Everyday People (10 page)

“What's that?”

“Our tag. Million Dollar Posse.”

“Great name.”

“It was.”

Chris took the pad back and started sketching again, filling in a section with red, pretending to concentrate hard, and Harold knew he was supposed to leave.

He wanted to ask if Chris was okay, if he wanted to talk, but that chance was gone, lost. It was all his fault.

I'm here, he'd say. Everything's going to be fine.

He went into the living room and turned on the TV—the same thing Chris was watching—then lay down on the couch. He could talk with Dre for hours, waste whole days slinging it, but with his own son he came up empty. Again, he thought of his father's silence, his patience with his mother that could sometimes seem like suffering, or, worse, in a child's eyes, cowardice.

What was there to be afraid of now?

The truth. How could he explain Dre to him, or Mason, all the other men he'd wanted and then given himself to. And why?

On TV there was a serial killer loose, like every Friday, a new set of clues to figure out. A white guy usually, into religion. There were only twenty minutes left in the show. He lay there not watching it, picturing Dre stepping out of the shower, the water caught like diamonds in his hair. Choir practice ended at ten, so did Eugene's meeting. The van would drop them off at a quarter after.

So it was over.

Good. One less thing to worry about.

Outside, another siren joined the chorus. He thought of Nene—if it really was him—and what kind of love Chris felt for Bean, how long it would take him to get over it. He
thought of his father and the cop pushing the Mercury to the berm, his mother steering, himself strapped in the backseat like a precious package. Maybe never. But that was all right. Was there another choice?

He could do it. He would have to.

The killer walked the dark neighborhood, keeping to the shadows, peeking in at his unsuspecting victims. He had to choose the most innocent one, pretty, her back to him. The wind sent leaves tumbling across the lawn. The music turned strange, the beat slowed and speeded up, and then there was just his breathing, faster and faster, as if he was going to come. No, Harold thought, they'd gotten it all wrong. That was not at all what it felt like.

THEY HELD THE
funeral Tuesday morning, not at Spinks Bros. but out in East Hills because they were afraid B-Mo's crew might try to bum-rush it, flip Nene's casket over and trash the place. Eugene knew Fats and the other old heads were strapping, ready for some of that getback. Leon and Smooth were there too, all of them G'd up, the last of the Spofford Rolling Treys. Legally Eugene wasn't supposed to be seeing any of his old associates, but naturally they came together on the sidewalk, a solid wall of security. It was cold, the sky gritty. Rush-hour traffic bombed past. Eugene felt defenseless in just his suit and his good shoes, his shirt too thin to stop anything.

“Damn, U man,” Fats said. “Ain't peeped you in a while.” In his gray pinstripe and gators, he seemed smaller than Eugene remembered, not at all fat, barely even stocky. He gave Eugene the Trey handshake and took him in his arms.

It was like a reflex. It made Eugene feel like he was lying, like he was being spied on. He could feel the steel under one of Fats's arms.

“Long's it been,” Fats asked, “like two years and shit.”

Nineteen months, eight days.

“Too long,” Eugene agreed.

“Serious,” Leon said. “I couln't believe you got rolled up like that.”

“Heard you was working,” Smooth said.

“S'right,” Eugene said. “You know, s'one of the conditions.” It was strange; ten seconds with them and he was back on the corner talking shit like nothing happened, like he hadn't been avoiding them. He noticed he was easing into his old homeboy slouch and straightened up.

“How's Chris doin'?” Fats asked. “You know we're all sorry about that.”

“That shit was hectic,” Leon said.

“He's all right, he's just layin' up.”

An older couple came hobbling across the street, and Smooth went over to help them with the curb. Trash blew around the parked cars—sheets of newspaper, fast-food wrappers—and Eugene wanted to run and catch it, start cleaning up the whole city. Nene. He couldn't believe it.

“So what's up with all this?” he asked.

They looked to Fats.

“Shit's fucked up,” Fats said. “You know I got mad love for Nene, but he was just gettin' outta hand.”

“Straight cluckhead,” Leon said. “Boy was gone.”

“All the way lost,” Fats said. “You know he was slangin' the shit. Afterwhile I guess it just got good to him. You were
gone, he started smokin' up all his product. Got so he was stealin' shit from his Granmoms.”

