You know what, Auntie, it’s cool, I say. Where’d you say you were headed?
We (the three of us) ease off. Me and Half Man are locked in a white-boy rigidness (the anti–Invisible Man), heads straight, contrived tranquillity. No, there ain’t no handbooks for this, but if there ever was or is, what pose to strike when you’re dirty should make the final script.
You see them? he says.
What you think? I say.
See who? Dawn says. See what?
No worries, I say.
The police bust a U and, bam, it’s like someone tripped a stopwatch in my chest. Here’s the nanosecond you say, self, keep your head straight, your hands at ten and two, make no, copy that not a one, sudden move.
If they flash us I’m breakin, Half Man says.
Breaking for what? Dawn says. What’s going on?
It’s all good, Auntie, I say. Not your worry, I say. But as soon as I say it, my guts jump out my chest and break, leave the punk in me all by my lonesome. We’re cool. We’re cool. Just sit back. We got a good L, insurance, good tags. This is me talking to me.
We straight, I say. This is me talking aloud.
Who straight? Half Man says. His face is bled. How I’m straight when I might got a warrant?
Oregon state law: Attempting to elude police could be charged as a misdemeanor. State law: A warrant is all the probable cause they’d need for a search. With what’s stuffed in Half Man’s waist (soft grams in the thousands), by the time they set us free, we’d be decades into the new motherfucking millennium.
They drilled it into us: Life has options.
But what they didn’t say was how those options dash with the hurry-up.
Elude or not.
Half Man sits or bolts.
Take the risk or risk the loss.
Wait too long and you’ve waited too gotdamn long.
They trail us for blocks before they hit the lights. I pull to the curb. Uniformed blockheads take their punk-ass time climbing out. They stomp up on both sides, all shoulders and grudge. We got this handled. We got this handled, I say to myself, and my self disbelieves. I touch my foot to the gas thinking, Which risk is the riskiest? Which risk is the riskiest? Which risk is the most risk? Hello, sir, I say, cheesing beyond all reason and nursing the prayer the sir sounds incontrovertible true. Did I do something wrong?
For starters, he says, how about soliciting a prostitute? He taps the back window. Well, well, well, if it ain’t old Dawn, he says. You’re still at it, are you? Didn’t we tell you that last time that the next time we were taking you down?
He asks for my license, insurance, and registration. I glance over at Half Man, who’s flushed.
Dawn calls the officer by name, assures him she isn’t turning a trick. Tells him that I’m her nephew.
Nephew, he spits. He scopes my L. Then you should have no problem confirming his first and last name and year of birth.
Dawn shifts in her seat.
This is my life.
That was my life.
It can happen that fast.
Chapter 25
Boy, you don’t have a worry that ain’t my worry.
—Grace
Everyone, when you think of it, is trying to buy time, and what’s more expensive than that? The buzzer sounds, and before I can get my bearings there’s banging at my door. It’s Champ. How’d you get through the gates? I say, standing outside the light.
It’s late, I say.
Or early, he says. He wipes mist from his face. He looks past me into a living room too dank to see much of nothing. Well, do I get to come in or am I banned? he says. I stall. I step aside, hoping he won’t speak on the shake in my hands, what the rain has done to my hair. If he’d come an hour ago, I would’ve been in the midst, doffing my wet clothes, checking myself, saying affirmations by the mirror.
He smells like an ashtray and I tell him as much.
Been out, he says. Damn smokers. Be glad you quit.
Would it have been too much to wait till tomorrow? I say.
It is tomorrow, he says.
The ride with Michael could’ve cost me more than I had to give, but this isn’t the time to mention it. I ask if he’s thirsty and offer him room-temperature tap or tap on ice. Ice, he says. I tell him to sit, but he stomps into the kitchen behind me and throws open the fridge. He checks best-by dates, tugs open the empty drawers. Where’s the food? he says. What’re you trying to do here, starve?
