Them

by Nathan McCall

  She raised her eyebrows. She didn’t believe he was being sincere.

  “No. I’m serious.” He needed to get away.

  Suddenly, Ricky Brown appeared from around the corner, pushing his grocery cart. He stopped at the curb across the street and scooped up two rusty cans from the ground. He smiled to himself, like he’d found two crisp twenty-dollar bills.

  “I need to go,” said Barlowe. He took another step away from Sandy.

  She followed. “I need to be going, too. I’ll walk with you.”

  She sniffled and blew her nose and tossed the napkins in the trash. The two of them walked the short distance to Randolph Street. As they crossed over, Barlowe glanced to his left. Mr. Smith was nowhere in sight. Good.

  They reached the sidewalk and separated without saying good-bye. Barlowe rushed indoors and beelined to his room. He felt light-headed. He needed to lie down.

  Sandy stopped and picked up litter that had been dropped in her yard. Then she went in the house.

  She had started toward the kitchen, when a voice startled her. It came from off to the side, in the living room.

  “Did you have a nice conversation?”

  It was Sean. He had been standing near the window, watching.

  “Yeah,” said Sandy. “I was talking to the guy next door. I ran into him at the new cafe.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact; casual. “You should talk to him sometime, Sean. He’s really a nice guy.”

  “I’ve tried. He doesn’t seem too interested in talking with me.” His tone was sharp, accusing.

  Sandy turned and walked from the room.

  Chapter 36

  It was early morning, a Tuesday. Tyrone spilled out the front door and crept slowly up the walkway toward Irwin Street. Other folks, the working stiffs, filed along the block wearing haggard expressions that dragged their faces in lock-step with their shuffling feet. Trudging along, Tyrone gazed hopefully up at the sky. An orange tint swept across the horizon, ushering in the first burst of morning light. Though slightly cold, it was a beautiful morning. He hoped the weather would hold. If the weather held, he might rake in some extra cash. He needed money, bad.

  He reached the bus shelter and waited for the Number 23, which would take him to Greenbriar Mall. As quickly as he flopped down on the long, wooden bench, he rose again, wondering: Did I set out food and water for my birds? He strained to recall. Lately, he was beginning to forget things. Too much worriation. Too much worriation. He decided not to risk going back to the house. The Number 23 would be coming soon. Maybe Barlowe would check the cage before leaving for work.

  Maybe he wouldn’t. Tyrone wasn’t too sure about Barlowe these days. It could have been paranoia, but he suspected his uncle might be having second thoughts about letting him continue rooming there. With Tyrone losing his old job and all, he hadn’t been able to contribute as much to the rent lately.

  He felt slightly depressed. A rough stretch of bad luck had blown in on him. Even the bones at the craps tables weren’t falling right.

  Leaning forlornly forward, Tyrone rested his elbows on his knees. He glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock. The Number 23 was late again. He stood and peered, impatient, up the street and spotted a ragtag army marching his way. As they moved in closer, he made out the frames of two women, surrounded by a bunch of children. The women clasped hands with two children apiece. A fifth child appeared old enough to walk on her own.

  The army crossed the street and bailed into the covered bus shelter. Tyrone nodded a greeting. The women ignored him. One child nodded back.

  Clothes wrinkled and faces cruddy, the children looked like they hadn’t been washed. They each carried a Popsicle, which Tyrone guessed was breakfast. Popsicle juice ran messily down their arms.

  The children talked loud, and all at once, shattering the morning peace. The women babbled like children, too; aimless, empty chatter.

  The ladies were young, maybe early twenties. They didn’t appear to be dressed for work. They wore tight pants; big, fake hair; makeup; the whole nine yards. They resembled the dancers at Tyrone’s favorite clubs.

  “Bitches,” he muttered under his breath. “Bitches.”

  He thought he might like to have a family someday. He could muster no clear vision of how that would look or feel, but he had accepted the possibility that a family was something he might one day stumble into. He chuckled, tickled that such an idea had entered his head.

