Them

by Nathan McCall

  Driving home, Barlowe thought about the look on Billy Spivey’s face when he told him he was leaving work early. He could see it bothered Billy. There were several more print jobs to be run, but he couldn’t stop Barlowe from taking time off. So Billy shrugged, spit hard in his tobacco cup and stormed away.

  In the months after he got the news about the stingy pay raise, Barlowe had taken more time off. He’d decided that if his bosses didn’t intend to do right by him, he would make sure he took care of himself. From now on he would do no more than was required and he would make sure he got everything he was entitled to. It would start with all that overtime he’d built up through the years. Until now, he rarely missed a day at work. He always went in early and stayed as long as it took to finish the job. Now things would change. He would see to that.

  There would be even bigger changes, too, if some of his other plans came through. He was shopping himself around a bit to see if other printing operations in town might want his services.

  Riding along a different route, he cut through the southern tip of downtown, past all the government buildings named after dead white men. He rode up Peachtree Street, beyond the towering skyscrapers, which stood as grotesque markers of a city trying too hard to prove its mottos were true. Atlanta had its professional sports teams and its glittering theaters and bustling crowds. But it also had its Confederate past (and present), which no amount of sloganeering could shed.

  Likewise, Barlowe tussled with his own nagging doubts. It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to shake it, something inside was flawed, lacking. And the loneliness. The loneliness was there, too, always hovering over his shoulder. More and more, he lay awake late nights listening to disc jockeys play old-school songs that promised love around the bend. And more and more he asked himself, Around what bend? Where?

  In his desperation, he was even moved one day to borrow a page from Tyrone’s playbook. He went to a Kroger grocery store and piddled around, hoping to meet somebody in the produce section. He saw a lone old lady in a blue trench coat and brown stockings, rolled up around the knees. She leaned heavily against a shelf, mulling over a single apple.

  Lingering among the fruits and lettuce, he looked up and saw another woman, standing with a big bag of oranges cradled in her arms. He went over and commented about the shortage of apples in stock. She turned and walked away.

  All he picked up in produce that day was fruit, and some of it had spoiled.

  Before leaving the store, something else caught his eye, which now came back to mind. As he stood in the checkout line he noticed a black lady at the cash register. She had three young children, all shabbily dressed. The lady was dark, and she wore a scarf tied around her head. It was an American flag scarf, knotted in front, so that the ends stood up like bunny rabbit ears.

  The white people in line stared hard until their foreheads crinkled. They searched each other’s eyes for answers, then stared at the black lady some more.

  It was touch-and-go for a minute there. Barlowe enjoyed every bit of it. It brought a smile to his face as he thought about it now.

  When he reached home, he stopped at the Auburn Avenue Mini-Mart and bought his lottery tickets. Then he went outdoors to challenge Willie on the checkerboard.

  Tyrone had slipped off the job again, this time to go to some strip club. He phoned to see if Barlowe might want to come along and got the usual rejection.

  Tyrone came in from the club earlier than usual and went straight to the back porch to feed his pigeons. He opened the cage. The animals jostled for position and rattled their feeding tray, spilling water onto the newspaper lining the cage bottom. He reached in and stuck an index finger near the guilty bird. The animal strutted forward and hopped on board. Tyrone brought both hands close to his face and confronted the creature, eye-to-eye.

  “Vito, whas the matter wit you, boy?” He rubbed a finger over the bird’s head, softly stroking. “You got problems? Huh? Huh? Tawk to me, baby. Tawk to me!”

  The creature cooed a short reply.

  Tyrone picked up a box of seed next to the cage and filled the food tray. When the animals had pecked until their bellies bulged, they hustled toward the open door, the red ID tags dangling from their skinny legs.

  He released them. Wings fluttered wildly as they rose up, up, upward and landed in the majestic oak tree in the yard next door. They looked down contentedly on the world below.

  Tyrone watched and smiled, then went inside and fussed around in the kitchen, making himself a peanut butter sandwich.

  Suddenly, a noise sounded outside. It sounded like a heavy-duty lawn mower revving up. Tyrone drifted toward the living room and away from the noise. Then he remembered he’d let the pigeons loose.

