And then one night, while writing an e-mail to hornyowl297, he received a message from the Otis Zeal algorithm. He’d already read dozens of little reports of Otis being arrested, tried, and sometimes convicted. The not-so-young delinquent popped up all over the boroughs. He’d married Brenda Redman, but five months later she’d filed for, and been granted, a restraining order against him. Their divorce came soon after that.
But that evening, while trying to explain to the postgraduate hornyowl297 that all math existed before human understanding, he received the notice of Otis’s death.
At a small graveyard called simply Final Rest, on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, the funeral and burial of Otis Zeal was held. The ceremony was scheduled for 7:15 a.m. Crash arrived at 6:27. The small chapel was empty, and so he took a seat at the back, in the third-to-last row. There he remembered the night he met Otis. There was the hello, the confession, and the kiss. It was a moment that happened outside of his head but was as important as the eternal resolution of pi.
“Who you, sugah?” a woman asked.
Crash looked up to see a dark-skinned woman wearing a black dress suit with a pale pink blouse underneath. There was a deep purple iris pinned to her lapel and a smile that Crash believed would never be far from her lips.
“Crash.”
“Not Percy Crash?”
“Uh-huh. That’s what Otis called me.”
“I’m Zenobia Zeal,” the woman said, taking Crash by the sleeve of his blue blazer. “You come up with me to the first row. I know that’s what my son woulda wanted.”
She dragged the shy professional cheater to the front of the first row of pews. The coffin had come while Crash was remembering.
“You know who I am?” the young man asked.
“Otis nevah stopped talkin’ ’bout you. He said that you gave him all this stuff and read to him from a book called Demon and that he told you just about everything and you didn’t laugh once.”
“Really?” Crash asked. He’d thought that the older boy had probably forgotten him.
“I’ll prove it.” Saying this, Zenobia Zeal pulled Crash from the front row to the side of the open coffin.
Otis looked very much the way he had when Crash last saw him. Only now he sported a thick mustache. He wore blue jeans and a pullover afghan sweater.
“That there sweater was the onliest wrap he never lost,” the ever-smiling mother said. “He told everybody that you was his best friend and that sometimes he’d come to see you on Horatio Street where you went to school. Nobody believed him though. We all thought he stole that sweater. But now here you are, his oldest friend, come to say goodbye to him.”
Tears glittered in the older woman’s eyes.
“How did my friend die?” Crash asked.
“Fightin’.”
“Over what?”
“You never knew with Otis. He was just so sensitive. He always thought that people was laughin’ at him or takin’ advantage. He always said that you were the only one to treat him like a human being. Why is that?”
Crash stared into the dark woman’s inquiring eyes and wondered about the question. He realized that she wanted him to share something intimate about her son, something uplifting.
“There’s something different about my brain,” Crash said, for the first time ever.
“Oh.” A flash of concern moved across Zenobia’s face.
“Not a disease or a condition,” Crash interjected. “It’s just that I think differently, and, in a way, Otis did too.”
Zenobia nodded sagely.
“And so when we talked,” Crash went on, “it felt like we understood each other. All the people in the world didn’t understand us, but there we were, like brothers really. I knew him better than I did my own brother.”
Zenobia took Crash’s hand in hers, making him think about his mother and the life she saved and about Otis and his heartfelt kiss.
Showdown on
the Hudson
How the whole thing started is a mystery to most people, even the police. But those of us who were around 145th Street and Broadway, up in Harlem, knew something new was happening the day Billy Consigas came to town. His mother had moved to New York from southern Texas to escape an abusive husband. “A roustabout name of Henry Ryder,” Billy told us.
And so Billy (who was fifteen at the time) was forced to leave his beloved Texas for Harlem. He didn’t like New York at first, said that there was no place to stretch your legs or keep a horse. Some of us used to make fun of him, but that never amounted to much because Billy was an honest-to-God, one-hundred-percent bona fide black Texas cowboy. He wore a felt Stetson hat that was almost pure white. From the band of his hat hung a tassel of multicolored triple-string beads that he said was a gift from his Choctaw girlfriend when he had to leave Texas, to come north. He wore fancy bright shirts with snap buttons made from garnet, topaz, and quartz. His jeans were always well worn and rough as sandpaper. And he boasted that he had cowboy boots for every occasion—from weddings to funerals.
He got in good with the girls because, before long, he had a job for the NYPD training their horses in a special area of Central Park. He’d take young ladies up there in the early hours of the morning and teach them how to ride. Nesta Brown told me that if a man takes a girl riding that morning, he will most likely be riding her that night.
She actually said most likely with a dreamy look in her eyes and a kiss on her lips.
Girls our age flocked around Billy, and I never heard one of them call him a dog.
The black cowboy also had the most beautiful pistol any of us had ever seen. It was a silvery Cowboy Colt .44 six-shooter etched with all kinds of designs and finished with a polished horn handle. The holster for this ten-inch pistol was black with silver studs. And even though I am no fan of Westerns, when I saw how fast Billy could draw I downloaded fourteen cowboy films.