  Eventually, the anguished groan of the Number 23 sounded from off in the distance. Tyrone stood and paced as the bus, gushing smoke and fumes, limped toward the shelter from up the street. When it reached the stop, he rushed aboard ahead of the army and shot straight to the back. The army piled in and settled noisily up front, near the driver.

  When the bus pulled away, Tyrone scanned the handful of people on board. They were mostly regulars: janitors and waiters in hotels downtown. Gardeners and cooks at Georgia State. The unemployed, out on the hunt. And various miscellaneous strays, including people he wanted to keep a distance from.

  There was one curious, unfamiliar face in the mix. A woman sat across the aisle and a few rows ahead, reading a newspaper. He couldn’t see her face square, but he guessed she was pretty. Even at that angle, she had fine features and an air of prettiness about her.

  She had class, too. Tyrone could tell. She wore a business suit, and subtle earrings—not like the gangly hoops tugging the ears of those women up front.

  She looked to Tyrone like she didn’t belong on the bus. He guessed she owned a car. It was probably being fixed in a body shop somewhere.

  From time to time, the woman glanced up from her newspaper, noting people who got on or off the bus. Tyrone watched her awhile, then turned and stared vacantly out the window, wondering what the day would bring.

  The bus slugged along downtown, making its way toward the city’s south side. It passed the state capitol on Washington Street. A magnificent, gold-domed building, the capitol was fronted with long, sculpted columns and lots of broad concrete steps that led up to tall, majestic doors.

  Several old white men in business suits climbed the steps toward the entrance. Carrying briefcases and important-looking folders, they appeared eager, confident enough to run the world.

  Sonsabitches. That was what Tyrone called them. Sonsabitches.

  As the bus rolled past, he craned his neck and stared back at the building. It came to him that the capitol was a public building, which meant he could go inside if he wanted. Important business was decided by sonsabitches in buildings like that. Maybe he should go there someday and walk around, just to piss them off.

  Downtown, near City Hall, he saw a high-rise apartment building under construction. With all the construction going on in Atlanta, there were plenty of labor jobs to be had. A few times, he’d done electrical jobs on construction sites, but for reasons he didn’t want to think about, he never was able to stay with those.

  Besides, he had his own thing now, working for himself.

  Now the woman in the business suit rose and got off the bus. Tyrone watched her through the window. She was pretty, just like he’d thought. She carried a leather briefcase and walked hurriedly toward City Hall.

  Maybe he would see her again. If he saw her again, he would say something to her, strike up a conversation, to see how she reacted.

  Eventually, the bus reached his stop on Campbellton Road. He got off and walked briskly toward his job site, a shopping center parking lot near Greenbriar Mall. After the first two months installing car stereos, Tyrone had drawn so many customers he had to hire a man to help him out. The new assistant, a guy called Benz, lived a few blocks from the shopping center. On installation jobs, Benz was about as skilled as Tyrone. He did good work, and fast. Problem was, he proved unreliable. Most days he showed up late, and sometimes not at all.

  On that Tuesday morning, when Tyrone reached the littered parking lot, Benz hadn’t arrived yet. Tyrone was greeted by a man in bifocals, who’d bought a sound system t
he day before and made arrangements through Kwan Li to have it installed. According to the appointment book, Benz was supposed to install the system at 8 a.m. It was now 8:16.

  Tyrone apologized, then proceeded to do the installation, which required wiring the car from front to back and adding four new speakers to the two already in place.

  As he worked, another car—a customer Tyrone had booked for his first job of the day—pulled into the lot. Then still another showed up.

  Hours later, Tyrone was lying on the floor of a Honda Civic, running wiring beneath the steering column, when Benz showed up, sucking on a Budweiser. He leaned down where Tyrone worked.

  “Yo. What we got, chief?”

  Tyrone kept his eyes focused on his work. “Look out there for yourself and see what we got.”

  Three customers waited. A fourth had left, frustrated, a half-hour before.

  Benz approached a car and went to work. He knocked out the job in twenty minutes, then broke for lunch. He returned an hour later, carrying a three-piece chicken snack and a forty-ounce brew.

