“Whose?” Darnell buttoned his jacket.
“Sonia's,” Larry said. “She saw some guys from the eighth grade cracking on him and she caught an attitude.”
“ She's always got an attitude,” Darnell said. “But usually she's right. Anyway, I'd like to see if we can get him to run fast.”
“We ought to get Tamika to coach him,” Larry said. “She can aggravate you so much you'll want to run fast just to shut her mouth.”
“You going to marry Tamika,” Darnell said. “You always talking about her.”
“Hey, look.” Larry nodded with his head. “I bet you that's not a real store.”
They had turned onto Jackson Avenue from Ege Street. Darnell saw bags of onions piled on a wooden box in front of the window. The sign on the window that read MACK'S GROCERYS barely covered the old sign that read LA CARNICERÍA FAMOSA.
“Let's get on down the street,” Darnell said.
“You scared to look in there?” Larry asked. “I'll go on in.”
Darnell stopped and leaned against a utility pole. “Go on in, man,” he said. “I'll wait for you.”
Larry smiled and kept walking. Darnell caught up with him and punched him on the arm.
Sweeby was standing in front of Ace's Barbershop. Darnell and Larry reached him just as a light rain began to fall.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sweeby.” Darnell waved his hand in greeting. “I'd like to have another chance to interview you.”
“Read about your little narrow butt in the paper,” Sweeby said. “Think you a big deal, huh?”
“No,” Darnell said with a shrug.
“What you want to ask me?” Sweeby said. “And how much you going to pay me for an interview?”
“Pay you?” Darnell looked over at Larry and saw that Larry was looking at Sweeby. “I ain't got no money/ ‘
“You ain't giving out no free cans of beans?”
“Naw.”
“Okay,” Sweeby said. He turned and looked in the barbershop. “Come on in here.”
Ace's Barbershop was one of the best places to go on a Saturday morning. That was when the men who were waiting to get their hair cut sat inside and talked man talk with Ace and Preacher, the two barbers. Preacher was bald but wore a big, curly wig. Ace was big with a rough, gravelly voice. What they talked about was just about anything. Sometimes they talked about how the city was being run, and sometimes they talked about what the Arabs or the French people were doing. A lot of the time they just talked about what was going on in the neighborhood.
“Preacher, you mind if this boy interviews me here?” Sweeby asked Preacher. Ace wasn't there. “He's that kid that said they should turn the basketball court into a garden for the homeless.”
“Who's your daddy?” Preacher asked.
“Sidney Rock,” Darnell said. “He works for the post office.”
“Yeah, I know him,” Preacher said in a flat voice. “Go on, do your interview.”
“I'm going to tape the interview, okay?” Darnell asked.
‘‘Yeah, go on,” Sweeby said. He straightened up and squared his shoulders.
Larry sat down as Darnell set up his tape recorder. A man who was sitting in one of the chairs reading a paper folded it and put it down. He crossed his legs and turned toward Darnell and Sweeby. Darnell felt a lump in the middle of his stomach.
“So, where were you born?” Darnell asked.
“I was born in Live Oak, Florida,” Sweeby said, in the year nineteen hundred and forty-three.”
Then what happened?” Darnell asked.
Then what happened?'!” Preacher stopped clipping hair. “You want the man to give you his whole life after he was born? You got to ask him some questions!”
“You have a job?” Darnell asked, wishing Preacher had kept his mouth shut.
“Had all kinds of jobs,” Sweeby said. “Good jobs, too. Worked up in Kentucky for a while as a driller in a mine, worked in New York City down on the docks, worked in Jersey City for Western Electric. That was a sweet job.”
“Till they closed,” Preacher said.
“I know whole families used to work for them,” the man who had been reading the paper said.
“So how come you … you know … you don't have a job now?” Darnell asked.
“Why you think I don't have a job?” Sweeby said.
Darnell looked at Larry, then at Preacher. “You don't dress so hot,” he said finally.
“Did I tell you that you don't dress so hot yourself?' ‘ Sweeby said. “You got a job?”
“No.”
“But you got somebody to take care of you, right?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Sweeby Jones don't have nobody to take care of him,” Sweeby said. “And the little piece of job I got don't pay nobody's rent today. When I was a young man I used to get a job here or there and I could keep a roof over my head. Today, if you don't have a woman or some kind of partner, you got to make big money to keep an apartment.”
“So how come you don't have a good job?” Darnell asked.
Sweeby took off his hat and turned his head from side to side. “You see these ears of mine?”
Darnell looked at them. They were small, like Larry's. “I see them.”
“Well, I ain't got a good job because I ain't got nothing between these ears that anybody is going to pay any good money for.”
“You know what I always say”—Preacher was giving a guy in the chair a nice fade—”it's a good thing your stomach don't control your feet. Because you know that if your stomach controlled your feet it would be kicking you in the hind parts every time it got hungry for all the dumb things you did in your life.”
“What dumb things did you do?” Darnell asked.
“Did what folks expected me to,” Sweeby said. “They expected me to sit in the back of the room like a big dummy, and that's what I did. Then they expected me to get out of school with nothing but a strong back, and I did that.”
