USA Noir Noir

by Johnny Temple

  I was just about to take pity on Clayton and show him how to read the Form when Big Fred appeared and sat down at one of the extra chairs at our table.

  “You see this piece of shit Pletcher’s running in the fifth race?” Fred wanted to know. Big Fred, who weighs 110 pounds tops, isn’t one for pleasantries. He had no interest in being introduced to Clayton, probably hadn’t even noticed I was with someone; he just wanted confirmation that the Todd Pletcher–trained colt in the fifth race was a piece of shit in spite of having cost $2.4 million at the Keeneland yearling sale and having won all three races he’d run in.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding gravely. “He’ll be 1-9.”

  “He’s a flea,” said Fred.

  “Yeah. Well. I wouldn’t throw him out on a Pick 6 ticket.”

  “I’m throwing him out.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “He hasn’t faced shit and he’s never gone two turns. And there’s that nice little horse of Nick’s that’s a closer.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I’m using Nick’s horse. Singling him.”

  “I wouldn’t throw out the Pletcher horse.”

  “Fuck him,” said Fred, getting up and storming off to the other end of the place, where I saw him take a seat with some guys from the Daily Racing Form.

  “Friend of yours?” asked Clayton.

  I nodded. “Big Fred. He’s a good guy.”

  “He is?”

  “Sure.”

  I could tell Clayton wanted to go somewhere with that one. Wanted to ask why I thought some strange little guy who just sat down and started cursing out horses was a good guy. Another reason Clayton had to be gotten rid of.

  One of the waiters came and took our omelette order. Since I’d mapped out most of my bets, I took ten minutes and gave Clayton a cursory introduction to reading horses’ past performances. I was leaning in close, my finger tracing one of the horse’s running lines, when Clayton kissed my ear.

  “I love you, Alice,” he said.

  “Jesus, Clayton,” I said. “What the fuck?”

  Clayton looked like a kicked puppy.

  “I brought you here because I thought it’d be a nice way to spend our last day together but, fuck me, why do you have to get ridiculous?”

  “I don’t want it to end. You’re all I’ve got.”

  “You don’t have me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Clayton, there’s no future. No mas,” I said.

  “No who?”

  “No mas,” I repeated. “No more. Spanish.”

  “Are you Spanish?”

  “No, Clayton, I’m not Spanish. Shit, will you let me fuck­ing work?”

  “Everything okay over here?”

  I looked up and saw Vito looming over the table. Vito is a stocky, hairy man who is some kind of low-level mafioso or mafioso-wannabe who owns a few cheap horses and fancies himself a gifted horseplayer.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said, scowling at Vito. Much as Clay­ton was pissing me off, it wasn’t any of Vito’s business. But that’s the thing with these Vito-type guys at the track: What with my being a presentable woman under the age of eighty, a real rarity at Aqueduct, these guys get all protective of me. It might have been vaguely heartwarming if Vito wasn’t so smarmy.

  Vito furrowed his monobrow. He was sweating profusely even though it was cool inside the restaurant.

  “I’m Vito,” he said, aggressively extending his hand to Clayton, “and you are . . . ?”

  “Clayton,” said my soon-to-be-ex paramour, tentatively shaking Vito’s oily paw.

  “We all look out for Alice around here,” Vito said.

  Go fuck yourself, Vito, I thought, but didn’t say. There might be a time when I needed him for something.

  “Oh,” said Clayton, confused, “that’s good. I look out for her too.”

  Vito narrowed his already small eyes, looked from me to Clayton and back, then turned on his heels.

  “See ya, Vito,” I said as the tubby man headed out of the restaurant, presumably going down to the paddock-viewing area to volubly express his opinions about the contestants in the first race.

  A few races passed. I made a nice little score on a mare shipping in from Philadelphia Park. She was trained by some obscure woman trainer, ridden by some obscure apprentice jockey, and had only ever raced at Philadelphia Park, so, in spite of a nice batch of past performances, she was being ig­nored on the tote board and went off at 14-1. I had $200 on her to win and wheeled her on top of all the logical horses in an exacta. I made out nicely and that put me slightly at ease and reduced some of the Clayton-induced aggravation that had gotten so severe I hadn’t been able to eat my omelette and had started fantasizing about asking Vito to take Clayton out. Not Take Him Out take him out, I didn’t want the guy dead or anything, just put a scare into him. But that would have entailed asking a favor of Vito and I had no interest in establishing that kind of dynamic with that kind of guy.