  He rushed to the back porch in time to see the birds fluttering, frantic, away from the big oak tree. Two of the creatures flitted to another tree, shedding feathers as they flapped and flailed. The other bird took refuge on the neighbor’s roof.

  An engine hummed, followed by a cracking sound. It was the big oak! It swayed back and forth, as though battling wind from a heavy storm. Tyrone’s eyes dropped from the top, to the bottom of the tree. He saw a man in goggles and work gloves leaning down with a power saw leveled at its base.

  It was his new neighbor! He was chopping down the big oak tree!

  The birds, more frazzled now, fluttered still farther off and away. They landed on the far end of the Gilmores’ roof.

  “Shit!”

  Tyrone set down his sandwich and bolted toward the neighbors’ yard. Sean was so intently focused on the tree that he didn’t see him bearing down. At some point, though, he felt a presence. Instinctively, he looked up in time to see his neighbor charging, fists clenched and eyes blazing.

  Before he could react, Tyrone pounced. He thrust both hands around Sean’s neck and shook him until his teeth rattled.

  “You stupid sumbitch! You stupid sumbitch!”

  Sean dropped the power saw, which cut off, tripped by its safety switch. He tried to pry Tyrone’s hands loose.

  While the two men wrestled, the tree swayed. It leaned toward Barlowe’s house, then appeared to correct itself. It leaned back and away from the Gilmores’ place and let out a crackling wail. Its half-cut bark, shredded by the sheer height and weight of the thing, tilted sharply, falling in a slow-motion tumble, crashing to the ground.

  Tyrone seemed unaware of the noise and dust and crumbled mass of wood debris. He tightened his grip around Sean’s throat, determined to wring his neck.

  “You stupid sumbitch!”

  “Arrrggghhhhh!” Sean managed to rip off his goggles. “Arrrggghhhhhh!”

  “Sumbitch!”

  “Arrrggghhhhh!”

  He gagged violently, trying with all his might to wrench Tyrone’s hands from his throat. He couldn’t. Tyrone jiggled his neck some more, eventually cutting off the breathing passage.

  Sean let out a wheezing sound. “Heeeeeeeccchhhh! Heeeeccchhhh! Heeeeccchhhh!”

  At some point, Sandy peeped out the kitchen window. Seeing her husband dangling in the clutches of the man next door, she dropped the silverware she’d been putting away and ran outside, screaming.

  “Stop it! Stop it! Let him go! You’re hurting him!”

  Tyrone had slipped into a violent trance. He squeezed tighter, even as Sandy began desperately pounding his back.

  With one hand clutching his neighbor’s throat, Tyrone used his free hand to whip Sean’s limp arm behind him. He planned to snap it like a toothpick. He’d broken a man’s arm in a fight once. Snapped it right in two. He wanted to hear that familiar snapping sound. So he tightened the pressure, all the while studying Sean’s eyes. He liked what he saw: the arm and eyes, bending to his will.

  Sandy pounded harder. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  Tyrone leaned forward, to get more leverage.

  “Stop it! Stop! Pleeasse! Please stop!”

  Tyrone prepared to give the arm a final twist.

  Suddenly, a ha
nd, firm and heavy, grabbed his wrist. A familiar voice called his name:

  “Ty. Ty. Let im go, man. Let im go, Ty.”

  It was Barlowe. He had come home and heard the screaming out back.

  “Let im go, Ty. Is all right, man. Let im go.”

  Slowly, Tyrone released the white man from his grip. Sean slumped to the ground, like a flimsy burlap sack. With Sandy kneeling beside him, he clutched his throat, gasping.

  Sandy rubbed Sean’s arm and moaned. “Oh-my-God! Oh-my-God! Sean, is it broken? Oh-my-God! Ooohhh, baby, I’m sorry; I’m sooo sorry, baby!”

  Sean didn’t move. “I think it’s broken.”

  Sandy gently rubbed the arm some more, then looked up past Tyrone and yelled at Barlowe.

  “What’s the matter with him? He’s crazy! He’s crazy! He attacked my husband! For no reason at all, he attacked my husband!”

