
As he headed back home, he saw the old house, hidden back from the trail, billowing forth the fall’s first burn from the chimney. He’d seen the smoke from a distance, first black, then gray, then white, dissipating quickly into nothingness. Behind the ancient wrought-iron fence lurked Hugo the Rottweiler, who started to bark but, on recognizing his friend, suddenly stopped.
Clarence pulled over and unzipped his bike bag, opened up some aluminum foil, leaned over the Cyclone fence, and handed Hugo a gristled piece of steak, saved from last night’s dinner.
“If he could see us now, Spike would think I’d betrayed him,” Clarence confided in Hugo. “Of course, he had his share last night, but still, there’s no talking to Spike when he’s jealous. Hell knows no fury like a bulldog scorned.”
He talked on and on the silly way people do to dogs and babies, knowing they will love them no matter how stupid they sound.
Hugo licked his hand through the chain-link fence. Clarence felt certain the dog saw every person the same. It didn’t matter to Hugo that he was black. It neither irritated him nor impressed him. He liked that.
Clarence rode to the lonely park bench just past Hugo’s. It had become part of his ritual to pull over, kick back, and stretch out on the bench before digging in again and climbing the big hill that would take him back toward the freeway and home. After five minutes of lying there, soaking in the world of dreams and promise around him, he got back on his bike and braced himself again for the real world.
It felt strange being at the Trib on Saturday, but he and Jake both wanted to get an extra jump on this week’s columns, to free up time during the week. Jake had plans with Janet and Carly. Clarence had plans of his own.
He finished off his sports column—not a home run, but a triple anyway, or at least an off-the-wall double. He’d had only a few strikeouts over the years, but he remembered each of them vividly.
Clarence waited for Jake. He looked around the Trib, manned by a skeleton crew. He’d worked so hard for so many years to make a mark on this place. He thought about Daddy. When Clarence was a boy, Obadiah had told him, “Son, you has to work twice as hard as white folk to get half as far. I know it don’t seem fair and I reckon it ain’t, but that’s the way it is. I know you can do it. I’ll be in your corner whenever you needs me.”
“Ain’t no shame to be ignorant, boy,” his daddy’d told him. “Only shame is to stay ignorant when you don’t has to be.”
Obadiah had been raised behind the plow of his sharecropper daddy, fighting weeds and drought and the boll weevil. In the years after Negro League baseball, he’d worked a dozen jobs, some two at a time, everything from short-order cook to custodian at a small black college. Administrators had let him sit in on classes after he finished his job. He loved it. He’d discovered the school library, a temple for the mind. He loved books, checked out hundreds of them while working there.
“ol’ books, they got the most wondrous smell, they do. Most wondrous.” His eyes would sparkle, and at dinner he’d read aloud some precious fact or insight.
“Don’t let your dinner get cold, Obadiah,” Mama would say, but good as her cooking was, and it was the best, Obadiah Abernathy was always more excited to learn than to eat.
There was only one book, though, opened at every dinner. The book. God’s book. Obadiah would read from it, voice trembling. “These are the words of the Almighty, chillens. You don’t mess with God, you hear me now? You break his commandments, and they’ll break you.”
He wished Daddy had been given more of a chance. With his thirst for knowledge he could have been a scholar, a doctor, a teacher. He could have been anything. But when you worked fourteen hours a day to provide for your family, there wasn’t much time for the scholarly life.
Clarence remembered Daddy lining up the kids like crows on a fence: Harley, Ellis, Darrin, Marny Clarence, and Dani. More than once the lecture began, “Always pick you out a rabbit, chillens. Pick out somebody ahead of you in their schoolin’. Then try to catch ’em, and when you catch ’em, pass ’em. Better yourselves, chillens. That’s what you gotta do. Always better yourselves, you hear me?”
I heard you, Daddy.
Clarence picked up the phone and dialed. “Hi, baby. Yeah, everything’s okay. Can I speak to Daddy?” He waited.
