They play four games to fifteen; Willie can’t even remember who wins which. He just knows he’s back doing something he loves; something he thought was gone from his life.
“A hunnert forty bucks for what?” Lacey looks at him as if he’s asked to drive the Chrysler to Montana.
“I’m not sure. Some kind of special class. Both Lisa and André say it’s required.”
“Other kids all payin’?”
Willie nods. “Lisa says everyone who takes it has to pay, and that it’s a required class for me.”
“Jus’ thinkin’ some new ways to suck old Lacey dry,” Lacey says in disgust. “Hunnert an’ forty bucks. You gonna be doin’ some work around here for that. Maybe build me a hot tub.”
Willie laughs. “Lacey, I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t have five hundred dollars rolled up in your front pocket right this minute, I will build you a hot tub. If you do, I get the money free. A gift.”
“Cold day you get a hunnert forty from Lacey Casteel as a gift,” Lacey says. “You gonna work for this.”
“‘Tote that barge; lift that bail,’” Willie sings.
Lacey reaches into his front pocket and peels off a hundred forty in twenties and tens. “You in deep financial difficulties now, boy, an’ don’t you be forgettin’.”
“Thanks, Lacey. I won’t be forgettin’. Really. Thanks.”
Two days later Lisa drives Willie through downtown Oakland and under the Oakland estuary to Alameda, a nine-minute drive from school, to Nautilus of Alameda, where she plunks down the $140 cash to take advantage of a special membership drive. She also buys one for herself. Then she walks him through all the weight machines, showing him special ways to work on his left side to catch it up as far as possible. After that, three times a week—Monday, Wednesday and Friday—she packs him into her car the moment school lets out—before he starts his janitorial duties—and hauls him off to Nautilus to work out for an hour and a half. And Willie gets stronger.
That same afternoon Lisa drives him to an old building surrounded by more old buildings with steel bars guarding what few windows aren’t already boarded over. Inside, they watch for more than a half-hour as a young Japanese man in a World War II crew cut—tiny in stature, but catlike in quickness and anticipation—guides fifteen pre-teen and teenage kids through what looks to Willie like a cross between some kind of Oriental martial art and poetry.
“It’s called Tai Chi,” Lisa whispers as the three rows of kids glide through their movements. Willie’s really drawn to them because it looks like they have an abundance of what he’s been missing: balance. The instructor looks up and spots Lisa, nods calmly, almost serenely, and continues the exercises. When he finally approaches them, almost gliding across the floor as if walking and flying are the same, Willie expects a bow followed by some wise utterance à la David Carradine in “Kung Fu.”
“Lisa, you hot little number,” the instructor says in perfect English. “Where you been? I thought we were going to start working out again a month ago. I’ve been lusting for you.”
“Hi, Sammy. I know. I’ve just been really busy. This is Willie Weaver, the boy I told you about.”
“Ah,” Sammy says, “Crazy Horse.” He puts out his hand and Willie takes it, smiling self-consciously. “I’ve been expecting you. Lisa thinks I can help redesign your unit and then we’ll all be famous when she sells her thesis to the Enquirer.”
Lisa laughs. “‘How I Regained Use of My Arms and Legs on a Simple Diet of Beefalo Patties and Carrot Stix.’ I’ll write it under the name of Victoria Principal.”
“So,” Sammy says, “how about next week? Start about six Monday morning? Work at least four days?”
Lisa nods. “That okay with you, Willie?”
Willie’s along for the ride. Lisa’s never steered him wrong yet. “Fine.”
“I’d put you in a class,” Sammy says, “but I don’t want to limit which disciplines we use. Tai Chi isn’t enough. I want to make this as intensive and varied as we need to. I haven’t worked with physical disabilities before, but it seems like a perfect thing to do. Besides, it gives me a chance to watch Lisa in her tights.” He nods back to the kids exercising across the room. “Wouldn’t do for them to see my Oriental mystique broken down.” He kisses Lisa a quick, soft kiss on the mouth that tells Willie there’s more going on here than just a thesis, and pads back to his class. As Willie and Lisa start for the door, Sammy hollers back at them, “And bring your cane!”
