“Well, as soon as possible,” the man said. “Can you come Friday?”
“Yes, Friday is fine.” He tried to keep his voice flat. Another one. “We’ll come Fridays, and you can send checks to 2897 Picasso Street. Payment is once a month, and please call me if you have any trouble.” Darnell spoke slowly, concentrating the way he still had to each time.
“Picasso Street?” the man said. “Isn’t that on the Westside?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I thought you guys were Oriental. I bet you want to get out of a minority area like that. Pretty rough in a black neighborhood.”
Darnell’s face and neck prickled. “Yeah. We’re moving soon. Very soon.” After he’d hung up, he saw Charolette unfolding the towels Brenda had stacked on the couch. “Daddy talking?” She imitated his clipped voice. “We moving soon?”
“You ain’t gotta talk like that,” he said roughly. “Leave the towels alone before I get mad.” He stared at the laundry, at her round face set hard under the held-still eyebrows. “Oh, you pissed?” he said. “Let’s go look at a washing machine for Mama.”
“Move, Daddy?” she asked again, since it had bothered him when she said it the first time. When he tried to take the towels away, she said angrily, “Move, Daddy!” and shoved him. He pretended to fall over on his back, and then he caught her on his chest to tickle her, so she couldn’t get away.
WILD WILD WEST
“OVER THE BRIDGES AND through the hood to Charolette’s house we go,” Darnell sang, and Charolette clutched the purple hair ties she’d found at the market.
Brenda had told him to buy good coffee. When he pulled into the driveway of the house and parked behind the chalky-dusted Spider, she came out onto the porch.
Dry grass tufts still covered the yard, and he was embarrassed when she said, laughing, “Where’s my landscape maintenance?” But the owner of the house had been gone for months by the time Mr. Nard showed it to them. Darnell tried to water every day now.
Charolette ran right up on the porch steps. The house was old, dark-blue painted wood, with deep eaves over the porch. The windows were still bare, since Brenda hadn’t had time for curtains. Charolette went straight to her own room, with the twin bed.
The windows were the main reason Mrs. Batiste was coming today, but Brenda was nervous because her father had said he might come, too. “He wasn’t thrilled that we picked this address,” she said, wiping down the kitchen counter. The kitchen was dusty, but bigger than the apartment’s.
“Is that right?” he teased her. Then he said, seriously, “Hey, Pablo Street ain’t Jackson Park, okay?” He pushed her gently into the living room, where a soot-stained fireplace was empty. “We can have some nice, controlled flames this winter, when you skinny again and the baby’s sleepin back there.”
She looked around the room at the couch and table, ducked her head. “It’s not like the apartment,” she said, finally. “I mean, I’d hardly never spent the night away from my parents and you took me to this bare little place and said, ‘We gon live here.’ Remember?” She watched him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I never thought about it like that. Hey, I didn’t want to think about it—just wanted to do it. Been a while now.” He folded his arms. “You sure you want to live on the Westside? My hood?”
She smiled. “It used to be mine, too.”
She’d changed into her flowered sundress and sandals. Charolette brought out the hair ties onto the porch, and when Darnell went to check the oil in the El Camino, he heard the three little girls next-door jumping rope. Teneya, Alliane, and Tracey, Charolette had told him. Their braids flew and slapped their shoulders.
“I got places to park my cars,” Darnell said to Brenda, who smiled. “I can park my women in separate bedrooms now. Oh, yeah.” He sat next to her. “Your old hood. Your pops left long ago. But now you got my moms within walkin distance, you got Sophia and Paula and Hollie. Charolette in girl heaven. Only thing your pops could get mad about is we ain’t got no property value—black neighborhood and all like that.”
“Shut up,” she said.
He laughed. “Just playin, baby. I know your heart was always on the Westside, hidin in the bushes, waitin for me to come and get it.” She hit him on the shoulder as she watched Charolette stare at the girls.
“Oh Mary Mack-Mack-Mack, all dressed in black-black-black, with silver buttons-buttons-buttons, all down her back-back-back…” the girls sang.
“The store up by our house never carried hairdress,” Brenda said, watching for the car. “Never had Pickapeppa, and Mama had to come here to get it for my dad.”
