Slapboxing with Jesus (Vintage Contemporaries Original)

by Victor Lavalle

  ———

  Despite Horse’s laughing, the attempt to drown me, I could ignore him. I was thinking of the uniform, how it would fit. With anticipation. For fucking days I had been watching television, thinking I had to pack in a lot of viewing time because when I went to boot camp I’d be spending all my hours doing sit-ups and marching in the rain. Four nights before, I came across this channel, the little gold H in the right bottom corner. All these white guys at desks, screaming. It was funny to me, this was almost forty years ago and they rocked electric blue blazers, thick-ass ties. It was when Nixon was going down, had done all that impeachable shit. Then the camera cuts to this one lady, behind a desk too; she’s talking about her Country and her Constitution, which she loves. Loved. She spoke clearly, directly, all the ways Horse had been trying lately, hers had no sneer. Horse was an obnoxious motherfucker. I didn’t tell him about Barbara Jordan. But watching her, how much she looked like me, it was the first time I’d thought my only options in the world weren’t to be like Horse or to be like Sanford.

  —Patriotism, Horse spat. A word he said all the time around me now. He said it like a curse.

  —You know where patriotism is going to take you? I asked Ahab. To some brown country where you’ll be told to shoot lots of brown people.

  Ahab said, —You’re still around when I’m on leave and I’ll shoot you.

  When I first mentioned I was leaving, changing neighborhoods and lives, I was all joyful. No parts regret. I enjoyed telling Ahab, slowly, which buses he could take to visit, knowing he never would. When I grabbed him tight in a hug, I know, it wasn’t to show Ahab love. It was triumphant on my part, like in life I was the only hero. From how he was acting, Ahab might have been stupid enough to be feeling that way about America.

  I left Horse behind, waited on the beach for maybe half an hour while he paddled out there, turning his back to the shore and staring at the far horizon, maybe thinking of his future like I was. When he finally came in we agreed the ship was lost, left like so many other things to drift on ocean currents for maybe five hundred years. On the bus we didn’t speak. To be the fortunate son, even men like us wanted this.

  In our neighborhood I walked to my house while Horse sped around the corner in a rush. He owned a Chevy, two-door, not sporty. It didn’t run, two wheels were on cinder blocks, but he liked to sit in it like he might pull off. The radio worked. We lived barely a block apart, so when he got to it, I could hear the yelp of a rusted car door opening, the sound like bones being broken, loud like that.

  two

  one boy’s beginnings

  chuckie

  So it was me, my boys and two new kids, Mark and Chuckie. All of us were heavy with equipment, the two new fellas with bikes. Saturdays parents existed only when we woke up and went to bed, the long line of hours in between were just baseball, baseball, baseball. We’d decided to stretch over to that park in the Italian neighborhood; the one near us was full.

  The game went right: ground outs, pop flies and stolen bases; I slid into second after a line drive and caught a nice piece of glass in my knee, it left the kind of scar you could roll up your jeans and brag about. While waiting to swing a bat we made up stories about girls far off we were fingering. We were almost ten and spoke loudly.

  Baseball diamonds had been etched into the park, three separate plots. It was easy to find little ponds all over; like everything in Flushing they looked good from a distance. Only coming closer could you spy their murky gray insides. In the summers, very faintly, they emitted paint fumes. It was getting dark. That’s how night arrived then, bothering you all at once, bursting into the room. One of us said, —Let’s get the fuck out of here. We weren’t Italian. Not even Mark. Not even Chuckie. This is not to say I had no Italian friends, our neighborhood was a mash of origins, but still, there were intricate politics. This was 1982. You knew where you could be and when.

  We gathered up our mitts and balls and both aluminum bats Jung had carried on his wide shoulders. Half a block traveled and I had to run back for the left-handed glove Mom bought special after searching through six different Modell’s for a first baseman’s. Then I chugged back to the guys on their feet, ahead of them Chuckie, Mark and the bikes they’d rode in on, these dope silver Huffys. Those two had learned how to do spins, other tricks, and instantly I hated them like I did all my boys: secretly. Those ties didn’t mean much to me. When you stopped speaking to some kid there would be another; one thing Flushing had in abundance was people.

