Stewart wondered why the world couldn’t be the way it was in here, right now, all the time.
“Buzz,” said Hess, standing beside him, a shot of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, a draft beer in the other.
“Yeah.”
“You see that fuckin’ girl over there in the corner?”
Stewart looked in that direction. He saw a guy, drinking a beer, grinning, listening to the music, not bothering a soul. Stewart looked at Shorty, his eyes somewhat crossed, nodding his head rapidly for no reason except that the speed was telling him to.
“So?”
Hess threw his head back to drain his mash, placed the empty glass on the bar. “I don’t like the way he’s smiling.”
“Shit, he ain’t smilin’ at you.”
Hess stepped forward. Stewart grabbed the sleeve of his leather and pulled him back.
“Let him be, Shorty. He’s just havin’ a good time.”
Stewart felt the bunched muscles of Hess’s arm loosen under his grip.
“Buy me another shot, will ya, Buzz? I can stand another brew, too. Man, I’m thirsty as shit.”
Course you are, thought Stewart. All that speed you got in you.
They had two more rounds. After the set, Stewart got a go order from the bartender and motioned Hess and Martini toward the door. They killed a six on the drive uptown.
DEREK STRANGE HAD parked his Impala on Princeton Place under a street lamp and was locking it down when he saw Kenneth Willis’s green Monterey coming up the block. Willis slowed and pulled up to the curb, stopping behind the Impala. Strange saw that Alvin Jones, a crawler who never had been no good or brought any good along with him, sat beside his younger cousin. Dennis was in the backseat.
Strange waited for his brother to get out of the car. Jones leaned on the window lip, crossed his left hand over his right forearm to ash his smoke. As was Strange’s habit, he scanned the physical details: Jones wore a gold Ban-Lon shirt and a black hat with a bright gold band. He smiled as his eyes sized up Strange.
Strange straightened and gave Jones his full height and build. It was childish, he knew. Still, there were some things a man never could stop himself from doing, no matter how mature he was supposed to be. One was letting another man know that he had the goods to kick his ass if that’s what he had a mind to do.
“Lawman,” said Jones. “Must feel all naked and shit, out of your uniform. Where your sidearm at?”
Right under my shirttail, thought Strange. In my clip-on.
“Brother, you gonna hurt my feelings, you don’t say somethin’ soon.”
Strange said nothing. Through the windshield, he could see Willis’s big old row of buckteeth as he smiled. Willis, who had done time on a statutory charge, worked as a janitor, lived above a liquor store on H, and thought he was a stud. He saw Jones and Willis touch hands.
“My man,” said Jones, his smile gone, looking directly at Strange with his cold light eyes. “Makin’ the world safe for Mr. Charlie.” Jones took a drag of his Kool and let the smoke dribble from his mouth.
Dennis shut the door and slowly made his way from the Mercury toward Derek, clutching a paperback in his hand, wincing a little as he took an errant step. Sitting in a car, and getting out of it, were hard on his back.
“Remember what I told you, boy,” said Jones. “Hear?” But Dennis didn’t look his way.
Dennis met Derek by the Impala. Together they walked toward the steps up to the row house where they’d both been raised. They heard more comments coming from behind them. Jones said something about the police and then mentioned Darius Strange’s car, “another repop,” which made Willis laugh. The brothers did not turn or acknowledge them. Soon there was the sound of the Mercury turning in the street as Willis drove back toward Georgia.
“What you been doin’, man?” said Dennis.
“Worked today. Took this girl to the movies. You?”
“Just drove around some.”
“With those two?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you go?”
Dennis fingered the check in his pocket. “Jones knows this woman. We was just over at her place for a little bit, you know.”
I do know, thought Derek. Whatever you were doing, it had something to do with bad. Always would, with Jones and Willis around. Buying or selling something that was wrong. Maybe running for that dealer, Hayes, stayed over on Otis.
“What were y’all doing over at this woman’s place?”
“Damn, boy, you gonna run me in?”
“Just curious.”
“We were gettin’ our heads up. You happy?”
Derek looked at his older brother with disappointment. It was a familiar look to Dennis, and he cut his eyes away.
“You gotta get high before family dinner now, too,” said Derek.
“Ain’t like you never burn it.”
“Yeah, but I don’t make it my everything.”
“Father Derek,” said Dennis, shaking his head.
“That woman y’all were visiting,” said Derek, not able to back off. “Is she that Bacon girl Jones stays with in LeDroit Park?”
“How you know about her?”
“You told me. Hard to forget a name like that.”
“This was another girl, had his baby. Lives over your way.”
“Just what we need down here, more children bein’ made by no-account brothers like Jones.”
“So now you put on that uniform, you lose your color?”
“Bullshit.”
“Now you gonna get up on your high horse and look down on the black man, too.”
“That is bullshit, Dennis. I’m just pointin’ out that this particular cat is wrong.”
“I got eyes. You don’t need to be lecturin’ me on things I can see my own self.”
