by Sposs, Mike
"His name for me was inside out Oreo. But he would stand up for me if the other kids got too rough," Pat said softly.
"Yeah. He told me that and asked me since I was so blind to your features, if I ever noticed what good looks and a great ass you have," said Kevin.
Pat laughed loudly. She was clearly pleased. "So what did you say to that?" she asked.
"I told him I did notice just the other night when we were having intimacies. Then I told him I would tell you what he said within hearing of his spouse just to instigate some fun for him," Kevin replied.
"Kevin Kelly! Don't you dare do that! Having intimacies? Is that what we do? About half the women I know don't trust me as it is," she said, slapping at him.
"We did have a somewhat serious conversation about the biracial deal. He told me not to let what other people think affect me. He told me that we should get together with his wife. He said the two of us would get along just fine. He is also going to talk to the detective that has the Greenberg case just to see what he knows," Kevin said.
"I don't have any problem going out with them. I would love to see Willie again. I'm sure Sheila is nice too. I don't want to have a friendship with a couple based solely on the problems of biracial couples, though. It would be one of those kill me now things after a while," Pat said.
"I agree. All we can do is try it out and hope we have more in common than just that," Kevin replied.
"I did talk to Mr. Sharpe, too. I am going to do one of my lectures at his math club next Wednesday. Old Mr. Sharpe still is pitching me to become a teacher. He was surprised when I told him that I was smitten with you. He knew you were biracial and he didn't bat an eye or hesitate. He told me, no urged me, to do what made me happy. There is a guy that knows from his AA work that you can have a lifetime of regrets if you don't follow your heart," Kevin said.
Pat looked at Kevin intently. "You really are serious about me if you are running it up his flagpole already, aren't you? I know what his approval means to you Kevin," said Pat.
"He said a couple of interesting things beyond that too. He said that both your mom and dad lost their jobs over your conception. He said your dad's timing couldn't have been any worse. No unemployment, a known union organizer, being black in a world where lots of white veterans needed jobs. They both happened to work in an industry that was declining, and moving to the South. Then, the ultimate bad career move of screwing the help that happened to be white," Kevin said.
"I know all that, but it is hard for me to understand," Pat said.
"Do you know that in 1969, the year we graduated from high school, they were still fighting the integration battles in more than half the country? They were just starting to integrate the schools in Virginia. For example, we were a decade ahead of them, at least," Kevin said.
"Mr. Sharpe theorized that your dad knowing what his prospects were, decided that you guys were better off without him than with him. Maybe, he took off before you were born because he knew he wouldn't be able to do it once he laid eyes on you," Kevin said.
Pat teared up and said, "I still think it was selfish and irresponsible."
"We probably will never know what happened. I just want you to consider how tough it must have been. The facts are that the baby needed a roof over her head and food. The man may have been scared to death that his prospects for providing that were slim and none," Kevin said.
There was a long silence as Pat sniffled. Then she said, "Thank you Kevin. I know you care and are trying to help. You have helped. You have always been my biggest cheerleader, and I can't put a price on that except to say I am so grateful to have you in my life."
They talked more and finally got up again. Pat said, "I have to meet with my thesis adviser tomorrow and I don't want to look like I've been sleeping in my clothes. Can you give me a ride to my house? I should spend a night with my mom anyway."
Kevin knew he had to get some studying accomplished too. So, he rode her home and came back to the apartment to study. That night, he made another of his lists of things he should do and got the first good night's sleep he had since Pat and he had started sleeping together.
The next morning, he got up and started to do it all over again. He went to meet Matt for breakfast at the restaurant where Janet worked. "So, did you see my brother yesterday?" Janet asked as she poured him some coffee.
"Yeah I did! You didn't tell me I wouldn't recognize him. I can't believe the muscles on that guy," Kevin said.
"He spends a couple hours at the gym every day. Did he show you pictures of his kids too?" she asked.
"He did. You didn't tell me he went to the other side,” replied Kevin.
