“And that makes you want to rest all the time?” Loren said. “Right?”
“No, it makes me want to journey on, son, trying to leave the dreams behind me.”
“I have to go,” I said.
“Well, look at how the time is passing,” Mr. Moses said. “So long, Mr. Hart and Mr. Curry.”
“You can call me David.”
“David? Ain’t that a good name! Good-bye, Mr. David. And you can call me Moses.” He touched his hat like he was going to take it off, but he didn’t.
“I think he’s strange,” Loren said as we left the playground. “My father said that when he was young, they used to have strange people in the circus and charge a quarter to go see them. Now they just turn them loose so they can bother everybody. And I know he’s not three hundred years old, either. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes old people say funny things.”
On the way home I didn’t think about the old man but about what Loren had said about strange people not being locked up. I knew Loren wasn’t talking about my father, but he could have been. My father wasn’t crazy, Mama had said, but he was troubled.
I also thought about what the old man had said about going on with his journey to leave his dreams behind.
The loud banging on the front door woke me up. The first thing I thought was that it was Reuben, either drunk or nervous, not finding his keys. Then I heard his voice and he was asking who it was at the door. Even through our bedroom door I heard a man’s voice say it was the police.
I turned on the light and looked over at Tyrone’s bed. He was sleeping with the covers pulled up over his head. The banging got louder. I looked at the clock on the dresser. One thirty. I heard Mama talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“Ty!” I got up and shook his leg.
Ty raised himself on one elbow without opening his eyes.
The banging on the door got louder, and Ty opened his eyes.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“The police are banging on the door,” I said.
The banging got louder, and the police were yelling for somebody to open the door before they tore it down. Reuben was yelling back, saying he didn’t want anybody in his house. I felt sick to my stomach.
Ty was awake and listening to the all the noise. Then he jumped out of bed, took something from under the mattress, and left the room. A moment later I heard the toilet flush once, and then again. Tyrone got back to our room just as I heard the police come in.
“Get in bed!” he said.
I put my pants on and opened the door. From where I stood, I could see three guys, two white and one black. They had their guns out and a flashlight was shining in my face.
“Keep your hands where I can see them!” the black guy said to me.
The cops told Mama to get everybody out into the kitchen, and she went and got Ty. The cops made us stand around the kitchen table with our hands in front of our chests with the palms toward them. Mama had her robe on, but Reuben was in his shorts and a T-shirt. The cops asked Mama if they could search the house.
“It’ll make things easier for you.” The tallest of the three cops was a light-brown-skinned guy wearing a sweatshirt. His badge was on a chain around his neck.
“No, you can’t search my house!” Reuben was just about shouting. “You don’t have any business in here.”
“Are you ‘Circle T’?” one of the white cops asked Ty. “And don’t lie to me or I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”
Whack! Whack!
Reuben was slamming his fist into the palm of his hand.
“You’d better relax, buddy!” the black cop said.
Whack! Whack!
Reuben looked really mad as he punched his hand again.
“He’s on medication,” Mama said.
Reuben turned toward the stove and started turning the burners on.
“Are you dealing—” The cop started to talk to Ty but then turned to back to Reuben. “What did you do that for?”
Reuben’s eyes were puffed out and his mouth was tight. Mama put her hand on his arm, and he smacked it away hard.
“We can cuff you if we have to—” one of the cops said.
Reuben started cursing and saying they better have their guns out if they were going to mess with him.
The policemen looked like they didn’t know what to do, and then the shortest one said they should come back with a warrant and arrest the whole family.
“You’d better stay out of the Thirty-fifth Precinct.” One of the cops pointed his finger at Ty. “If I’m the one who catches you dealing, I’m going to find a reason to blow you away.”
The cops backed out of the apartment, and Mama went to the stove and turned off the burners.
“Why you tell them I was on medication?” Reuben asked.
“I just didn’t want anybody hurt,” Mama said.
“I can’t be a man in my own house.” Reuben had turned and was talking to me and Ty. “She got to give me an excuse! I got to be on medication!”
“Boys, go to bed.” Mama’s voice was tired.
“Why they got to go to bed?” Reuben asked.
“Reuben, it’s late.” Mama sat down at the end of the table.
“Anybody can walk in my house and tell my family what to do.” Reuben’s voice was getting higher and he was holding his chin up like he was having trouble breathing. “Just walk right in like they own the place because there ain’t no man in here to stop them.”
“I have to go to work in the morning….” Mamastood up and was shaking her head.
Tyrone left the kitchen first. There was a plate on the drainboard and Mama picked it up, rinsed it off, and put it in the dish rack. Reuben turned and started talking to the wall. I heard him saying he might as well talk to the wall because nobody was listening to him anyway.
Mama looked at him for a while, then shook her head and started for the bedroom. Then I heard her talking to Ty. She was telling him not to go out, that it was dangerous. Ty said he had to go somewhere, and a moment later he came into the kitchen and was opening the door.
“Where you going?” By the time Reuben got the words out, Ty was already out the door.
