The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man (16 page)

His smile faded, was replaced by a more serious, dedicated look. He knew he had to go to work, that was his responsibility. He kissed her gently on the mouth, eyes and scrambled out of bed, heading for the chair with his pants on it. “That's the way to do it,” he said over his shoulder as he hopped to the door, his bare feet chilled by the icy floor. “If you jive around you'll never make it.”

He peeked out into the hallway to see if the bathroom was vacant, saw that it was and scurried to take his morning piss.

Bessie huddled down under the covers, vicariously feeling the cold floor, the frozen hallway, the icy bathroom. Who would ever have believed that Fred Lee would be hopping out of bed in deep November, making it to a gig, for love?

She pulled the covers around her shoulders a little more snugly and stared at the slightly open door, wondering did jail change him that much?

It must have, she decided. He wasn't anything like he is now after he came back from Vietnam. After Vietnam they had taken up where they'd left off. Bessie working, Fred Lee chili pimpin' and trying to be nickel slick, promising matrimony someday.

What was it Big Momma used to say? “Maybe fightin' them Vietnamese had made him scared o' work.”

Bessie shook her head at the echo of Big Momma's words in her head. No, Vietnam hadn't made him lazy. He had told her many times in different ways exactly what being in Vietnam, fighting yellow men for the white man, had done to him.

And then the bust, at Slick Rina and Taco's crib, almost five years ago, five years of waste.

And now the post jail period. What had they done to him in the joint?

He had come out walking tall, talking to her about the new lifestyle he wanted to design for them, the first section of that being that she wouldn't be working any more. He would, he told her, even if it meant shoveling shit with a teaspoon.

Bessie sighhhed, her nose just over the cover's edge, listening to him pad back through the hall. It was rough, being an ex-con but, because of his honorable discharge, he had been able to find a job as a mail clerk in a big department store out in the suburbs, one of those places that didn't have a rehabilitated Negro on the premises and needed one or three badly. In walks bruh Lee.

At any rate, she uncovered her mouth as he popped back in, chill bumps on his arms, she hadn't had to hit a lick at a snake since he got out. “Baby, you want me to get up 'n fix you some breakfast?”

“Nawww, I'll have some coffee 'n a doughnut soon as I get to work,” he answered, moving energetically around the room to brush his teeth, wash his face, neck and underarms and to add socks, shoes and turtleneck sweater to his pants.

She wanted to ask him, “Baby, ain't you cold?” but knew it would sound silly, so she simply lay in place, watching him comb out his Afro gettin' ready to go meet the Man.

Yeahhhh what the hell
had
happened in the joint?

She stared at his lean hips, the bold, definite way he did things. Funny, she thought, it used to be that they would ship brothers off to prison and they'd return like whipped dogs, tails dragging between their legs. But not any more, not if Fred Lee was any example; “I don't want my beautiful black queen to be off slavin' under some blue-eyed devil, it's bad enough that one of us is forced to do it,” was one of the first beautiful things he'd said, and then followed that with other, equally beautiful statements and actions. “They be tryin' to practice genocide on us and we be helpin' 'em. Well, that shit must cease. We needs all the lil' beautiful black sons 'n daughters we can get.”

Of all things! Fred Lee wanted a baby

She slid her hand down across her stomach with no pills, no coil, no diaphragm, no condoms, no what did they call it? coitus interruption. It shouldn't be too much longer now, not the way they were keepin' each other awake at night.

And, “Now here's my plan, Bess baby all we have to do for a year is keep expenses to a bare ass minumum, don't piss off any well, not too much dough, save every stinkin' cent I make and rent a damed storefront, open up a day nursery or somethin', you dig? Get off into somethin' of our very own.”

“Fred, don't you want some toast or somethin' before you go out in the cold?”

He strode over to the side of the bed, his cap at a rakish angle, his topcoat buttoned, pulling on his gloves, his eyes sweeping from her hips to her face and back. “What I want, right now, would be somethin' hotter than any piece o' toast anybody ever had.”

She brushed the covers down from her shoulders, ignoring the cold, and reached her arms out to him.

He sprawled across her body and kissed her, deeply.

