Fein returned and took his seat. He shuffled the papers on his desk and put them in some kind of order. Then he folded his hands, rested them in his lap, and turned his attention to Derek.
“You did wrong today,” said Fein.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fein exhaled slowly. “I saw those other boys steal those combs. There’s no trick to it; we have mirrors up in the corners of the store. Do you know why I didn’t grab them first?”
“No, sir.”
“Because it wouldn’t have done them any good. I’ve seen them around. The older one, especially, is already . . . Well, he’s on a path. I’m not going to speed things up for him, if you know what I mean.”
Derek didn’t, exactly. Later he would think on this day and understand.
“So now you’re wondering, why me?” said Fein. “It’s because you’re not like that other boy. I watched you and your friend in that aisle. You hesitated, because you know the difference between right and wrong. Then you made the wrong decision. But listen, it’s not the end of the world, if you know you made the wrong decision.”
Derek nodded, looking into the man’s eyes. They had softened somewhat since their first encounter.
“Derek, right?”
“Yes.”
“You know what you wanna be when you grow up?”
“A police,” said Derek, without even turning it over in his mind.
“Well, there you go. You need to start thinking on how you’re going to live your life, even now. Everything you do as a young man can affect what you become or don’t become later on.”
Derek nodded. It was unclear to him where the man was going with this. But it sounded like good sense.
“You can go,” said Fein.
“What?”
“Go home. I’m not going to call your parents or the police. Think about what I’ve told you today.” Fein tapped his temple with a thick finger. “Think.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Derek, rising up out of his chair as if shocked.
Harold Fein moved his eyeglasses down from the top his head and fitted them on the bridge of his nose. He returned his attention to the work waiting on his desk.
Billy was sitting on the curb outside the store. He stood as Derek came to meet him.
“You in trouble?” said Billy.
“Nah,” said Derek, “I’m all right. Where the Martini boys at?”
“They left.”
“Figured they would.”
“We better be gettin’ back to the diner, Derek, it’s late.”
Derek put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Thanks, man.”
“For what?”
“For waitin’ on me,” said Derek. Billy ducked his head and grinned.
They walked southeast on Missouri Avenue, toward Kennedy Street. The shadows of late afternoon had begun to lengthen, and they quickened their steps. Down in Manor Park a car went by, its radio playing “You’re So Fine” by that group the Falcons, had that singer Derek’s father liked. The sound of it, and the sight of the colored men in the car, made Derek smile. He felt clean, like he’d just walked out of church. The way you do when you confess.
BY MOST FOLKS’ estimation, Frank Vaughn had it pretty good. He had survived a tour of Okinawa, married a girl with a nice set of legs, fathered a son, bought a house in a white neighborhood, and was making a fair living with a pension waiting for him down the road. Men gave him wide berth, and women still looked him over when he walked down the street. Coming up on forty, he was where most men claimed they wanted to be.
Vaughn had a sip of coffee, dragged on his cigarette, and fitted it in a crenellated plastic ashtray his son, Ricky, had bought for him at Kresge’s for Father’s Day. Imagine a kid buying his old man an ashtray. Might as well have given him a card to go with it, said, “Here you go, Dad, hope you croak.” But the kid wasn’t clever enough for that. The ashtray must have been Olga’s idea, her idea of a joke. Like she’d last a week if he wasn’t around. What would she do for a living? No one pays you to shop, watch television, or talk on the phone with your girlfriends. Least not that he was aware.
Vaughn snatched the sports page from the newspaper sections piled at his feet. Redskins president George Marshall, in the process of renegotiating a lease with Calvin Griffith, was threatening to build a new stadium down at the Armory grounds if he didn’t get his terms. Former welterweight champ Johnny Saxton had tried to hang himself in a jail cell after he was caught robbing a five-and-dime. Saxton, who had beaten Kid Gavilan, Carmen Basilio, and Tony DeMarco before he hit the skids, had previously been arrested for trying to steal a fur cape and a pack of smokes. Former Washington Senator Jim Piersall, another candidate for the laughing house, said he was “unhappy” about being traded from Boston to Cleveland. When, exactly, thought Vaughn, had Piersall ever been happy? Audacious and Negro Minstrel were the long-shot daily double picks at Laurel. And the Nats had taken the Orioles two to one when Killebrew doubled in the eighth.
