Everyday People

by Stewart O'Nan

  Already chomping on his burger, Smooth stared at him like he was out of his mind. “Can I ax you something?”

  “Huh?”

  “You for real with that shit?”

  “Why,” Eugene said, “’m I making you nervous?”

  “Naw,” Smooth said. “I got you. Just ig me, a’ight.”

  “Since when you know me not to be real?”

  “Never.”

  “Well there you go.”

  “It’s just strange,” Smooth said. “It’s just different, you know?”

  “It’s different,” Eugene agreed. “But it’s all right.”

  Later, dropping him off, Smooth called after him, “Keep it real, man,” and from habit Eugene stretched his arm out, palm down, and shot him with the gun of his thumb and finger. He saw what he’d done, and wondered how long he’d been doing it. Like Darrin said, you had to be conscious all the time, you couldn’t let yourself fall into those old traps.

  He kept that advice in mind when Pops helped him with the dinner dishes, washing while Eugene dried. Since it happened, the two of them hadn’t talked about it, probably never would. Nothing would change, except this, and that wouldn’t last long. Again, he thought he should have the words to break through, make a difference. Wasn’t that what a preacher did? Pops had a scratch above one eye. He seemed older to Eugene since he’d been out, his face thinner. Before he could look at him, Pops looked away. The dishes clunked underwater.

  “How you doin’?” Eugene asked.

  “I’m all right,” he said wearily, relieved, as if he’d been waiting on something worse.

  “You know the two of you have got to work something out.”

  “I know.”

  It didn’t go beyond that. It didn’t have to. They were busy with their hands, and then they were done, each of them wiping down the counter on their side of the sink.

  By the time he got off the church van in his suit, he’d convinced himself the same straight-up approach would work with Little Nene. He’d just lay out the facts, put down the Bible and testify from his life. The key was exactly what he’d told the judge. He’d been in the system, he’d made the mistakes and paid the price. Maybe if Little Nene would listen he wouldn’t have to.

  In the basement Sunday school room he set up the metal chairs in a circle. First twelve, then eight, then he compromised at ten. He wasn’t sure how many would come. He’d stapled flyers to bulletin boards and telly poles all across East Liberty, and Reverend Skinner had announced it before the sermon, so ten was a guess. He had enough Lemon Blend for twenty, and brownies from the women’s auxiliary, a two-liter bottle of pop he’d bought himself, a bowl of ice from the kitchen. He arranged the stacks of cups and the napkins on the table, then poured himself a glass of Diet Pepsi. Upstairs, the choir softly rumbled, clapping and stamping their feet.

  He drank the pop down to the ice, from time to time checking his watch. It was still five minutes before the time, so he set the glass down and went upstairs to see if people were wandering the halls, having trouble finding the room. The only person he came across was Reverend Skinner in his office, who used the opportunity to give Eugene the book on grant proposals he’d been recommending. Eugene had told him about Chris’s mural, and Reverend Skinner thought he ought to try Martin Robinson’s office.

  “Make sure you run it by me before it goes out,” he said, and Eugene promised he would.

  Outside, the parking lot was lit a sickly orange, shadows hunched between the cars. The four corners by the stoplight were empty, and he wondered if Little Nene had slipped in while he was with Reverend Skinner. He waited another minute, watching a cop car cruise through, a big Caprice slow as a shark, then went downstairs.

  No one had come. The chairs sat there, the overhead light reflected in the punch bowl full of Lemon Blend. It seemed a waste, and he had a glass, dipping the scratched plastic ladle in. So sweet it hurt his teeth, turned them gritty. He felt stupid in his suit, surrounded by the second grade’s cut-outs of Noah’s Ark, the crayon drawings of Harriet Tubman. The ice had melted so there was no way of saving it, and he dumped the bowl in the teacher’s sink, poured the Lemon Blend over it.

  Nene’s Granmoms thought Leonard was at the meeting with him. She sounded shocked that he wasn’t, but only for a minute. Then she was all promises, telling him she’d be on him when he came in. When was the next meeting, because she would see to it that he was there if she had to drag him there herself.