Mama stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the parlor. There were tears running down her face, and she didn’t even try to stop them. When she looked at me, I wanted to cry, too. It was like she wanted me to say something and I didn’t know what to say. She turned and went into the bedroom. Reuben sat down at the kitchen table and was muttering to himself. I felt so tired, I didn’t think my legs would move.
I never felt so bad in my life. It was as if sadness had just come in and was living with our family. When things were going wrong, it didn’t seem so bad with all the doors closed and it was all stuff that you could keep indoors. But when the police came, everybody in the building knew it. When they came in the door, it was like they were opening you up for the world to see. I didn’t know if Ty had done anything, but just thinking he might have made me mad.
I pulled the cover over my head and just tried to shut out everything.
Morning came and Ty wasn’t home. Mama was making eggs. Reuben was hunched over a cup of coffee. He was dressed, but his hair wasn’t combed.
“The light in the living room is out,” Mama said. “It’s probably the bulb.”
“People don’t have a right to come into your apartment without a search warrant,” Reuben said without looking up from his coffee. “That’s the cops or nobody else.”
“Reuben, I’m sorry about last night,” Mama said.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“Everything’s up in the air because I got a job,” Reuben said. “That’s what’s going on. Everybody’s nervous because a black man has a job.”
“It hasn’t got anything to do with your job or you,” Mama said. “Somebody must have told them that Tyrone was involved with drugs.”
??
?That’s them,” Reuben said. “But they didn’t come in here excusing themselves for being cops or for saying something about Tyrone. They just bust in here like they owned the world. And what you do? What you do?”
“What did I do?” Mama asked.
“You start making excuses for me,” Reuben said. “You can go after whatever you want with this homeless place but I can’t even take a job.”
“Reuben, I don’t need this conversation this morning,” Mama said. “Do you know that your son didn’t come home last night?”
“Yeah, I know it,” Reuben said. “I’ll talk to him today.”
“Do you want eggs this morning?”
“You been making excuses for me ever since I started working for Mr. Kerlin,” Reuben went on. “Like I’m some kind of freak or something.”
“Reuben, I am too tired, and too beat down, to carry this burden this morning,” Mama said. “Can we just rest it for today?”
“What you know about Mr. Kerlin anyway? You ever talk to him? You ever sit down and have a face-to-face conversation with the man?” Reuben asked. “You say all he’s interested in is the money. What’s he supposed to be interested in? He’s a businessman and he got an apartment building to rent out. What’s he supposed to do?”
“Do you want eggs?”
“No, I don’t want no eggs,” Reuben said.
“You know as well as I do that the building at Three sixty-nine sat there empty and run-down for nine years, Reuben,” Mama said. “David, do you want these eggs?”
Mama cracked two eggs and put them in a bowl, sprinkled them with basil and salt, and stirred them with a fork.
“The junkies and the crack heads were living in there last year and stealing the pipes,” Mama said. “You said that yourself.”
“That was last year!” Reuben said.
“That was last year, before the community decided to buy the building from the city to make a shelter,” Mama said. “Now he’s fighting us and saying the city doesn’t own the building because he’s paying off his taxes. Everybody knows he’s not interested in that building. He’s just trying to keep us from doing something with it.”
“The neighborhood is coming up,” Reuben said. “You even got rich people moving in over at the Riverfront Houses.”
“I haven’t seen any rich people moving into Riverfront, and even if it is true, they’re not going to be moving into Three sixty-nine, which is Mr. Kerlin’s house. David, didn’t I ask you if you wanted these eggs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The eggs were scrambled and Mama put them on my plate.
“Mr. Kerlin’s got a dream,” Reuben said.
“Lord, if I hear that ‘I got a dream’ phrase one more time, I’m going to scream,” Mama said. “I wish Martin Luther King had never made that speech.”
Reuben stood up real quick, and his chair fell backward onto the kitchen floor.
“Reuben!” Mama backed away.
“What?”
“You—you want some toast?”
Reuben didn’t answer. He just looked down at the table and then, with one big swing, he knocked the coffeepot, the salt and pepper shakers, and his cup off the table. His coffee ran over the plastic tablecloth toward me and I stopped it with the tea towel. He grabbed his jacket off the chair and went out the door, slamming it hard behind him.
Mama started picking up things from the floor and I started to help.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t cut yourself.”
“You okay?” I asked.
“As okay as I get these days,” she said.
When Mom got mad, she got quiet. When Reuben got mad, he would do something physical, like slam a door or knock something off a table. No matter how upset Mom was, it never stayed with her, she could always get up a smile after a while. With Reuben it seemed to always stay, and I thought about him piling it up higher and higher.
Last night he hit Ty. Ty came in late, after nine, and Mama started in about where he had been. Ty went to the refrigerator and opened it, and Mama asked him again where he had been.
“Taking care of business,” Ty said.
