by Tayari Jones
Booker was standing next to his protégé, Charlotte Johnson. She was the one who actually ran things and came up with all those innovative ideas. Booker just took what she said and packaged it as his own. He gestured toward her, and Lorraine thought she saw the young woman flinch. She wasn’t sure if she should feel jealousy or pity for Charlotte. Did Charlotte know what she and the mysterious writer of the letter knew?
She turned back to the lavender suit swinging from the hanger. She had designed it herself, imagining it as a nod to Jackie Kennedy, the first lady of all first ladies. Now, Jackie knew that being a first lady was all about keeping secrets and looking good at the same time.
Right there in the living room, Lorraine stripped down to her bra and panties, put on her suit, and stood before the mirror. She tugged at the hem to make the fabric lay flat. She turned to assess herself from every angle, and from every angle the suit appeared homemade. She looked like she had in grade school when there was no money to buy off-the-rack and her mother made do with needle and thread. Surely it would look better once she finished ironing out the seams. But what was the point? How had she come so far to get nowhere?
She lifted her chin and the ghostly imprint of Booker’s fingers peeked out just above the collar. How could a bruise left years ago still be there? She thought of Jonathan and his promise to take her away from all of this.
At that moment, there was another knock at the door.
“Jonathan,” Lorraine whispered. She nearly tripped over the cord of the iron as she ran for the door. “You came back for me.”
She snatched the door open and there stood the Witnesses, prim and proper in their Sunday best.
“Do you know where you will be spending eternity?” the taller of the two women asked in a soft voice. She held a copy of their magazine out to Lorraine.
Lorraine looked past them, hoping Jonathan was there too. But of course he wasn’t. Why would he be? “No, I don’t,” she answered under the eager gaze of the proselytizers.
The smile on the Witnesses’ faces melted into frowns of sadness.
“Too bad for me,” Lorraine added before they could speak another word. She stepped back and closed the door.
The Fuck Out
by John Holman
East Lake Terrace
Here’s a word: glorious. That’s how it feels for Blur to be back. It’s Friday! Folks standing around drinking in Uncle Card’s yard, some sitting at the picnic table, some gathered near the shedding magnolia. Bobby “Blue” Bland on the boom box, pickups in the driveway and on the shoulder in front of the house. After work for these dudes. Blur, first weekend out of jail in six months of fall and winter and now it’s springtime! Bobby “Blue” Bland! Snort! Because Blur and Uncle Card are of the Blue family and Blur is tired of the Prince music Joyce has been playing, and anyway for Blur this is like a family reunion. No relation to Bobby Bland, nobody thinks. Uncle Card and Blur, and Joyce, and Uncle Ron and Uncle Red who run the funeral home. Blur’s mama down the road. Uncle Card the so-called black sheep ’cause he runs a liquor house. Ron and Red don’t come nowhere near here. Busy with the bodies and the respect. Joyce has been playing Prince nonstop. Dead Prince.
But Blur is not in the yard right now, though he can hear the music outside. He’s in Uncle Card’s dark kitchen rummaging through shaky drawers and pressboard cabinets for a lock Card wants for the cage out front for some reason. He called from Augusta a half hour ago. Blur doesn’t have any money to buy a lock, and he’d have to walk to the store, unless Joyce, his aunt, his mom and Card’s younger sister, lets him borrow hers. And it might rain. “Got a surprise,” Card said.
The kitchen has dark, fifty-year-old linoleum on the floor and dark, fifty-year-old cabinets and counters, and a couple of drawers that will fall completely out if you’re not careful when you open them. Some hardly open at all. He rummages, finds screws, nails, thumbtacks, Post-it notes, twist ties, cleaning products, rubber gloves, plastic bags, rags, paint cans. He finds an old combination lock, locked, with no combination code on the back. There’s a padlock with no key and that’s too small, anyway. He looks through the back door to the screened back porch. There might be something in the tool chest out there. No. Just wrenches, hammers, and sockets. Back in the kitchen, a brown roach runs up the faded curtain over the sink window. Blur was supposed to spray insecticide while Card was gone. He swats hard at the roach with a folded magazine from the dinette table and the curtain rod falls. He reaches to put it back. He’s cracked the pane. Maybe nobody will notice for a long time. The insecticide canister, like a big oxygen tank with a nozzle and hose, is on the porch, but first he’d better take a trash bag and clean up the empties out front, then figure out the lock—borrow money from Joyce, get a ride to the store. Or walk. After, he can spray the fucking roaches. Jail was full of them. And mold. And lice, which is why Blur is bald. It’s 6:05, according to the clock over the stove, and it’s still light outside, but getting dark soon, and the rain that could happen has dimmed things already. Patchy, itchy-looking clouds over the sun. Hopefully, Card is just now leaving Augusta, two hours away.