  Tyrone spit on the ground. “Shut up, Becky.”

  “The name is Sandy!”

  “Same difference, bitch.”

  Barlowe broke in. “Ty. Calm down, man. Chill.”

  Two of Tyrone’s pigeons came fluttering back. They landed on the ground a few feet away and poked around in the dirt for bugs.

  Barlowe turned to Tyrone. “What happened?”

  Tyrone pointed at the fallen tree. “Looka what that sumbitch did! The tree, man! He cut down the gotdamn tree, and right while my birds was in it!”

  Barlowe studied the fallen tree, wondering how he’d overlooked it before.

  With help from Sandy, Sean sat up straight. Still holding his throat, he tried to find his voice.

  “It’s my tree! That tree is on my property!”

  Tyrone balled his fists and leaned down, ready to throw a punch.

  Barlowe grabbed his arm. “Ty. Calm down.”

  Sean was livid, and especially upset that his wife had witnessed his humiliation.

  “I had every right to cut down that tree!”

  Barlowe shook his head. “No you didn’t, partner.”

  “It’s on my property.”

  “No, partner. That tree stood between both our yards.”

  “I happen to own the part of the yard that held the tree.” Sean lowered the volume now, careful not to provoke another attack. “I can prove it…We can compare deeds and lot drawings and I’ll show you…Shoot, I’ll show you if you get your deed—the tree belonged to me…You don’t have to believe me; go and get your deed.”

  Barlowe lowered his eyes as Crawford came to mind.

  “We don’t have to go through all that…It woulda made sense for you to tell us you were gonna cut down the tree…That tree kept things cool back here. It gave us shade, and you jus went and cut it down.”

  Tyrone chimed in: “Stupid sumbitch!”

  “You leave him alone!” Sandy shouted.

  “Shut up, Becky!”

  “It’s Sandy!”

  Sean grimaced, more from embarrassment than pain. He had been nearly strangled by the neighbor. Now here was his wife stepping in like some protector.

  With Sandy’s help, Sean climbed to his feet. He was woozy, unsteady.

  “Nobody told me I needed permission to cut down a tree in my own yard. I did it for safety reasons.” He looked at Tyrone. “I had no idea I’d be attacked!”

  Tyrone charged him again. “I’ll fuck you up, gray boy…”

  Barlowe blocked his path and turned back to Sean.

  “Safety?”

  “That’s right. All kinds of shady people creep through here and hide behind that tree.”

  Tyrone turned and stamped off, disgusted with the whole scene. He went to round up his birds.

  Sandy began leading Sean slowly toward the house. Halfway there, he stopped and turned around. “We’ll show you the deed and the lot drawings.” He shot Barlowe a snotty look.

  Barlowe shot him one back. “I don’t care bout your deed.”

  Now he regretted having come home so soon. He wished he had played one more game of checkers—one more.

  Then maybe Tyrone could have finished the job.

  Chapter 21

  According to the emergency room doctor Sean Gilmore was very lucky.

  “No broken bones at all, young man; only a minor sprain. A few pills for pain, a sling around the arm; in a few weeks you’ll be good as new.”

  The doctor’s cheerful tone irritated Sean. On the way home he remained fairly quiet. Beyond vague references to “the incident,” he was in no mood to talk about what happened to him. The humiliation was too fresh, too painful.

  Driving along, Sandy tried to deflect her husband’s shame. “Let’s try to forget about this, Sean. It was a misunderstanding, I’m sure…You think we should still try to get those Braves tickets?”

  He turned to Sandy. “You know things could get worse before they get better.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You know that, don’t you, Sandy?”

  She patted him on the knee. “Don’t be negative, Sean. Don’t release that kind of thinking into the universe.”

  If looks could kill…

  Over the next week, Sean moped around the house, still licking his wounds and tickling the edges of shallow exchanges with his wife. When he was home, he stayed indoors, partly to follow the doctor’s orders, and mostly because he felt uneasy about returning to the yard.

  He was especially self-conscious about the sling. It was an affront to his manly pride. And what if he should run into one of the neighbors? He’d have only one arm to defend himself.

