“Who is that bitch?” said Jones.
“Man said Connie Francis,” said Willis.
“She can’t sing a note. But I would fuck her to death if I ever got close to it.”
“She’s too old. Anyway, I seen her picture in a magazine, and she ain’t all that great.”
“I don’t care what she looks like. I would fuck the life out of that white girl anyway.”
“She’s Spanish.”
“So?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“What’s the name of that song she’s singin’? ‘My Hot Penis’?”
“‘My Happiness.’”
“What I said.”
They were in Jones’s Cadillac, a ’53 sedan, a basic radio-and-heater model that was no Coupe DeVille or Eldorado. It had the Caddy symbol on it, though, and that is what Jones cared about most. It was a start. He had bought it on time from Royal Chrysler on Rhode Island Avenue for eight hundred and ninety-five. He had lied about his job status to get the credit. He’d owned it for three months and had made one payment so far. They could go ahead and repossess it, they wanted to. He wasn’t gonna pay on it anymore.
“Where we goin’ when we done with this bottle?” said Jones.
“Told my boy Dennis we’d swing by and pick him up, ride around some. Boy’s a grasshopper, man. Figure he might have somethin’ we can burn.”
“That tall boy lives over on Princeton?”
“Yeah.”
“He ain’t no more than a kid.”
“He’s my age.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’.”
Alvin Jones was twenty-two. His cousin Kenneth Willis had just turned eighteen. Jones was feral, thin, light-skinned, and small of stature. Willis was dark, medium height, bucktoothed, and skinny, with thick wrists that said his frame would fill out soon.
“How you know this Dennis from?” said Jones.
“We both in the navy reserve.”
“Huh,” said Jones, and then laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Picturin’ you in one of the sailor suits. You know, that uniform looks like a dress to some of them navy boys. Heard them ships be crawlin’ with faggots.”
“I ain’t no punk.”
“You better not be one. If you was, it would be my blood duty to put a size ten up your motherfuckin’ ass.”
Willis grabbed the crotch of his slacks. “This here is for bitches only, Alvin.”
“So is this,” said Jones, raising his fist. “You got a point?”
“Don’t be callin’ me no punk,” said Willis.
“Shit, just find some got-damn music on that box.”
Kenneth Willis turned the radio dial and got a Fats Domino tune, “I Want to Walk You Home,” on WUST. Now, that was how a song should be sung. Willis looked across the bench at his older cousin, who knew so much.
“Alvin?”
“Huh.”
“What it felt like when you killed that boy?”
Jones hit the bottle of sherry and used his sleeve to wipe his mouth. “I ain’t planned to kill him.”
“Planned to got nothin’ to do with it. He dead whether you meant him to be or not.”
Two nights earlier, Jones had called a liquor store he knew delivered and asked for a messenger boy to bring out a bottle of Cuban rum, a fifth of French cognac, and a bottle of Spanish sherry. He had taken the selection right out of an ad the shop had run in the Evening Star. When the boy, young buck wearing a hat, had arrived at the address, a deserted row house in east Shaw, Jones had come out of the shadows and put the muzzle of a hot .22 to his temple. The boy gave up the money he had on him without any kind of fight. Jones shot him anyway, and watched the boy’s last moments with fascination as he shivered and bled out on the street. He had always known he would kill a man someday and had decided just then that it was time to get it done.
“It felt like nothin’,” said Jones. “Boy was breathin’ and then he wasn’t.”
“You cold, man.”
Jones shrugged. “We all headed to a bed of maggots. I was just helpin’ the boy along.”
The response chilled Willis. In some way it excited him, too. He reached for the bottle and took a long pull.
“You ain’t said nothin’ to no one, right?” said Jones.
“No one,” said Willis.
“Don’t even be talkin’ about it with your friend.”
“You know I won’t.”
Jones took the bottle, put it to his lips, and drank off the base. “That’s the end of the evidence right there. I already done drank the rum and the cognac up.”
Willis wiped at his forehead. “I am high.”