Billy drawled when he spoke and respected everyone he met. He’d always take his hat off inside or when in the presence of a woman or girl. And he could fight like a motherfucker.
One time, over by the Hudson, uptown, this big dude was chasing down some man that he claimed owed him money. The big man caught the little one and started beating him. The poor guy fell to the pavement and was bleeding from his mouth and forehead. That’s when the big man started kicking him.
After two or three kicks, Billy Consigas walked up and said, “All right now, he’s had enough.”
When I tell you that the bully was big, I mean it in every way possible: he was tall and fat and had biceps almost the size of his head. But it wasn’t only that he was big; he was fast too. He hit Billy—who was five ten and 160 at most—right in the chest. Billy flew back and hit the wall behind him. We all thought that he was going to get himself killed.
The little man on the ground got up and started running.
Billy pushed off from the wall, took a deep breath, and then he smiled. Smiled!
“Fuck you, you grinnin’ fool,” the big man yelled, and then he ran right at Billy.
Billy kept on smiling. He didn’t move until the guy was almost on him . . . and then he did this amazing thing. He jumped half a step to the right, so that his attacker slammed into the wall. Then Billy jumped up on top of the guy and clamped his left arm around his neck. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the end of the fight right there. The big guy was twisting and jumping around but couldn’t throw Billy off, and Billy was steadily hitting him in the face with these wicked right uppercuts. He must have hit him two dozen times before the behemoth slumped down on the sidewalk. The bully tried to get up three times, but his legs were spaghetti and his shoes roller skates.
We never found out what happened to him because we heard sirens and scattered.
After that fight Billy became like a hero among the young men and women up around 145th. He didn’t consider
himself a leader, though, because of something he called the Cowboy Code. I never got all the ins and outs of that system, but it had something to do with being self-sufficient and treating all others equally. Leaders, he thought, were there only for the weak.
“Felix,” he said to me one late afternoon when I was showing him around Times Square, “a man has to stand up on his own two feet. The only leaders they should evah have is parents, teachers, and generals during time of war. Other than that we all just people come from our mothers and headed for the grave.”
Billy talked like that. He bought me a hot dog, and I paid for our tickets to the wax museum. We walked in the crowds of Times Square for hours. Billy was especially interested in the Singing Cowboy, who wore only a Stetson hat and underpants as he played the guitar and posed for photographs.
“What do you think about that?” I asked after Billy had stared at the street performer for at least three minutes.
“Like any other child’s cartoon on the television.”
It was somewhere past eleven in the evening when we decided to take the number one train back to Harlem. Billy had paid for our barbecue dinner. He told me that it was OK because the police gave him good money to train their horses.
When we were walking toward the train someone said, “I’ll be damned, a nigger in a cowboy hat. I never seen anything like that before.”
I turned first and saw a group of five young white men and three young women. They were maybe a year or two older than us. The guys sported new-looking blue jeans and fancy shirts like the ones Billy wore. The girls had on modern party dresses, slight and short. I was nervous because it was only the two of us against five of them, not counting the girls.
I say “against” because the leader, a tall and skinny white guy with a long and somehow misshapen face, had used the word nigger, and that word, in that tone of voice and that situation, meant conflict.
Billy turned and smiled. I had come to associate that expression with sudden violence. This mental connection only added to my fear.
“A peckawood with a problem,” Billy said jovially. “That’s more common than rattlesnakes down a prairie hole.”
“You sound like Texas,” the speaker of the group speculated.
“And you sound like horseshit.”
“Where you come from, boy?” the white youth asked.
“From a long line a’ men.”
In any other situation I would have run, but I didn’t want Billy to think less of me. So I squared my shoulders and wondered which one of the five I could get at before his friends got to me.
That was what Billy did: he made people happy and proud, brave and courageous—qualities that rarely served a poor black man or boy well.
“You think you man enough take us?” the leader asked.
“At five to two?” Billy asked. “All we got to do is stand our ground and we prove better than some gang a’ roughnecks.”
The leader smiled. That grin was a close relative of Billy’s violent mirth.
I realized that I was holding my breath.
“My name is Nacogdoches,” the white youth claimed. “Nacogdoches Early.”
“Billy.”
“You a cowboy, Billy?”
“I’ve been in a rodeo or two.”
This made me think of Billy taking down that giant on the Hudson. He wasn’t afraid because he’d brought down steers with that same hold.
“You got a gun?” Nacogdoches inquired.
Billy shrugged.
“You a gunslinger?” Nacogdoches said to Billy.
“Faster ’n you.”
The warped-faced white youth’s eyebrows raised, and his smile broadened.
“Is one of these fine ladies your girl?” Billy asked.
A strawberry blonde moved her shoulders in such a way as to indicate that she was the one.