"I love the kids, they are so cute. I want to be the best auntie in the world. I don't really like that he has a white girl for a wife. I think when you do that, you're being selfish and not thinking of the kids. They are the ones that pay for it," Janet said firmly.
"I should confess to you that I've been shacking it with Pat Washington," Kevin said.
Janet set her coffee pot down. "Pat Washington from the old neighborhood? You went to the other side, too? What is it with you men? Always wanting stuff that ain't good for you. Don't be going no darker than her. You won't be able to keep up," she laughed.
"I wanted you Janet, but I knew I could never be enough man to please you. So, I settled for her," said Kevin.
"You got that right, white boy! You couldn't keep up. You might like trying. I know I wouldn't get anything out of it though," she shot back as Kevin laughed. She had her head wagging and her tail, too as she walked away.
Matt came in about that time and sat down in the booth. Janet greeted him and poured another cup of coffee. Then, she took their orders and headed back to the counter.
Matt held out an extended hand and said, "Hey, five days of being straight counting the time in detox. I am finally starting to lose my shake."
"Good going, Matt! I didn't know you were trying to do that. Just playing it out to see what kind of streak you can get,” encouraged Kevin.
"Yeah, I guess. I've been thinking I do want to get my hearing checked. Would you go with me down there?" Matt asked.
"Sure will! Let's eat and go down there before they get too crowded," Kevin said as he thought to himself that he better get on this before Matt changed his mind.
At the VA, they did a good job of handling walk-ins. In a matter of a few hours, they had tested him and found him to be eligible for a disability payment. Kevin was not that surprised. He knew a lot of the flight operations guys on carriers suffered hearing loss after being around jets for months and months. The VA just needed to get his records and verify them. It turned out there was a program for dental work for homeless veterans. Upon verification of his records, they could get his mouth worked on too.
After spending almost the whole day down there, Matt was getting a little strung out too, but he bore up to it amazingly well. In the course of evaluating him for the dental work, they asked about his drug & alcohol use. Kevin thought this might scare Matt into changing his mind. It didn't. He stayed with the questioning and saw it through. They gave Matt a phone number and told him to call back in a week. By then, they should be able to tell him what his disability status would be.
Finally, at the end of the day, they headed back downtown. Matt seemed to relax a little. Kevin bought him an early dinner & dropped him off at the hotel. They agreed to breakfast again the next morning. Kevin wasn't about to let up on Matt now.
25. Matt Avenue
After dropping Matt off, Kevin drove up to the old neighborhood and drove around somewhat aimlessly. He drove down the Avenue slowly just taking in how it had changed. When he got to where the grocery store that Sylvia lived above had been located, he slowed down even more. Once past that, he came to the parking lot for the funeral home. He pulled in and parked. Nothing to see but empty lots, Kevin thought. Then he looked around a little more and spotted the back way into the two McCann owned whorehouses on English Avenue. "
What the hell, there is nobody around. I am going to take a little walk," he thought to himself as he slid out of his old F-150.
Once out of the truck, he quietly made his way fifty feet up the alley that was one of the side boundaries to the lot. On one side, was a big back-filled masonry wall about eight feet high. Cut into it at alley level was a small narrow set of cement stairs leading up to the backyards of the two adjoining old houses. When he was a kid, Kevin used to cut through this way all the time.
Just as he did when he was a kid, he stopped and perused the back yard before going all the way up the stairs. Kevin used to do that all the time too because of the drunks that used to be passed out in the backyard of the whorehouses. The coast was clear, but still Kevin hesitated trying to recall all the details of what he took in from this vantage point when he was 14 or 15. The yard looked the same. There was even an old cast iron headboard for a bed, leaning against the side of the garage that Kevin would swear was the same one that had been there for over 12 years. He noticed that the house windows were boarded up. It looked like if you were real brave, you could force your way in through the basement windows in the back. They looked like they had been kicked in. It wasn't made for big people to squeeze through easily though.