  He sat atop the hood of one of the cars and ate, tossing chicken bones on the ground.

  When he was done, Benz went back to work.

  “Yo, Tyrone, you usin your wie cutters?”

  “Naw.”

  “Can I use em a minute?”

  “Where yours at?”

  “Left em home.”

  The wire cutters came flying his way, landing on the ground near his foot.

  At the end of the workday, when Tyrone had finished his last car, Benz went to him. “Me and the fellas goin over to a bah. You wanna hang wit us?”

  Tyrone had gathered his tools and begun sweeping his area of the parking lot.

  Benz asked again: “You wanna come?”

  Tyrone kept on sweeping. He didn’t look at Benz when he spoke. “I done lost two hunnered dollas today fuckin wit you.”

  Benz stiffened.

  “Whut?”

  “You ain’t shit, thas whut!” Tyrone shouted. “You hear me? You ain’t shit!”

  Benz shot back: “You the one ain’t shit! Uncle Tomin for a Chinaman!”

  Even in the heat of a moment there are some things you shouldn’t say to certain people, even if you believe it’s true. Later, as Benz sat in the Grady Hospital emergency room, holding a blood-soaked oil rag to his throbbing skull, he regretted that that morsel of wisdom had not come to him sooner.

  For his part, Kwan Li had his regrets, too. He regretted having to end the partnership with Tyrone. And he hated forking over $400 to replace the passenger-side window of a client’s car after Tyrone implanted Benz’s head in the glass.

  Nobody regretted the whole thing more than Tyrone. After the brutal outburst, he ended up right back where he had started—he rejoined the ranks of the unemployed.

  Chapter 37

  Barlowe lay in bed after an evening of long, vigorous lovemaking. Louise had fallen asleep beside him. He stared, engrossed, at her TV, which broadcasted bad news, conflict, from around the globe. There was That War going on, half a world away. He watched the latest dispatch and listened with the volume down low: There had been another bombing. More people killed.

  On the TV screen, the camera panned to dusty, battered, clay-baked buildings, reduced to smoldering ashes. Clusters of people with contorted faces anguished over the loss of more lives––over the loss of their way of life––as they collected mangled bodies and rushed them to hospitals and morgues.

  Standing amid the chaos, a news reporter interviewed a man described as “a high-ranking U.S. official.” Dressed in a tie, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, the high-ranking U.S. official assured the reporter, over and over, that Americans were there to liberate.

  The camera then cut to a man standing on the crowded street. Bearded and scruffy, the man, arms flailing, pointed to scattered fires raging here and there, a result of the bombs dropped to liberate.

  Over and over, the man shouted, in clipped English: “The Americans are occupiers! The Americans are occupiers!”

  Occupiers.

  Barlowe turned off the TV and went back to sleep.

  The morning light filtered in through the second-floor window on Ormond Drive and splashed across Barlowe’s groggy face. A bird landed on the sill, chirping and fluttering its wings, shaking off icy water from an early bath.

  Barlowe gazed past the bird and stared dreamily at the winter sky. It was a Sunday. The morning had come and he felt the kind of contentment a man feels when he’s had a good meal and retired to the easy chair to digest his food and rest himself.

  Earlier that morning, he had watched through bleary eyes as Louise got up from bed, slid into a sheer black nightgown and left the room. Now he could hear her moving around downstairs. Now there were pots and pans clanging; there was the whiff of bacon wafting in the air and the faint sound of a small kitchen radio playing Mississippi blues.

  Barlowe lay in bed, thinking. He felt pretty good about the moment, and even better about the woman downstairs. There was no real reason not to trust the goodness of what he felt. Still, he sensed himself holding back a little.

  Something struck him as odd. He had been seeing Louise steadily for several months now and, so far, there was nothing wrong. How could there be a real relationship with nothing wrong? Surely there had to be demons prowling around somewhere behind her dimpled smile. Everybody had demons, didn’t they?

  So what were Louise’s demons? When would they come out and expose themselves?