Vaughn dropped the newspaper on the floor and yawned. There was nothing about the straight life that excited him. These days, he could only get jazzed when he walked out that front door, to his other life on the street.
He sat back in his chair and took in Olga, who was building sandwiches on the counter beside the sink. She was wearing black pedal pushers she had picked up at Kann’s, a top from Lansburgh’s over in Langley Park, and a new pair of shoes on her feet. All of it courtesy of his Central Charge card. It kept her happy and it kept her out of his hair, so what the hell.
Olga walked toward him, carrying his sandwich. She had a plain face that had hardened over the years. The heavy eye shadow she wore, the hair-sprayed helmet of hair, the pancake makeup, and the red-red lipstick did not enliven her, but rather reminded Vaughn of a corpse. She had kept her figure, at least, though it had flattened out somewhat in the back. She still had nice legs.
“Here you go, honey,” she said, putting the plate down in front of him.
“Thanks, baby doll,” he said.
Olga picked up one foot and wiggled it around. “Capezios. You like ’em? I got ’em over at Hahn’s.”
“They’re all right,” he said with a scowl. He wasn’t angry that she’d bought them. He couldn’t have cared less. But he was expected to react this way. And now she’d justify the purchase.
“I needed a new pair,” she said. “And I’ve been saving every place else. Honey, I’ve got a full book of S&H Green Stamps. . . .”
He blocked out the rest of it. Her voice reminded him of flies buzzing around his head. Annoying but harmless. He grunted almost inaudibly, thinking of how he must have looked. Sitting there, acting like he was listening but not really listening at all, giving her his canine grin, his eyes heavy lidded and amused, slowly nodding his head.
Finally, when she was done running her mouth, he said, “C’mon, Olga, let’s eat.”
He finished his cigarette while she went to the stairs by the foyer and called up for their son. He heard her add, “And go down and get Alethea, tell her to come up, too.”
As Olga placed the other setups and drinks around the table, Ricky came in, twelve years old and flouncy-bouncy in that way of his that made Vaughn fear his son was gonna be a swish, and took a chair. He had been up in his bedroom, standing in front of the mirror, most likely, doing the twist or some other crazy dance he had learned from watching that guy, Dick Clark. It hadn’t been long since Ricky was nuts over Pick Temple, that TV cowboy, and now his interests had gone to girls in sweaters. Vaughn hoped. He loved his kid but had never understood him. He should have tried to get closer to him, especially when he was younger, but he didn’t know how. No one gave out road maps on how to be a father. Vaughn tapped ash, thinking, All you can do is the best you can.
Alethea entered the kitchen wearing one of those old uniforms of hers, a shapeless white dress that could not hide her shape. Vaughn watched her walk to the table, hoping
to get a look at her legs as the sunlight from the kitchen window went through her dress. She held her head erect and her shoulders square as she crossed the room and took a seat. She wore no makeup, and her hair was hidden under some kind of patterned scarf she always donned when working at their house.
Vaughn put her at about forty. She wasn’t young, but she was allwoman. He wondered what she did to her husband when the lights went out. He thought about it often. Sometimes he thought about it when he made love to his wife.
You couldn’t call Alethea beautiful or anything close to it. Her skin was dark and she had those prominent colored features that Vaughn didn’t go for. No one was gonna mistake her for Lena Horne. Her eyes, though, they did it for him. Deep brown, liquid, and knowing. If there was something, one thing about her, it had to be her eyes.
Olga had a seat at the kitchen table. Alethea closed her eyes, put her hands together, and soundlessly moved her lips. The Vaughns were not themselves religious, but they sat quietly while Alethea said her grace. When she was done, they began to eat.