“I am, too,” said Jones.
They drove out of the alley and stopped on the adjoining street, where Willis got out and rolled the empty bottle down a sewer. He and Jones then headed for Princeton Place to pick up Dennis Strange.
SEVEN
DENNIS?”
“What?”
“I was looking at this police officer today, studyin’ on him, like.”
“So?”
“I was thinkin’ I’d like to be one my own self someday.”
“A police?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna keep all us Negroes in line down here, huh?”
“What you talkin’ about?”
“Never mind.”
Dennis and Derek Strange sat on the front steps of their row house in the last hour of daylight. On the sidewalk, three girls were playing jump rope, and on the north side of Princeton a woman pushed a baby carriage down toward Georgia. The light from the dying sun was like honey dripping on the street. Derek thought of it as “golden time.”
“What about you?” said Derek. “What you gonna do?”
Dennis fingered the marijuana cigarette he had slipped into his pocket before leaving the house as he thought about the question. He didn’t mind answering, as long as it was Derek and not his parents who were asking. Not that he was thinking on his future all that much. Lately, all he looked forward to was getting high. This older cat on the next street over had introduced him to reefer a few months back, and Dennis had taken to it from the start.
“I don’t know. Continue on with the navy, I expect, when I get out of Roosevelt. Learn some kinda trade. Let the government put me through college, maybe. Knowledge is power, little brother, that’s what they say.”
“The navy. That means you got to go away?”
“What you think, man?”
“I don’t want you to,” said Derek, trying to keep the desperation that he felt out of his voice.
“It’s just natural that things gonna change around here, D. You’ll be missin’ me at first, but soon you’ll be lookin’ to get out yourself. Like them baby birds Mama’s always goin’ on about. They ain’t gonna be stayin’ in that nest forever, right?”
“I guess.”
“Go on, young man,” said Dennis, pushing on his kid brother’s head, hoping to lighten the sadness that had come into his eyes. “It’s gonna be all right.”
A Cadillac came up Princeton and pulled up behind Darius Strange’s Mercury. Though there was space behind him, the driver of the Caddy touched his bumper to the rear bumper of Darius’s car.
A man and a young man got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk. Derek had met the younger one, Kenneth, a friend of his brother’s from the reserves, and didn’t like him. He bragged on himself too much and talked all the time about what he had done or was going to do to girls. Kenneth Willis didn’t look like he was headed anyplace good.
The other man, the older, smaller one with the light skin, didn’t seem like someone Derek would care to hang with, either. He was dressed in black slacks and a thin purple shirt, looked like silk. He was what Derek’s father called a no-account, or a hustler, or sometimes just a pimp. You could tell by the way his father’s lip curled when he said it that he had no use for this kind of man.
Dennis rose from the ste
ps as the two from the Cadillac came up the walk. Derek got up and stood beside his brother.
“Damn, Alvin,” said Dennis, “ya’ll ain’t had to hit my father’s car.” He said it with a smile, to let them know that he was not angry. It made Derek ashamed.
“That your old man’s Merc?” said the one called Alvin, who was the driver of the Cadillac. “Thought he had a job.”
“He does.”
“Car look like a repop to me.”
So what if it is? thought Derek. Don’t mean you had to bump it.
Alvin Jones lit a cigarette from a pack he produced from a pocket in his slacks. He carelessly tossed the spent match on the weedy front yard as smoke dribbled from his mouth and nose.
These men, with their bloodshot, heavy eyes, looked like they were on something. Derek had heard about things some people used to make themselves crazy in the head. But as they stepped closer, he could smell the alcohol coming off them. He recognized that stench from a wino he often came in contact with in the neighborhood. These two were drunk.
“That your brother?” said Alvin, looking Derek over.
“His name’s Derek,” said Dennis.
“Where you hidin’ Dumbo at?” said Alvin Jones.
“What, all a y’all got names start with D?” said Kenneth Willis.
“My father’s idea,” said Dennis, looking at his feet.
