by Jeff Hobbs
But over time, as his fatigue grew—the energy-suction of tending to his students at school and his family at home, paired with the stress of operating an illegal enterprise in a gang-dominated arena, plus barely sleeping in general—they began to see that Rob’s condition went deeper. In that basement, Rob felt in control. He had created something, and his work was bringing in money, and that dynamic gave him pride.
HE FOUND A LAWYER in Toms River who, after reviewing the vast history of documents Rob organized, visiting Skeet, and naming a retainer that Rob could afford after a winter of intensive drug dealing, agreed to file one last appeal. In place of courtroom hearings, the argument consisted of a six-page brief, written and filed with a much larger compilation of supporting documents, asserting that Skeet’s postconviction relief had been overturned by an “improper standard of review.”
Skeet was living in the prison infirmary, weak, and heavily sedated; the prison medical ward didn’t stock much in the way of cancer treatments, but it had plenty of pain medication. For the first time since Skeet’s reprieve during Rob’s senior year of high school, Rob was able to visit without the Plexiglas between them: to look into his father’s eyes without a coating of dust, to breathe the same air while they spoke without telephone receivers, to hold his father’s hand. The summer was hot and muggy despite the air-conditioning, which was one of the few benefits of living in the infirmary. Rob made no effort to travel that summer. He had been coming to the prison up to five times a week, though rarely with anything to report about the appeal: the forms had been filed; the State had countered; the judge was reviewing. They both knew that however the appeal turned out, Skeet did not have long to live.
Brain cancer, in comparison with other terminal forms that impacted bones or vital organs, usually involved less physical pain. His tumor had not ravaged his body aside from the dramatic weight loss, and steroid treatments had helped alleviate that effect. The building pressure within his skull caused intense headaches and nausea, but another regimen of drugs eased the physical sickness to a manageable degree. His face appeared increasingly swollen, a symptom Skeet seemed to bear well. Mostly, he was just very, very drowsy, and the intensity of his fatigue began to mark his life’s inexorable waning. His mental faculties flickered on and off; some visits he would exhibit that old charismatic ferocity, while others he was impossibly far away and mouthing inaudible words known only to him. On those days, Rob would sit silently beside him for the entirety of their time. That Skeet’s illness decayed his mind over his body might have been a comfort to Rob; he might have witnessed or projected some semblance of well-being onto his dying father that manifested, mostly, in long periods of sleep. Just as likely, Rob might have taken a vicious offense at this last, cruel turn in his father’s fate: very few people in Rob’s life had cherished their brains more than Skeet, and that was precisely where the disease had fortified itself. Meanwhile, up and down the ward, prisoners lay in cots separated by yellowed curtains, their existence announced by the steady chorus of complaints regarding their various discomforts, mostly due to infectious diseases and the deficiency of their treatments.
On August 16, 2006, Rob learned that the final appeal had been denied. The judge decided that “the District Court applied the correct standard of review in determining that the Appellate Division’s decision was not contrary to, or did not involve, an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
On August 22, Skeet slipped into an unconscious state, the final event for most patients with his condition. Some took days or even weeks to pass away. But Skeet’s respiratory system failed that same night, and he asphyxiated quietly, alone, in his sleep, a month shy of his sixtieth birthday.
ROB HANDLED THE funeral arrangements. Very few people attended the service in East Orange. Skeet’s old friends in the neighborhood still told stories about him, but not many had stayed in touch with the hero of these stories. Almost no one in Rob’s life even knew what had happened. In Rosedale Cemetery less than two miles northeast of Chapman Street, he stood with Jackie at the foot of the plot while the coffin went down. His head was bowed and his body provided a column against which his mother could lean as her mind revisited the decisions that were now being laid to rest along with Skeet Douglas’s body. They each dropped a lily into the grave, and they left as the dirt was being packed in.
Rob didn’t buy a tombstone. Like Skeet’s legal options throughout the nineteen years that had passed since his arrest, a proper stone was too expensive, and an affordable stone wouldn’t do the job required. The plot was marked by a thin strip of brown concrete with a metallic disc bearing the number 54, and a small depression in the ground, six inches deep and nine in diameter, an earthen flower receptacle.
Later that day, Rob and Victor went to Orange Park to smoke, a cathartic ritual dating back to Mt. Carmel. Rob said, “I lost my father three times. First when he went to jail. Second when he went back to jail. And now he’s in the ground.” Rob looked up and turned his head toward his oldest friend. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Coming to the funeral. Means a lot.”
Unlike the moment in this same spot eight years ago when they were talking about the uncertainty of college, or the moment shortly after that when Mr. Cawley gave Rob the paper napkin that removed the uncertainty, he did not cry.
HE’D NEVER FAILED a test before, and he was pissed.
“The questions they asked, it was, like, the most obscure shit imaginable,” he told Tavarus, who considered that listening to Rob Peace bitch about an exam was one of the least likely scenarios he could have ever imagined.
“Go back, take it again,” Tavarus replied.
“I don’t have time for this shit!” Rob yelled, activated despite the setback.