Kevin retreated quietly back to his truck. He drove around to English Avenue. The whole block had been vacated. There wasn't going to be anyone around to see anything if he decided to poke around more. The city must have acquired the whole block for urban renewal. Like they always seemed to do, they let the houses sit idle for years before they got going on tearing them down. Usually, that gave people a chance to totally scavenge the houses for solid oak doors, brass, old chandeliers, and even complete stairs and banisters.
Once he saw that there wasn’t a soul around, Kevin was tempted to go explore inside the two houses. But before he did that, he wanted to round up some tools. As he sat there thinking, he made a little mental list of what he would want to have with him before crawling into the house. Flashlight, claw hammer, j-bar, step stool, and maybe a handgun, too. He wanted a faster way in & out of the house. He decided he would pry the covering plywood off the back door and go in that way. He would pry it open wide enough to make getting in and getting out reasonably easy.
Finally, he started the truck and headed out. He wandered over by William Bailey's house. It was starting to get dusky as he idled past his old house. Kevin pulled over to the curb just down from the house and looked at it. It was the same color, a little more dilapidated than it had been. Still had the same old chairs sitting on the porch. He eased out in the street and went to the end of the block and around to the alley in the back. He slowly tooled down the alley and checked out the garage. There was a beat up old car parked alongside the garage. Kevin stopped the car and quickly edged up to the driver's side door. The car was fitted with hand controls.
Kevin quickly went back to the truck, got in and rolled off. It appeared that Mr. Bailey was still alive and not kicking. He was definitely going to get a visitor in the personage of Kevin tomorrow. He slowly made his way back down to the Avenue, turned west and headed for the city limits.
Just outside of town, there was the sporting goods store where he had purchased the handgun years before. He parked in the lot, went inside and looked at the handguns they had for sale. He selected a short barreled, used stainless steel .357 magnum double action revolver. It was a slow Monday night for the shop owner. He was just minutes from closing time. The old owner looked out the window of the gun shop. The only car in the lot was Kevin's old truck.
"That you out there,” the man said thumbing at the truck.
"Yeah, that's me,” Kevin said.
"Tell you what. I know you ain't no damn cop. I never forget a face, and I know I have sold to you before. Give me $150 cash and I'll throw in a box of shells. I'll give you an untraceable version of this same gun. There will be no waiting period or paperwork. You cool with that?" he asked.
Kevin nodded and spent a moment looking the replacement gun over to make sure it was the same. He spun the cylinder, checked the ejector and hammer, and tried the trigger pull. He dry fired it to make sure the trigger pull was satisfactory. He looked down the barrel to check the rifling. The serial number had been ground off the frame. It was a done deal. He counted out seven twenties and a ten. Kevin stuck the revolver in his waistband and pulled his sweatshirt down over it. Then he grabbed the shells and headed out.
As he drove away, Kevin wondered why he didn't buy in a legitimate manner. He decided he just liked doing these things in a bad boy fashion. There was no reason for doing what he just did. When Kevin carried, he always got a certain feeling of bravado from doing it that is hard to describe. Just a certain "don't fuck with me" attitude that feels great. Kevin had the same old feeling now. He liked it, too.
When Kevin got home, he brought the gun upstairs and got out some cleaning supplies. He cleaned and oiled the gun, and loaded it. He went in his storage closet and selected the few tools he thought he needed. The gun and the tools were stuck in a small tool box Kevin owned. He latched the box and thought some more about what he intended to do. He studied a little more, had his nightcap and went to bed.
The next morning, he loaded up the tool box. He put it in the truck and headed up to have breakfast with Matt. Kevin carried on with Janet some more, too. Then he asked about the old houses on English Avenue that the McCanns used to have. Janet was a fountain of information. "The city bought the whole block. They are going to tear the houses down and build low income housing units. That will be better than having whorehouses there. When the McCanns got paid for the property, they bought their Stripper Bar. That was about three years ago," she said.