  The fifth race came and I watched with interest to see how the colt Big Fred liked fared. The Todd Pletcher–trained horse Fred hated, who did in fact go off at 1-9, broke alertly from the six hole and tucked nicely just off the pace that was being set by a longshot with early speed. Gang of Seven, the horse Big Fred liked, was at the back of the pack, biding his time. With a quarter of a mile to go, Gang of Seven started making his move four wide, picking off his opponents until he was within spitting distance of the Pletcher horse. Gang of Seven and the Pletcher trainee dueled to the wire and both appeared to get their noses there at the same time.

  “Too close to call,” said the track announcer. A few min­utes later, the photo was posted and the Pletcher horse had beat Big Fred’s by a whisker.

  “I’m a fucking idiot!” I heard Fred cry out from four ta­bles away. I saw him get up and storm out of the restaurant, probably heading to the back patio to chain-smoke and make phone calls to twenty of his closest horseplaying friends, an­nouncing his own idiocy.

  “Guy’s got a problem,” Clayton said.

  “No he doesn’t,” I replied, aggravated. While it was true that Big Fred had a little trouble with anger management, he was, at heart, a very decent human being.

  I got up and walked away, leaving Clayton to stare after me with those dinner plate–sized eyes.

  I went down to the paddock, hoping that Clayton wouldn’t follow me. I saw Vito there staring out the big viewing win­dow, his huge belly pressing against the glass. As I went to find a spot as far away from Vito as possible, I craned my neck just to check that Clayton hadn’t followed me. He had. I saw him lumbering around near the betting windows, looking left and right. He’d find me at any minute.

  So I did something a little crazy.

  “Vito,” I said, coming up behind him.

  “Huh?” He turned around.

  “Favor?” I asked.

  His tiny black eyes glittered. “Anything, baby,” he purred.

  I already regretted what I was doing. “Can you scare that guy I was sitting with? Just make him a little nervous? Make him go home?”

  Vito’s tiny eyes got bigger, like someone had just dangled a bleeding hunk of filet mignon in front of him.

  “You serious?” He stood closer to me.

  I had a moment’s hesitation. Then thought of Clayton’s love pronouncements. “Yeah.”

  “Sure. Where is he?”

  I glanced back and didn’t see Clayton. “Somewhere around here, let’s look.”

  Vito lumbered at my side. We searched all around the betting windows of the ground floor, but no Clayton. Then I glanced outside and spotted him standing near an empty bench, hunched and cold and lost-looking under the dove-gray sky.

  “There,” I said.

  “You got it, baby,” said Vito. Without another word, he marched outside. I saw him accost Clayton. I saw Clayton tilt his head left and right like a confused dog would. I thought of Candy. Later this afternoon, I’d go home to her and just mayb
e, thanks to Vito, I wouldn’t have to worry about the big oaf turning up with his big eyes and his inane declarations. Me and Candy could have some peace and quiet.

  Now Clayton and Vito had come back inside and were walking together. They passed not far from where I was stand­ing. Where was Vito taking him? I figured he’d just say a few choice words and that would be that. But they seemed to be going somewhere.

  I followed them at a slight distance. I didn’t really care if Clayton saw me at this point. They went down the escalator and out the front door. Vito was only wearing a thin button-down shirt but he didn’t seem to register the bite of the Febru­ary air. Clayton pulled his coat up around his ears.

  They headed over to the subway platform. I saw Clayton pull out his MetroCard and go through the turnstile. Then he handed his card back to Vito, who went through after him.

  What the fuck?

  I stopped walking and stayed where I was in the middle of the ramp leading to the turnstiles. The two men were about a hundred yards in front of me but they had their backs to me. There wasn’t anyone else on the platform.

  They started raising their voices. I couldn’t hear what was being said. There was wind and a big airplane with its belly low against the sky. Then the sound of an oncoming train and a blur of movement. A body falling down onto the tracks just as the train came. I braced myself for some sort of screeching of brakes. There wasn’t any. The train charged into the sta­tion. The doors opened then closed. No one got on or off. The train pulled away. There was just one guy left standing on the platform. He was staring down at the tracks.