“Hey, I'll be runnin' late in a lil' bit,” he whispered, pushing himself up reluctantly.

She released her hold around his shoulders just as reluctantly, whispering back, a tremor in her voice. “I'll have a nice hot supper for you when you get in tonight.”

“You better have!” he said gruffly, humorously, patted her on the ass and split.

She sprawled herself out, goose pimpled arms played out beside her, aroused, in love, feeling for her man clattering down the stairs to catch a cold bus in the cold dawn for a trip to the cold, white suburbs.

“Fred?” she had asked him one night, having gone to the laundromat, grocery shopped, cleaned the apartment twice, and done a dozen other little things to make their life groovier. “Fred, they don't hardly have any black people goin' out as far as you do, do they?”

He had almost swallowed a fish bone laughing at her. “Oh wowwww! Baby you talk, you talk like one o' them civil wahh niggers!”

“Well, you can call me whatchu will or may, all I know is how ugly some of those white dudes can be, 'specially the middle-aged ones way out there.”

“Bessie,” he had fixed her with a hard look, “I been through enough shit in my young life to get me ready for anything. Are you hip to the fact that I did time in ‘
Nam and
the joint? And I still ain't but twenny-seven. I wish one o' them silly motherfuckers would even look at me wrong!”

She stared at the clock on the bedside stand. 7:05. He was on the bus now, probably napping to the first transfer point. She stuffed her arms back under the cover, wishing she could dream some money into being as she settled in for another hour's sleep before her guilt complex forced her to get up, to do something, anything.

Think I'll talk to him about workin' again, this evenin', at least until I get pregnant, she told herself and drifted back off mocking the cold sunshine of another day that was telling practically everybody else in the neighborhood to get up, get out and scuffle again.

Requiem for Mr. Chickens

The people of the community, honest johns, jiffy slicksters, peanut pushers, one-stop do-droppers, duece 'n' dice guys, three-card molly players, innocents of all ages, children, mushmouth sisters, down home gossipers, snuff dippers, exotic religionists, fast steppers, high rollers and just plain ol' folks, walked past the Spinning Top Dude, the wind shoveling cold air up their cracks, glancing, if they paid any attention to him at all, at his slow work with a beautiful hourglass top made of Swedish crystal, as he spooled it up and down a spider's web string, singing sadly in his native Tagalog all the while.

They may have smiled discreetly or laughed quickly, openly, at the sight of his friend Mr. Chickens sprawled out on a pile of cold, crusted garbage, nose snuggled down in a bag of chicken bones ironically, either asleep or dead drunk.

“Hey, did y'all hear about Mr. Chickens!?”

Nathan Holt looked up glumly from his Tuesday evening newspaper, his slippered feet propped up on a box of packed chinaware.

“Yes, Byron, I heard about it. Wasn't that a shame? They say the poor man laid out there all day before anybody came to get him,” Diane Holt answered, bustling around, packing.

“What did he die from?” Nathan asked, a cynical curl to his lips.

“They say he froze to death,” Byron answered sadly.

“Why didn't his buddy, what do you all call him?”

“The Spinnin' Top Dude.”

“Yeah, why didn't he help him?”

Byron shrugged, “People say he was too drunk.”

Nathan grumbled, flexed his newspaper out and stuck his face back into the sports page.

“Well, all I can say is, it's a shame that people would let a person lay up in a pile o' garbage all day and not try to give him some kind of help. Byron, come on back here 'n help me get some o' this stuff off the shelf in the back closet. Lawd ha' mercy, I didn't know we had so much junk. Nathan, don't press your heels down on that box 'n break my dishes.” Mother Holt scurried through the short hallway leading to the rear of the apartment, her youngest son plodding along obediently behind her.

Nathan scowled in the direction of their exit, looked around at the shadowed places where pictures had been removed, at the boxes of mysteriously wrapped up bits of family history, piled up odds and ends of a ten-year occupancy, and scowled again. Moving shit! Buyin' a damned house. What if I lost my job? The way things is these days, ain't no tellin' what's gon' happen.

He lowered his newspaper onto his lap, leaned his head back onto the headrest of the chair and dozed off, thinking negative thoughts, a secure island in the middle of a sea of packed household goods, ready for relocation.