They had reached the door of the house. Derek put a hand on Dennis’s arm. “Listen, all I’m tellin’ you is, you don’t need to be runnin’ in place out here. I can hook you up with some kind of job, you let me. I’m always meeting people, got small businesses and such, on my shifts. They’d be glad to do a police officer a solid, help out someone in his family, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s the way it works.”
“The system, you mean.”
“Yeah. Nothing wrong with it, either.”
“I ain’t interested.”
“What you plan to do, then, be some kind of professional victim? Give up ’cause of all this white oppression you always going on about? So, what, all these race-hatin’ motherfuckers out here can point to a shiftless nigger like you and say they were right?”
“Shut up, man.”
“Or maybe you just gonna keep hangin’ with trash like Jones, till something happens you can’t fix.”
“Told you to shut your mouth.”
“You and me, we weren’t brought up that way.”
Dennis pulled his arm free. “Dinner’s ready, I expect.”
“You’re better than you know.”
“I’m tired, man.” Dennis lowered his eyes. “Do me a favor, Derek. Let me be.”
FOURTEEN
THERE GOES JULIA,” said Dennis Strange, pointing to the screen of the family’s color TV.
“Diahann Carroll,” said Derek Strange. “That’s a fine-looking woman right there.”
“Reminds me of your mother,” said Darius Strange.
“Talks like a white girl, though,” said Dennis.
“Ain’t no crime in it,” said Darius.
“She be datin’ white men, too,” said Dennis. “I seen her in this magazine, on the arm of some British cat, one who does those interviews on channel five.”
“She’s still fine,” said Derek.
“Got your mother’s eyes,” said Darius Strange.
Darius sat in his green lounger, the sports page of the Washington Post open in his lap. His facial features had begun to sag, and his weight had shifted down toward his middle.
His sons sat on hard chairs beside him. Alethea Strange
had cleared the dinner table and was back in the kitchen putting the dishes in a sink full of warm water.
The apartment was as it had always been. The furniture was the same furniture Dennis and Derek had roughhoused on all their lives. Their father’s hi-fi was used infrequently these days and now served mainly as a stand for Alethea’s herbs and African violets. Darius had not bought a record for many years. First Ray Charles went country, and then Sam Cooke had been shot dead by that woman back in ’64. He had just lost interest after that. And anyway, he was well into his fifties now. The new soul sound was for the young. He had given his records to Derek, who had become a deep rhythm and blues fan, the same way Darius had been years ago.
The men were watching The Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC. Bonanza had come and gone, and there was little else of interest on the other channels. They were waiting to hear the president, scheduled to speak at any moment. It was rumored that he would be making some sort of major announcement concerning the war in Vietnam.
Diahann Carroll finished her number, a tune from Camelot. The show’s host, Don Adams, came back onstage and began to introduce the next guest.
“Sorry about that, Chief,” said Dennis in a nasal voice. “Yeah, you sorry all right. You and your tired-ass shit.”
“Man used to have a comedy act in D.C.,” said Darius.
“Was he funny then? ’Cause he ain’t never made me laugh once. They want me to watch this show, they better bring out Agent Ninety-nine.”
“And now, please welcome Diana Quarry and her brother, boxer Jerry Quarry, who are going to perform a very special song tonight.”
“He’s gonna sing now?” said Derek.
“Gotta do somethin’,” said Dennis. “’Cause you know he can’t fight.”
“He decisioned Floyd Patterson,” said Darius.
“An old Floyd,” said Dennis.
“Government gives Ali his gloves back,” said Derek, “he gonna take that man apart.”
As the heavyweight and his sibling attempted a rock-and-roll duet, Darius Strange read from the newspaper. “Elgin Baylor had thirty-seven for the Lakers, can you believe it? Now L.A. gonna go on in the west. Man eliminated the Bulls all by hisself.”
“Baylor?” said Derek, grinning at his brother. “Who’s that?”
“Local boy, right?” said Dennis, winking at Derek.
“Came out of Spingarn,” said Derek.
“You lyin’?” said Dennis. “Thought it was Dunbar.”
Dennis and Derek reached behind their father, chuckled, and touched hands.
“Quit playin’,” said Darius, stifling a grin, not looking up from his newspaper.
Alethea came into the room rubbing her hands dry on a dish towel. She wore a flower-patterned housedress with a cloth rose, similar to those that were printed on the dress, pinned in her graying hair. Except for the gray, the bursts of lines around her eyes, and her wrinkled hands, which had been damaged by the cleaning fluid she’d used through the years, she was a fit fifty-one. Her legs and back gave her problems from time to time, the cost of her domestic work, which she had recently cut to five days a week. But aside from those minor pains, she felt fine.
“Satisfaction?” she said, looking with affection at her men grouped around the Sylvania in the living room.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Derek. “That chicken was right. Greens weren’t too shabby, either.”
“Glad you enjoyed it.”
“Could’ve used a nice bottle of wine with it, somethin’,” said Dennis, smiling at his mother, not meaning anything by the remark.
“You want us to buy that for you, too?” said Darius.
“Darius,” said Alethea.
“We pay his way for everything else around here, don’t we?”
