Hold It 'Til It Hurts

by T. Geronimo Johnson

  Wexler said, “This shit gets in the brain. Crunch affects people on an animal level. It’s like possession. Think The Exorcist or Night of the Living Dead. They get like zombies. Believe me. Most people can’t even quit cigarettes.”

  Achilles raised his hand to silence Wexler. Achilles wasn’t naïve. Maybe Troy had the crush. Maybe he’d gotten flushed into some bad shit hanging around with his black family. But that was only a possibility, and Achilles wasn’t going to treat the probable like the definite. He knew Wexler would back him if ever push came to gun, but said, “It’s cool.”

  “Brrrlll.” Wexler blew air across his lips, as if to brush off Achilles’s remark, shook his head, gave Achilles the finger, looked flustered, said “Fuck,” and crossed himself.

  Achilles shot the finger back, as he used to during PT when Wexler would glide by grinning, his stride as smooth as a moonwalk. “How’d he ever outrun you?”

  Wexler snapped his head back, as if dodging a live wire. “He had a head start. Fuck man. I called you.”

  Achilles felt awkward. He was being a complete dick to the friend who’d called him, put him up, taken him to where Troy could be found, a friend who was a brother in his own right. But Wexler owed them. Troy had saved his life, and, after Jackson died, Troy had soothed Wexler. It was Troy who pried Wexler—kicking, screaming, biting—off Merriweather. In fact, Troy had calmed Wexler first, like Wexler was his brother. Achilles didn’t hold that against Wexler, nor did he resent all the other times it seemed Troy was more concerned with Wexler, nor did he resent Wexler’s obvious attachment to his brother, but for some reason Wexler’s almost matronly caution was always Achilles’s trigger, or was it just that whenever he was around Wexler he felt like yelling “bring the thunder,” screaming “drop the money shot,” throwing rocks, blowing chunks, drinking whiskey with a crazy straw, and shooting himself in the head with the tequila pistol?

  The orange Hummer drove by again.

  Wexler laughed. “That’s who I need to be praying for.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. He’s the HZIC around here, runs the Bricks. Knows all and everybody, got his finger in everything: drugs, hookers, dogfights, numbers, welfare, daycare.”

  Prayer? Whatever. But what if Wexler was right about Troy being on crunch? Did it even matter? Everything would collapse when he found Troy. Telling Ines had seemed easier when he thought there wasn’t any chance of finding him. But how to speak of the living? He tried to push that thought out of his head, but it only reminded him that he’d promised to call, no matter the time. He stepped into the dormer farthest from Wexler and dialed.

  A rush, a tingle in his neck, when she answered. He adjusted his pants, excited by the sound of her husky morning voice, needles and all, as she mildly admonished him for taking so long to call. While he was driving, Tropical Depression Twelve had been upgraded to Tropical Storm Katrina. She said she might be joining him in Atlanta, then assured him she was only joking. Her family hadn’t even evacuated during Betsy. “We can always go to our place in Lake Charles,” she said. “Hell, we didn’t even leave for the Battle of New Orleans. But that’s all right. How are you? How’s your friend’s family? The name was Kevin Wexler, right? In the rush to get you on the road, I forgot to get the address.”

  He looked at Kevin Wexler, who stood in the opposite dormer, probably listening to traffic and dreaming about visiting some other country, unarmed. “Baby, I’ll call back about that. I just wanted to let you know that I made it.”

  “Okay. I love you,” said Ines.

  “Think fast,” said Achilles, unconsciously extending his index finger like the barrel of a gun.

  “Okay, Mr. Cool.” Ines laughed as she hung up.

  Achilles joined his friend in the dormer and tried to follow his gaze. Water dripped from the ceiling, collecting on a skewed window ledge in a star-shaped puddle that swelled until one single drop slipped over the side, taking the rest with it, then more water collected, forming another star-shaped puddle. Under the only working streetlamp, the sidewalk was a stage awaiting a performer. But it was intermission, the slice of morning when the crunchers were already in, and the workers weren’t yet out. Cars hummed through puddles. Downtown, a succession of streetlights went out, one after the other, as if extinguished by the wind. A hazy orange aura lay on the horizon, as if the distant trees had burst into flames and a fire was headed across the city, straight into them.