That’s when Reuben stood up and hit Ty. He didn’t just hit him, he knocked him away from the refrigerator and onto the floor. Mama screamed. Reuben sat down, put his elbows on the table, and leaned forward against his clasped hands. He looked right at Ty sitting stunned on the linoleum floor. Ty was unsteady as he got up and said something about “getting out of this stupid house.” I could see he was hurt. His hands were shaking and he was holding on to the cabinet. Mama ran and grabbed him and hugged him real close. Then she took him into our bedroom.
When I went into the bedroom, Ty was asleep. I lay across the bed thinking about what had happened, about the hurt expression on Ty’s face as he sat on the kitchen floor after Reuben hit him. I had almost fallen asleep when I heard Reuben’s footsteps in the hall. I held my breath as I heard the door open. Reuben looked over to where Ty lay. He watched him for a while, then turned toward me.
“You want to give me a hand at the job tomorrow?” His voice was low, easy.
“Okay,” I said.
No, I said to myself. I didn’t feel any better about it in the morning, either. But there was no way I was going to say no to Reuben.
Some of the buildings on 145th Street are nice, especially as you go toward the hill. The block between Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass is beat-up and kind of run-down. Down the street, across from the church, there are some buildings that have been fixed up. The workers, mostly West Indian dudes with Rasta dreads and thick accents, worked on them for over six months. Loren has a friend who moved into one of the buildings after it was fixed up, and we went to his house and saw how they had painted everything and patched up all the cracks. They had put in brand-new bathrooms and new kitchens, and Loren’s friend, whose name was Ollie, was real proud of it. Mr. Kerlin’s house at three sixty-nine was different.
“All you need in a house is the basic structure,” Reuben said. We had finished taking the garbage from the fourth floor and putting it into big, black plastic garbage bags. “You get the basic structure and then you can fix up each apartment like you want it. Jimmy Carter—you know who Jimmy Carter is?”
“He used to be president.”
“Right. He’s fixing up places for people all over the country. He just fixes up the outside so the rain don’t come in,” Reuben said. “Then it’s up to the people to fix the insides themselves. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what Mr. Kerlin’s doing. Your mama don’t understand that. She thinks he needs to fix up the whole insides. But if you do that, then you got to charge big money for the rent. You see any old photographs or anything like that, you need to put them aside. We can sell them to Earl or Akbar down the street.”
We collected the garbage, mostly stuff people had left behind when they moved, and put it in the bags. I was working as fast as I could, but I wasn’t working as fast as Reuben. He was working hard and fast, and the sweat was pouring off him. I thought of what Mr. Moses had said about trying to leave your dreams behind.
“The building was empty a long time,” I said.
“Harlem is full of empty buildings and empty promises,” Reuben said. “Every time you see a building all boarded up, you’re looking at a promise that somebody didn’t keep.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what he meant, and I didn’t want to ask. Sometimes when I talked to him, I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t want him to get mad at me for asking.
“What you thinking about your brother?” he asked.
“He’s probably in the streets too much,” I said. “In school they said that if you hang in the streets too much, you start thinking like a street person.”
“He dealing drugs?”
“Ty?” I looked at Reuben to see if he was serious, and he was. “I don’t think he’s dealing drugs.”
Mr. Kerlin came by at six o’clock
in the evening to see how things were going. He’s light-brown-skinned and is always smoking a stinky cigar that he waves around when he’s talking. When he agrees with what you’re saying, he points that cigar at you. He doesn’t say anything, just jabs that cigar in your direction. When he likes what he’s said, he nods his head like he agrees with himself.
“You got a fine young man here,” Mr. Kerlin said. “What’s he going to be? An engineer? Maybe a lawyer?”
“David’s going to be a pilot,” Reuben said.
“Well, we can use some black pilots,” Mr. Kerlin said. “Why did you decide to become a pilot, young man?”
“I thought it was a good job,” I said. “And I like to travel.”
“Using your head,” Mr. Kerlin said. The cigar jabbed in my direction. “You keep using your head and you can do anything you want.”
“I got the top two floors cleaned up,” Reuben said. “If I work tomorrow, I can get the whole building cleaned by this coming Wednesday.”
“Take your time,” Mr. Kerlin said. “I need somebody in here so the junkies don’t start ripping out the pipes again. You know they get up to eight cents a pound for copper.”
“Yes, sir.”
We worked most of the day. When we left, I was tired and so was Reuben. He stopped in a liquor store and I waited outside. When he came out, he had a dollar in his hand and he gave that to me. He said I had earned more than that one dollar but he would make it up to me later. He asked me if that was okay and I said that it was.
“If you see your brother dealing drugs, you got to let me know,” Reuben said. “It’s never wrong for us to look out for each other. You believe that?”
“I believe it,” I said.
“And I don’t want you messing around with no drugs,” he went on. “You got a whole lot of sense in you, boy. Don’t be leaving it in the streets.”
When we got home, Mama had made spaghetti, and Reuben had a little before he went to bed.
“How you doing, Mr. Bojangles?” Mama said when Reuben had left the room.