Peace Realty. The new goal coalesced in the wake of Skeet’s passing, as the ’06–’07 school year began. After two-plus years of home ownership, he’d finally renovated the house on Greenwood to a decent state. By living with Jackie on Chapman and renting out all three units on Greenwood, he was actually turning a profit of $1,000 a month, though that number fluctuated depending on repairs. The process of making Greenwood work had been clumsy, protracted, and too much hassle for what he earned. In some ways, the clumsiness was what compelled Rob to become more involved in the real estate market, as trial and error more often than not led to success. And he wanted very badly to be successful in real estate.
Whereas the relative success of teaching was almost abstract in that it was contained within those most self-contained of creatures (teenage boys), he saw something pleasantly simple about the real estate cycle: locate an undervalued property, buy it and renovate, find the right homeowner, and come away with $20,000 or $30,000 cash in pocket. Success in real estate required skills that Rob believed were some of his strongest: the work ethic to locate those homes, the social skills to negotiate with people ranging from rich lenders to working-class contractors to poor renters, and the desire to make money in crafty but fundamentally honest ways. And, at least in Rob’s idealized vision, he would be making a positive mark in the world. Because a house meant shelter. It meant heat. It meant security. Above all, it meant family.
Some friends who knew about Skeet’s passing felt that something equally powerful drove him: Rob had lost not only his father but also the goal of releasing his father in which he’d invested so much work since high school. He’d achieved almost every objective he’d ever laid out for himself: swimming, college, Rio. But this one, probably his most valued, had beaten him. As he laid out this new goal for himself, those around him saw emotional progress, and perhaps recovery.
He knew from his high school stint working in title research that many people who pursued profits in real estate did so in less than intelligent ways, due either to ignorance, dishonesty, or the pressure of time. Rob desired to be neither ignoran
t nor dishonest, and he didn’t plan on rushing. But before he could do anything, he needed to pass the Realtor’s exam. While flipping houses did not require a Realtor’s license, he wanted one in order to access the Multiple Listings Service that contained the most up-to-date information on current properties. Without that access, he would be working from behind the competition. He passed the exam on his third attempt, in January 2007, and he partied the entire weekend with the energy that had characterized graduation weekend at Yale. The malaise that had gripped him for the past two years seemed to have lifted; the man drinking vodka shots and cracking jokes and rallying for a trip to the strip club resembled the kid the Burger Boyz had known in high school, the kid who had carried them all. From beneath the festivities arose a new determination, an orderly alignment of the future he now envisioned.
He would finish out this school year, his fourth.
He would continue living on Chapman Street and hustling at night.
He would save money with the same frugality and vigor he had since he was a kid.
At year’s end, he would start investing that money in houses, beginning with three or four inexpensive urban properties similar to Greenwood, the cumulative rent of which would theoretically provide him with an income of roughly $3,000 to $4,000 per month, in addition to his drug earnings, which he planned to ramp down on the same time frame.
Once fixed up, he would flip all the houses except for Greenwood and come out with $100,000 to $150,000 profit.
Half of this he would invest in more real estate.
The other half he would use to support Jackie and begin graduate school.
As soon as the math worked out, he would stop selling drugs completely.
At least, this was how the next few years coalesced in his mind.
He went through this itemized list with Curtis and Tavarus over and over. Curtis’s stepfather was an accountant, and he would help with the incorporation of a company—not technically necessary but useful in terms of credibility. Oswaldo was in medical school at Penn, but his father was around to work on renovations at a low rate. Tavarus would perform all the title research. Wherever a connection could be made to family or friends, Rob made it.
As he wrote and rewrote the hard numerical figures in a composition notebook—his handwriting, as ever, impeccable and slightly effeminate—he drew the vision further and further outward into the future, where his thinking became less analytical, increasingly idealized. Once Peace Realty had built up a reputation for savvy and efficiency, he would move into the commercial market, buy vacant storefronts along South Orange Avenue, and install real businesses, the kind that represented a neighborhood in ascendance rather than stasis or decline: delis and coffee shops and clothing stores instead of funeral homes and weave salons and check-cashing centers. The capital for such an undertaking would come from white men in suits who worked downtown, knew the mayor personally, believed in revitalization, and respected someone like Rob who had the education and street-level knowledge to accomplish it.
Night after night that fall, as the weather drove backyard barbeques at 34 Smith Street inside for round-table conversations in the kitchen, the Burger Boyz talked about what they would achieve. They didn’t reference the luck that seemed vital to anyone in East Orange raising his station; they’d each run through enough bad luck for fifty young men, and their optimism was total, driven by the fact that Rob was operating at their center once again.