  Achilles and Ines had visited Atlanta for Sammy the Stargazer’s birthday. Sammy had prominent front teeth and the stubborn stance of a spoiled kid. Achilles and Ines bought tickets to Six Flags over Georgia; the amusement park seemed a good choice for a fifth grader. But the surprise was on them: Sammy, who attended a fancy boarding school in the suburbs, wanted to be an astronomer, and demanded, truly demanded—teary-eyed as he proclaimed his adult status—a trip to the planetarium at the Fernbank Science Museum. “It’s my birthday after all!” Ines said Sammy was granted latitude because of his condition. Achilles asked her to repeat it three times, finally giving up because all he could make out was that Sammy had “ass-burger” (which sounded like something Merriweather would say, until it dawned on Achilles that maybe he’d been molested—at which point he kept his distance). Achilles was pissed. The tickets weren’t cheap, and he’d been looking forward to a few rounds on the Cyclone roller coaster. Instead, he found himself at a museum enduring an animated dramatization of the Big Bang, complete with celebrity voices.

  The Fernbank lecturer, wearing socks with sandals and smelling of patchouli, compared the Big Bang to conception, calling it, “Another explosive genesis, but driven by enzymes. A flash of light is emitted at conception, a burst that is far too bright to be explained by chemistry. Boom! There we are. And so our body is created in a big bang, like the universe. Likewise, it starts to cool and contract in old age.” He lowered his voice, as if delivering a pickup line. “In this vast universe, there are solar systems, and in these solar systems there is us, and in us, there are additional solar systems. We are each interconnected beings of light.” Achilles noticed, not for the first time, how Ines perked up when she was intellectually stimulated, as if aroused. His anxiety that he would never be an intellectual was cooled by the fact that he felt equally moved, being in that moment entranced by the possibility that all was as it was meant to be.

  At the same time, the Fernbank lecture had left him spooked, much in the same way it chilled him to hear Ines, stoned, hold forth on water and earth as living things. If the world were alive, it would be a mirror reflecting him at every turn, and he simply couldn’t abide that. He didn’t like the thought of a living being that large and always in motion, and breathing, and watching, for surely it would see him and know what he worked so hard not to think about, surely it would harrow his secrets and kindle his fears. If the world were alive, wouldn’t that be like a parent who knew your every move? Wouldn’t thoughts be weapons? Wouldn’t that make karma real? Wouldn’t there be danger in his joke, “Everyone wants what they deserve. Me, I’m hoping not to get it.”

  In retrospect, it had been a good time. Like she had with New Orleans, Ines breathed life into Atlanta. During that trip, they’d visited the Coca-Cola Museum, eaten prime rib at Bones, strolled Phipps Plaza’s marble halls. Now he was stepping over beer bottles and dog shit. Armed with Wexler’s map, Achilles noted the new street names, which definitely didn’t match the neighborhood. Medgar Evers was surrounded by Carnation Avenue, Gladiola Street, and Peace Lily Way. Achilles corrected the map as he circled the block. If a house appeared abandoned, he went inside. If not, he knocked. It took over ninety minutes to do all thirty-five houses on the first block. There were sixty-five more blocks, not to mention the old paper plant and the abandoned cotton mill. He wouldn’t be even halfway finished before Sunday, when he had to leave. He battled his discouragement by trying to stick to the plan and treat it like a road march—one foot after the other, orderly, insistent. But he couldn’t shake the
feeling that when he was on one side of the block, Troy was on the opposite side, that they were like the blades of a propeller, and he soon found himself backtracking and making figure eights via the grassy alleys, like a gambler who thinks that one more time around and the wheel will pay.