He takes a trash bag outside, maneuvers around the guzzlers gathered about, and grabs the empties off the picnic table. Then, just as Blur spots the doctor and his old drunk beagle walking down the road, Smack! A side glimpse and Blur sees Teddy fall like something big and heavy off a truck, or out of a tree. Thump! Facedown in the new grass.
“Shit!” yells Blur. “You just got knocked the fuck out!”
Big dumb-ass Wheatbread stands over Teddy, fist still clenched. Other guys whoop or don’t do nothing, keep standing around like only the wind is different. Which it is, a little. Teddy, knocked the fuck out. The doctor half drags his beagle, Poon, into the yard, which looks 80 percent better since Uncle Card put in some seed and planted red and yellow flowers here and there. Still some dirt spots.
“Dudes,” the doctor says, “help the man.”
“Could be dead by now,” old man Word in a lawn chair says.
Somebody else says, “Can’t help him, then.”
“Motherfucker, stop messing with me,” Wheatbread mumbles, pouting.
Teddy stirs down on the ground among tossed beer cans and pony-size liquor bottles. He scoots up on his hands and knees, huge yellow work boots trembling at the end of his wobbly pant legs. Might be having a seizure.
“You all right?” says the doctor, bending with his hand on Teddy’s shoulder. The doctor hardly ever stops by to hang out. Drinks at home. Does some kind of CDC work. Poon wanders the length of his leash, pees on a dead azalea at the porch corner. That azalea didn’t make it. Blur missed Poon. Old Poon. A lemon-squeeze dog. Face whiter than dumb-ass Wheatbread’s. First time Blur met the doctor he told him about his own sweet beagle he had years back. How if nobody could find Blur, like his old lady back then, all they had to do was follow his dog. Too good of a damn dog.
“God a’mighty,” Teddy says, like mud’s in his mouth. But it’s blood, where he got his lip busted or he bit his tongue or both. Tooth loose? He wags his head like a big sick cow. Teddy’s a thick brother. He lets the doctor hold his arm while he scrambles to his feet. Shakes himself, and the doctor stumbles back. Drops the dog leash. Poon is under the picnic table nosing the dirt. “Fuck you,” Teddy mumbles. To the doctor? Can’t tell. The doctor chuckles.
“Called me Whitebread,” Wheatbread says. “Too many times.”
Teddy swallows hard and frowns. “Hagh,” is the sound he makes next. “Fuck you, Whitebread.” Now he laughs and then throws back his head and growls like a lion. Or a bear. Mouth looks like he’s been eating an animal. Wheatbread’s ears go red. But the doctor is between them. Not the ears . . . but maybe. Maybe the only one besides Uncle Card who can stop a fight around here. Maybe Joyce. Blur without his taser today, which he could zap a nigga with if he had it. Growllll! Teddy with his shoulders hunched back and his face at the sky, eyes like he’s looking at something, but nothing’s there except a b
ird and a plane. Gray clouds. He staggers and lurches out to the road, Growllll! a few more times before he sits down on the middle line, legs stretched out in front of him. Gotta be free, Blur gets that. Blur can see him between Birdie’s black Ram and old man Word’s green no-name truck. Maybe two cars come by, each way, and steer around him. There’s speed bumps now, anyway. That happened while Blur was inside.
“Doctor,” Blur says, “buy me a beer!” shaking an empty OE waist high.
“Buy me one,” the doctor says. Ball cap pulled down low to his sunshades. Got on some mint-green cargo shorts and a Bob Marley T-shirt. Hundred-dollar tennis shoes, Blur bets. Blur already owes him money, or maybe he doesn’t. Hard to know if the doctor expects Blur to pay him back from all the times he’s bummed a couple of bucks off him. Doc doesn’t even look sorry anymore when Blur comes to his door and says his mama’s in the hospital and he needs bus fare to go see her. Last time he rolled his eyes and just gave Blur a five. Blur’s mama is all right, but she does get sick sometimes. Blur thinks, I guess Doc ain’t missed me while I was inside. Hard to tell if he really wants a beer, either.