  My fingers were numb.

  I slowly walked up the platform. Found my MetroCard in my coat. Slid it in and went through the turnstile. I walked to the edge and looked down at the tracks. There was an arm separated from the rest of the body. Blood pouring out of the shoulder. The head twisted at an angle you never saw in life. I wasn’t sure how the train conductor had failed to notice. The MTA has been very proud of its new one-person train operation system that requires just one human to run the entire train. Maybe that’s not enough to keep an eye out for falling bodies.

  I felt nauseated. I started to black out and then he steadied me, putting his hands at the small of my back.

  “He was talking about you,” said Clayton, staring down at Vito’s big mangled body. “Said you were going to blow him in exchange for him getting rid of me. He was just trying to upset me but it was disrespectful to you. I wanted to scare him but he fell onto the tracks.” Clayton spoke so calmly. “He was talking shit about you, Alice,” he added, raising his voice a little.

  “Well,” I said, “that wasn’t very nice of him, was it?”

  Clayton smiled.

  He really wasn’t a bad-looking guy.

  THE GOSPEL OF MORAL ENDS

  BY BAYO OJIKUTU

  77th & Jeffery, Chicago

  (Originally published in Chicago Noir)

  Swear I’m trying to keep up with Reverend this morning. Ain’t so easy, not with the black angels crooning at his back, alleluia, and these amens rising in flocks from the Mount’s bloody red carpet and gleaming pews, and the Payless heels square stomping up above my head until Calvary’s balcony rocks in rhythm with the charcoal drum sergeant’s skins. Seems the flock understands his sermon mighty fine, else why would they make all such noise in Mount Calvary? It’s me then. I am the lost.

  “Today is a good day, Church. Ain’t it, Church? Always a good day for fellowshipping in the community of the Lord God, ain’t it?”

  The woman leaning on her walking stick across the aisle echoes loud as the speaker box boom.

  “Amen!”

  “We come in here on this good day looking for the righteous way to serve Him to bring manifest—y’all like that word, Church, that’s a good word—let me say it again. We come in here to bring man-i-fest His glory in a world gone wicked, Church. We got this here fine church built on a mount—and we call it Calvary, like that hilltop where the Lord God sent His One Son to hang from a cross for us and save us from sin, deliver us from black death, Church. Make me so happy when I talk bout how the Savior came to this world to sacrifice His life for us, so happy, Church, all so we could come back here to the hilltop and build up a palace that’d shine bright in His city, so all would know. But all still ain’t here celebrating the Good News, Church—no matter how loud I speak it, y’all sing it, and no matter the blazing beauty of this here Mount Calvary. City’s wicked, Church, so wicked; we got folk look like us, talk like us, breathe like us out here. But them folk is confused, Church, lost out in concrete Gomorrah. Y’all know too much about that place already. That’s right, the wicked place right outside the oak doors to our Mount Calvary. Right down there on 79th Street, where sin whirls among folk blind to the Good News.”

  Maybe my trouble understanding Reverend Jack comes from these tiny ears, a quarter of the space the Good Lord carved on either side of my head for hearing. Or maybe confusion comes from eyes gone pus-yellow driving Sunday sunrise fares out to the good places north, south, and west; far, far from the wicked, whirling city and never back into concrete Gomorrah a moment before seven o’clock the following Saturday night.

  Or maybe I’m carrying the soul of a Black Jew up inside me. Not like the one-eyed Candy Man, or the musty shysters on the corner of State and Madison, their nappy heads hid underneath unraveling crochet hats. Sammy Davis was a happy half-monkey/half-rat, and the zero corner hustlers call themselves “Ethiopian Hebrews,” selling their stinky incense sticks. I know I ain’t no chimp dancing on a music box or no rat running into corners, or no shyster either. Ain’t looking to get down with no big-boned Swedish honeys or start no funky sweet revolution. Just getting hold of this preacher’s babble before salvation passes me by, trying to—Black Jews, you see, don’t sing or dance God or shout alleluia in the temple. We read holy script in quiet. That way, we understand what the rabbi’s spewing. We Black Jews get to know what the sermon means, Church.

