Chameleon (19 page)

Actually, we didn’t. At least I didn’t. And I usually catch everything.

“Things change as you get . . . bigger,” he added with a flex of his chest.

I hadn’t realized how much bigger he was until that moment. Our bodies, except for Lorenzo, were tall but all skin and bones. Randy was not only taller, but filled out with muscles.

“In time you guys will see that too,” he continued.

“I don’t know, Randy, I’m the biggest one of all of us, and that don’t change a thing,” Lorenzo offered.

“Yeah, you big but . . . not in a good way . . . know what I mean?” he said with a sly laugh.

Me and Trent laughed too, Trent’s laughter bubbling louder than mine.

“I’m sorry, Lorenzo, man,” Randy said. “I’m just saying . . . being big and being strong are two different things. On the ship, I play ball, lift weights, run, and do other stuff to stay in shape. But see, I been doing that since high school.”

The four of us nodded as Randy went on.

“When I was your size, Andre, I had a hard time keeping up with other guys on the court. I was skinny and quiet and always getting pushed around, but the taller I got, the more I hit the weights to fill out my frame. The bigger I got, the better about myself I felt,” he said, running his hands over his upper body. “I didn’t want to be
all
muscles . . . just get a six-pack and some guns to show off,” he added, flexing his arms with a grin.

We laughed.

He continued, “Anyway, I know how it is, bro, and I wish there was something I could do for you, but you gotta do it yourself. When it comes to getting picked on, you gotta be confident in yourself and believe that nobody can mess with you.”

“So . . . this was my fault?” Andre said, tossing the ball back and forth.

“I ain’t saying that at all. What I’m saying is . . . some targets are easier than others. You guys are still young, so that right there makes you a target. But you take the target off your back when you . . . when you got that look in your eyes that says, ‘I ain’t afraid of nobody,’ ya know?”

“Now Randy, that’s all Kool and the Gang . . .” Lorenzo started.

“Cool and the what?”

“Kool and the Gang. You know, like the music group. You ain’t never heard that? Man, you been at sea too long,” Lorenzo said.

Randy laughed as ’Zo went on. “That’s just something we say. Anyway, just because I think somebody ain’t gonna beat me up doesn’t mean they won’t. Right?”

“Right. Right. But . . . you guys are all big, growing boys. . . .”

“Some of us are bigger than others,” Trent said, rubbing Lorenzo’s belly like a Buddha. ’Zo smacked his hand and sucked his teeth.

“So, Randy . . . what’s it like living on a ship? Don’t you go crazy being cooped up?” I asked.

“It’s cool, for the most part, but sometimes you find yourself staring at the sea, ready to jump in,” he answered with a laugh.

“What y’all do for fun?” Lorenzo asked. He eyeballed Andre and winked.

Randy didn’t take the bait. He leaned forward with his answer. “I told you . . . play ball and work out mostly. I read a lot. A bunch of us play cards: spades, whist, poker, whatever. A couple of guys got bands and stuff. There’s a lot of people on the ship, so we have plenty to do. It gets boring when you go out on the deck and all you see is ocean every which way you look. It’s cool to relax and think, but, man . . . sometimes you feel like you on an island. And you are — it just moves.”

“Any fine ladies on that island? Maybe wearing bikinis?” Lorenzo asked.

Randy settled back into his seat and spread his arms across the bench.

“Of course we got girls on the ship, but those ain’t the ones to go after,” he said, sitting up and hunching forward in his seat. A grin crept across his face as he threw in, “The ones you go after are in port. And, man . . .” he said, settling back into his seat, “do we go to a lot of ports: the Philippines, Japan, Hawaii, Thailand, Guam . . . shooooot!”

Lorenzo’s face lit up as Randy ran down the ports. My dad had mentioned a lot of the same places from his time on a ship, but hearing Randy say them made me think more of the girls than the places themselves.

“So what happens when y’all get into port?” ’Zo asked.

“We get leave, a couple of days to do whatever we want. And let me tell you . . . a bunch of sailors cooped up on a ship for three months arriving into port for leave is a dangerous thing.”