“How’s it going today, Alethea?” said Olga.
“I’m on my schedule. Gonna get to that laundry next.”
“You feeling okay?”
“Fine.”
“How’s your family?”
“They’re fine. Everyone’s fine.”
Same old conversation, thought Vaughn. Olga, influenced by her girlfriends in the neighborhood who sat around talking about segregation and civil rights when they weren’t talking about their nails or pushing around mah-jongg tiles. Olga, with her guilt about paying Alethea “only” ten dollars a day, when that was the fee Alethea herself had quoted from day one. Olga, still trying to make Alethea feel like she was one of the family; Alethea polite but not giving up anything of herself. And why should she? For Chrissakes, she was their maid. Get in, do your work, earn your money, and get back downtown to your people. Vaughn understood this, but Olga, who wasn’t out there, could not. Okay, so some folks were pushing for equality, and Vaughn had no problem with that. But nobody wanted to mix, not when you got down to it. People wanted to be around their own kind.
“Olga,” said Vaughn, “give me some potato chips, pickles, or somethin’, will ya, honey? This is . . . this sandwich would leave a bird hungry, right here.”
Anything to shut up Olga’s yap. But when she returned to the table with a jar of sweet pickles, she tried again.
“Alethea, isn’t it awful about that boy down in Mississippi?”
“Yes,” said Alethea, “it sure is.”
“They lynched that boy!”
“That’s what the newspapers say.” Alethea’s voice was void of emotion. She kept her eyes averted from Olga as she replied.
“The way they treat those Negroes down South,” said Olga, shaking her head. “When do you think this will stop?”
“I don’t know,” said Alethea.
“Do you think it will get better for your people soon?”
Alethea shrugged and said, “I just don’t know.”
When they were done, Olga cleared the table. Vaughn watched as she separated Alethea’s plate and glass from the others she had put in the sink. Later, Olga would wash Alethea’s things more thoroughly than she did the rest. Vaughn noticed that Alethea was watching Olga arrange the dishes.
Alethea turned back to the table and, for a moment, looked into Vaughn’s eyes.
FOUR
DOWN IN HIS room, Buzz Stewart turned on the fourteen-inch Philco that sat on his dresser and switched the dial to channel 5. The Saturday edition of The Milt Grant Show was still in progress. Local band Terry and the Pirates were onstage, and the kids were dancing up a storm.
Milt Grant’s show was on Monday through Saturday on WTTG. On Saturday, Milt went up against the nationally telecast American Bandstand. Everyone knew that Milt Grant had come up with the concept first, but the preppy kids and those whose parents had desk jobs had gone over to Dick Clark. To Stewart, the kids on Bandstand looked like pussies and fakes. The kids with rougher edges and rough tastes, greasers and the like, and those who liked their rock and roll on the raw side, had stayed with Milt Grant. Hell, Link Wray headed Grant’s house band. That was enough to make Stewart go for him right there.
Many of the famed Milt Grant’s Record Hops were held in the Silver Spring Armory, not too far from Stewart’s house. At these events, packed to the walls with kids from local high schools, Stewart saw acts like the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, and that wild boy, Little Richard. Stewart wasn’t much of a dancer. At the hops, he leaned his back against a wall, his sleeves rolled up to show off his arms, and watched the girls. But sometimes, especially when the colored acts got up there and cut loose, he wished he’d learned a few steps.
After the Grant show was done, Stewart took a shower. Then he returned to his bedroom, where his mother had placed a turkey sandwich and a bottle of RC Cola on his nightstand. He played some singles on his Cavalier phonograph while he ate and dressed. First was “Bip Bop Bip,” by Don Covay, on the local Colt 45 record label. Then a Flamingos tune, and “Annie Had a Baby,” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and finally, as was his pre-Saturday night ritual, Link’s “Rumble” before he went out the door. Anything by the Raymen got him fired up.