“Well, hello, Dolly.” His father surprised him with a beautiful imitation of Louis Armstrong’s low gravely voice.
“Well, hello, Daddy.” Clarence laughed. “Just lookin’ in on you. Check your blood pressure today? Everything okay?”
“Shor nuff, Son. Why you askin’?”
“Just checking on you, that’s all. You still feel up to coming out to the park for the rally?”
“Sure do. I ain’t mulch on the flowers yet, you know.”
“I know, Daddy. I’ll see you at the rally then.”
“See you there, Son.”
Clarence hung up the phone, wiping his eyes. He went to Jake’s desk and they headed from the Trib to what had been billed by Norcoast’s office the “North Portland Fight Crime Rally.” Geneva would be bringing Obadiah and meeting them there.
Clarence braced himself as they turned north on Martin Luther King Boulevard. He never drove on this street without remembering the bitter opposition to changing the old Union Avenue to MLK. It bothered him that some of the people who fought against it were conservatives. One of the contradictions of his life was that among the people whose beliefs and morals were most like his and who hated political correctness and big government and encroaching liberties as he did were some who didn’t seem to ever want to concede anything good to those of his skin color.
“You remember when Martin Luther King was killed?” he asked Jake.
“Yeah, I do. I was fresh out of the army.”
“You remember exactly where you were?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“I was in eighth grade, still livin’ in Chicago at the Henry Horner projects, just before we moved to Cabrini Green. I heard about it out on the street, playing stick-ball after school. Spider Edwards came runnin’ up wide eyed and stuttering, ‘They killed Martin.’ I ran home to Mama. She was frantic—never remember her like that. Daddy came home from work early. He cried and cried. To us in the projects it was the end of the world.”
“I remember when President Kennedy was shot,” Jake said. “Exactly where I was, in high school my senior year. Gym class. We were playing basketball, and I’d just shot a free throw when the principal’s secretary came in and told the coach, and he told us. It’s like it was yesterday.”
“Yeah? I’ve heard people say that. I remember too, but not as much as when Martin died.” What Clarence really remembered from the day of the Kennedy assassination was his mama asking, with terror in her eyes, “It wasn’t a black man who shot him, was it?”
Clarence decided not to say more. How could he expect Jake to understand why Martin dying was like the descent of the four horses of the apocalypse? It seemed like the end of hope for black people. Martin had his flaws, no doubt about it, but his convictions on equality and his dream of the races living in harmony was from God.
“Tell me about Chicago, Clabern. What were the projects like?”
“They were…like another planet. Alien nation. We thought everything would be great, man, comin’ up from Mississippi to Chicago. I was ten; Dani was six. Blacks couldn’t buy real estate in the outlying areas, so we all got pushed into the Southside. You know, just like in every city, though the truth is we felt more comfortable with our own anyway. My family was better off than most. Daddy and Mama worked really hard to give us kids an opportunity. But the gangs were going even in those days, and the racial t
ension was hot, you know, the sixties. Whites and blacks were from two different worlds. Still are, I guess. Back then we thought it would be different by now. But it isn’t.”
Jake nodded. He had a few more questions, but held off.
“You know what bugs me, Jake? And this is something Dani and I used to go round and round about. I was raised in poverty, so I want to put as much room between me and poverty as I can. Middle- and upper-class white kids can talk about identifying with the poor and all that noble-sounding stuff, but that’s because they’ve never been poor. When you’ve known poverty, there’s no mystique about it, no appeal. You just want more than anything never to be poor again. That’s why I hate this part of town.”
Clarence looked where the dry cleaner used to be, now a liquor store. Where there was a doctor’s office, now a pawnshop. Where there was once a church, abandoned years ago for the safety of the suburbs, now a gang hideout and a drug-running station.