  Sandy respected Sean’s need for space. She had needs of her own, conflicting emotions she struggled to reconcile. There was lingering guilt, and mostly anger to appease. How could a next-door neighbor do such a thing?

  Sitting in the living room one day, she turned the incident over in her head, looking at it from different angles. Neighbors everywhere had clashes all the time. They fought over property boundaries, barking dogs, lawn tools borrowed and not returned. They fought and even made up sometimes and became best friends after that.

  Whatever the problem, she couldn’t give it power to rule her days; she couldn’t let one run-in cloud her vision of what the neighborhood could be.

  And she definitely couldn’t feed into fear right now. Sandy made up her mind. She would refuse to give in, no matter what.

  Two weeks after the incident with Tyrone, Sean went to Sandy, who was sitting in the living room, reading. He had slipped into sneakers.

  “I’m going to take a walk.”

  A concerned look splashed across Sandy’s face. “I’d better go with—”

  “No. I’m going alone.”

  She gave in. Sandy knew her husband. Sean was a proud man. He had to feel like he was standing up.

  She bit her bottom lip as he went through the door. She stood in the window and watched him head up Randolph Street.

  Sean started out walking fast, then forced himself to slow down some. No need to hurry, he told himself. He lived here now. Like it or not, people would have to get used to that.

  He tried to blend in, stopping here and there to admire a garden, or to pick up litter, in a gesture that said: “This is my neighborhood, too.” Still, he looked like an outsider, and that was how he was regarded by people he encountered along the walk. Passersby flashed curious sideways glances, like he was some intruder, some wide-eyed tourist who’d strayed too far from The King Center.

  Walking along, Sean tuned into the routine sounds of the neighborhood. Laughter flowed to him from a porch nearby. It spilled from dark faces set back too far in the shadows for him to see. Music floated through an open window. A dog barked. Children played in a front yard, chasing each other round and round in silly circles.

  Sean spotted Mr. Smith coming in from the grocery store. The old man didn’t offer so much as a neighborly nod. A block farther, he passed a woman working in the yard. In a muted response to Sean’s cautious “hello,” the woman flicked a stingy wave and promptly turned her back.
<
br />   He wondered, Are these people actually angry at me, or am I being paranoid?

  Judging from the backyard attack, it seemed pretty clear. A full two weeks had passed and still he couldn’t face it head-on just yet, and least of all with his wife. Besides, talking about it might force him to admit what he now felt bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin—full-blown fear, dread and, yes, even resentment: What had Sandy gotten him into?

  He reserved a special disgust for the thug next door. If the world were still right-side-up, that man would answer for what he’d done. Sean would personally see to that.

  But what could he do? This was sensitive. The man lived right next door.

  Maybe it was a freak misunderstanding, out of the ordinary. Then it came to him: Maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe it was very ordinary.

  So, then. Was the attack a forewarning of more to come? He could hardly bear to think about it, and yet he knew he’d better think about it or risk another assault.

  He shuddered and suddenly became aware again of his surroundings. He was moving down a sidewalk in the Old Fourth Ward. He was outdoors, out in the open where he was being watched. He looked around in all directions, taking care to be alert.

  He tried to appear casual, nonchalant, but it didn’t work so well. He fell into a self-conscious stride that made him appear awkward, out of sync with his own feet. He covered another block and was struck again by the sense that he was being scrutinized, more like assaulted, by untrusting eyes.

  They seemed to be everywhere. Eyes poured out of windows, squeezed between houses, trailed him up and down the street. Some people, like the nappy-headed man leaning over a rickety upstairs balcony, shot him hostile glares. Others peered intently, not seeming to care that he saw them staring.

  It was unsettling. Sean could actually feel his whiteness. He felt it in ways he had never experienced before.

  Eventually, he came upon a group of teenage boys, about five of them, heading toward him. The boys were dressed in brightly colored clothes, large, outlandish athletic jerseys and baseball hats, with those appalling black stocking caps wrapped around their heads underneath. As they brushed past him, he tensed up some but tried to appear unconcerned. He could hear them talking, casually cursing one another. Why did these people curse so much?