  “It’s Thursday,” Eugene said. “And don’t tell him, but I am personally going to come over there and escort him if that’s all right.”

  “Bless you,” she said, but after he’d hung up he found he was angry with her, though he knew it was impossible to stop the little hustler. It was his own history; why did he think he could change it?

  Because he had. You’re living proof, Darrin said, all of you. Use that.

  Where would he start? Boosting cigarettes from the Giant Eagle. Hanging on the corner with his partners, selling some bud. None of it seemed that scandalous, and then he was strapping every day, moving TVs, riding down on Dawayne Perry that night. It was too easy to blame it on the rock. It wasn’t like Nene. It wasn’t the Treys either. He couldn’t say for sure exactly what happened.

  “How’d it go?” Moms asked him in the van, and he told her.

  “It may take a little while,” she said, and patted his knee. Riding beside her, he thought she must know so much about patience that her advice had to be right.

  Wednesday it rained and they wore their yellow slickers at work, the hoods useless. The planes dripped, the jetways, and even drawing the rubber curtains of the carts didn’t stop the bags from getting wet. They were cold coming out of the planes, and Eugene’s fingers hurt like frostbite. He squeezed into the glassed-in cab of the tractor, staring out at the brown lakes of the runways while Smooth wondered aloud about the Pirates’ slim playoff chances. The season was ending, and Eugene had missed it; he wanted to take Chris to a game like old times. It had been at least ten years, since they were kids.

  The stink of burnt diesel drifted up from the pedals, warming his shins. He would tell Little Nene he couldn’t remember when he stopped caring about anything. It snuck up on you and then you were in the middle of it, you weren’t sure how, but that’s what happened, and it could last a long time, your entire life if you were unlucky.

  “Think he’ll show tomorrow?” Smooth asked as he dropped him off.

  “I’m not going to wait and find out.”

  “I hear you.”

  When he got out, Eugene gave him an old-school power salute that Smooth laughed at.

  “Power to the people, baby.”

  Again, Pops helped with the dinner dishes, quiet for a while, then asking Eugene how he was doing. Moms made a Mrs. Smith’s pie, and the three of them ate it watching TV, unable to tear Chris away from his mural. Eugene told them about the grant book Reverend Skinner lent him, and they agreed that it would be good for Chris. They didn’t have to say they were worried, that the only time he left his room was when Vanessa came over. Eugene watched them watching Damon Wayans, laughing on the same couch they’d fought on, and wanted to understand. The pie was better than frozen pie should be. He thought he should start on the book and left them there, closing his door so he could concentrate.

  The key to writing winning grant proposals is the dynamic presentation of ideas in a clear and concise manner. If applicable, charts and graphs are preferable to lengthy paragraphs of explanation. He yawned above the page, felt his jaws pop. Rain tapped at the window. He’d been going to bed earlier and earlier since he got the job, and his sleep was deeper, dreamless. He’d lay down and the next thing he knew the alarm was going off in his ear, as if it had only been minutes, his back knotted, and then he needed coffee, sat dazed in the Regal with a tall cup between his legs while Smooth motored along the Parkway, picking sleep from his eyes.

  He closed the book and got ready for bed, made sure
he had a clean uniform for tomorrow. He would come home and put his suit on, go straight over to Moreland. He’d have Little Nene, even if no one else came. He knew exactly what to tell him now.

  In the morning it was still raining, the trucks on the Parkway blinding them with spray, making Smooth turn the wipers up to high. They didn’t bother to talk, just rode with the heat on defrost. At work there was nothing to do. The east coast was socked in, JFK and Logan closed; everyone missed their connections. They tended the few puddle jumpers that came in from Dubois and Ligonier, the bags barely filling their cart.

  At break Eugene stayed in the dry cab while Smooth put his hood up and went off to buy them coffees. He’d brought Reverend Skinner’s book with him, but it just made him tired. Establishing nonprofit status is imperative for maximum tax exemption. He took off his cap and hung it on the gearshift, rubbed his hands over his hair and watched the drops make their way down the pane. The rain was harder now, bouncing white off the tarmac; nothing was coming in today, and he wished the tractor had a real heater. Maybe he’d catch up on his sleep.