Friar Leahy, in the offices and hallways of St. Benedict’s, saw something different. He saw a man who was burnt out, a man who was conflicted, a man who was refusing to come to terms with the loss of a father. Rob had never spoken much, neither in Unknown Sons gatherings nor faculty meetings. But he’d always listened, had always processed the obligations of being a schoolteacher quietly, studiously. He’d always put forth the effort required to perform his job well. At the end of the ’05–’06 school year, the students had given him the Teacher of the Year award. Not so as the ’06–’07 school year wore on: when called on to speak up on matters ranging from the annual budget to cutlery being stolen from the cafeteria, he’d come out of his thoughts reluctantly and say, “What? Sorry, zoned out.” Sometimes there would be contempt in his voice akin to a disengaged teenager being called out in the classroom, a note of Tell me why this is worth my time? During classes, his patience and air of peership frayed; a typical confrontation with a student who’d cracked a joke during Rob’s lecture had ascended into an uncontrolled shouting match (as was custom now, the parents complained, and Rob was called in for another reluctant apology). During practice and tournaments, he let kids slack off, as if lacking the energy to dog them.
In the context of this high school in this city, disengagement was always the first sign of problems at home.
Friar Leahy sensed that the former Presidential Award winner’s tenure as a schoolteacher was reaching its natural end. In keeping with the school’s method of dealing with its students’ personal lives, he did not confront Rob directly about any particular problems he might have been having. Instead, in the winter of 2007, he mentioned the Appalachian Trail hike coming up in the summer, which Rob had helped lead for the last three years.
“I’m just thinking ahead and wanted to make sure you were on board this year.” Rob looked away, toward a state championship soccer trophy in Leahy’s office.
“I might be traveling this summer,” Rob said.
“Where to?”
“Hopefully Rio. But also Ohio, to see family.”
“Okay, that’s totally fine,” Friar Leahy replied. “The boys will miss having you.”
“Yeah,” Rob said. “And also, I’m thinking about graduate school, for chemistry. I’m thinking about doing that next year.”
“I think that’s a very wise move,” Leahy said without hesitation. “So you want to keep teaching on the next level?”
Rob shrugged. “Maybe. Right now, just starting to think about the applications.”
“Anything I can do to help, you tell me. Got it?”
“Thanks, Father Ed.”
ON JULY 1, 2006, Cory Booker officially took office as the new mayor of Newark. He’d gained fame in the late ’90s as a city councilman who would sleep in a tent at city housing projects, hold hunger strikes and live on food stamps, patrol bad neighborhoods himself and physically confront the dealers holding down their corners. His victory was the first regime change in two decades, and it happened only after six years of near-bloody battling between the young, charismatic, light-skinned, Stanford-Yale-Oxford-educated upstart and the old, grizzled, but equally charismatic incumbent. The tension between Cory Booker and Sharpe James had been national news for most of the ’00s. The 2002 election, which Booker lost, was documented in the Oscar-nominated Streetfight, which between talking head interviews showed intense footage of the predominantly poor, black constituents who ardently supported James’s altercating with the working-class whites and Puerto Ricans who fought for Booker and his eloquent calls for public service and revitalization. The documentary was a near-perfect picture of a specific place and time: the declining city at risk of being left behind, the shoulder-height view of the vast number of problems in play, and the presentation of two equal and opposing paths forward whose backers were split almost definitively along socioeconomic lines. The 2002 election had been beyond combative; a riot nearly broke out when Booker showed up at a street basketball tournament that Sharpe James was already attending, and James called Booker “a Republican who took money from the KKK and the Taliban . . . who’s collaborating with the Jews to take over Newark.” When James—who was constantly being investigated for various alleged corruptions—won the election by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent, his victory seemed to cement Newark’s representation of “permanent poverty,” a culture of violence and corruption (at least if you subscribed to the New York Times).
Mayor James pulled out o
f the 2006 election and anointed the deputy mayor, Ronald Rice, as his successor. Booker, backed by the majority of corporate interests in the city, outspent Rice twenty-five to one and won the election with 72 percent of the vote. (Two years later, Sharpe James was convicted on five counts of fraud for conspiring to rig the sale of nine city lots to his mistress, who quickly resold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit.) The new mayor’s campaign pledge to beef up the police department in order to make Newark the national leader in crime reduction was what inspired the Bloods’ assassination attempt, which in turn had denied Skeet Douglas the possibility of external cancer treatment.
Booker came into office with an ambitious “100-day” plan to increase police forces, end background checks for many city jobs so that former offenders could find employment, improve city services, and expand summer youth programs. Though Newark city government did not extend to the Oranges, his rise suggested a shift in the direction of the city. Even those who had voted for the “other guy” were curious, and perhaps even hopeful, about what the future might bring.
“That’s your boy,” Rob’s friends would say, messing with him. “Went to Yale and everything.”
Even in this context, Rob was uncomfortable being associated with Yale, let alone the charming, some might say slick politician who hadn’t even grown up in Newark himself. “We’ll see what he does,” Rob said. “He’s been talking a long time. Let’s see how he does now that he’s in it for real.” And his expression said, resignedly, I don’t have high hopes. Now let’s talk about something that matters.
“YO, GET UP HERE!”
Rob was in the basement at Smith Street around midnight, gas mask on, filtering hash oil through the tiny perforations at the end of his sieve. Around him, the hydroponic planters formed three sides of a rectangle. The auto-timed LED lights above the sprouting plants blasted white light, screwing up Rob’s internal clock even more than his odd hours already had.