Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Aint that the truth,” Elmont said.

  “I don’t know,” Mabel said.

  “It’s time we got our piece of the pie.” Ty’s voice was soft, smooth. “You know, I’ve been overseas. In the army. America is the best hope for blacks but we’ve got to take the opportunity. We’ve got to grasp it. Grasp the legal opportunities. Otherwise your children and mine will be right down here where we at. Forever. And it’ll be our own fault.”

  Mabel shifted uncomfortably. “This all legal?”

  “Oh, it’s legal.” Ty nodded his head subtly. “Absolutely.”

  Elmont sat up straight as if the implications of Ty’s words had just reached him. “Tyrone, you mean if I give you the nine thousand seven hundred dollars my brother left me, in a year you’ll give me back sixteen hundred and I’ll still have a note sayin I’m owed ten thousand?”

  “An unsecured note,” Ty said. “I want to remind you of that. You’re protected by law, by the good name of the borrower and his legal promise to pay. But it’s not a mortgage on his house. Just like a credit card. Still, people pay their credit card bills, don’t they?”

  “Yeah. Sixteen hundred the first year,” Elmont repeated, “and I don’t gotta break my back cleanin or repairin or worryin about collectin the rent!”

  “That’s the way it’s been working. I can’t promise you a note for exactly that amount, you understand. It might be two notes. You don’t give me the money until I’ve got it sold.”

  “Honey—” Mable fixed her eyes on Ty’s face, “you evah done this befo?”

  “Oh yes,” Ty said sincerely. “All the time. Mostly to home buyers up in San Martin.” Now Ty chuckled. “There may be hardly any black families up there, but pretty soon blacks will own ten percent of the entire town.”

  Elmont turned to Mabel. “What do you think, Mabe?”

  “Might be nice to sit back and not worry ...”

  “We’ve got a little bit”—Elmont turned from Mabel to Ty—“a little bit of savings too.”

  “Oh, wait!” Ty held up his hand. “Now I don’t want you to give me all your rainy-day money.”

  “Well”—Elmont was nearly bursting now to hand his money over to Ty Dorsey—”not all of it. We could go, um, maybe twelve thousand.”

  Ty interrupted. “Look, this sounds like this is a bit too much for you.”

  “When do you need it by?” Elmont shot back.

  “I’ll need a cashier’s check on Friday,” Ty said softly.

  “Mr. Ellis. Mrs. Ellis. I’m not going to play games with you....”

  Again and again. “Mrs. Carr, I’m sure if your husband were still alive he’d want you to invest in the future of your children....” “Mr. Brown ... I’ve been overseas. America may have problems but it’s our best hope. I don’t want to rip it down. I’m no Panther. I’m just like you. Only I want our people to partake of their proper share.”

  In San Francisco’s black neighborhoods, and in San Bruno, in Foster City, all the way south to San Jose and back north through Milpitas, Fremont, out to Martinez and across to Vallejo, Ty Dorsey’s spiel flowed, telling people what they themselves were thinking, good people aghast at the radicalism of the times, hard-working people hoping, praying to take a legal step forward. From them Ty collected funds—from generally older black men and women whom he found by searching year-old obituaries in local newspapers in municipal libraries, generally calling on the listed survivors exactly a year and a day from the death of their loved one, calling them as if by chance.

  By the end of 1971, Ty Dorsey had collected just under $200,000 from thirty-one sources. He had placed $160,000 in loans on which he’d grossed nearly $12,000. For the remaining $40,000 Ty issued fake notes to the sources—those he judged most gullible. From the principle he made all necessary interest payments (which not only kept everyone happy and at bay but also generated dozens more “sales” leads).

  Ty Dorsey purchased two more investment properties—small, rundown Riverside subdivision homes—in his name. He purchased another with Lloyd Dunmore as a silent partner and three more in which he was only owner-mortgagee in name, under aliases: Tyrone Blackwell, Ty E. Dorsey and T. E. Wallace.