  Alleys fed even narrower side streets that poured into broad thoroughfares like Auburn Avenue, which was once the African American Main Street, according to Wexler. The decline appeared irreversible, like New Orleans’s own Tremé District, which Ines had explained was the oldest black neighborhood in America (and St. Augustine the oldest black parish). The Fourth Ward felt different because at least commuters passed through this neighborhood, whereas in the Tremé, you either lived there or you were lost. In both cities, old men spoke and young men stared. But Atlanta had more black history on display, the neighborhood dotted with plaques memorializing bygone glory. One minute he was in a Section Eight complex, the next he was on a path identified as Freedom Walk. For a time it seemed the only businesses were pawnshops, churches, and funeral homes. Then came King’s tomb and torch. Achilles detoured from his path, venturing into the paved courtyard surrounding the tomb. A group of schoolchildren held hands, heads bowed before the eternal flame. Catty-corner from the MLK center, a row of burned-out homes, and across the street a statue of Gandhi. A few blocks later he was facing a six-foot-tall cast of John Wesley Dobbs’s head. The plaque read: “Give us the 3 Bs—the buck, the ballot, and the book.” Behind the sculpture, winos slept in the shadow of a replica of a slave castle wall. As he passed the winos, one spoke: “What’s up, young blood?”

  The tone and timber of the man’s voice reminded Achilles of Bud and Father Levreau, and the blaxploitation movies he had recently discovered and enjoyed but Ines detested: Dolomite, Shaft, Black Belt Jones, Truck Turner. Pimps, pushers, prostitutes. “It’s vaudeville,” declared Ines, “blacks in blackface.” But Achilles saw black men leading a revolution, cleaning up their neighborhoods, meeting the government on their own terms. The fabled Spook Who Sat by the Door, of which he had only heard, Gordon’s War, Coffy (Grier had serious high-beams): where were they now? Afros and picks with fists, fly suits, and high fives; the seventies were a golden age of brotherhood. The men in the shelters often talked about it, a time when everyone was a brother or sister, a time when there were young bloods because they were all of the same blood. He felt a heightened sense of fraternity as he answered, “I’m fine, old-timer. How are you?”

  “Good, brother, but I sure could use a quarter, a dime, anything to help a brother get something to eat.” His eyes were red, but his hair was thick and wooly. He was plum-cheeked and thick-ribbed, his body round, not chiseled and angular like those on the crunch diet. He could work. Achilles handed him some change, a bargain for such a precious lesson, or a refresher course. You couldn’t talk to some people without being asked for money.

  What would Ines say? Achilles asked himself as he entered an abandoned house and found himself staring down at two squatters immune to the flashlight shining in their eyes, splayed out as if they had fallen from a great height onto the soiled bedspring, a raft in a sea of food wrappers and glossy jack mags. Brother, do you think you can hide from your true nature? Brother, why are you killing yourself? Achilles told himself, Self, they’re not weak, they’re just hurt. He couldn’t conjure her compassion.

  These men before him were self-destructive, meaning weak. Through the ratty aluminum foil covering the window, a few dusty blades of light stabbed the darkness. At the foot of the bed were bits of fur mixed with balls of puffy mattress stuffing. Beside it, a tub turned toilet, attended by flies. On the floor in the corner, a third man, curled into a ball, with a bundle of newspaper for a pillow, hugged a Krazy Kreme donut box to his chest, a column of ants trekking back and forth across his arm and circling the sugar ring around his mouth. Feeling like a vampire hunter, Achilles ripped a large strip of foil off the window. The man on the floor beat at the ants.

  “Hands up! Heads down!” Achilles yelled in Arabic and Pashto, as a joke. But as he said it, his right hand reached for his sling and his heart started racing.

  Two of the guys retreated to the corner, hiding their faces like bad dogs. One man in a black POW-MIA T-shirt rolled off the bedspring and onto the floor, turning clumsily, the exposed steel toes of his unlaced boots knocking the floorboards until he reached the shadows. Achilles hefted the flashlight like a baton, ready to strike. Unarmed is disarmed! It’s like sticking your ass up and yelling “chowtime” in San Fran!

  The man in the POW-MIA shirt sat up, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the light. His voice hopeful, he asked, “Lionel?”

  Achilles, who had nearly begun hyperventilating when he realized he was unarmed, shook his head.

  When the man asked again, Achilles said, “No!”

  “You seen him?”