We all laughed.

“Usually we hit a bar and get some drinks in us first — some of us more than others. I can’t stay in one bar for too long, but some of the guys find a spot and shut it down. After that, me and some friends hit a couple of clubs and dance until the sun comes up.”

Lorenzo did a little dance on the bench, waving his hands in the air side to side. The bench shook and groaned under his weight, making Trent smack him in the leg.

“So that’s where you meet the ladies?” ’Zo asked.

“Shoot . . . there, the bar, the street, wherever. When you on leave, time is short, so you don’t waste it.”

Lorenzo stopped his little dance and came down from his stage to ask, “So how you do it?”

“Do what?” Randy asked, folding his arms with a confused look covering his face.

Lorenzo spoke slower and lower. “You know . . . how do you get the girl to go with you to . . . you know?”

“You been wanting to ask that since y’all left the house, right?” Randy laughed.

We joined him. I sat up straight to hear his answer. We all did.

“Well . . . it ain’t no thang. You just gotta talk to ’em, listen to ’em, tell ’em what they wanna hear. You know, like . . . ‘Girl, you so fine, how could I not say hello . . . you sitting here with all this sweetness and me with a sweet tooth.’ You know . . . stuff like that.”

“You say that?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“All the time. At the very least it gets me a smile. And that’s all you need. Once you get ’em smiling, the door is open. Just don’t say something stupid to slam it shut,” he said, standing up. “See, the thing with women is, they know we want it, so they play hard to get. But don’t let that throw you off. All women want it just as bad as we do — they just try to play it off like they don’t.”

The last sentence caught my and Lorenzo’s attention, making both our eyes wide. It always seemed like we were the dogs chasing the helpless cat, but I guess the cat likes to be chased.

“Yeah, but . . . how you know when it’s time to . . . you know?” Andre asked, rubbing the ball and wiggling his body to say what words couldn’t, making all of us laugh in the process.

“You ain’t ready for that, baby bro!”

“I’m just saying . . . it’s one thing to be talking to a girl you just met in a club one minute, then the next minute be . . .”

Lorenzo finished the sentence with soft “yeah-yeah-yeah’s” and “Oh, God’s,” making Andre and Trent crack up. Even I had to laugh. Lorenzo’s big body jerked each time a sound came out. His hands clawed at his shirt, and his head shook side to side as he got louder and louder.

“OK, I get it,” Randy said, cutting him off. He made his way over to his little brother, threw an arm around his shoulder, and said, “You’ll know when it’s about to happen. But right now? I told you . . . you ain’t ready for that!”

He snatched the ball from Andre and headed toward the court. Lorenzo tried to ask another question, but Randy cut him off again. “Come on, let’s play some ball.”

We broke into teams: me and ’Zo versus Randy and Andre. Trent took a seat on the grass for a second, then disappeared into the park.

“Straight to eleven,” Randy shouted, flipping the ball into Andre.

The game began and so did the questions.

I asked, “So what do you do on the ship?”

“I fight fires.”

“What?” Lorenzo said, stopping his dribble. “You joined the navy and then took a job doing something you could’ve done right up the street?”

Bank shot from Randy. Rebound to Andre.

“Yeah . . . but I didn’t wanna stay here. As much as I love Compton and this knucklehead”— he nodded toward Andre —“I wanted to get out and see the world, man. I mean . . . if you had your choice, would you wanna fight fires here in Compton or on a ship that sails the world?” Pass from Andre to Randy. Pump fake on Lorenzo. Dunk.

Good point.

The game went on and so did the questions, until Randy ended it with an alley-oop from Andre.

“That was a good one. Let’s run it back,” Lorenzo said.

That was closer than we thought. They only beat us by two, and we were ready for more. Andre started shooting free throws, but Randy said, “Sorry, boys, but I gotta get to the gettin.’”

“The what?” ’Zo asked.

“Hey . . . you say what you say, and I say what I say, and what I said is: I gotta go. I gotta take care of a few things before I go out tonight.”

“Who you going out with?” Andre asked.

Randy scratched his head and hesitated before he answered. “Ummm . . . you guys kind of met her already.”