Not even, I say. Just haven’t been able to get to the store. Been working and working and when I get home it’s too late, the walk too far.
You ain’t got to walk and you know it, he says. This is crazy. He takes a clutch of bills from his pocket and waves them at me. Why’re you being so stubborn? he says. Why are you killin yourself when we got this?
That’s yours and nothing’s changed, I say. He looks at the bills and stuffs them in his pocket and slams himself into the chair. My refrigerator rattles and growls. The faucet drips in hi-fi.
I saw Dawn, he says. She’s some of the reason I come to see you.
Did you? Haven’t seen her myself, I say. How is she?
The same, he says. Or worse.
That’s sad, I say. I’ll have to put her in my prayers.
She could use it, he says. And while you’re at it, pray for a date to pick up your car. To pick up your bag, he says. They’ll be there when you come.
Give the bag away, I say. Someone could use it.
Right, he says. You!
Champ, I say.
Grace, he says. Besides food, what else do you need? Are you straight?
Lord willing, I say.
How about we give the Lord a break? he says. Leave Him out of it for a sec.
What I need are my babies, I say.
What we need is the house, he says. That’s what I’m going to buy.
What house? I say.
The house, he says.
Have you lost your mind? You must have lost your mind. Buy the house when? With what?
That’s my worry, he says.
Boy, you don’t have a worry that’s not my worry, I say. None. Do you think you’re the first one to bet on a dollar? Don’t you know what you’re into won’t save us, that it cannot save us? she says. You need to see it, son. You must. You either see it now or see it when the seeing is priceless.
He springs out of his chair and clicks on the light. I lose sight, find it again.
Look at you, he says. How about I ask questions. Where you been? For how long? With who?
It’s not what you think, I say.
I’m supposed to believe that? he says.
It was a ride. That’s it, just a ride.
Just got a ride from who? To where? he says.
From Michael, I say. But believe me, nothing happened,
He tells me to show him my hands—it was always in my hands. He fumbles across the table for them, and I cede. Do you see? I say. What don’t you see? I say. You have to know I made him bring me home. He had to. I won’t give him that power. I can’t give anyone that power. Champ releases me and sits back in his seat, rocking, his face softened. I ask him to wait and pad into the room to find my spare key, to fetch the cash from my check, and the receipt. I tell him to check the receipt against what’s there, but he won’t.
I’m sorry, Mom, he says. Straight up.
I lay my spare on the table. Come and go, come and go, I say. There’s nothing for me to hide. He takes up the key and turns it and touches the ridges and grips it in a fist and taps his fist against his head.
You think you could stop by the county office? I say. They got me working a double, and I’d rather not risk being late paying my fees.
Done, he says. He leaves the bills on the table and tells me to use them to buy food.
Take the money, I say.
Keep it, he says. You need it.
Oh God, Champ. Never mind, I say. I’ll go myself.
He gulps water and slams his cup, and cubes
leap and skip to the floor. He pushes from the table and snaps to his feet and clomps for the front room and I follow—me chasing my eldest, so many of my days pursuing us. He rages outside and I strive after him until he stops along the path and turns to me, huffing, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Someone snaps a light on in a second-story unit. Something fat and small darts across the lawn.
Champ, please, don’t do this, I say.
Please Champ don’t do what? he says. His eyes drift over me, all of me. In a flash, he whips away and hikes for the gates.
But can my boy be blamed? Can he? So help me, what in God’s name on God’s earth can he do with all I have done to us?
Chapter 26
Man, she been trippin.
—Champ
No mights or maybes to it, in the public my homebody is a helluva right-hand man, but minus a crowd, he’s a jabbering voice of dissent. Prove it! he loves saying, which is second only to his favorite: Man, what kind of fool-ass shit is that!
Was making my case on the ride over, schooling the homie that a generation was all it takes. For evidence I used the Kennedys and Joe Sr. (John, Bobby, and Teddy’s pops), he, who clocked beaucoup bread doing stock business that, these days, would get a motherfucker locked up under a jail; he, who made a king’s ransom off his side hustle as a grand, maybe the grand puba of prohibition bootlegging.