“Let me borrow Poon,” Blur says.
“So you can sell him?”
“My little girl wants a dog. I’m gonna make her think I got her one and then say it ran away. You’ll get Poon back. Just a loan. It’s her birthday next week.”
“Shut up, Blur,” Joyce says. She pats Poon’s head over at the picnic table, where Wheatbread is now. “You always using shit that ain’t yourn.”
“You got a little girl?” the doctor says.
“Might as well be mine,” Blur says.
“Humph,” Joyce says. She has an arm sleeved with silver and copper bracelets to her elbow. Don’t know how she can stand that, Blur thinks. Reminds him of handcuffs. She wears a new big braid across her head like a basket handle. Joyce is his aunt but they’re about the same age, thirty-six for Blur. A little sweet on the doctor. A little sweet on Prince too, must be, in her satiny purple shirt. Been crying. Around last Labor Day, she spent days painting the picnic table all kinds of colors so she’d be outside whenever the doctor walked by with Poon. “Poon!” she’d sing. “Hey, Doctor, how you doing?” Took to taking her own walk early in the morning, but couldn’t go on pretending she was out for her health with Poon stopping every few feet to smell something in the ditch. Pee on something and take a shit. Her out there in leopard-print slippers and sexy sparkly tights. Had to just walk on and leave the doctor behind. The picnic table does spruce up the yard. Blue benches with yellow legs; red, yellow, and blue-painted planks on the table.
Joyce’ll never get no doctor, though, is what Blur believes, no matter how she smiles that gap-tooth mouth or slicks her side hair into flat sideburns. Wheatbread is on her case pretty hard, anyway. And the doctor’s got white chicks coming and going from his house like he’s running a coffee shop outta there. Funny, the doctor likes white chicks, or don’t mind them, and big dumb Wheatbread, looking as white as his dead white daddy, likes black-as-midnight Joyce, who likes the doctor, who happens to be one them pecan brothers. Most of the crowd is dark as Jamaicans, though. Maybe two or three straight-up Africans come by sometime. Since Katrina, way back awhile now, all kinds wash up here.
What does Blur like? Beer and pussy, and don’t care what brand, either one. They call him Blur because of his thick eyeglasses. Bottle bottoms. But he can see with them. He can see who is drinking what and he can spot possible pussy.
Beer is plentiful but pussy is scarce. Chicks come by on Saturdays, mostly, but with other dudes or dude-like chicks. And Uncle Card keeps strict inventory on the beer, with Joyce’s help. Stingy Joyce. Blur is the runner—he goes to the store and gets supplies—and Joyce and Uncle Card are the cashiers. Blur can’t even drink a free beer and he lives there, even though he’s the one that goes down to Kroger to get the cases Card sells to these fools. At least he got the job back after getting out, and at least he can still stay with Uncle Card in exchange for working for him. He can’t live with his mama, who’s bossier than Joyce and Card. A lot of these guys bring their own quarts and half-pints, and that’s all right because they run out quick and buy Card’s anyway before too long. Blur might get a beer off one or two of them, like a tip. He has to borrow Card’s truck to get to the store.
The doctor rounds up Poon. “Where you been, Blur? Ain’t seen you,” he says.
“Had to go away for a minute. Parole violation. You didn’t know?”
“Damn, Blur. Welcome back.”
“Thanks!”
The doctor takes Poon out to the road where Teddy is still sitting and laughing to himself as cars creep by, passengers looking at him like he’s a big bag of interesting trash. He tries to pull Teddy up again, from the armpits this time. Teddy starts laughing and growling at the same time. Wheatbread curses and swings his legs from under the table, over the bench, and heads to the road. Maybe to kick Teddy. Who knows why half-and-half Wheatbread will take that name but not Whitebread. Wheatbread can’t be his real name. Honors his black mama, Blur guesses. Basically, white ain’t quite right around here. Lots of white people have moved in, though, even before Blur got incarcerated. Pushing their babies in carriages. None gonna push past Teddy now, though. Go the other way. Blur’s seen signs stuck in the ground at the end of the road saying the East Lake Terrace community meeting is next Monday night. East Lake Terrace is a new name to him. Maybe folks trying to siphon some status from the golf club across the way. Used to be just Candler-McAfee, the intersection where the bus picked you up or dropped you off.