“Listen to Sammy real close,” Lisa says, driving back toward the school so Willie can finish his janitorial duties. “He teases a lot, but he says damn little that’s meaningless. Everything he’ll say to you is something you can use; either now or sometime.”
“You like him,” Willie says.
“I do like him. And I love him. Someday, when our paces match…”
In the following months Sammy taps into Willie in a way that almost frightens him. Willie discovers that his mind and body are merely extensions of each other, and Sammy teaches him how one can transfer power to the other. He learns that, even though he is just less than six feet tall, there is a bottomless well inside him, holding a map with specific directions around his physical limitations, information about his emotional pain that helps him let it be. He sometimes finds himself telling Sammy his best-kept secrets in the same way he might talk about what he’s going to have for lunch; realizing only later, lying flat on his makeshift bed at Lacey’s house, what he has revealed. And he knows, in that way that humans sometimes just know things, that Sammy would never hurt him with any of what he has disclosed.
And Sammy teaches him to use the cane. “I don’t want to make you a warrior,” he says, “but I also don’t want you helpless on the street at a bus stop. Ever.” So Willie incorporates the cane into his balance.
On a hot day in July, a day when the natural airconditioning of the Bay Area is on the fritz and the fog stands far out to sea, Lisa and Sammy and Willie sit in a circle, cooling down after a tough workout.
“So, where are you, Willie?” Sammy asks. “Where do you want to go now?”
Willie shrugs, thinking.
“What’s in you that needs work?”
Willie can’t get it.
“What hurts?”
“My family,” he says. “My sister. My goddam sister…”
“Your sister’s gone.”
Willie nods. “I know. But it doesn’t leave me alone.”
“It probably never will,” Sammy says. “But you’ll find a place to put it. What else?”
“There’s one thing,” Willie says, “and I know it shouldn’t be there. I should just be glad to be playing sports again. I mean, when we play ball at the park, I’m good, I really am. I play smart and I never hurt my team. I get my points; almost never throw the ball away.”
“And?”
“And then I go home and I replay the Crazy Horse Electric game in my head, and I know I’ll never have that moment again. It was so high. Everything was together. And I begin to wish it hadn’t happened; like if I didn’t know about it, I wouldn’t miss it so much. It’s so selfish…” His voice trails off, then snaps back. “It’s like with Missy. Sometimes I wish she’d never been born, just so I wouldn’t know how special it was to have her…”
“You can choose to look at that lots of ways,” Sammy says. “You can use your sister—or the baseball game—to beat you down or build you up. But remember: every moment of your life is part of you. You say you can never have that moment, or your sister, again. I say you’ll always have them. They’re part of what makes you Willie Weaver.”
Lisa massages the back of Sammy’s neck, running her hands through his short hair and down over his chest, toward the elastic band of his gym shorts, and Sammy smiles. He leans over and reaches for the wallet inside his workout pants on the floor beside them, pulling out a five-dollar bill; hands it to Willie. “Why don’t you go get yourself some breakfast for about forty-five minutes?” he says, and Wil
lie leaves them alone.
In late August, after a basketball workout with Lisa and a couple of pickup games with some neighborhood stars, Lisa calls Willie into the office, once again booting André, who is trying to come up with the fall class schedule, outside. “Close your eyes,” she says, and Willie obeys. “Extend your arms and touch your fingers together lightly,” and again Willie does as he’s told. “Now bring your fingers to your center.”
Willie’s center has moved.
When school starts in September, Willie sees it with new eyes; he’s feeling power over his life. On registration day he notices Angel standing in line to register for Chemistry, starts toward her, stops, then goes ahead. He’s not had any kind of meaningful dialogue with her since that crazy night at Lacey’s, but she hasn’t been off his mind for more than the length of one pickup basketball game. And if Willie knows anything, it’s that you’d better act when you get the chance; because once the chance is gone, it may be gone forever.