  My religion would explain this Scandinavian wanderer’s nose misplaced on my Down-Deep-in-the-field face. I smell from it plenty good, better had what with this crooked beak jabbing from my head, stabbing and jabbing at the rearview mirror reflection as I pull on seeing holes to explore my rot. The nose’s tip hooks down like those of the old olive diamond hawks underneath the tracks on Wabash Avenue, except that nostrils gape wide and jungle-black where cheeks meet. I breathe the stank of the Lord Jesus’ celebration: this funk of salt, Walgreens makeup counter product, relaxer lye, and air panted from deep in guts filled with only starvation and desperation. Smelling lets my beak know something’s ill in the reverend’s Sunday spiel, and that knowledge means trouble on the Mount.

  “But why’s the world still so wicked if the Lord God sent His One Son down here to die and save us from sin? Let the Reverend explain the mystery to you—”

  Reverend Jack’s Satan changes every first and third Sunday. God is always the father, Jesus is his namesake son, and the Holy Ghost is that daytime creeping soul who slips inside the good Calvary Baptist lady in the satin dress, takes hold of her up in row ten after the reverend drops the sermon’s main point. Twists her skull at the base of the neck, bends her in half, then snaps her holy rock-head front to back with the drum sergeant’s beat; until the Ghost is done with her and he tosses the top half of this lady free so the end of her spine slams into wood pew.

  She never cries or screams in pain as the Holy Ghost works her fierce like so; saved lady just shouts in this thrusting rhythm, “Praise you in me, Holy Ghost. Stay up in me, Holy Ghost. Deep up in me, Holy Ghost. Glory. Praise you in me, Holy Ghost,” and then again, before she hops into the aisle, mist rising from cocoa forehead, arms and legs flapping against each other while her neck snaps backwards without wood to interrupt the flow of ecstasy. There she goes with that sanctified chicken jig, same dance every other Sunday of the month.

  * * *

  Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist has sat just west of 77th a
nd Jeffery Boulevard since the real Jews first let dark folks on these blocks fifty years back. Deep Down wanderers brought the Mount with them from Mobile County, Alabama, or some such burning place, so this is really Mount Calvary Second Baptist, too many words to get in before crooning an alleluia and interrupting the mission. The church used to be a rickety wood frame worship-shack blending in perfect with the houses leaned sideways by lake wind, siding smudged orange-brown by the burn of the wicked city’s July sun, same as the Rothschild Liquor store across from the church parking lot. That old mud-weed lot where the Cadillac hearses parked whenever one of the Section C heads who sit under haberdashery and Easter brims passed on from this world to that better place prepared for them in the Kingdom.

  But that old Deep Tuscaloosa–style shack didn’t shine sufficient for the Good News. So Reverend sent me to the alderwoman’s main ward office in the old Gold Medallion cab, carrying five large from Calvary’s tithe right after Mayor Harold died. Handed the flock loot over to that elected bag lady in exchange for eminent domain over half the row of homes just east of Jeffery, and the mud-weed lot too. City crashed down them shacks that used to line 77th long before they swore in Gomorrah’s new king. Then the church board started passing around a second collection pot on the second and fourth Sundays. They called it “the building reserve special blessing fund.”

  “Give what you can, Church,” Reverend told the flock then. “Know times is rough for folk round here right round now, but sacrifice is remembered eternal—and remember, you sacrificing for the One who gave the greatest sacrifice, who made that path into Glory with His own blood. If you can’t give to build up a new place for celebrating Him, there’s still gon be a place for you on the Path, Church. I promise it. Still gon be a place for you in His new house. Somebody say amen.”

  Before hardhats started pouring foundation to the new temple, Reverend had to pay out six weeks’ worth of bingo proceeds to the bag lady, just so she’d change the title to this block of 77th Street to his name. Original paperwork claimed the Lord, or the Mount itself, or the flock, as the new church land’s owner. “Naw, that ain’t right,” Reverend moaned back then. “All deeds got a price, Moral.” Then he pointed me toward the bags of bingo gold, and watched as I piled them into my cab’s trunk.