Wheatbread gets behind Teddy where the doctor was. The doctor stands to the side with Poon. Wheatbread hauls up Teddy, who laughs that private laugh he has, like he’s the most clever man ever to get knocked the fuck out. Teddy walks on down the road, must be to that house he’s squatting in. You can hear him howling and growling. The doctor turns down the side street with Poon, who don’t want to go. Wheatbread pushes his sand-colored hair off his forehead and brushes his hands on his jeans. Squints both ways on the road, and at the sky. Clouds thickening the west now, out across the street, behind those houses. Storm kind, which is what Blur doesn’t want ’cause then everybody gets in their truck and stops spending, and stops tipping.
If Wheatbread won’t come back in the yard, Blur’s gonna finish his beer. Fuck Joyce. If he does come back, whatever. At least all the violence will be done before Uncle Card returns from Augusta. Been gone two days. If Card gets mad, no telling what job he’ll give Blur, like punishment, like making him crawl under the house to change the furnace filter, which he hates. Dirt and spiders, a cat carcass one time. Feels like a buried man trying to get somewhere in the dirt. Like everything is Blur’s fault. It ain’t his fault, for instance, that the white folks called the cops about the beer cans and loud music in the yard, that he got arrested ’cause he had that taser under his shirt and the cops called it a concealed weapon, that some of Card’s azalea bushes didn’t take because Blur was in jail and couldn’t water them, that Wheatbread is such a sensitive dummy.
“Come here, Blur,” Joyce says, sniffling, teary-eyed again. It was last week when Prince died. Blur heard about it in jail. It was on everybody’s radio and TV. A shock, sure, but Blur tried not to feel it. He’d be getting out soon, is what he wanted to feel. Joyce, she even went to the concert at the Fox. Dude’s last show ever. A three-hundred-dollar ticket! That price pisses Blur off more than anything. She’s looking away, wet-lashed, to the old lantana bush at the border between the yard and the neighbor’s. Two little hummingbirds hover at one of the yellow-red blooms. “That’s sweet, ain’t it?” she says. “When’s the last time you saw a hummingbird? See the purple in the tail feathers? Even birds paying tribute to Prince.”
Blur can see they are hummingbirds, not big bees, but has he ever seen one, much less two together? You got to know they some free motherfuckers, he thinks. Them motherfuckers is just like me. Them motherfuckers like the springtime too. But t
hey don’t know from Prince, he thinks. Do they know from death? Free or not when you’re dead? Ask Uncle Ron and Uncle Red, maybe. Son of bitch dying like that in the springtime sours the mood, all right. He’s the fuck out, all right. All the way the fuck out.
* * *
Wheatbread comes on back, finishes his beer. Leans in to Joyce but doesn’t speak. He’s a plumber, whereas Teddy’s a tree man, and nearly every other dude in the neighborhood cuts grass and cleans gutters. Everybody freelance. ’Cause everybody’s a felon. Here, though, they drink and cut up with Uncle Card’s friends who have steady jobs, like city sanitation and construction or some other blue-uniform work, and after work on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday all day, Card does good business selling drinks. Uncle Card does yard work too. He’s done all right. Has a truck with a trailer to carry his mowers and Weedwackers. Does yards in “better” neighborhoods. White yards. Makes sense, then, for his own yard to look good. Card has a work ethic that kind of kicks Blur’s ass.
Bunny Bone comes into the yard with a dude Blur’s never seen before. Bunny who thinks she’s a dude, and looks like a dude, and might be a dude except with big loose titties under her big T-shirt. And she’s albino too. Whiter skin than Wheatbread’s. Got her own thick glasses plus weird white eyelashes and nappy blond hair. Used to be Blur wondered how she hung with all the brothers without getting those dead-white titties looked at and squeezed. Blur used to imagine them, wondered if the nipples were white too, or like her thick pale lips. But then, because she’s the scariest-looking and loudest of anybody during a fuss—face scrunched like a powdered knuckle—he wondered if she might be the one to rape some chick. And thinking about rape he felt bad for thinking about her titties. She’s got a life supply of annoying wolf tickets to sell. Bragging about what she’d do if somebody said this or that to her, what she actually did to somebody who said this or that.