The Dying Ground (21 page)

“Hey, Holly. Maceo.”

The voice caught us off guard. We looked up at the second story, where a half-dressed girl leaned out of a window. It broke my heart when I saw her.

“Wait there. I’ll come down.”

She did, and it was a sight to see. When Sera came toward us, all I could recall was her untouchable status at Berkeley High School. She still walked with the remnants of that past in her step, but drugs had taken their toll.

Her look was that of a late-seventies
chola.
She wore her long black hair in plastered feathers that covered her ears. Two wings of black makeup shot out from the sides of her eyes. She was thin and papery-looking, her skin like cheesecloth.

“Man, it’s been a long time.” She greeted us with a friendliness that had never been present when she was one of the most sought-after girls in the Bay Area, but neither of us had the heart to shoot her down. “Y’all look good.” Her teeth were covered with a gray-yellow film that reminded me of moss.

She was friendly, overly so, but there was also something mincing mixed in, like she expected us to send her away at any moment or ask her to give us something she was tired of giving.

“Hey, pretty girl.” Holly used the same tone he charmed Chantal with. I was too stuck, too appalled to add anything. I’d heard rumors that Sera was a strawberry in Jorge’s camp, but the evidence threw me for a loop.

She searched Holly’s face for mockery but there was none there. “You still rollin’, Holly?”

“Just livin’, baby.”

“Yeah. What y’all doing out this way?”

“Looking for the Mexican. He around?”

She frowned and looked toward the garage, where the
group of men had stopped playing cards. When she turned and the sun caught her eye, I noticed the faint remnants of a bruise.

“He’s here somewhere. He don’t leave this place. Thinks he’s Escobar or something.” She rolled her eyes.

“You taking care of yourself?”

“Of course. My little girl upstairs. You wanna see her?” She asked the last question with a promise of something extra if Holly followed her into the house.

“I bet she’s pretty like her mama.” Holly squeezed Sera’s hand. “Maybe after I handle some business.”

“Sera! Get the fuck out of here. You left the baby by herself?” Jorge’s voice boomed from the other side of an abandoned car.

“She’s asleep.”

He balled a fist and Sera slunk back despite the distance between them. Back in the day, Jorge wouldn’t have been able to touch a girl like Sera, but crack was the great equalizer and he wasn’t going to let her forget.

Sera scurried into the house while Jorge approached with his hand extended. “Lot of visitors from Oaktown lately.”

“That right?” Holly replied. “Was Billy out this way?”

“Let’s go up on the roof.”

We took a rickety staircase to the top of the garage, where Jorge kept a pigeon coop. Two notches below the chickens I expected.

“Yeah, Billy was out here with his chick,” Jorge answered. “Sera took one look at her and was depressed for two days.”

Holly couldn’t hold his tongue. “Man, why you got your girl smokin’ that shit?”

Jorge dropped his congenial manner. “You judging me?”

“That shit is foul.”

“Didn’t you come here wanting something from me? And now you’re gonna make decisions about how I’m living?”

“I’m just saying.”

“You can’t say shit.”

Holly cracked Jorge across the nose. I knew it was more for Sera than for the outburst, but Holly had a reputation to uphold and he never allowed disrespect from someone below him on the food chain.

“Man, Holly, what the fuck.” I remembered the crew of card players just below us. I stepped forward but Holly waved me back.

“This weak-ass punk ain’t gonna do shit. This place’ll be lit up by sundown if he tries anything stupid.”

Jorge held one hand up and used the other to hold back the blood pouring from his nose. Holly grabbed his ponytail and tried to yank his head from his shoulders. “Am I right?”

Jorge nodded.

“Say it.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. I slipped on the staircase. Had a little accident.”

Holly let him go. “So, Billy was out this way?”

“About a week ago. Came with the girl, like I said. He was looking for a way to move into L.A., and I tried to hook him up with my cousins.”

“Tried.”