  Ahead, Mark was screaming. For us. Chuckie too. We got closer quickly. Beyond them all the setting sun’s flames were running down to an orange gasp on the horizon. Two sweaty boys gripped one set of handlebars each. They were old enough to buy beer. Smiling and Laughing, that might as well have been their names. One said, —Come on, let us ride them once.

  Mark said, —I gotta get home, man. He sounded like he was going to cry.

  —Me and my friend just want to ride around the corner, said the other one. Smiling.

  —We gotta help them, Jung pleaded. He had invited them along so what else could he say? We weren’t fifteen feet off. The two thieves hadn’t noticed us, didn’t look even as we crossed the street: moving away. Chuckie and Mark were on their own.

  The trees all around had been season-stripped of every leaf; pulsing winds made the branches crash and shake like hands applauding. Mark turned to us, then Chuckie, they took a moment to stare. Only the arms of the older duo moved as they tugged and jerked the bikes. We heard yelling. The chain-link fence surrounding an old home swayed loosely, its rattle a language. —Guys, Jung tried again. We should really go over and help.

  —Will you shut the fuck up, I said. I was afraid the way people must be during a hurricane, thinking, Will it come for me? I had seen fights, started and lost them, I wasn’t a novice. But this was a beating.

  Mark was thrown off his bike. Next Chuckie. Then the tall one was kicking Chuckie in the head. Mark got up and ran—not toward us, just away. I couldn’t tell you how long those guys worked on Chuckie. It was a few minutes. Even one or two are very long. The blood started coming. I didn’t know a face had so much. Helping was still an option for the others, but not me; it could have been Jung getting beat, my own father; many people would call me the betrayer, often, but that was because they’d mistaken me for a friend when I was just hanging around. There was only one kid I ever cared for and his name wasn’t Chuckie. It wasn’t any of these guys.

  When a loud -pop- echoed from across the street I didn’t flinch, wasn’t even sure it had come from nearby.

  Ten is too young to learn how you are. That you wouldn’t run for the ambulance, as all my friends did, while Chuckie clutched at his eye like his very own soul was in danger of escaping. Booth Memorial didn’t send an ambulance quickly. To the right, in the park, squirrels appeared, ruthlessly picking at the ground for food; from where I stood their quick little hops were even more graceful; when they ate energetically they seemed to be on their knees, paws forward in a frantic prayer.

  Trinidad

  I

  Of the four of us I was the yellow one, getting closer and closer to brown; sunlight burned down so hot I wasn’t sure if it was a punishment or a blessing.

  Vaughn was a coolie and that red-brown skin of his matched his bright new bike; the one saying, My mummy has money, every time a wind blew and sent the rainbow-colored tassels on his handlebars flying. Orpheus had called it a bitchy bike when we’d first witnessed it, but what he’d meant to say was, I wish it was mine. Those two were the same age as me; our last member was Orpheus’s little brother, Caesar, who rode far back, two years behind us; he was eight. Caesar pumped his skinny little legs harder to catch up, as though he could pedal his way to our maturity.

  My bike was new too, but not as fancy. Back in New York I would have beat up kids who rode things as nice as what I now had. Me and my boys would have kicked his ass twice. But in Trinidad it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t about my
mother the secretary who couldn’t afford much. Here it was Aunty Barbara who paid; she had all that loot from the dead doctor, a husband who had insured that money would never be the problem. Orpheus and Caesar had bikes like the one leaning behind my couch in Flushing, Queens. Their mother, Lucille, cleaned house for my Aunty, Vaughn’s mom and others. The four of us had met on Aunty Barbara’s front porch, an evening planned by three kinds of mothers: by birth—Orpheus and Caesar; by law—Vaughn was adopted; and by substitution—that would be mine.

  We stopped pedaling when Orpheus complained that his seat was loose. I flopped down in grass beside the dirt road that would lead to the fulfillment of a promise: the best homemade curry goat on the island. Lucille was going to do the cooking. I was anticipatory. —Fix it quick.

  —Shut up New York, Orpheus said, both hands on the bike seat, working his weight down. We watched as it sank some, but not enough.