Don’t apologize to them for our father, thought Derek. Don’t you ever do that.
“Musta got little man all angry, talkin’ about his family,” said Willis. “Lookit, Alvin, he got his fists balled up.”
Derek relaxed his hands. He hadn’t realized he had formed them into fists.
“Damn,” said Jones, “we ain’t mean to upset you, little man. What, you want to steal me, somethin’ like that? Come over here, then, you got a mind to. I’ll let you have a free swing.”
Derek felt Dennis’s arm come around his shoulder. He felt Dennis pull him in.
“He’s all right,” said Dennis, making a head motion toward the Cadillac. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“You bring that gage with you, man?” said Willis.
“Shut up, Kenneth,” said Dennis, losing the pleasant tone he had been trying to maintain. “Ain’t you got no sense?”
Jones and Willis laughed.
Dennis turned to Derek. “Go on, Young D.”
“Why you got to go with them?” said Derek, not caring if Willis and Jones could hear.
“I won’t be late. There go Lydell, lookin’ for you.”
Derek glanced up the block, where Lydell Blue was coming down the sidewalk from the direction of Park View Elementary, two cane poles resting on his shoulder. Derek walked north and met his friend. They shook hands, then tapped fists to their own chests.
“Us,” said Derek.
“Us,” said Lydell.
Lydell, stocky and muscled, with the beginnings of a mustache, handed Derek one of the poles. They were headed up to the Old Soldiers’ Home, where they would jump the fence that surrounded the property and fish the pond on the wooded grounds. They hardly ever got a bite, but no one bothered them there, and it was a nice place to sit and talk. Lydell was Derek’s boy going back to kindergarten. He had always been his tightest friend.
“You all right?” said Lydell, studying Derek’s troubled face as they walked up the street.
“What is gage, Ly?”
“That’s marijuana, man. Don’t you know nothin’?”
“I knew,” said Derek, feeling a drop in his chest. “I was just wonderin’ if you knew, is all.”
Derek turned his head, watched as his brother and the other two went toward the old Cadillac, watched Dennis put his hand to the handle of the back door.
Don’t get in that car.
Derek Strange heard doors open and slam shut, and then the ignition of an engine. He and Lydell Blue walked east through the last of golden time as dusk settled on the street.
STEWART AND HESS went over to Mighty Mo’s, a drive-in with car-side service at the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and 410. It had been built in ’58 and was the hangout for their crew and others. This was where they went to plot out the action for the rest of the night. Hot rods and lowriders with names like “Little Dipper,” “Little Sleeper,” and “Also Ran” were scattered about the lot. Rock and roll came from the open windows of the rides, their freshly waxed bodies gleaming under the lights.
Stewart and Hess hooked up with their friends. They ordered the signature burgers and onion rings through speakers, and were served by waitresses who ran the food from the kitchens out to the cars. The young men and women washed it down with beer. The night went on like that, engine talk and boasts and eye contact with the girlfriends of others, and soon enough the buzz of alcohol and deep night had come. It was time to go out and run the cars.
Hess and several others began to drive out of Mo’s. In a corner of the lot, apart from the younger ones, stood Billy Griffith, Mike Anastasi, and Tommy Hancock, all leaning on their cars. These were the most feared, badass white boys in the area. For sport they frequently went into D.C. and picked fights with groups of coloreds. The most famous fight had started at the Hot Shoppes down at Georgia and Hamilton and continued on to the Little Tavern across the street. It was said that Griffith, Anastasi, and Hancock took on ten coloreds and beat the living shit out of them. As the story got around, the coloreds numbered twenty.
Stewart nodded at Billy Griffith, the most demented of the three, as he and Hess drove by. Griffith had a legendary rep. Men of all ages talked about him in bars and quieted when he walked into a room. Buzz Stewart could only hope that people would someday see him that way, too.
STEWART AND HESS drove out Route 29 to the area around Fairland Road. It was not far from downtown Silver Spring, maybe five miles on the odometer, but it was country. By ten o’clock there was little traffic, and those who were parked along the shoulders were there for fun.