“That's what they expected all of us to do,” Preacher said. “And it didn't make much difference if you knew something or not, unless you were a preacher or a teacher.”
“Or an undertaker,” the customer waiting said. “ ‘Cause you know down South the white undertakers didn't take no colored business.”
“You never got your high-school diploma?” Larry asked.
“Hey, who's this?” Preacher asked. “He your coanchor person?”
“He's my friend,” Darnell said.
“You think they don't have any high schools in Live Oak?” Sweeby said. “Sure they got high schools, and sure I got my diploma. But when you got a piece of paper in your hands it don't mean that you got something between your ears.”
“When I was a young man …” Preacher stopped cutting hair and put his scissors down.
“I'm going to be an old man if you don't finish cutting my hair,” his customer said.
“You free to go anytime you want,” Preacher said. “You can just pay me for half a haircut.”
The customer gave Darnell a dirty look.
“When I was a young man you could always get a job if you were willing to work, and just about any old job would see you through. Didn't mean you ate high on the hog, but you ate. Now if you don't have a decent job you can't make it for nothing. You could just be strong then and make a living. Lifting and carrying and stuff like that.”
“You could dig a ditch,” Sweeby said. “You remember when they laid that cable under Jackson Avenue?”
“Yeah, and colored folks were the last ones to get their homes wired up,” Preacher said.
“They must have had a hundred men digging for three weeks steady,” Sweeby went on. “Today they get two men with a back hoe and dig up from here to Bayonne in four days.”
“So what you going to do?” Darnell asked.
“Try to eat enough to keep my body and soul together,” Sweeby said. “Then hope I can sneak up on some learning so I can make a decent living.”
“Can you rea
d?” Darnell asked.
“Didn't I just tell you I read about you in the paper?”
“Then how come you can't get a good job?” Darnell asked.
“Can you read?” Preacher asked. “And are you working?”
“He ain't nothing but a kid,” Larry said.
“Well, kid, ask your coanchor over there what difference it makes if you're a kid or not. If you can't do nothing the man is going to pay for, then you're in a world of trouble.”
Darnell looked out the barbershop window. Across the street, two young men leaning against a fence were talking to a girl holding a baby. The light rain had already stopped.
“So what are you going to do?” Darnell asked.
“You already asked that question,” the waiting customer said.
“If I knew what to do to get myself straight, I would go out and do it,” Sweeby said. “You can sit in your house and think about what it's like out here in the street, but unless you out here, you don't know. You just don't know.”
“What you think about the garden idea?” Darnell asked.
“It's something,” Sweeby said. “It's not a great idea, but it's something. You letting people know we here. People want to forget that poor people exist. We ain't pleasant.”
“Are you homeless?” Darnell asked.
“Homeless?” Sweeby leaned back as far as he could and looked at Darnell. “No, I'm not homeless. I sleep in these buildings right here on Jackson Avenue. They're my home. Or I go over to St. Lucy's and sleep, and then that's my home. Homeless don't mean anything to me. I could sleep on the ground in the park and it wouldn't mean anything to me. I ain't homeless, I'm hopeless. I don't see a way to do anything better.”
“That's why you got all this crack out here,” Preacher said. “People know they in trouble and can't see a thing to do about it. Then they get into that crack and make believe they don't know what's happening to them.”
“They know if they want to know,” Sweeby said.
“All I know,” the man sitting in Preacher's chair said, “was I come in here an hour ago for a haircut and I got to sit here and listen to all this talk instead of going home and spending some quality time with my family. I told you I was in a hurry.”
“Man, your hair's been growing every minute you been here. It's just about all I can do to keep up with it. You lucky I'm not falling behind!”
“What you think about the garden?” Darnell asked Sweeby. “You want it?”
“Yes, I do,” Sweeby said. “It'll be good for the people who don't have regular meals, and so on, and then it'll be good for the kids to see a different side of things.”
“You were in the Army with my father, right?” Darnell asked.
“Twenty-fourth Transportation Battalion,” Sweeby said.
“How come he did all right?”
“ ‘Cause he did the right things,” Sweeby said. “He just found the right thing, or somebody told him the right thing, or he just knew the right thing. If he didn't get into the post office, I don't know what he would have done. But the post office ain't big enough for everybody.”
“Post office is a nice job,” Preacher said. “You got to be lucky to get into it. You got to find out when the test is being given, then you got to pass it high enough to be called.”
“And you got to have an address so they can mail you a letter saying you passed the test,” Sweeby said.
“You happy with your life?” Darnell asked.
“It could be better,” Sweeby said. “But God gave me fifty-one years so far, so how can I complain?”
“Hard luck is better than no luck,” Preacher said. “Down in Waycross, Georgia, they tell this story about a old black farmer who was working a tenant farm—”
“Man, are you ever going to finish this haircut?” Preacher's customer asked, annoyed.
“You better shut up before I raise the prices,” Preacher said. “Anyway, he was complaining about how hard life was plowing behind the mule ten hours a day for a ten percent share of that farm. Every day he walked down each row and complained to the Lord about how hard he had it. One day just as he reached the end of a row the angel of death showed up and said he had come to take him out his misery.