“How you doing?” he asks, sliding into line behind her.
“Okay.” She’s polite; a little cool.
Willie’s quiet a moment, looking for a way in. Angel doesn’t offer one. “S’pose we could have lunch?” he asks. “I’d like to talk.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Stuff.”
“Lunch here?” she asks, pointing around the cafeteria, which has been converted for the day to the registration room. “I don’t think there’s lunch today. We’re out at noon.”
“No, not here. We could go over to the mall. Have our choice.”
Angel looks slightly annoyed, but sighs and says, “Sure, why not? Meet you out front by the gate a little after twelve.”
“You still working for Lacey?” Willie asks over his bacon burger. “I mean, you still…”
“Yeah, I’m still working for him.”
Willie’s quiet. That’s as far as the conversation has gotten in his head. He wants to ask why she doesn’t quit, now that he got Lacey to agree to let that happen; the result of a marathon argument the night after they saw Lacey’s son at Highland; Willie would stay if Lacey agreed to let Angel off the hook. Lacey did agree—too easily, as if he knew something Willie did not. Two weeks later Willie asked him about it and Lacey just said, “I tol’ her,” and shrugged. Willie had been afraid to ask Angel about it, mostly because of his gut feeling that Lacey actually did offer and Angel declined.
He’s still afraid to ask, but does anyway. “Did Lacey tell you what we talked about?”
Angel plays dumb.
“Last year. After the fight.”
Angel looks away, then down at her plate. She doesn’t answer.
“He did tell you.”
“He told me.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to quit?” Willie’s insides are churning in response to the head movies he always gets when he brings this up. He knows what prostitutes do, and his imagination won’t leave it alone.
Angel’s answer is restrained. “No, I’m not going to quit.”
The right words won’t come. He wants to tell her he’s concerned for her; that he cares for her; wants her life to be better. Instead: “Why not?”
Angel takes a deep breath. “What are you, my daddy?”
He leans back. “No, I’m not your daddy. I just…Well, I just can’t get you out of my head. I can’t stand it that you’re a…well, that you work for Lacey, and I can’t stand not spending time with you.”
“I’m a whore, Willie.”
“I know. But Lacey said he’d let you off the hook.”
“You think I’m a whore because of Lacey? If Lacey wasn’t my pimp, I’d get someone else. I’m a whore because that’s how I survive. I wanna be a whore, okay? So leave it alone.”
Willie blows. “So you gonna do that crap all your life? Why you bother going to school? You don’t have to go to school to be a whore. Shit, look at all the time you’re wasting. Six hours a day. How many guys is that?”
Angel gets up to leave.
“Wait. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I just can’t help it. I really care about you.”
“You really care about me. Shit. You want what every man wants. You want into my pants. You’re just a little sweeter about it.”
Willie’s embarrassed. “No, really. That’s not it. I really care about you.”
“How could you care about me? You don’t even know me. You don’t know nothin’ about me. You couldn’t. No one does. You care about my skin and my body and what I can do.”
Willie knows she’s right, in part. He doesn’t know anything about her. But he’s so attracted it aches. It has to be more than just wanting sex. “If I just wanted sex,” he tries, “why does it bother me so much that you’re with other guys? If I just wanted sex, I wouldn’t care. I’d just save up my money and come find you.”
“Look, Willie,” Angel says patiently. “Don’t play word games with me. You know what you know and I know what I know. You know how girls get to be whores? Girls get to be whores when they grow up thinking sex is the only way to get anything. You know when I had sex first? Seven years old. My uncle. Till I was seventeen. It was ugly and I hated it, but he was nice to me and he gave me things I’d never have gotten any other way. It doesn’t matter whether you care about me or not. Nothing’s going to change. Now, do you want me to pay for this lunch? I probably make a whole lot more money than you do.”
“No,” Willie says, defeated. “I can pay for lunch.”