A quarter mile had been marked off. Small bets had been made back at Mo’s and at other area hangouts. Hess pulled over near a group of their friends and watched a race between a Chevy and a Dodge. Then a guy arrived towing a trailer holding a ’31 Ford sedan without tags.
“Man claims it’s got a five-twelve rear, dad,” said Hess.
“What he claims,” said Stewart.
The driver of the Ford dragged a hopped-up ’50 Studebaker and blew its doors off.
“Whew,” said Hess. “He wasn’t braggin’.”
They watched more races and drank more beer. Stewart saw a peroxide blonde named Suzie who he had dry-fucked one time in the back of his car when both of them were falling down on gin and Coke. He couldn’t remember nothin’ about her except the smell she’d left in his car. He started toward her but changed his mind. He could have that any old day, he wanted it. What he wanted tonight was a different kind of action. Three beers had been whispering to him, and now four talked in his ear, telling him to kick somebody’s ass.
But Hess wanted to take a run at some snatch, so they went over and talked to a couple of tough girls they recognized, one who was okay, one who looked like a pimply duck. Both of them were wearing tight jeans. They got the girls into the car and after they’d switched to boy-girl and he’d gotten everyone to take off their shoes, Hess drove them through some farmer’s cornfield for laughs. The girls were as drunk as they were, and soon they found a place to park. Stewart took a walk with the okay girl while Hess stayed in the car with the pimply duck. Later, after they had dropped the girls at a field party off Peach Orchard Road, Stewart admitted that he hadn’t gotten anything off his girl, not even tit. Hess claimed he got his fingers wet and with an outstretched hand offered Stewart a smell.
“Get that shit outta my face, Shorty,” said Stewart.
Hess cackled like a witch. “You ready to go sportin’, Buzz?”
“Yeah. Let’s pick up my ride.”
They switched cars at the doughnut shop, bought more beer down below the lin
e, and drove into the District, looking for something or someone to fuck up.
Their next stop was the Rendezvous, down on 10th Street in Northwest. The bar was jammed with rough old boys, bikers, and women who liked their type. The place smelled like alcohol and sweat. Link Wray and his Raymen were up on the bandstand. Link was wearing leather and rocking the house.
Stewart and Hess stepped up to the bar and ordered a couple of drafts. Stewart got a man’s size and Hess ordered a fifteen-center. It looked like a girl’s glass, but Hess didn’t care. The fifteen-cent glass was tall, fragile, and skinny. You could break the head off it easy, if you had to, and use the jagged edge to open up some joker’s face. Hess had a sip and put his back to the bar.
The band did a number with sometime vocalist Bobby Howard, then another. The Raymen were at their most raucous on their instrumentals, but Howard had a good voice for this kind of rock. It was known that Link couldn’t sing. He had caught TB overseas when he was in the service, and the doctors had removed one of his lungs.
“Here he goes,” said Stewart happily, and they watched Link use a pen to punch a couple of holes in the bands’ speakers. It was how he got that fuzz tone out of his ax, and it was a signal that the band was about to lift off.
Which is how it went as the band kicked into “The Swag” and then an extended version of “Rawhide.” It was a sound that no one else could seem to get, a primal, blood-kicking kind of rock and roll, and it energized the room. People were dancing into one another, and soon punches were thrown, and many of the people who were fighting still had smiles on their faces. Link himself was said to be a peaceable man, but sometimes his music incited righteous violence.
“You in?” said Hess, his eyes on a fight that was building in numbers on the edge of the room.
“Nah,” said Stewart, who just wanted to enjoy the music for now. “I’m good.”
Hess put his glass down on the bar, made his way into the crowd, and started swinging. His first punch met the temple of some guy who turned his head right into it, knocking him clean off his feet. Hess thinking, Some nights you just get luckier than shit, right before some other guy, looked like Richard Boone, up and split his lip with a straight right.