"Do you think they are still in the prostitution business?” Kevin asked.
"Sure they are. They do much better with the strippers though. They don't have nearly the trouble they used to have with vice squads and all that either. I am sure some of the strippers still turn tricks on occasion. I will ask Tammy about it. They are way more uptown, upscale and exclusive than they used to be. Just trying to put it in terms a schoolboy like yourself would understand," she said smiling.
Matt came in and they ate a quiet breakfast. "Just out of curiosity, do you know or remember anything from your days on the Avenue?” Kevin asked.
Matt told him how he used to get food from the shop owners at the end of the day. "Ray James that had the rib place used to give me a big takeout order of ribs just about every other night. The grocery store at the east end gave me produce every night along with loaves of bread and deli sandwiches. I ate good back then. Actually, I regained some of the weight I had lost when I was on hard drugs in Vietnam," he said.
"In those days, I generally slept in some of those bad order cabooses they had parked on the siding over by the river. They weren't bad. One of them still had an old stove in it I could fire up when it got real cold. Once you got it blazing, you had enough heat to keep the caboose 30 or forty degrees warmer than the outside temp for most of the night," Matt said.
Kevin smiled, "You make it sound like it was an adventure, not a struggle to stay alive."
"Those old guys that had those stores kept me alive. They fed me. On real cold nights, some of them also let me sleep in the back of the stores. They trusted me that much. They treated me better than my parents did. My parents wouldn't even let me come back home when I got out," Matt said angrily.
It was a chance for Kevin to ask about Matt's parents, and if he had any contact with them anymore. They spent a good hour talking about that. Matt hadn't seen his parents in years. He didn't even know if they were alive, didn't seem to care much either. He had a younger brother that was serving time in prison for armed robbery. He hadn't seen him in years, either.
Just to be perverse, Kevin told Matt that he would pick him up the next morning at the hotel and take him to breakfast somewhere new. Kevin was thinking they would eat at a restaurant closer to where Matt's parents had lived. Maybe, rev
isiting these places would help Matt get some perspectives on his life. Matt seemed to be game for it. So, they made some plans for the next day.
26. English Avenue
Kevin got in his ride and swung up to the old neighborhood. It was about 9am. He drove by William Bailey's house and saw the old guy sitting on the porch drinking a cup of coffee in a worn-out bathrobe. He nosed the truck to the curb, got out and strolled up to Mr. Bailey. "Hi, Mr. Bailey. Do you remember me? I used to be your paperboy about 11 years ago," Kevin started out. Mr. Bailey eyed him closely with tired old bloodshot eyes.
"I quit taking the paper years ago. They couldn't put it between the doors," replied Mr. Bailey.
"I used to put it between the doors all the time, and I always rang the bell only one time when I came here to collect," Kevin said with an amused grin.
Mr. Bailey looked him over more closely and said, “I do remember you now that I think about it. You were that skinny boy that carried the typewriter roller in your papers sack. I saw you hit the neighbor's Irish Setter with it when he chased after you one time. I always hated that dog cause he did the same thing to me when I went out to my car sometimes. I couldn't run away though. I complained but the owner didn't seem to care."
Kevin laughed, "I remember, I hit him and chased him up on the porch of that house. He jumped right through the screen door trying to get away from me. Then, thinking he was safe, he turned around to snap at me again. I hit him again right through the screen. I never saw the dog after that. It was early on a Sunday. He yelped like crazy and ran through the screen on the end of the porch.”
Mr. Bailey smiled, "I saw it all. You did nice work that time, boy. That motherfucker got rid of the dog after that. He wasn't happy about having to replace a couple of big screens, either."
There was a small lapse in their conversation. Kevin stepped right into the lapse and asked Mr. Bailey if he was the one that owned the labor newsletter at one time. Mr. Bailey nodded that he was. "I was a big labor guy. I lost my leg in a rail accident in 1950. I was a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the BSCP, until I slipped and lost my leg. I worked on the Empire Builder," he said.