The broken-down store that had been a Rexall Drugs had an old RX sign from the fifties swaying in the wind and poised to fall and injure some passerby. The only thriving businesses seemed to be the little foreign-owned stores, plastered with signs for Lotto and Powerball. He watched people walking in, eyes full of hope they would win the big one and escape life’s drudgery. Later the same people would feel fear and remorse and shame for having wasted money that could have bought school clothes for their children.
“I can’t stand that stinking lottery,” Clarence said. “State funded temptation for the poor. Makes people think you can prosper without hard work and discipline.” He suddenly pulled over by a freshly painted red sign announcing “Kim’s Grocery,” one of a dozen Korean-owned stores in north Portland. “How about a soda?”
Clarence walked in, Jake behind him, and noticed a Korean woman immediately step into a back room. He sensed the other woman behind the counter gazing at him suspiciously, watching him out of the corner of her eye. For a moment he felt that ever-present tension, as if it was assumed he was about to pull out a piece or shoplift them blind.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” he asked, as he handed her two dollars for two pops. She said a quiet yes and looked down, then placed the change not in his hand, but on the counter.
Clarence seethed as he walked out the door. “Won’t even dirty her hand by touching a black man.”
“What?” Jake sounded startled.
“All these Asian store owners are the same. Koreans, Japanese, Cambodians. They come into the black community, get rich off them, then think they’re better than their customers.”
“But…she seemed very nice. Quiet, but nice,” Jake said.
“You notice she put the change on the counter? Didn’t want to touch my black hand. Like I’m a leper or something. They’re all that way.”
Jake’s forehead wrinkled, but he said nothing.
The streets were the color of soot, somewhere between black and white. Politicians such as Councilman Norcoast had set up photo ops and drawn up plans to restore, beautify, and renovate, to prove Portland was a city that cared about all its citizens. But like most tax money, it seemed to always fritter away in overhead and salaries and plans and discussions and never actually do much good. Clarence resented the politicians, but he also blamed the people, like his sister, who put too much trust and hope in government, expecting it to be a benefactor, to do justice, to take care of their problems.
“It’s up to hard work and individual initiative, Jake,” Clarence said. “The sooner black Americans figure out government just subsidizes and perpetuates their poverty, the better off they’ll be. Government isn’t the solution. It’s a big part of the problem.”
“Still, sometimes it helps, doesn’t it?”
“Forty acres and a mule,” Clarence muttered.
“What?”
“That’s what the government promised all the freed slaves after the Civil War. You know, to help get them started.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“Don’t feel bad. The government forgot it too. No acres, no mules. What else is new? Lyndon Johnson did a lot of good on civil rights, but then he promised the Great Society’s welfare programs would obliterate black poverty in a decade. Guess what? It’s much worse now than it was then.”
Clarence withdrew into himself. Jake wanted to know what was going through his friend’s mind. But Clarence held his thoughts close to his chest like a poker player, as if he was afraid someone would see his cards.
The two men appeared similar in many ways. Both dressed meticulously. Both were compulsively clean, wearing fashionably cut suits. Both sneaked frequent looks in mirrors. Two differences were dramatic, though—the build of their bodies and the color of their skin. One was thick and black, the other slender and white. One was Clarence Abernathy; the other, Reggie Norcoast. They were scheduled to sit near each other today, with only the Reverend Cairo Clancy between them, on the special rally platform set up in Woodlawn Park.
Clarence had wanted to bail out of this public appearance, but Geneva had talked him into it. She said she knew Dani would want it. That was a low blow.
As the crowds arrived, Clarence sat in his assigned chair, observing Norcoast’s moves around the platform. He studied him as if they were the moves of a chess or tennis opponent, moves that might display both strengths and weaknesses.
With Norcoast, any contact, regardless of its purpose, was a political image meeting. The meeting began the moment he walked in, the agenda was whatever image-enhancing event or perspective was on his mind, and the outcome was whatever he wanted it to be.