Perry opened the door quietly, peeked around at his father and motioned for his true blue ladyfriend to come in.

Nathan opened his eyes slowly, felt for a second that he was looking at a very young version of Pearl Bailey.

“Hi, Mr. Holt, did we wake you up?”

“Oo, ahhemmm, naw! I was just uhhh checkin' my eyelids for holes, come on in. I would ask you to sit down but, as you can see, Diane got the whole place boxed up.”

“Where is Momma, Daddy?”

Diane sang out over the distance, “I'm back here, whose voice is that I hear?”

“It's Rochelle's, Momma!” Perry called back, a smile in his voice.

“Rochelle?! Rochelle, come on back here, honey … I got some baby pictures of Perry and Byron to show you.”

Father and son surreptitiously checked out Rochelle's well-designed figure from the rear, as she darted away gleefully to see photos of her roommate to be.

“They sho' as hell wasn't makin' 'em like that when I was comin' 'long,” Daddy Holt obliquely congratulated his son on his choice, impressed once again.

Perry slapped his father's outstretched left hand lightly, affirmatively.

They exchanged brief, soulful looks.

“Looks about like everything is ready to go, huh?”

“Yep, just about but you know your mother, she keeps findin' somethin' else that needs to be boxed up.”

Perry smiled at his old man's mock weary complaint and the cackling noises coming from the women, coupled to the heavier sound of Byron's polite laughter.

“Byron back there?”

“Yeah, he's helpin' pack.” Nathan dug into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, offered Perry one.

“Nawww, not me. I'm gon' be dyin' from too many other things as it is.”

“Right on, son! Right on! If I had just turned twenny-two, I wouldn't be suckin' on these ol' coffin nails myself, but I ain't got a thing to lose, not at my age coff off!”

Perry leaned his weight from foot to foot, feeling strangely awkward. “Daddy?”

“Huh?”

“I uhhh

The two men exchanged evasive expressions for a few seconds.

“Go 'head, boy … spit it out, you know you can say anything you got a mind to, to me.”

“Uhhh, well.…”

A fresh series of cackles and tenor chuckles cut him off.

“Ain't like you to be tie-tongued, Perry,” his father teased him, blowing smoke rings.

Perry took the bait. “Well, what I wanted to say to you was uhhh, I won't be makin' this move with the family.”

Nathan Holt's shoulders shook as he coughed and laughed. “Shit! I thought you was gon' tell me somethin' spectacular. You ain't been doin' nothin' but talkin' about gettin' married for the last six months. Naturally we took it for granted that you'd either do one or two things either you 'n Rochelle live with us 'til y'all found a place of your own that you like or just live with us period, there's room a'plenty in that big ol' hairy place.”

Perry chewed on his bottom lip. “That's a beautiful idea, Daddy it sho' 'nuff is, but

“No buts! We'll be puttin' all this junk on a truck Saturday mornin', hightailin' it to the land of saddidy niggers.”

Perry flashed a large grin in his father's direction, in appreciation of the joke, and looked down at his shoes.

“Well? what's the matter? Ain't this what everybody in the family wanted?”

“Momma did anyway hahhhahhhah,” Perry replied, knowing exactly what had gone down between his mother and father on the house deal.

Nathan released a long smile and waited, feeling vaguely uneasy with his favorite son's ambivalence about, about? What the hell was it about?

They were suddenly silent, the chatter from beyond filling up the dead space.

“Daddy, me and Rochelle have decided to live to set up housekeepin' together,” Perry blurted out.

Nathan Holt's first impulse reaction was to ask, “And not get married at all?” But he cooled it out and said instead, “Is that a fact?”

“Yeah!” Perry rushed on, bending over to place his palms on his knees in his excitement. “See, the way we've figured it out, with my stuff packed 'n everything, what sense would it make to be movin' all of my stuff out to the house? When all I'd be doin' is movin' it a lil' later on anyway.”

Father Holt sucked hard on the back end of his coffin nail, inwardly disappointed at the idea of not having his favorite son with him awhile longer. “Shack job, huh?” he asked, not really intending to be as crude as the question sounded.