  Smooth came back early from break, running and ducking the drops. Eugene thought he’d take a long one, warm in the bacon-and-egg smell of the cafeteria, but here he was, hood flapping, sprinting like B-Mo’s crew was after his ass. Eugene laughed in the cab, and when Smooth got to the door he held it closed for a joke.

  “Cut the shit,” Smooth yelled through the glass, banging it with a fist, and Eugene let him in.

  “Fuck you playing around for?” Smooth said, all serious. He shoved the paper at him, flattened it with a slap. “I was trying to show you something if you’d listen.” He jabbed at it with a finger.

  EAST END MAN DEAD IN POLICE CHASE, the headline said.

  “Musta happened last night,” Smooth said, but Eugene wasn’t listening, was falling through the article, caught on the name—Leonard Jenkins, 16, of East Liberty.

  His face burned, the skin of his cheeks and his forehead. It had to be a mistake, a misprint, and he backtracked and then read on, dizzy with the impossibility of it. He was seeing him tonight. His Granmoms would have called. Vehicle reported stolen, a brief exchange of gunfire. This was exactly the kind of shit he was going to tell him about.

  He stopped and started to read it again from the beginning, as if beneath a more intense concentration the words might change or mean something different. Early morning, the North Side. But there was no reason for him to be there, Eugene thought.

  where the suspect then crashed at high speed into a utility pole.

  “’s fucked up,” Smooth said, as if there was nothing anyone could do.

  It was true. It was not his fault, Eugene knew, but still, somehow he had lost him—had failed to save Little Nene as Darrin had saved him. He’d barely even tried, and now everything he had to say to him seemed fake and useless, an empty lesson.

  Police say the deceased had various misdemeanor charges pending in juvenile court.

  The story refused to change.

  He still didn’t fully believe it.

  He folded the paper and laid it on the dash, unable to fit his thoughts together, to see anything but Little Nene jumping from the cracked, steaming car, running. He didn’t picture an exchange of gunfire, just the police drawing down on him, the boy falling. For a car—but it was not about a car, it was about him: Little Nene or Eugene, or Nene, Dawayne Perry. It was about all of them, and the knowledge made Eugene get up and push past Smooth and out the door into the rain.

  “U man,” Smooth called, but he was gone, splashing across the concrete for the terminal, then inside, out of the rain, in the scarred corridor that led to the big belts. The light was dim in here, and his footsteps echoed dully, like the inner ring of a basketball. He walked the length of it, swinging his arms, wanting to punch something, or someone, holding and letting go his breath until he realized he was making a wet, seething noise in his throat. He had nowhere to go, and he turned and walked back to the end just as fast, turned again, slower, the feeling leaving him, seeping like adrenalin from his muscles.

  “Motherfucker,” he said, but quiet so it didn’t echo. He was suddenly tired. The walls were black with skid marks. It was too late to do anything, and he walked back outside into the rain, stopping to feel it against his skin, looking up at the low clouds as if they held some answer. Nothing but gray, the drops falling white and cold.

  He got back in the cab, and Smooth scooted over.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Eugene said, because it was easier. Smooth knew what he meant.

  The day moved too slow. He needed something to do, but the coast stayed closed, only Chicago feeding them connectors, a few commuters from Erie. After lunch he spent most of his time reconstructing what happened from the paper, each time believing it more, and by the time Smooth dropped him off, it seemed to have happened weeks ago, like Nene. He didn’t wave to Smooth, just said, “Tomorrow,” and closed the door.

  Chris was in his room.

  “You hear?” Eugene said.

  He hadn’t, so he told him.

  “Man,” Chris said, “I don’t know. It’s gettin’ insane out there.”

  Eugene was disappointed in him; he’d wanted him to be shocked. But what did Eugene expect after what had happened? For Chris this was normal.

  He’d find a place on the wall for him, he said. He pointed with his pencil. He’d move Fred Hampton over so he could be right by Nene.

  “I’m sorry,” Pops said at dinner.