Jorge flung the blood pooled in his hand off the side of the building. “Yeah. Tried. It was suppose to go down this week, but …”

“But what?”

“He got killed, man.”

Holly let him go. “You have anything to do with that?”

“Hell, naw.”

“Who else knew about the deal?”

“His girl. Just his girl.”

“Felicia? Is that who it was?”

“That’s not what he called her. He called her Flea, something like that.” My heart sank. “She was here with him the whole time.”

“She the only one knew anything about it?”

“From this side, yeah. I don’t know how Billy was slippin’ outside of here.” Jorge’s words had merit. I was surprised Felicia was so involved in Billy’s dealings.

Holly pulled Jorge to his feet. “Alright, then. We gonna get out of here.”

“Sure. Sure.”

Jorge started to follow us down the stairs but Holly held him back. “Wait up here until we gone.”

Jorge nodded and went back to his pigeons. I expected gunfire to rain down on us as soon as we cleared the building, but Holly entertained no such fear. Jorge was too weak, too low on the scale to sustain a battle with anyone from the Town.

Out front as we climbed into the Cougar, Sera rushed out to see us. She leaned against the passenger door. “You sure you don’t want to see the baby?”

“Another time.” Holly motioned for me to start the engine.

“How’s Oakland? Berkeley? I haven’t been out that way in so long. Jorge like to stay out here with all this shit around.”

“You should stretch your legs, get out some.” Holly remained solicitous, though he was aching to go. “People in Oak-town probably miss you too.”

She ran her hands across her hair and pulled on her bangs. “I’ma get my shit together, you know, fix things up a little.”

“You do that.”

She lowered her voice. “I was here when Billy came to visit.” She smiled with her decrepit teeth. “He was nice to me too. Remembered me from junior high.”

“You hear what they were talking about?”

“Yeah, I did. People ignore me now. They act like I’m not
here but I still hear things. I usually know everything that goes on.”

“Was everything cool between Billy and the Mexican?”

“Billy wanted Jorge’s help in L.A. He said his other connection fell through, but he needed to get out there.”

“Did he say who the connection was?” Holly probably wondered if Billy had been referring to him and the deal that never happened.

“No, but a lot of people came up here after that.”

“You recognize anybody?”

“Not from the first crew, but Smokey came out a few days ago.”

“Smokey?”

“Yeah. He came to get two puppies. There’s a new litter and he got a male and a female.”

“Did you talk to him?”

She looked away, and we both knew Smokey had used the opportunity to humiliate her. I wondered if the bruise came from his hand and not Jorge’s. “No, we didn’t talk.”

“You recognize anybody else?”

Jorge yelled her name before she could answer the question. She glanced back anxiously at the house. “I gotta go. Maceo, tell your sister Cissy I said hi.”

“I will.” I didn’t bother to correct her about the relationship.

Holly grabbed her hand. “You gonna take care of yourself.?”

“Yeah.”

She rocked from foot to foot, wanting to explain herself and her condition, but there were no words. She had just slipped like so many others.

Holly reached into his pocket and pulled out five twenty-dollar bills. He handed them to her. “You not gonna use this to fuck around, are you?”

“I’ll try not to.” She wouldn’t look us in the eye—the reflection was too severe—so she looked off at the oil derricks that lined the bay.

“Try harder. You got that little girl.”

A tear slipped down her cheek but she remained quiet. “This is the worst thing that ever happened, this stuff. This is the worst thing to ever happen to anybody.” As she looked at Holly I saw a quick flash of anger directed at him and his charity. She might be a victim but he was a predator. He profited from the misery she had fallen slave to and she hated him even as her hands reached out for the cash. She hesitated for a moment but, ultimately, she didn’t have the heart to refuse it.