“No bullets,” Billy said, as if they had already agreed on the gunfight. “Just a video camera in case it’s a close call. If you win, I’ll spit-polish your green boots right on that corner. I’ll just wear my long johns and hat at high noon on a Saturday. If you lose, that pretty girl will agree to have dinner with me at the place and time of my choosin’.”
The girl tried to frown, but instead a smile grazed her lips. She wasn’t really that pretty, I thought, but had the kind of face that you’d want to nod to at a party or if you sat near each other on a subway train.
Nacogdoches was biting his lower lip.
“OK,” he said at last. “When and where?”
“There’s a youth center up on Sixty-Third,” I said. “Lazarus House. We do it there in three days at ten at night.”
In spite of the offer, my plan was simply to get away.
The principals agreed, and I gave Nacogdoches the address.
“What kinda crazy luck you have to have that you run into another cowboy with a six-shooter somewhere in the middle of a million people?” I asked Billy on the number one train.
“It’s the bright lights,” the black cowboy opined.
“What?”
“You know a cowboy loves the stars more than anything. He’s drawn to the lights like a moth to fire. Times Square is bright like the heavens come down to the ground. And you know two cowboys will see each other. No, no, Felix. It would be a wonder if we didn’t meet up sooner or later.”
“We don’t have to do this thing, Bill,” I said. “We just don’t show up, and it’ll all blow over.”
“Maybe so,” he said, “but we will be there.”
All the youngsters in our neighborhood knew about the showdown, as Billy called it, scheduled for Wednesday night. They gossiped about it and bragged on their black cowboy hero.
In the interim, I saw Billy every day because I was his assigned tutor.
“Hello, Felix,” Mrs. Consigas greeted me on that Wednesday afternoon. She was a dark-skinned black woman with a young face. “You’re a little early, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s that you’re carryin’?”
“My uncle’s video camera.”
“What for?”
“My sister’s in a dance recital after, and I’m going to video it for my mother. She works nights.” It was all lies, but Marion Consigas didn’t know my mother or my sister.
“You’re a good boy, Felix Grimes.”
I spent the next two hours trying to teach Billy about variables in algebra. I was a good student, and as far as school went, Billy was dumb as a post; he said so himself.
“It takes me a long time to get the idea,” he said to me at our first tutoring session, “but once I got it, it’s there forever.”
He didn’t talk about the showdown at all. I told six friends where it was happening: five guys and Sheila Grant, a girl I wanted but who only had eyes for the Harlem Cowboy, Billy Consigas.
Billy struggled through the workbook lesson, and somewhere around seven o’clock he said, “Time to go.”
We all—Billy, me, Sheila Grant, and five others—arrived early. My brother Terrence, who worked at Lazarus House as a nighttime security guard, was waiting at the side entrance. He told us that Nacogdoches was already inside with his posse.
My brother was nineteen, three years older than I. He was nervous, but Billy ponied up twenty dollars for the use of the gym, and Terrence was always looking for more money.
Nacogdoches was there with the same group of friends. This detail said something about the ugly southerner that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
While I set up the tripod and videocam, Billy and Nacogdoches decided on the rules.
“Best out of three,” the white cowboy said.
“And we check to make sure that each other’s gun is empty before each duel,” added Billy.
“Duel?” Nacogdoches sneered. “What are you some
kinda English faggot?”
“I am what I am,” Billy said, “and that’s more than enough for you.”
Nacogdoches frowned and balled his fists. Billy wasn’t school-trained, but he once told me that all true cowboys could sing and were poets. The white gunslinger couldn’t match him with words, and so he said, “Thalia will count. On three we draw.”
Billy nodded, no longer smiling.
The duelists checked each other’s guns and then took their places six steps apart. The white guy had a mean look on his face. Billy was as peaceful as moonlight on the Hudson. He wasn’t actually a handsome youth, but Billy had a look that made you feel like there was something good somewhere, something you could depend on.
Thalia, that was Nacogdoches’s girl, counted out loud. When she got to three, Nacogdoches slapped his brown leather holster, coming up with his black iron gun at incredible speed. But when we looked at the replay it was obvious, even to Nacogdoches’s friends, that easygoing Billy had his piece out first. The black cowboy’s movements were fluid, seamless.
Nacogdoches was slower on the second draw. We didn’t even have to look at the replay.
After that Billy started undoing the leather string that laced the bottom of the black and silver holster to his right thigh.
“What you doin’?” the white cowboy complained.
“Two outta three,” Billy said.
“I want the last draw.”
“Why?”
“You scared?” Nacogdoches asked in a taunting tone.
Billy smiled and shook his head. He tied the lace again, and I turned on the camera.
“One,” Thalia said, and a sense of doom descended upon me.
“Two,” she pronounced. It struck me that this last contest meant far more than two young men proving themselves.
“Three.”
Nacogdoches was faster this time. He grabbed his piece and had it out like a real gunslinger in a fight for his life.
But Billy was faster still. On the video replay he had the silver gun out and had played like he was fanning the hammer with his left hand before Nacogdoches had his barrel level.
The Awkward Black Man Page 17