  Through autumn and early winter Ty concentrated on his pyramiding real estate “empire.” His herpes infection recurred for a short bout prior to Christmas but subsided within days. He still dared not think of sexual contact, still believed, if the thought flashed across his consciousness, that he’d been sexually scarred, devalued, but he barely thought of it now. He had his stash, his kit, his work, his “works.” Carefully, very carefully, aware of the potential for robbery, for violence, for addiction, Ty pressed forward. He spread his drug purchases thin, buying only a little from any one junkie, always complaining about the price, always lamenting, “Damn, Man, I work my ass off. This drainin me, Man, a ev-rah cent.” After a purchase Ty always returned to his hotel by a different and circuitous route, never returning to his own building without entering another by one door, leaving by a second. In his room, too, he became more cautious. One day he quietly cut a hole in the plaster behind the bureau, inserted a portion of his cash and stash, sealed the hole with an old piece of wallpaper so it appeared the room had once been painted without the furniture being moved. On another evening he pulled a section of the baseboard that ran beneath the bed away from the wall, made a second hiding place. Then he found that at the back of the base of the sheet metal armoire there was an opening and if he kept the cabinet an inch from the wall he could easily insert and retrieve envelopes. He also took the precaution of leaving ninety dollars in cash, several costume-jewelry rings, and a single vial of skag in the box on the dresser—enough, he reasoned, to satisfy any creep who’d break in. Enough to keep them from searching for more.

  Ty Dorsey was careful, too, in how he administered his speedballs, how much heroin and cocaine he used. Over and over, long after it had become a nightly, then a twice-daily habit, he admonished himself, “Don’t get hooked. It’ll steal our piece a the pie. Just tee-tee, Man. Just a little now and then. Take the edge off. Keeps us goin.” When his left arm became swollen and sore he taught himself to shoot with the left into the right. When those veins collapsed, he found he could shoot his thigh or the top of his foot. “Just a little, Man. If we get hooked, The Man’ll come. Take our piece a the pie. Take our portfolio.”

  There is an old adage: “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.” Ty would never understand, not even years later, that perhaps the negative corollary is more valid.

  “I’ve got a little problem,” Lloyd Dunmore said. It was midafternoon, mid-January. Dunmore, Dorsey and Peter Wilcox were standing in the sun, in a small parking lot in Sausalito, following lunch at the 7 Seas. Their backs were to the bay, their eyes sweeping Sausalito’s two-lane main street, taking in the tourists, hippies, street artists, shops, and colorful old homes stepping up the steep verdant hillside. From the crest above town a thick low fog was cascading down the hill.

  Ty did not look at Lloyd Dunmore. “If it’s only a little problem, Lloyd, you probably wouldn’t even bring it up.”

  “Well, it’s little and it isn’t,” Dunmore said slowly. He opened the door of his Mercedes, rested one arm on the roof. “I’m getting up there in years.” Ty turned, looked Lloyd in the face. Peter pretended not to hear. “Not old, mind you. But I’m financially set. Except for my youngest, the kids are grown and out of the house. What I’m saying is I want to cut back. I’m still going to be in charge of my operations but the daily management—”

  “Come off it, Lloyd,” Peter interrupted. “How old are you?”

  “I’m fifty-eight.”

  “And you want to retire?!”

  “No. No. Don’t get me wrong. Madeleine ... she’d like us to do a bit of extended traveling. Believe it or not she wants to see Asia. Most of what I’ve got going takes care of itself. But there are a couple of properties ... Look, I know you two. You’re both good men. Peter, that strip shopping center w
e’ve got in Terra Linda, buy me out.”

  “Really?”

  “Come up with a price. What it’s worth. And Peter, I’m willing to let you clip me on this one.” Lloyd laughed, patted his hand on the car roof. “Not by too much. Ha! I’ll even carry the paper.” Dunmore shifted. “And Ty, that big Victorian we’ve got way out there on Miwok ...”

  “The slum?”

  “Ah, you haven’t been out there to see what I’ve done, have you?”

  “No. Just that one time.”

  “Go out and look at it. The construction’s almost finished. We’ve got eight nice units in there, Son. Tore down all that crap out back and carted it away. Some of those people were absolute pigs. I don’t know how anybody could have lived in that filth.”

  “You had a problem with the building inspector....”

  “Naw. I took care of him. It’s tenants. Peter won’t service it....”

  Peter cringed. “Way out there?!”

  “See,” Lloyd said. “I just don’t have the time. But you, Son, you could live out there.”