The New Yorker cruised slowly to the curb, and they both stood up. Brenda’s mother got out, looked into Darnell’s eyes, and smiled carefully, straight across her lips, over a pie plate.
Darnell grinned and said, “You come to baptize the house?”
“Sweet potato,” she said, kissing Brenda’s cheek. “Where my baby?” She turned back and said, “Darnell, it’s coffee, good coffee, in there, and some other things.”
“Just hide that pie, or I won’t get a piece,” he said. “Brenda into the eat-it-all month, whatever month that is. And Charolette a greedy pig.” He went out to the car door, thinking he’d have to lean politely near the window, but Mr. Batiste was getting out.
“Got plants, coffee, measurin tape, a whole damn store in here,” he said, but when Darnell opened his mouth, he saw that Mr. Batiste was looking past him. He heard Brenda come out onto the porch, felt Charolette’s fingers pushing at the bend of his knees.
“Who that, Daddy?” she said.
Mr. Batiste tightened his lips and said, “Brenda don’t look like she starvin,” when his wife came to the sidewalk.
“I got y’all some roses,” she said, ignoring him.
“They ain’t buyin, they rentin,” Mr. Batiste said.
“And that’s not good enough, right?” Brenda called. She folded her arms, which made her stomach protrude even more.
Darnell saw that her father couldn’t look at her for long. Charolette studied Mr. Batiste’s face briefly and then turned to poke at the box.
“I’ll be back,” Mr. Batiste called to his wife, and Darnell thought he would get into the car again, but he started walking down Pablo Street.
“Go with Gramma,” Darnell told Charolette, setting the box on the sidewalk, and he caught up at the third house.
Mr. Batiste studied the fences, the yards, the cars, and Darnell stayed even with him. What the hell, he thought. Cojones. Say what you want now, cause we been gettin along fine without the man. He thought of Brenda’s eyes, how she’d swept the sidewalk this morning until dust swirled in her bangs.
“Lotta Mexicans moved in since you left, huh?” he said. “Everybody gotta be an immigrant sometime.”
Mr. Batiste glanced at him. “I drive through here now and then, but I ain’t studied the percentages.”
Darnell smiled. They passed the truck on the corner with a bumper sticker that read “COLGADORES—DRYWALLERS” and “YO ♥ MEXICALI.” “How you like my guys doin your yard?” he asked.
Mr. Batiste kept his eyes on the house to his left. “One of em left a few marks on my back fence, from that wire whacker.”
Darnell nodded and they crossed Eighteenth Street. Snooter cruised past with a woman, driving her Honda, and he waved at Darnell. Behind him was Mr. Moncrief, in his ancient Catalina, the one all the lowriders kept begging him to sell. He pulled slowly to the curb and said, “Etienne?” in that Louisiana voice.
Darnell hung back after he’d nodded to Mr. Moncrief. He leaned on a fence, near the chain-link gate at the corner where he turned each day. He looked for the greens tree at Victor’s sister Soma’s house, on this street, and at Mrs. Strozier’s. Floyd King had always grown them in pots and given or sold them to people. The plants clambered up walls and fences and stucco, their stems thickening to trunks with circling marks where the collard leaves had been plucked off.
The pla
nts liked chain link best. Air circulating, Mr. King said.
“Check out the craftsmanship,” Darnell said when Mr. Batiste came back and kept walking. He pointed to a low block wall set with huge sunbursts of white iron rays, spiked and arcing.
“You gotta paint iron every year,” Mr. Batiste said. “Block walls all they buildin in them new tracts.”
“Yeah,” Darnell said. “That’s where most of my business is, out there near Grayglen.” They turned down Pablo again.
“Your guys, huh,” Mr. Batiste said. He sucked at his cheeks. “Indians own all the motels now. Orientals got the markets.”
“Asians,” Darnell said.
“Whatever they are, they save their money. And you two got kids now; you can’t save no money,” Mr. Batiste said harshly, still not looking at Darnell’s face. “But y’all gotta learn that the hard way. No college. No plan. You didn’t have to get married. That was back in my time, when people still gave a good goddamn.”