“ ‘Misery? That ain't me complaining,’ he said. That's the mule!'
“Angel of death struck the mule dead, and that's why you go down to Waycross today you can see an old fool plowing up a field all by his lonesome and just smiling to beat the band!”
Darnell smiled. “I guess that's the end of the interview.”
“You supposed to turn it over to your anchorman and he's supposed to tell us what's going to be on the late news,” Preacher said. “Hey, anchorman, what you got for the late news?”
“The lottery!” Larry said.
“I can deal with it,” Preacher said. “I can deal with it.”
Darnell shook hands with Sweeby, Preacher, and the other two men in the barbershop, and so did Larry.
The sun was brighter than it had been when Darnell and Larry had gone into the barbershop, and there were long, black shadows across the sidewalk.
“How you think it went?” Larry asked.
“Okay, but a little bit scary,” Darnell said.
“Scary?”
“They were all talking like the same things happened to them,” Darnell said. “Then Sweeby got homeless. Even though he said he's not. How come if the same things happened to them it was just Sweeby that got homeless? I still didn't figure that out, and that's scary.”
“Yeah,” Larry said. “I guess.”
TEN
What are we going to do about the homeless? We have to do something and we should do it soon. If we don ‘ t, things will just get worse.
Darnell looked at the words he had written. It was his fifth try, and he still didn't like it. He tore the paper out of the typewriter, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash can. Mrs. Seldes had said he could do it, but he knew in his heart that he didn't believe it. Slowly he picked up a new sheet of blank paper and put it into the typewriter.
Sweeby Jones is a homeless man who deserves to have a decent place to live and something to eat every day. All human beings deserve this. So what we can do to help is to make …
He got up from his chair and fell heavily across the bed. He tried to clear his mind, to think of something else for a while instead of the article. He heard the front doorbell ring, and a moment later, Tamika's voice. He got up to open his door.
“Hey, Tamika, how's Molly?” he called.
“Not too good,” Tamika said. ‘They think she's going to have to go to the hospital to have her blood cleaned.”
“What?”
“Her kidneys don't work right,” Tamika said. “So she has to go to the hospital and they put her blood through this machine that cleans it.”
“That sounds rough.”
“She said if she don't she could die.” Tamika took her jacket off and threw it on Darnell's bed. “How you doing with your article?”
“So far it stinks,” Darnell said. “I shouldn't have let Miss Seldes talk me into this mess.”
“She talked you into it?”
“She talked me into interviewing Sweeby.” Darnell took Tamika's jacket off his bed and threw it across a chair. “The guy from the city paper wanted to do the interview. What's that smell?”
“I put cocoa butter on my elbows because they were getting rough,” Tamika said.
“You just put cocoa butter on because you saw Mama doing it,” Darnell said.
“Why don't you call Miss Seldes and …” Tamika looked into Darnell's trash can and saw all the balled-up papers. She picked one up and read it. “This isn't so bad,” she said.
“It's not that good, either,” Darnell said. “I can't talk about it as good as Sweeby did. I played his tape and it sounded important. But when I was trying to make it sound important in writing, it came out funny/ ‘
“Why don't you just write down what he said?” Tamika asked
. “Or call Miss Seldes and see what she says?”
“Maybe,” Darnell said.
Tamika went to her room to start her homework, and Darnell looked at the paper he had just put into the machine. He looked at his homework assignment, decided to do it later, and closed his notebook.
The telephone was in the hall between his room and Tamika's. Darnell looked through the telephone book until he found Miss Seldes's number, and then dialed it. He thought she would probably be mad that he even called. He thought twice about hanging up before he heard her voice.
“Susan Seldes.”
“Miss Seldes, this is Darnell. You know, from school?”
“Hello, Darnell.” Miss Seldes had a pleasant voice.
“I'm just having a lot of trouble with this article,” Darnell said. “I interviewed the guy—his name is Sweeby—but I can't seem to get the writing to sound like anything.”
“How did the interview go?”
“Good,” Darnell said.
“Then why don't you just run the interview?” Miss Seldes said.
“I was thinking about that,” Darnell said.
“You have to edit it, of course,” Miss Seldes continued. “You know, take out what's not relevant to the subject.”
“Okay.” Darnell picked up the telephone book and threw it toward Tamika's door. “Thanks a lot,” he added, before hanging up.
“What's up?” Tamika asked.
“Miss Seldes said I should just use the interview.”
“That's what I said.” Tamika put her hand on her hip. “You have any more problems, you just come to Miss Tamika.”
“You want to type it up for me?”
“What's in it for me?” Tamika asked.
“What do you want?”
“Go to the hospital with me tomorrow to see Molly Matera—”
“Uh-uh. Can't stand hospitals.”
“Uh-uh.” Tamika shook her head. “Can't stand typing.”
“What time we going?”
It rained the next day and Jessica Lee and Mark got into an argument in front of the school about whether it could snow before December.
“That's why everybody is always wondering if there's going to be a white Christmas,” Mark said, shaking his head slightly as he spoke.
Darnell Rock Reporting Page 7