  It seemed almost a law of nature that if she had demons Barlowe wouldn’t find out until late in the game, when it counted most. He wouldn’t likely find out until after they had gotten married and maybe had their second child. Then demons might appear. He might stumble up on a lifelong gambling habit she couldn’t break, or struggles with anger management or a private addiction to prescription drugs.

  Everybody had demons, didn’t they?

  Maybe not. Maybe Barlowe’s ship had finally come in. Maybe Louise was one of the few people in the world passed over by demons. Maybe there were demons haunting him.

  He suspected what might be nagging him: He didn’t trust life to turn out right. Could well be, he thought, turning over on his side. Could well be.

  “Barlowe!” Louise called from the bottom of the stairs. “Breakfast ready!”

  He rolled again onto his back and lifted his head. “All right!”

  He climbed out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He now had his own toothbrush there. It hung on a silver rack, beside hers. She had given it to him one weekend, without a big ceremony or commitment speech. When he came back the next week, he found the toothbrush still there, resting in the same slot where he’d left it. She hadn’t taken it down to hide from anybody.

  He gazed at himself in the mirror. Did he really think there might be somebody else sniffing around? Not really. Then he remembered Nell. Nell proved you never can claim to know anything for sure. She proved things can up and disappear.

  Still…

  “Barlowe, c’mon! The biscuits are gettin cold!”

  He washed up good, went downstairs and took a seat at a small kitchen table. Wearing fuzzy slippers, Louise stood at the stove with her back to him, putting the finishing touches on breakfast.

  “I got you somethin here that’ll stick to your stomach.”

  “Good, baby. I’m hongry.”

  He studied her there in that sheer nightgown. It was sleeveless, and it fell down to the middle of her thighs. He could see through that gown to the contours of her body. Hers wasn’t the shape of a nightclub dancer, but she was sexy just the same.

  Barlowe picked up the morning newspaper from the day before, which Louise had left on the table. He liked sitting at her table. Just beyond it there was a sliding glass door with two long windowpanes that offered a bright, clear view outside. He looked out to the small backyard, which rose into a steep, tree-lined grassy knoll. Beyond the knoll was an apartment complex
, and a basketball court across the way. Barlowe could hear a ball bouncing. He could see teenagers playing out there. Some ran up and down the court, passing, shooting, jumping, while others stood on the sidelines, shivering in the cold. The morning frost had begun to fade, but he could tell from the way they shivered that it would be a while before the temperature climbed.

  Watching the boys it occurred to him that he’d give almost anything to be that carefree again. He’d love to have nothing more weighing on his head than choosing sides for a pickup game.

  He shifted his sights back and forth between the teenagers and lovely Louise, standing at the stove in her sheer black nightgown, preparing a breakfast of biscuits and eggs and fried potatoes.

  He liked Louise a lot. She had been to college, but she wasn’t caught up in the glitz and glitter of such things. She was down-to-earth, wise and calm, even when she was upset. In fact, she was one of the purest spirits he’d ever seen in a woman not married to the church.

  As she’d told him on their first date, Louise sprang from a family of simple rural folks. Barlowe actually went home with her once to meet her people, and even went with the family to Sunday service. The family church was so small you could talk across the room without raising your voice. Most of the people there were Louise’s kin, and many looked alike. High foreheads and a reddish-brown-to-dark skin tone that testified to blacks and Indians crossing paths.

  Sitting in the church service, Barlowe felt the stirrings of something warm and natural. After the visit, he was glad he had gone. It solidified his sense of who she was.

  Louise wasn’t perfect, whatever that meant. Barlowe was too old now to be concerned with perfect. Still, it somehow bothered him that he couldn’t pinpoint some character flaw that proved she was a real live human being.

  In their months of dating there was only one habit he could count as anything even close to a vice: coffee. The woman was crazy about coffee. Two cups in the morning were a given. Another cup during the day, a need.

  And not just that: Louise was a high-end coffee lover. She drank the gourmet stuff, which required special trips to special coffee stores. She had an expensive, high-powered coffeemaker that percolated like it ran on diesel fuel. She used amaretto and French vanilla dairy creamers, and instead of plain white coffee filters, she preferred the special unbleached brown.