“He’s just havin’ a little fun with me,” said Alethea.
“I can move out, Pop,” said Dennis, “you want me to.”
“What I want is for you to work,” said Darius. “That’s what a man does. Your brother’s out there breaking a sweat. He’s got a car, his own apartment. That’s what you need to be moving toward, too.”
Derek couldn’t look at Dennis. He had ridden him hard outside the house because he believed in him and thought he could improve his life. But he never came down on Dennis in front of their parents. He wished he wasn’t here to witness this now.
The silence that had fallen on the room ended as an announcer broke into the show to inform viewers that the president was about to speak. Derek got up and let his mother take his seat. He found another chair and dragged it close to the set.
“Man looks like one of his beagles,” said Dennis.
“Hush,” said Darius.
President Johnson began by talking about the war in Southeast Asia. He said that he would immediately order a cessation of air and naval attacks on North Vietnam, except in the area north of the twentieth parallel. He went into an explanation of what this meant in terms of the conflict’s history and its progression. Then he indicated that he wanted to speak on something else. His face was somber but somewhat more relaxed than most Americans had seen it for some time.
“I will not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party. . . .”
“Damn,” said Dennis.
“Can’t believe it,” said Alethea.
“Man’s giving up,” said Derek. “You can see it on his face, though. He’s had enough.”
“So what fool we gonna get next?” said Dennis. “Nixon?”
“That won’t happen,” said Darius. “I got to believe, you get down to it, the people in this country are better than that. They get in the voting booth, they’re not gonna pull the lever for that man.”
“Unless they’re scared,” said Dennis.
“Scared of what?” said Darius.
“Everything,” said Dennis. “Us.”
Derek rubbed at his face. “Bobby Kennedy gonna step in now. You watch.”
“That would work,” said Darius. “He’s a politician like the rest of them. But his heart seems right.”
Alethea nodded. “Least there’d be hope.”
They sat there in the glow of the television screen, listening to their president. But soon their thoughts returned to the smaller, more manageable conflicts in their own lives. Derek thinking of his job. Dennis concentrating on his wrong companions and their plans, and, at the same time, his next high. Alethea worrying about her elder son’s future. Darius wincing at the sudden, sharp pain low in his spine.
He’d been getting these jolts lately, sometimes on his feet, sometimes while simply relaxing in his chair. A few days earlier, he’d noticed blood in his morning movement as well. There was something wrong with him, for sure. But what could he do? He still had to provide. His wife, God love her, couldn’t work any harder than she already did. They were in debt, as they had always been. He couldn’t afford to be sick, so there wasn’t any use in worrying about it either way.
“I’m going out,” said Dennis, getting up out of his seat.
“Where you off to?” said Darius.
“Out,” said Dennis, walking toward the bedroom he and Derek had once shared. “Twenty-seven years old, and you still quizzin’ me.”
“You stop acting like seven instead of twenty-seven,” said Darius, “I’ll stop quizzin’.”
“Darius,” said Alethea.
“Boy ain’t gone no further than a child.”
Dennis entered his bedroom and found a vial he kept underneath his socks in the top drawer of his dresser, beside a scarred-up baseball he’d had since he was eight. He and his father had played catch with that ball on summer evenings in the alley behind the house, as far back as ’48. He stared at the ball for a moment, then closed the drawer.
Dennis shook a red out of the vial, raised spit, and swallowed the pill. He left the apartment without a word to any of them, slipping out quietly, looking to pay his man for the reefer he’d sold, looking for the comfort he found on the street.
In
the kitchen, Alethea washed the dinner dishes and passed them to Derek, who dried them off with a towel. Alethea hummed a gospel tune he recognized as she handed him a wet plate. He wiped it hastily and slipped it, still damp, into a sun-faded rubber rack.
“You in a hurry?” said Alethea.
“I’m meeting someone,” said Derek.
“That little girl from Northeast, works in the beauty shop?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatever happened to Carmen?”
“She’s around. Finishin’ up over at Howard.”
“You ever see her?”
“Not lately.”
“Shame. Always liked Carmen. Good family, and a neighborhood girl, too.”
“Yeah, she’s good.”
“Nice girl like that, growing up right beside you. Sometimes you can’t see the good things ’cause they’re too close to your face. Like the story about that man, went all over the world looking for treasure, only to come back home and find —”
“Diamonds in his backyard,” said Derek. “I know.”
“Guess I’ve told you that one before.”
“You might have,” said Derek, smiling at his mother as his hip brushed against hers.
“Well, I hope you’ve been hearing me all these years.”
“It’s that brother of his who’s deaf,” said Darius, coming into the kitchen. He went to the old Frigidaire and grabbed a bottle of beer from the bottom shelf.
“He’ll find his way,” said Derek.
“He better start. ’Cause he sure ain’t found it yet.”
Darius got an opener out of a drawer and uncapped his beer. He had a pull from the bottle and drank off its neck. Derek put the last plate in the rack as Alethea dried her hands. The three of them stood in the closeness of the galley kitchen, a space that was tight and badly lit but was as comfortable to them as a warm glove.
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