Tell me the Kennedys ain’t American royals, I said.
And your point is? he said.
This is when I mentioned Big Ken’s oldest brother, Uncle Cluck, who well before his passionate crusade for crackhead of the century graduated cum laude from the U of O and ran a profitable legal businesses while becoming (per the newspaper headlines of his bust) the biggest dope dealer in the land.
My point is you’ve got to be more than ambitious. You got to have that capital-V vision. Just think where Big Ken’s fam would’ve been if Uncle Cluck was farsighted.
Half Man made the sound of a fat stabbed balloon. Bro, your uncle Cluck was a dope dealer, he said. Not no politician. You got a bunch of book smarts, homie. But I do believe sometimes you lack in common sense.
Maybe he wasn’t, I say. But what if it ain’t who you end up, but who you were or could’ve been?
It’s the Shamrock, but we call it the Sham. And the Sham wouldn’t be shit without Sweets. Sweets, Ms. Do-It-All here, is chatting up a guy with a grizzly beard. The TV bolted to the wall plays a football game on mute. A pair of chicks hunker near the poker machines, one with a head of frozen ripples, the other trawling a purse you could use for baptismals. Ain’t but a few working bulbs above the pool table, which makes for terrible light, but once your eyes adjust, you can make out rips in the felt and sight a clean shot. I hunt a pair of straight sticks and check the table for warps and Half Man slinks over to buy the brews.
Oh, you trying to get me buzzed, I say. It won’t work.
No, I’m trying to cut trips to the bar, he says. Besides, your luck has run out.
Since when, I say, is luck a synonym for skill?
The sun shines on a dog’s ass every now and then, he says.
My favorite unc, Uncle Sip, was the one who schooled me on how to hold a brew, how to lap it before you swallow, a skill at which (I’ve seen him down 40’s on the hour every hour all the day long) he must’ve been an expert. But Unc didn’t bestow me his tolerance. Me, who’s almost always buzzed from the first swig on. Liquored or not, though, Half Man ain’t half no comp on this felt. The homie don’t know nothing about my Shaolin secret. The key to a straight shot is balance. The trick to balance is accepting the fall.
I break. Balls scatter but nothing drops.
Losing your touch, Half Man says.
Or touched, I say, by another loose rack.
Half Man scouts a shot, eyes a solid, and sinks it. That’s your ass, he says. You luck done run out.
Bet money, I say.
What, now I’m supposed to be spooked? he says.
We both know I’m not to be bluffed by quasi-cool. I slap a couple bucks on the rail and, true to form, he short-sticks his next shot.
So much for being fearless, I say. Let’s hope we never get into another event with the police. You was damn near an albino.
Sheeit, he says, and catches his brew by the neck. What you know, when you ain’t been locked up?
You ever check on that? I say.
Bro, who checks on warrants? he says.
Boom! This dude burst though the saloon doors hauling a bloated garbage bag. He struggles over and drops his bag by us and scans the room from Sweets and the bearded man, to the chick gamblers to me and Half Man. He digs a black box from an inside coat pocket and asks us if we like gold and diamonds. Check this out: Knocked All That Glitters for proper shine, he says. He pulls out a thick copper-colored chain and a men’s diamond ring. Chain worth a few hundred. Ring worth a few grand, he says. But I’ll take half a stack for both. That’s a bargain right there.
You call that gold? We must look like marks, I say.
Nah, nah, not at all, boss. Check it out. Got the fourteen-K stamp and all that. The shit’s authentic plus ten percent, he says. Ask anybody. I do my business on the up-and-up day-and night, seven days out the week.
Half Man asks what’s in the bag.