That got ’Zo chanting, “Go, Randy! Go, Randy!”

Trent joined us on the court as me and Andre joined the chant. He stared at us confused but chanted anyway.

“Go, Randy! Go, Randy! Go ’head! Go ’head!” echoed across the empty court and throughout the park.

Randy shook his head, grabbed his shirt off the bench, and took off, waving with his back to us. Our chant followed him out of the park.

“All right . . . why we saying, ‘Go, Randy’?” Trent asked.

“My man is gonna make some more noise tonight,” Lorenzo answered.

“
Your
man? Last time I checked, Lorenzo, Randy was
my
brother.”

“You know what I mean, ’Dre. He’s one of us now; he balled with us and everything.”

“Maybe he’ll tell us all about it,” Trent added.

“I doubt it. He barely talked about it, even though Lorenzo kept pestering him,” Andre said, bumping ’Zo in the side.

“Ay . . . I’m just trying to
educate
myself,” Lorenzo said, emphasizing “educate.” “All I know is . . . soon that’s gonna be me getting ready to go out on a Friday night,” Lorenzo announced for the park to hear.

We traded standing on the court for a seat on the bench. Trent and ’Zo took one bench; me and ’Dre took the other. The park was still hopping, but some of the characters had changed: the double-Dutch girls had been replaced by a group of kids playing kick ball, and Black Bruce was nowhere to be found.

“So, Trent, where’d you go while we were playing?” I asked.

“I just went for a walk around the park.”

“A walk around the park?” Lorenzo said, jerking up as he reclined. He gave Trent the evil eye and asked, “Where you walking to around the park?”

“I wanted to see if anybody from school was here. And then I ran into Black Bruce.”

“I told you to leave that dude alone, Trent. I’m sure he don’t wanna be bothered. Especially by you,” I said.

“Relax, Shawn. He was cool. I saw him practicing and we started talking.”

“What’d he say?” Andre asked.

“I asked him how long he been doing what he’s doing . . . what color belt he is . . . stuff like that.”

“So what’d he say?” I asked.

“First of all, he kept calling me ‘young blood.’ You know, ‘young blood’ this, ‘young blood’ that . . .”

’Zo cut him off, his back now flat on the bench. “All right, ‘young blood,’ just tell us what he said.”

“Anyway, he said he’s been doing the kung-fu thing for about ten years now. Said it keeps him young.”

Lorenzo bolted upright to face Trent. “How old is he?”

“I wondered the same thing, because he looks kinda young, but get this: dude said he’s fifty-two!”

All our mouths flew open.

’Zo: “What?”

Andre: “For real?”

Me: “Are you serious?”

“Yup, and he still does competitions. Said he likes to practice here, under the big tree, so ‘young bloods’ like myself can check him out. I told him how we like watching Bruce Lee flicks, and he said that’s his main man — he loves to see him in action too.”

“So . . . this dude fights?” Andre asked.

“Yup. And he’s won more than he’s lost. He taught me a few things too. Here. . . . I’ll show you something.”

Trent jumped off the bench. His face got all serious as he planted his right foot in front of his left foot. A high-pitched “KIII-YAAAI” leaped from his mouth as his legs leaped into the air. I think he was trying to kick, but his body flailed like a shocked scarecrow instead.

“What is that supposed to be?” ’Zo asked, his eyebrows arching up like he just saw an alien doing the hustle.

“I didn’t do it as good as he did, but that’s called a butterfly kick.”

“Why? ’Cause you kicked a bunch of butterflies out of the way?” Lorenzo asked.

“He showed me a few other things too. . . .”

Trent got ready to do something else, but ’Zo stopped him. “That’s all right, Trent, we trust you.”

Trent ignored him and just started punching and kicking the air. My legs were more tired than I thought, so I settled back into the bench and scanned the park. Folks were disappearing one by one. My thoughts drifted from the park to the weekend and Dad. It’s been almost a month since I saw him because he missed his last visit. Dang . . . school had still been going on! Shoot, today had been more interesting than all of last summer combined. Randy and his “date” had taken care of that.