CHAPTER 18
Weekends during the first two months of school, André, Lisa, Willie and anyone they can recruit paint the school building. OMLC starts to take on the look of the castle André envisioned, and they work like demons, taking breaks for three-on-three games with neighborhood stars and barbecued chicken and ribs and burgers that André cooks on his portable hibachi. Willie, under Lisa’s constant “guidance,” works as much as possible with his left hand. Sometimes her guidance includes tying his right hand to his belt.
These are wonderful, relaxed days for Willie. He loves being part of whatever club it is that André and Lisa belong to; the days have been sunny and warm, for the Bay, and he’s getting strong and tan and confident. Sometimes Sammy comes to help and he always does the hard places, hanging upside down off the roof to paint under the eaves and threatening to drop on his head and splatter if Lisa won’t take five quick minutes to run into the thick shrubbery behind the building with him. “I know you,” she says. “What’ll we do with the other four minutes?”
Sammy giggles his high giggle and paints away like a madman, moving along the roof like a cat, singing a song he obviously made up called, “Shoulda Been a Sherpa.”
Some days kids from the school come and paint, but more often than not they work for about a half-hour, spending the rest of the afternoon shooting hoop and eating whatever André cooks. Except for Telephone Man. Telephone Man comes to work; and though he moves pretty slow and gets paint on a lot of windows, he contributes, staring closely at his work, talking to his scraper or his brush about the infinite number of “chickenshit rip-offs” that exist in his universe. André usually gives him an area of his own to work on, promising a small memorial plaque to let future generations of OMLC know Telephone Man’s part in beautifying their school.
On a Saturday in late October, when the outside work is nearly finished, Willie lets himself into the building early in the morning to polish the floors. He unlocks the student-lounge door so he can get the floor polisher out of the storeroom located just off the kitchen, and freezes. Scrawled in black spray paint on the off-white wall, probably four feet high and six feet long, is JO BOYS. Willie’s heart instantly leaps into his throat and he hurries around the building, checking the entrances and exits. All locked. How did they get in? He rushes down the stairs to the basement and sees the logo again on the staircase, and again scrawled across one complete wall in the open room in the basement. He checks
the entrances once more, thinking maybe one was left ajar, but now he’ll never know because he’s pulled them all tight. The sight of the name sends chills shooting through him and he gets the extra paint out of the storeroom to cover it, knowing it won’t do a lot of good if they have a way in, but just wanting it gone. His heart settles some by the time he’s painted everything over, and he continues with the floors, telling himself that most likely the panic bar on one of the doors was down and all he needs to do is be sure everything is tight when he leaves in the evenings. His mind tells him there’s no way those guys would remember him or know where he was if they did, but his paranoia says they’ve followed him and want to put him away for some reason.
He decides to have lunch at the mall and uses the short-cut down the steep concrete stairway from Kempton to Broadway, avoiding the tougher section of the neighborhood, as he usually does. A half-block from the stairway he looks up to see a sight equally as chilling to him as the message sprayed on the school walls. It’s Kam—has to be—spinning and kicking, spinning and kicking on the concrete bench at the top of the stairway. His buddies are cheering him on, almost absent-mindedly, laughing and slapping each other around, looking bored; dangerous. They’ve noticed Willie coming and Willie feels he can’t turn around, let them smell his fear; so he walks on toward them, avoiding eye contact. For a moment he thinks it’s over when they leave no room to pass and none of them makes space, but after a tense five seconds Willie mumbles, “Excuse me” and they move aside. Kam stops; watches him. Willie thinks he notices the cane—recognizes the cane—but can’t be sure. Descending the steps, he holds his breath, listening for footsteps, but the voices get fainter and fainter, and by the time he’s at the bottom, Willie feels he’s cheated death. He stops, closing his eyes. They still look young, and they still look scary. Especially Kam, with his cold, vacant stare; he looks like a guy with nothing to lose.
On Sunday, Willie takes the bus up to school just to check the place out; hoping—silently chanting inside—that the Jo Boys couldn’t or didn’t get in. His heart sinks when he opens the lounge door to see their name freshly sprayed again over his repair work. Again he checks the windows and doors, but everything’s locked tight.