  Vaughn’s mother spent money and expected things to last. She hadn’t married a doctor but became one; there were only about ten black women in Trinidad who could say this. Vaughn had to bring his bike home dirt-free and shiny-shiny; even grass trapped in the chain could get him in trouble. His bike stood like it was still in a shop window between mine and Caesar’s, the ones flat on their sides.

  We three, on our backs, looked at the sky, thinking our privacies.

  Orpheus said, —I’m ready. But no moves were made, doing nothing felt too good. I had known only New York sun my whole life, the one spectacular in the way it erases winter, but I had hardly ever had grass and dirt beneath me, air empty of a million other people’s breaths. The grass rubbed at my back, coarse and half dead from all that light and no rain. Bugs landed on our motionless knees and explored. They attacked the skin, but their bites were still gentler than what I was used to.

  II

  Me and Malik had been tight for years. But I had never met his father until that Saturday. Malik and I were nine, lived at the same address. When he’d asked, —You want to meet my father? I’d said, —Sure.

  In the lobby, going from my side of the building to his, we passed the old women who got together in groups to cackle. If it was warmer they’d have been on the sidewalk in their lawn chairs. When me and Malik walked through that afternoon they had been there for hours. They wore loose house dresses and, most often, slippers. They pulled back their lips as we passed, ready to talk more shit as soon as we were gone. The long wall to our right had this huge picture of a sunrise, but it never made warmth. In the elevator I asked Malik, —Where’s your dad been?

  —I don’t know. He showed up.

  I nodded. I hadn’t seen my father my whole life. When I saw some white dude I resembled coming down the block I would ask my mother, —Is that him? She would laugh and say, —Do you see my black ass running? No, she wouldn’t have said the curse, but it was there in the intonation.

  At the door to his apartment Malik turned to me. —Call him Mr. Stewart.

  —Is that your last name? He looked at me like I wasn’t serious, but I was.

  Their apartment was like mine: living room, kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom he shared with his mother like I did mine. There was a second bedroom, but his was always locked; in my apartment, D23, my grandmother slept there, all on her own like a queen. Malik’s place was always dark, his moms had sensitive eyes, a medical condition, kept the curtains drawn. There were safety pins running up them like a stitch. I thought I was in the wrong place for a second because it was full of light. His father sat on the couch. This man said, —Your mother’s taking a nap.

  —Okay.

  —Who’s this?

  —Anthony, I said. Hello, Mr. Stewart.

  We shook. —I like that. Malik, go find me some beer.

  Malik nodded and disappeared. —Sit down. Mr. Stewart motioned to the couch with his chin. So how old are you?

  —Nine.

  —Same age as Malik?

  —Uh-huh. I wished the television was on, just for the distraction. Mr. Stewart stared at me. We stayed like this. I was curious about him, he seemed strange. Mr. Stewart had pulled open the curtains, the remnants of safety pins lay on the carpet, mangled. Malik returned with a beer.

  —Hey, Mr. Stewart shouted after some gulps. I know where I’ve seen you before. At the Key Food. Was that your mom I saw you with? Black lady? My age?

  —Yes.

  —Boy, your mom sure is nice looking. He grinned. You know what I’m talking about Malik?

  Malik looked at his father like he was speaking Slavic dialect. —What?

  —Awww, his father shrugged, you boys can’t see gold because you’re too busy looking for bubble gum.

  Again Malik was mystified. Me too.

  —Never mind, Mr. Stewart sighed, shrugged, finished the beer. He reached into his pants, pulled out a five. You and Anthony take this and go out for a while, I’m going to wake your mother. He ushered us on, Take your time. I hear kids out there. Have fun. Couple of hours.

  Malik and I were out the door. I’d spied the bill as Malik had been stuffing it into the pocket of his Kangaroos. —Thank you, I yelled at the door. Your dad is great, I said in a lower voice. I was serious. Enthusiastic.

  Malik nodded, walked. —He’s going to be here for about a week, so we could probably get a bunch more money out of him.