“You see em starvin?” Darnell said. “You think your daughter ain’t got the sense to leave if she ain’t happy?”
“I ain’t hardly here to discuss her lack of sense,” Mr. Batiste said. He leaned up against the New Yorker now, and Darnell stood on the sidewalk, his arms folded.
“You used to live in Gray Hollow,” Darnell said.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t live there no more.” He remembered No More, Louisiana, and stared at the narrow, arched mouth.
“Nope. What you gettin at?”
“I used to live up in the mountains. I don’t live up there now.”
Mr. Batiste twisted his lips slightly. “I thought you wanted to be a fireman. Big plans.”
“I do,” Darnell said, digging his thumbs into his ribs. “But I’m kinda busy now.” He felt the angry knuckles. “Managing my ducats the best I can and tryin to be a daddy. Hard work.” He walked into the yard and saw three faces in the screen.
After Brenda had gone to bed, he lay on the couch, staring at the empty fireplace. The evening was warm, but he crumpled up the newspapers they’d used to pack boxes, and he pushed them hard under the old andirons. They burned fast and silent, and he sat in the dark, watching the yellow fire die to faint-breathed spongy red. When he was small he used to imagine that the tight-packed embers were a body disintegrating, the blood fading dark.
The phone rang, and he said automatically, “AnTuan’s Landscape.”
“Uh, yeah, I’m lookin for Darnell.”
“Louis?” Darnell held the phone hard on his ear.
“Yeah.” Darnell could hear other voices around Louis. “Man, you know I ain’t used this phone one time since I been here?”
“You okay?” Darnell asked.
“Yeah,” Louis said. “I just… I might get out in a few months. They talkin about early release, you know, cause the flock in here gettin large.” Louis paused. “But I might need a place. I mean, I can’t just go up north, cause they won’t let me out unless I got a place and a job.” Before Darnell could speak, he rushed on, his voice much faster than usual. “I know y’all in that one-bedroom, but I could sleep in the El Camino, man. I just don’t want to stay nowhere on the Westside, cause I don’t feel like hearin the questions.”
“Homey, man, me and Brenda moved. We got a house, got two bedrooms,” Darnell said, hearing the sparkling sound the ashes made when they shifted. “But we on Pablo Street, man, way down past the Stroziers.”
Louis puffed out breath in a tiny laugh. “Shit. You must be doin okay in the yards, D.”
“Yeah.” Darnell waited. He knew Louis didn’t want to stay on the Westside not just to avoid the raised eyebrows, but to avoid his father. “When you gettin released?”
“I’m not sure, man.” Darnell heard Louis move his mouth away, then bring it close again. “I’ma call you back, okay? Tell Brenda hey,” he said, and he hung up.
The fireplace was gray. Darnell slid into the sheets beside Brenda, who opened her eyes. “Who’s calling about a yard so late?” she murmured.
“Louis,” Darnell said, his hands behind his head on the pillow. He could smell the water drying off the rock-hard ground of the yard. “He’s gettin out pretty soon. He might need a place to stay.” He wondered what she would say—she’d always turned her mouth tender for Louis, but now he’d done time.
“Here?” she said, still low. “But you never found out what happened. What about Leon and them?”
Darnell watched the pattern of the palm fronds shift across the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said.
He looked for them at Jackson Park a few times when he picked up Victor and Ronnie. Brother Lobo said, “I see Leon driving, driving, but he doesn’t seem to want to linger. He conducts his business near the alley.”
Darnell saw the crowd of men on the porch, saw two women walking up the alley toward the vacant lot. Leon was supposed to be out of street level, he thought. He shook his head. I don’t even want to think about it.
He didn’t see Leon’s Bronco for a few weeks, and Louis didn’t call back. The green that had sprouted like whiskers in the fields and on the hillsides turned neon bright after the rain, but days passed, and the lacy filaree and wild oats that were so lush began to bend limp and silver.
The fire season would be starting. Darnell shaped the branches of Mrs. Tribeleaux’s olive tree with his father; she liked them trimmed every few weeks into bonsai puffs. Roscoe was helping Marietta Cook paint all her window sashes blue, like he did every spring, and while Darnell watched the soft gray leaves scatter, he wondered if Louis would ever just call Roscoe, tell him he wanted to start from day one, right now, this minute.