  Ty’s stomach knotted. He raised a fist to his mouth, stifled a belch, retasted the hot prawns curry he’d had for lunch.

  “Now”—Dunmore patted his car again—“hear me out. You buy me out. Move out there. Ty, the amount you spend on rental cars and coming up all the time, you’d be better off living out there.”

  Ty slowly shook his head. He resented Dunmore telling him he’d be better off living in the damn woods.

  “Truly, Ty. I’m just getting too old to do it. I’ve sunk nearly thirty-six grand into that rebuild. I’m not looking for a profit. And like with Peter, I’ll carry a note, ah, unless you have the OPM to cover it. You can do a wraparound. Shouldn’t cost you an out-of-pocket penny. Add to your portfolio, too. For real. Not just on paper.”

  “Hmm.” Ty did not say more but purposely let Lloyd babble on.

  “My wife bought a new car. You’ve seen it, right?”

  “The Jag,” Peter remarked.

  “Yes.” Dunmore glanced at Peter, back to Ty. “You might be interested in her old one. Basically she only drove it to the country club and back. I’d make you a good deal on it, too. Include it in the wraparound. We can make this thing work.”

  “I’ll think about it, Lloyd.” Ty looked across Bridgeway, stared into the sun at the shadowed street scene.

  “Good,” Lloyd said. Now he moved quickly into the car. As he started the engine, he said, “I’m late. Call me tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” Wilcox said watching Lloyd’s car pull away, “have you talked to Bobby Wapinski lately?”

  “No. He doing okay?”

  “Sure. Fantastic! You know he’s got that new cottage.”

  “Yes. I heard.”

  “And, ah, maybe he told you about the house on Tin Pan Alley.”

  “Which one?”

  “Up by the golf course. You know, in Golden Vista Estates.”

  “We haven’t talked. Maybe he tried to leave me a message....”

  “Yeah. Probably. He’s thinking of putting in a low-ball offer. But you know, he’s stretched right now.”

  “Golden Vista’s pretty expensive.”

  “Sure. But this seller’s desperate. Transferred ... to Houston, I think. Or Dallas. The place’s been vacant for months. Except for the dining room set. It’d be a great rental for families transferred in, you know, for maybe just a year. People who don’t want to buy but want to live in a nice house.”

  In April Ty drove by Bobby Wapinski’s cottage on Old Russia Road, drove Madeleine Dunmore’s old Audi 100-LS up the North Peak slope not once but three times. Each time he was happier, more reassured, delighted to find Bobby apparently not home, thrilled that 101 Old Russia Road was a shack when compared to his own new Tin Pan Alley residence which backed up to San Martin Golf and Country Club’s fourteenth tee. Happy that he had made it, that he now owned six properties, “owned” fourteen more under various aliases, and held notes totaling $67,000. In only a year and a half he—little Tyrone Blackwell-Dorsey-Wallace-Green, the jigaboo from Coal Hill, the disenfranchised spade veteran of Hamburger Hill, the coon rejected by his mentor—had eclipsed his own symbol of exactness, of making it, of the American pie. He had surpassed The Captain.

  “Do all black men have huge penises?” the woman whispered into his ear. They had been making love for an hour. He was spent. She was on top of him, holding him, tickling him, attempting to reexcite him. She nuzzled her chin into the crook of his neck making him squirm. Her skin was pale, white-white, not ashen, not sickly—ice milk. Her hair was black, blacker than his. The contrast of the chalk white of her arm against his rich deep brown chest aroused her, yet making him convulse or fidget under her was what she found truly sensual.

  It was hot, a mid-July afternoon. Occasionally a burst of laughter from the fourteenth tee penetrated the sheer curtains of his room.

  “Only one.” He chuckled.

  “Only one?” Olivia teased him.

  “One each,” Ty said.

  “One each what?” She shifted, straddled him. “Say it,” she ordered.

  “Say what?” he countered.

  “Penis,” Olivia said.

  “Why?” Ty asked.

  “Why can’t men say penis to a woman? I like your penis. I’m glad it’s huge.”

  “Well ...” Ty chuckled. He really couldn’t say the word. Not to Olivia. “It likes you too,” Ty said.

  “What does?” She tickled his ribs. He squirmed. She tickled harder. “What does? Say it.” She collapsed on him, pinned him.