Beneath the confident exterior, Clarence surmised, the councilman was nervous and insecure. He reminded him of a dog endlessly sniffing out the ground, trying to find where other dogs had been and, on seeing a new hound, overeager to get familiar with him.
You could see Norcoast’s handshake coming a block away. He’d turned the common handshake into an art form. He clasped with the right hand, but that was just the beginning. His left hand searched out just the right place, sometimes the forearm, the elbow, the shoulder, sometimes the back of the opposite shoulder, making a partial embrace. Occasionally the left hand went on top of the other’s right hand, creating a double-handed clasp signifying double sincerity. This was clearly a man who had a great deal of experience with his hands.
What his hands didn’t do, his ears did. Clarence could almost see them grow as he leaned forward toward each individual he came to. They were vacuum-cleaner ears that sucked up every word, making the constituent feel Norcoast heard him and felt his pain and understood every nuance of his thirty-second gut-spilling, leaving the implicit promise the politician would take action on every word spoken, whether that be as a councilman now, a mayor next year, or a governor in five years. Everything about Norcoast shouted “I care, I really do; I am sincere. I really am.”
Norcoast was a weather vane spinning in the wind. To Clarence he seemed another life form. The politician.
Walking around within a few feet of the councilman, as if to monitor the variables and make sure nothing got out of control, was his longtime aide, Carson Gray. Only in his late thirties, he was a savvy operator. Gray strutted around like a banty rooster, with quick steps and self-important motions. His skin was pale, with blue penciled veins. Despite his expensive suit, his anatomy resisted a tailored look. He was one of those bottomless men who hikes up his pants and tightens his belt an extra notch to keep gravity from embarrassing him. He was largely responsible for cultivating and watchdogging Norcoast’s political success. Gray stood there, always keeping his finger on the pulse while Norcoast bubbled and smiled and effervesced.
Down in the front row Clarence saw Geneva, looking fine in that pretty emerald green dress. She stood face to face with Norcoast’s wife, Esther, immersed in animated conversation. Geneva had remarked to Clarence several times how kind it was for her to come to Dani’s funeral. They seemed to really be hitting it off. As he watched the two women thirty feet away, h
e saw the tears well up in Geneva and assumed they were talking about Dani. Esther Norcoast put her arms around Geneva. Clarence saw she was crying too, and he sensed the grief was real.
Well, maybe she hasn’t been infected by politics. At least, not like her husband. Maybe she’s the idealistic people-serving person her husband imagines he is.
Clarence felt guilty, as he often did when realizing his cynicism had led him to misjudge someone. His eyes now caught a familiar slow moving gait and brown polyester suit. He stepped down into the crowd and put his arms around his father.
“How you feelin’, Daddy?”
“Well, when you gets as old as I am,” Obadiah Abernathy said, “if you wakes up in the mornin’ and nothin’ hurts, it’s a sure sign you’re dead.” He laughed hard, from deep within, with a delightful hiss that sounded like air escaping a balloon.
“I’ve been thinking about things today, Daddy. I want to thank you for all you taught me. For raising me like you did. And helping me through college. Thank you.” He hugged him.
Obadiah looked at his son curiously, as if to say, where is this coming from? “Couldn’t have done it without two people, Son. My sweet Jesus and yo’ sweet mama.” His eyes gleamed.
Clarence helped Obadiah into a folding chair. Jake came over to sit next to him.
“Hello, Mr. Abernathy. Good to see you again.”
“Mr. Jake. Always a pleasure, sir, always a pleasure.”
Clarence made his way back to the platform. After a few people came up to greet him, Clarence’s eyes went back to Esther Norcoast. He watched her go up to her husband. Both were all smiles, when suddenly she halted. He thought he saw surprise and anger in her face, but he couldn’t be sure. Words were exchanged. Norcoast looked intent on restoring her smile.
I didn’t even see him say anything. What’s she mad about? Well, she’s a woman. Norcoast probably doesn’t have a clue. Wish I could read lips.