His father sat in the shade to drink some water, and Darnell raked the small pile. “You gon be like them people in Sweden every winter?” his father said abruptly, and Darnell looked up, surprised.
“What?”
His father wiped at his neck with a bandanna. “They get some kinda chemical depression during their winter, cause they don’t get enough sunlight. I can’t remember the name. But I been seein you for three, four winters now, and you love that cool weather. When you came down from Conservation Corps, when you came down from Forestry, you were always lookin for rain. Now as soon as it turns hot, you get that long face. You start thinkin about what you gon miss up there when a nice dry wind blows through all that brush.”
Darnell threw the rake onto the truck and leaned against the door. “Sorry. Ill try to look grateful to have a gig.”
His father didn’t frown at the disrespectful tone. He drank the last of his water and said, “When you were little, you used to hate the rain, hate bein cooped up all winter. All you boys did. First hot day, y’all were out there runnin around the lots with your shirts off.”
They rode silently down the street, and when they reached his father’s yard, Darnell opened the door. His father said, “I was just watchin you, tryin to think about how you’d feel doin fire-season clearing. We got all Cacciotti’s land to do next couple of weeks. Probably depress you more, but it’ll put money in your pocket. Brenda’s talkin about a dresser.”
Darnell stood with his hand on the door handle. “Yeah. I’ll practice smilin, too.” He looked away from his father.
When the route was finished for the day and Juan and José had dropped off the truck, he washed it and the El Camino, watching the trickle in the dusty driveway, and then he sprinkled the still-sparse grass.
The sky was black with clouds when he walked back to his father’s to pick up Charolette; he was early, and she loved to walk instead of drive. She stopped, holding his hand, to stare into the early dark, and then she bent to study the few drops that fell onto the sidewalk. “Don’t worry, Daddy,” she said, looking up at him. “Just a polka-dot rain.”
It was the last one, only spattering on the cement downtown when they picked up Brenda, her belly rounded slightly now under her dress. At home, he sat on the steps, but the drops never joined into a sheen over the asphalt. And by the fi
rst week of May the sky was white with morning heat. The ground was eased dry, the wild oats tall enough now to bend limp to the ground.
He and José walked alongside a field to the back of a gas station. The owner had asked him to check on all three stations and give him a bid for maintenance; then Darnell had to drop José at home and meet his father so they could start the fire-season clearing.
Darnell and José weeded the neglected banks in front between the sidewalk and pumps, and then they turned up the rock-hard dirt on the narrow strip around back, where the planter edged the chain link and the field. “He wants grass,” Darnell told José, who nodded. He would seed it.
José still didn’t talk, didn’t even try, and Juan worried aloud to Darnell that he might get tired of José’s silence, take it for indifference, and fire him. “Not me,” Darnell told Juan. “I ain’t into palaver.” When Juan cocked his head in question, Darnell said, “I like José, okay?”
He did. He had to give the man props. Respect. He didn’t feel like talking. Ever again, it seemed. So he didn’t. He listened, he understood what Darnell said well enough to do his job; he spent his time thinking. Darnell liked to work with José, in silence, so he could blur his eyes and see something besides the same lawns and flower beds.
He drove toward the Westside. Louis had never talked much, either. Maybe he and Louis could do a lot of the side jobs; Victor and Ronnie couldn’t say he wasn’t hiring a brother, and they couldn’t get hot about Darnell helping a brother who’d just done his time.
Darnell parked on his father’s street. José and Juan had left in AnTuan’s truck. Looking at his father’s yard, Darnell saw Roscoe sitting at the old wooden cable holder they used as a table. I’m not sayin anything yet, he thought. But I wouldn’t mind workin with Louis; I wouldn’t have to yang like with Victor and Ronnie. Melvin used to yang, too. Me and Louis more like relatives. Crazy cousins. Birdman and Nature Boy.
He shook his head and walked across the street. Roscoe saw him and said, “I thought you were bringing your crew. We gotta get started. I got enough doughnuts for them, too.”
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 37