Oh, this right here? he says. This what I happened upon this morning. A few personal items. Household necessities and such. Got a twin sheet set with a thread count high as a house note. Got a nice comforter too. Calvin Klein drawls, got T-shirts, the premium kind with that thick-ass cotton, got flashlights and batteries, a coupla pairs of leather gloves. And you know them gloves gone come in handy. Be cold as an Eskimo’s balls out here fore you know it. Altogether the shit come up to bout rent on a one-bedroom. But I ain’t gone stick you up like I do them white folks. The shit’s all yours for the fair bid.
Half Man slaps his bottle down and digs in his pocket. He spreads his offer into a fan.
You serious, dude says. For almost five times that worth of merchandise. All brand-new with the tags attached. Damn, boss, I know I’m fucked up, but you ain’t got to do a brother like that!
Man, you want this money or what? Half Man says.
But that’s bad business, he says. Can’t do it for that.
Half Man stuffs his cash out of sight and dude tucks his black boxes and reties his bag. He fathoms the room and idles, begins to schlep off with his wares.
Hold up, I say. How much for the bedding?
He stops and turns and brightens and asks me what I think is fair. We haggle a second or two and settle. He throws in a pack of batteries, which is, as he calls it, a new business perk.
Me and Half Man split games and finish the rest of our brews. I’m good and buzzing by the last one but miles from slurring or swaying. Or so it feels. Meantime, one of the gambler girls wins big and brags about it to her friend. Sweets asks if we’d like another round, but I order water instead—another tenet of Uncle Sip’s drink-for-life manifesto.
The side door swings open and in rushes a clique of dudes wearing black parkas and blue Chuck Taylors. There’s a funny-ass joke running between them right up until the time they see us. Seeing us is the same as someone muting the laugh track on a sitcom. These clowns (in a city this small we all do) look hella familiar, but I couldn’t tell you from where or name a single name. They pull up seats, place an order for a round of Rémys, and keep right on snickering. They glare at us and bet money they’re measuring their reps against ours. I walk over and ask Half Man if he thinks there might be a problem and he says, Shit, if it is, it’s for them, maybe.
Got to dig the homie for that. True, there ain’t no superheroes here (all of the tough dudes end up dead or defeated), but some guys, guys like Half Man that live by pistols and pathos, there’s just ain’t no persuading them they’re capeless, that, no matter, white tees over flesh never amounts to Kevlar.
The wannabes spread out. One of them (dude smells like a lit blunt) spreads quarters on the rail and ho
vers without a word. We take our time finishing, and play another game just because we can, and when we’re done, Half Man snatches our bets off the rail, while I grab the stuff I bought for my mom. We blasé to the other side. It crosses my mind to hum.
On the other side we order our usual: burgers big as Frisbees, crispy fries, biggie pops. We grub by the big picture window. Outside, the wind throws trash across the lot. A trucker climbs into his semi. A woman flits towards the hospital with a thick parka up top, scrubs down below, and gleaming white nurse shoes.
Half Man asks about Mom.
She’s cool, I say. But she needs to get out of that spot. I need to get her out of there.
Where she stay again? he says.
Piedmonts, I say.
The Piedmonts, he says. Damn, dog, I see your point.
She gave me a key, I say. I’ma shoot this bedding there ASAP. If she don’t see me leave it, she might keep it.
Why wouldn’t she keep it? he says.
Man, she been trippin, I say. Asking about where I get the money to help. On her holy shit again.
You still scheming on ya’lls old house? he says.
Yeah, that’s the plan.
Oh, so they selling it now? How much?
Ain’t got that far, I say.
You can bet that shit gone be a jug, he says.
Why you think I’m into it like this now? I say.
Half Man scopes the restaurant and cranes across the table. Dog, what you think about fuckin with meth? he says. It’s crazy-low startup cost and stupid net. My homeboy knows some white boys in Southeast that be making bank.
Bad idea, I say.
No, serious, he says.
Me too, I say. How about we stick to what we know fore we get knocked?
The Residue Years Page 16