  “I don’t know anyone named Lionel,” barked Achilles.

  “If you see him, let him know I’m still here.”

  “Yeah, sure.” As he searched the other rooms, he moved with caution, his adrenaline high, his fingers twitching. He was surprised to find it otherwise deserted. Why did they all congregate on the same mattress? He passed that room on the way out. The man in the POW-MIA T-shirt was trying to stick the foil back up, muttering. He pressed it against the glass, but it flopped down. He tried smoothing it out with his hands, and it tore. He spat on the window, and tried again, but it fell. When Achilles heard a sob, he cast the flashlight toward the window. When the beam crossed his face, the man flinched and slapped at his cheek as if an insect had landed. “Lionel?”

  “I’m not Lionel.”

  “You seen him?”

  “No,” said Achilles.

  “Tell him I’m still here. Tell him Norm is here.”

  Achilles turned away.

  “Sure, I will. I’ll tell him.”

  Once outside, using one hand to steady the other, he made an X on the map, having checked the last house on the block. He had recorded the creases in overgrown lots, the runs that cut through otherwise impassable alleys, the winding trails that wound across vacant plots and between houses. Ultimately, every path led back to one place. Every street that ended without warning—Medgar Evers Avenue, MLK Boulevard, and Malcolm X Way—dead-ended at Banneker Homes, suddenly colliding with that brick wall as if it had been planned this way, as if the housing project had fallen from the sky whole, like a box trap. When Achilles finished correcting the map, the Bricks stood in the center like a bitter black heart.

  CHAPTER 14

  WAGES AND TROY SOFTLY HUMMED “MAMMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” Merri muttered the Psalms. Wexler said, “It looks like someone ripped a pillow open.” From where Achilles lay, he couldn’t see Wexler’s face, but knew that Wexler was referring to the puffs of clouds scattered across the horizon, white wisps sweeping westward, occasionally revealing the low, full moon. The squad’s position in a shallow cave offered a prime view of the piedmont below, dotted with brush and squat red dunes with low vegetation rounding their bases, like receding hairlines. The mountains on either side of the plateau vanished at the horizon long before meeting, forming a huge channel leading to the end of the earth. Gradually, the clouds retreated to the edge of that channel, bunching up like a blanket, revealing the moon high above, one perfect circle. Three goats crested a dune and stopped, as if they too admired the view.

  And it was breathtaking, this valley laid out before them like a tapestry, the gently undulating land, the high ridges on either side, and in the middle of it, one small village of only five buildings illuminated by flickering oil lamps, the only sign of human life, and above it the biggest sky he had ever seen, a dark sheet with that perfect sphere of light in the center like a watchful eye. The next morning a thin layer of mist hugged the hills. Watching the rising sun burn it off, he recalled the dawn vistas from the highway behind his home, the trees wavering behind a veil of fog like the shadows of people who weren’t there, t
he three rocks in the lake lined up like the back of a mythical beast preparing to surface, and it was all so stunning that as he fell asleep in that cave beside his brother, as he had those first few days before Troy’s bed arrived, it was hard to believe someone out there was trying to kill them.

  How had it started? Everyone blamed someone else. They were walking along, then a landslide, and next thing they knew, someone was firing at them. Then, as Merri later described it, it was quiet as the night before Christmas in the mofo. They tried to move a few times, but every time they did, the firing started again. Wages called it in and they waited for the money shot, watching that sunrise, all of them, side by side, tuned in like it was the best movie they ever saw. And Achilles forgot for a few moments that he was on Mission ZF1983—his birth year—and that he was trapped by bad decisions or fate or intel no more accurate than the maps on a child’s place mat.

  He felt equally trapped in the stifling attic at Wexler’s jobsite, hemmed in by the fear—foolish, he knew—that he needed to see Troy before Troy saw him. He was also unsettled by the suspicion that with all his drug talk, Wexler was hiding something; and he was angered by Ines’s sudden decision to come to Atlanta, which he resented because he’d need to stop his search and find a hotel room. “Doesn’t your mother need you?” he’d asked. Her answer: silence. His thought: Who ever heard of a little rain driving people out of town?