  “It just shows how much we need your group,” Moms said, then went on about poor Alberta Jenkins. Eugene thought he’d have to visit with her, sit in that beautiful living room with Chris’s picture of Nene and eat cheese and crackers, chips and dip. She would thank him, make him feel comfortable, would somehow know what to say, and then he’d leave her, the door of the house would close and she would be alone. No more “Where you goin’? When you gone be back?” He would visit her again, and maybe once more after that, but finally he would stop going. He’d walk by the house wondering if she was home and wouldn’t know, wouldn’t bother to knock.

  After dinner, Moms put on her makeup and came out to see if he was ready. He was wearing his hearing suit, still crisp from the hanger, in need of a dry clean. In the van, neither of them said a word, the streets rolling by glazed with rain.

  The doors of the church were open. He went downstairs and turned on the lights. From the walls, Harriet Tubman looked back at him, the scar on her forehead a dent under her bandanna. He poured the Lemon Blend and laid out the cookies on a plate, made two stacks of cups and a fan of napkins. Upstairs, the choir rocked, praising God. He set the chairs in a circle, then sat down himself and waited to see if anyone would show up.

  FAVORITE SON

  WAS HE SO OLD?

  Yes, seventy-three. Each time he came back there was less he remembered, and he missed the Pittsburgh he’d known as a child. Genteel. Professional. A world of topcoats and long brunches at the Crawford Grill, black Packard sedans and day lilies in crystal vases. Was it possible his father’s house was still gone, hadn’t miraculously grown back in his absence, the ivy green on its mock-Gothic arches, the leaded windows of his mother’s sewing room open on the garden? As the limousine slid by Spofford in a drizzle, Martin Robinson was tempted to peer up the street, but didn’t, knowing he’d find only the soulless faces of brick apartment buildings instead of his cloistered boyhood.

  “The community center’s tricky,” Sylvia was saying, going over her clipboard. “Their funding’s been cut, so no promises.”

  “Discretionary money?”

  “Nothing. Then at one you have the new state senator.”

  “Combes,” he guessed.

  “Goines. Friend, definitely. You met her last year at the library anniversary.”

  He remembered nothing of it, another in the chain of sectioned days—interviews and photo shoots, speeches faxed to him in the car, doctored in the front row while th
e locals spoke, then delivered with lofty, heartfelt conviction, his trademark oratory. His father had schooled him in Cicero and Frederick Douglass, brought him into the study to critique his performance, leaning back in his calfskin swivel chair, long dentist’s hands folded over his chest. “Deeper here,” he’d coach. “Okay, now slowly,” and Martin tried to do it right, ride the waves of self-righteous fervor, skim across the calms of intricate reasoning. The worst was when his father laughed and told him to start over—no instructions, just his hands flapping up like gulls, scattering his words. But he learned.

  “Two-thirty: pictures at Nabisco; three-thirty: downtown to petition city council.”

  “Petition,” he asked.

  “The Jenkins case.”

  “God, yes.” Excessive use of force. How many of these had he presented? His first had earned him the seat back in the sixties, though no one had been convicted. Few had been through the years, but there were some, little victories that kept the papers—if not the cops—at least partly honest. The Jenkins boy was someone’s son. Heartache, etc., a gross disregard for human life.

  The limo turned onto Highland, its tinted windows drawing stares, splashed down the long straightaway past the half-demolished Sears with its blue panels of sheet metal bent like playing cards. An ugly landmark, it had been bought up by Home Depot, who brought in Korean contractors from upstate New York to fulfill the city minority hiring quota. The unions and usual local groups bonded together in protest (strange—and strained—bedfellows), and the city asked Martin’s office to help with the talks. In the end he’d brokered a deal neither side liked, five jobs short of the number prescribed by law. Twenty years ago he would have gotten the five plus heavy concessions, maybe cut a sideways deal with the unions finally making it possible for people from the community to get bonded for construction work, but everyone knew he’d taken a hit on the busway he’d never recover from. The city bringing him back for the dedication was repayment for years of being a pain in the ass, a way of reminding him how far he’d fallen. No one forgot in politics, just as no one forgave him. Thirty-six years. Sylvia was the one he felt sorry for, only in her midforties, though she insisted she’d be fine.