  When the elevator arrived I held it while Malik went to the stairs for a piss. Five floors down people screamed up the shaft, —Let go of the goddamn button! I didn’t. When we reached the lobby we rushed through the crowd of adults trying to tell us manners. Outside, we passed kids leaning against Mr. Russin’s Chevy. We walked for a candy store. Malik put his arm around my shoulders.

  III

  It became a race for the four of us as we neared Lucille’s home. Caesar was in last place, ready to cry or at least curse, and right near him Vaughn, going slow and eyeing the dirt cautiously for rocks, a dent that might send him flying. Me and Orpheus, though, we were moving.

  We had been pedaling through countryside; soon we’d reach where houses had been built up cheaply and in close ranks. Before I saw their brick bodies, tin roofs, I heard the sounds of animals living all over the place. —What’s that fucking noise? I screamed.

  Orpheus laughed loud enough for me to hear. —That’s goat, New York, you been living in the city too long.

  The road curved. The air should have smelled like something sweeter but there was only the hard odor of burning tires. It should have been a problem, but there was so much space here, all that sky above, that you couldn’t imagine the scent would choke you forever; winds would come along eventually to usher the stench of charred rubber out to the ocean and after it would come something else, perhaps as pleasant as mangoes. We passed the old woman with a machete who liked to swing it near kids who made her vexed. We were ten feet farther before she had lifted that steel sword. Only Caesar yelped with fear as he weaved away.

  Lucille stood in front of her home sucking on a Marlboro. She smiled as we came to a quick stop, skidding, spraying dirt with our tires. She put her hand over her lit cigarette until the little cloud settled. She hugged her son, then me. —Hi Miss Cooper, I said.

  She touched my face, her hands smelled like car oil. —I told you to call me Aunty Lucille.

  The fence guarding their house was old wire. A dog was passed out from the heat, lying in the road. The tongue was slung out the right side of its mouth; the animal could barely manage a pant. I went over and knelt down, put my hand on its side. I was all sympathy. Aunty Lucille was at me quick, pulling me back by my hair. —Boy! Are you stupid?

  I looked at her with my urban incredulity. —It wasn’t going to bite me.

  She laughed. Orpheus laughed. Caesar. Even Vaughn.

  —What’s funny? What’s funny? I looked at the dog, which had twisted its head enough for one half-open eye to gaze at me. The dog’s fur was the muddy yellow of every mutt I’ve ever seen—me included.

  —Don’t you never get around animals, Ne
w York? Orpheus took me in with amazement.

  —I see pigeons.

  Caesar stood beside me while I lifted my bike. He said, —You’re going to have to wash your hands a lot before we eat. I looked at him with a question. The dog, man, he said, exasperated. Too dirty for touch.

  Yards were filled: with old cars, older cars, wrecked cars, a truck, bikes, shovels, cinder blocks, fallen trees, sheets of tin, strips of wood, bent metal, street signs, a wheelbarrow full of rocks, propane, gasoline, porcelain figurines of a very white Jesus, porcelain figurines of a very black Jesus, many tires as yet uncooked.

  Aunty Lucille walked away from us, to one of her girlfriends. Orpheus kicked away his sneakers and I followed after he’d told me I wouldn’t be served goat wearing tennis shoes; he hated that I never took them off.

  Orpheus took me around the back of the house. Bugs attacked my fresh feet. Every three steps I had to knock away some gorged winged insect from a toe. I submitted my feet to the sun. We came to a tree, thicker and taller than the one in front; tied to it were three goats making their noises. I jumped back like: ready to run. —It’s just goats! Orpheus yelled. And they’re tied up.

  The rope binding them was dense and awful; in places it had been chewed. It was very strong stuff and those goats would never bite through in time. They smelled, their faces reminded me of Evil Professors; their gray eyes, lids half shut, convinced me they were planning things. —Can I pet them? I asked.

  —What’s wrong with you? City boy always wants to pet things and play with them. These things are for eating.

  The goats were their own beings. One of them was an asshole. It shuffled a hoof in the dirt and knocked a pebble at me. Orpheus walked off shaking his head, but I stayed, hypnotized by this foe. The other two ignored me, but this one peeled back its face and gave me the show—the dentals were uneven and sharp. Then it wailed out at me. The sound was stiff and angry, bad and bad.