Averting her eyes, she snatched the money. Our pity left bruises that ached just beneath the surface. Old friends, East Bay history, represented life before the pipe. She saw judgment in our eyes; there was no way to hide it. Maybe in her own mirror she could still see the proms and the boys lined up on her parents’ porch, but the reflection cast back from us revealed Strawberry Sera and nothing else.

She turned without a good-bye and went back into the house.

We headed back to Oakland.

T
he Nickel and Dime was cast in artificial light as the mute television screen flickered indecipherable messages throughout the room. On the big screen two blond sportscasters pantomimed the day’s events to a nearly empty room.

Onstage the house band ended a run at the O’Jays, then awkwardly moved into “Delilah,” a famous blues tune with difficult vocals and chords. I looked to Vicki for explanation and she nodded toward the end of the bar.

I smiled to see Midnight Blue as he quietly watched the lead guitarist solo his most famous song. I couldn’t imagine a more intimidating experience.

Midnight Blue was a master, a genius according to blues historians and layman musicians, and there he was in the flesh as Glenn, a weekend warrior of a guitarist, sweated and ached his way through the chorus.

Over a ten-year period, “Delilah” had been professionally covered by everyone from the Rolling Stones to college marching
bands, and now Glenn strained his vocals and killed the riffs with his deadly fingers.

Blue was a member of the Redfield clan because of his fifteen-year relationship with my Aunt Desiree, Detective Noone’s blue flame. Desi and Blue had found each other after she fled Oakland, a drug habit, and a string of dismal boyfriends for the comforts and safety of Louisiana. Desiree’s visits to Oakland were few and far between, but we’d grown accustomed to Blue’s unannounced walkabouts from the south.

Twelve o’clock noon or six in the morning, you could never predict when Blue would appear, somber-faced and expensively clad, on the front steps of the Dover Street house. He’d stay for a while, entertain us with tales of his travels, play a few songs at the Nickel and Dime, and then disappear without notice.

Desiree attributed his habits to the years he’d spent locked away on The Farm, Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, a former plantation that prospered by using the inmates as slave labor.

Blue’s skills on the slide guitar and his haunting voice won him a governor’s pardon from the place he thought would be his coffin. Blue left behind everything he owned except his lyric sheet, scribbled in an alphabet he’d taught himself, and memories of the real Delilah, a bona fide woman who’d granted him the only pardon that mattered.

Blue walked from the gates of The Farm into a lucrative recording contract, three Grammys, and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. He met Desiree on his first night of freedom when he attempted to kick his habit, solo, in a New Orleans alley. Later Blue would say he knew that any woman who didn’t run from his funkiness, his screaming curses, and the torment weeping from every hole in his body was a woman he would walk through fire to keep. Since then Blue’s life had moved in a circle, beginning and ending with Desiree.

“Midnight Blue!” I yelled his name across the room. My shout cut through the music and startled Glenn into missing a few beats.

Blue turned and grinned a blinding-white smile. He was vanity personified in a charcoal gray suit, butter-soft loafers, and silver pirate hoops in each ear.

“Maceo Redfield!” He punctuated my name by slamming his mahogany walking stick into the ground. Christophene, his signature cane, had appeared on all seventeen of his album covers. “The bantam rooster!”

“What brings you out this far?”

Blue didn’t bother to stand but he clasped my hand tightly to show his affection. “Oh, Blue goes where he’s needed.” His famous voice sounded like scotch and jagged ice, hoarse around the edges, a faded whisper that burned out at the end. His speech pattern gave the listener an impression of permanent distraction, but Blue was as sharp as they came.

“How you doing?”

“Blue’s always fine. Ain’t no other way to be. And yourself?”

“Good. Good.” Wariness crept into my voice because Blue’s gaze was too steady. Behind his concern I heard the worries of Daddy Al, Gra’mère, and Desiree. “You seen Daddy Al since you got here?”

He smiled to let me know he knew the root of my question. “And your grandmama, three of them aunties of yours, and Gloria Johnson. You say you good, but that ain’t the way they tellin’ the story.”