  “My johnson does,” Ty blurted.

  “What’s a johnson?” She kissed his earlobe, blew gently into his ear.

  “My wang. My dick.” She was tickling him all over, poking her chin into his clavicle, gently digging her knee into his thigh just above his knee. He wriggled, gasped, “My meat. My ding-a-ling.”

  Afterward she backed into him, cuddled, snoozed in his arms. He held her, hot afternoon or not, kissed the back of her head. Better than the Captain, huh? he thought, but he did not say it. She’d told him that they’d had “several afternoon dates. You know, private. A girl can get a reputation in an office.” Ty hadn’t pressed. It was enough to know that she wanted him more than she wanted Wapinski, that she was with him now, that she thought his penis was huge even if he thought it was probably only average. He kissed her again, little pecks on the nape of the neck. Then he rolled, grabbed his Kools from the bedside table. She’d come onto him for reasons he didn’t know. He hadn’t pondered it, had thought instead, later, and laughed thinking it, and she had made him say it out loud—”Now this is true affirmative action.” She had not laughed with him, had not smiled, but she had kissed him passionately and he’d whispered to her, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” He did not tell her about his herpes infection. It was dormant; had not flared in five months.

  At four they rose. A steady breeze came from the golf course, billowed the curtains. Olivia closed the glass slider, stood nonchalant, naked, facing Ty, teasing him with her matter-of-fact posture.

  “Why’d you close it?” Ty asked.

  She did not look at him but coyly gazed to the side. “I’m run down.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Let’s do a couple more lines. Then I’ve got to go.”

  “I never expected him to move in.”

  “When the hell did he decide ... What the hell’s he thinking?”

  Their voices were harsh, hushed. Peter Wilcox, Lloyd Dunmore, Dirk Everest, and Howard Trimball, president of San Martin Savings and Loan, were in the country club locker room. They had played eighteen holes, had had a quick sandwich and beer, then had come down to shower and change. The room was clean, fluorescent-light bright, royal blue carpeted, mirrored between the banks of lockers.

  “Damn. I never thought ...” Peter Wilcox stepped one foot onto the bench, untied the lace on his golf shoe. “When I told him about it, I thought he’d rent it like he’
s done with all the others. Have you been there?”

  “God damn, no.” Dunmore sat on the bench.

  “He’s a slob. There’s not a stick of furniture in that house. Except the dining room set that came with it.”

  “Well, where’s he sleep?” Howard Trimball placed a foot on the bench.

  “I suppose he’s got something in the bedroom,” Peter said.

  “Who gives a damn where he sleeps.” Dirk stammered, “Th-this is bad.”

  “Yes, it is bad,” Dunmore said.

  “There’s no blacks in SMGCC,” Trimball said.

  “I don’t want this setting a precedent,” Dunmore said. “And I don’t want this becoming a court case.”

  “You know, Lloyd”—Everest tapped a fist onto his locker—“you and Peter did this. And you, Howard. Why in hell did you give him the god damn loan?”

  “Shit! He’s got half a dozen loans with me. This way I can show we make loans to Negroes.”

  “I thought he was going to move into that eight-plex out in the canyon.” Lloyd grabbed his chin, pushed his fingers up against the grain of his beard, removed his shirt.

  “So did I,” Peter said.

  “Well, he hasn’t.” Dirk straightened, banged his locker with his fist, removed his pants. “Figure some way to call his loan.”

  Howard Trimball pursed his lips. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on, Dirk. You know as well as I do.”

  “Well, what the hell are we going to do if he wants to join?!”

  “I really never thought—” Peter began.

  “I don’t care what you never thought.” Dirk cut him off.

  “He hasn’t submitted an application—” Howard began.

  Again Dirk cut in. “But if he does ... He owns property abutting the course. It’s supposed to be automatic.”

  Now Lloyd Dunmore stood, broke up the group. “I’ll buy him out,” he said. He opened his locker. “He’s money hungry. Where’s he coming up with all this money for notes, anyway? Unsecured! Damn, what a salesman! But”—Lloyd turned to the other three—“he doesn’t have a pot to pee in. Let him buy what he wants. He’ll need capital to keep it. And, damn it Howard, he bailed your butt out. I’m just a shareholder.”