He said good-bye to his mother, sitting at the table, smoking another cigarette. She told him to have fun and he said that he would. Out in the living room, his father, half lit now, looked him over. Stewart wore black Levi peg-legs, thick-soled loafers called “bombers,” and a bright orange button-down shirt under black leather. His hair was thick with Brylcreem and it rode high and stiff on his head.
“Where’d you get that shirt?” said Albert.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You look like a nigger.”
Buzz Stewart left the house.
DOWN IN THE basement of the Vaughns’ split-level, Alethea folded the family’s clothing, warm from the dryer, on an ironing board set under a naked bulb. She timed her day so that she could have this relatively light chore after lunch, when she tended to grow tired. All that food sitting in your stomach, especially that bland, tasteless food Olga Vaughn made, just made you want to lie down and close your eyes.
It was quiet down here, pleasant and cool. All the toys sitting around the basement, things Ricky didn’t use anymore and probably never had used much, gathering dust. In Alethea’s opinion, they had spoiled that boy, not an uncommon thing to do with an only child. When really all any child needed was love, food, shelter, and a good example of how grown men and women should conduct their lives.
Olga had become barren after the birth of Ricky, Alethea guessed, which was a shame for the boy. A child needed a sibling to play with and also to confide in when things got tough. Frank Vaughn was not the kind of man who could find a way to be both a father and a friend to his son. For Frank, it took too much effort and thought. He should have spent more time with Ricky, though, even if it was not in his nature, as the child had become something of a mama’s boy. Boys like that grew up to be lovers and layabouts, the kind of men who leaned on their women far too much. But Ricky was smart and kind. Most likely, despite what he hadn’t gotten in his home, he would find his way.
Alethea stopped for a moment to stretch her hurting back. The pain could have been a mind thing, thinking too much on the fact that she’d turned forty a couple of years ago. But she was getting out of bed slower most mornings, no question about it. Wasn’t her imagination or the date on her birth certificate giving her those pains. You worked this kind of labor six days a week all these years, what did you expect? She wasn’t going to think on it all that much, because none of that worrying ever did anyone any kind of good.
The Lord would show her the way.
She could see a doctor about her back, she supposed, but money was tight, like it had always been. Another ten, twelve dollars a week would help, and she felt certain she could get it, spread out among the six households she worked on her regul
ar schedule. Wasn’t one of those families could argue that she didn’t deserve a two-dollar raise. But seventy-two would put her over the salary of her husband, who was making sixty-five a week on his job, and that would be a problem right there. You never wanted to be making more money than your husband. A situation like that, it could kill the lion in your man.
Alethea folded a pair of Olga Vaughn’s white panties.
“Oh, Lord,” said Alethea, chuckling at the thought of Olga, trying to make conversation at lunch.
Lunch should have been Alethea’s time of rest, but truly, at the Vaughns’ it was the most challenging portion of her day. Olga insisted she eat with the family when all Alethea wanted was one half hour of peace. She accepted it, the way you had to accept most anything your boss asked of you, but it was a chore, more work, like being forced to take a role in a play. When Olga was talking to you, she was so aware that she was talking to you: Look at me, world, I’m talking to a “Negro.” The whole lunch thing was her way of telling herself, and her friends, most likely, that she was pure of heart, better than those people “down South.” But she wasn’t any better. Matter of fact, she was worse, ’cause with a race hater from anywhere, least you knew where you stood. If Olga was so pure, then why was she separating Alethea’s dishes in the sink?
Don’t want to get any of that colored on you, do you, girl?
“Forget it,” she said aloud, not liking her resentment, knowing it to be a trait that went against her Christian teachings. To herself she said a small prayer of forgiveness.
She began to fold Frank Vaughn’s underwear, extra-large-size boxers. Big man, Frank. She wondered . . . never mind. Wasn’t a sin to think about it. It was just natural curiosity about a physical thing, is all it was. She knew, though, that he studied her in that way. She felt his eyes on her all the time. But she never did think of him like that, not even for a moment. In any kind of world he was not her type.