“Dude was wired up nonstop,” Smooth said. “Crazy as a bag of angel dust.”

“He was into his people for some green, so he started rippin' people off, sellin' nem wax, inside of Lemonheads, whatever. He got in a beef with this dude from B-Mo's crew and went for the steel.”

“Threw it right up in his face,” Smooth said.

It was an old story, and Eugene didn't need to hear the rest of it. In group, they did situations where someone pulled a gat. You were supposed to come up with a peaceful solution. The class went around and around, arguing over whether you had to use it once it was out. Darrin, their leader, wanted them to say no, but they all knew the answer was yes. Nene didn't, so someone else did, cold smoked his ass.

And they didn't need to tell Eugene what Nene had turned into; he knew. Every day on his way to work he'd see him on the corner of Moreland, riding his bike in little circles, crew of shorties running for him. Stone jitterbug. Didn't matter how cold it was. Sometimes he just stood there in the street, looking around and talking to himself, dancing, laughing at nothing like a crazy motherfucker. Pickup truck would slow down and he'd slide up to the window. “Any happ'nins here?” “Yo, what you need, man?” Nine in the morning or half past midnight. Raining, snowing. Big old nutroll of dollars in his pocket, wearing the same holey old sweatpants all week, that stupid 'fro half flat on one side cause he didn't remember to look in the mirror, maybe hadn't slept in a while. “Else you need, man? Got some
crazy-ass Indo, ain't no janky weed neither. Jim Jones too, only three of them left. What you want, I got it. Crazy ill sherm, that nice ice, some of that Karachi. Buddha, moonrock, whatever you need. You know it's
all
good.” Eugene knew the smell of money on his palms, the way when you were fiending your brain kept reminding you it was time to smoke up before it really was time, the way that belly habit ate away at you, made you hold yourself like someone gutshot in the movies. It was the life he was trying to forget, to clean out of his own head, so he didn't go over to see Nene, just kept walking, thinking about work and the hours piling up on his time card, maybe church later. He didn't have time for that shit anymore, the same way he didn't have time for Fats and his old homies, and fuck them if they didn't understand. He couldn't afford it. Like Darrin said, he was making a concentrated effort. He wasn't that person anymore.

The rented limousine with Nene's Granmoms pulled up, and they all stood at attention, an honor guard. The driver opened the back door and helped her out. She had gloves on, and a veil over her thick glasses. She was a big woman all around, gap-toothed, down-home. Nene did an impression of her looking for her glasses after a shower that used to make Fats fall out laughing. “Godzilla titty one way,” Nene said, and knocked the TV over. They were drinking Eight-ball in the park, sitting on a picnic table and passing a blunt, Nene just buck whylin. “Godzilla titty the other way,” and—
boosh
—there went the lamp. Fats cackled and dropped off the table. “Turn around—oh Lord, run for the border, here come that nasty Godzilla butt.” He stuck his own out, and Fats slapped the grass like Mr. Fuji surrendering
to Andre the Giant, tears squeezing down his chubby cheeks.

Now he bowed, their ambassador. “Mrs. Jenkins.”

The look she gave the four of them was half thanks and half warning; today, please, she wasn't putting up with any trouble.

Fats nodded; they'd make sure.

Little Nene was with her, in a suit Eugene recognized as Nene's, the cuffs at his wrists. He wasn't a shortie anymore. Sixteen? Seventeen? And stone crazy, always had been. Eugene had forgotten how much he looked like his brother. What was his real name? Eugene didn't even remember, and he'd known it like his own. That would be hard—he'd always be Little Nene.

That's what Fats called him, solemnly offering his hand.

Little Nene threw the Trey sign, three fingers jabbed at his heart, and glared at Fats as if he'd killed his brother, as if he'd let him down.

Fats flashed the sign back, and they shook hands, Fats patting his shoulder.

“You see that little critter?” Leon said when the party had gone inside.

“He better chill that shit right the fuck out,” Smooth said.

“I don't know,” Fats said, looking up at the white sky, and Eugene could see he was thinking. He came to a decision and measured them one by one, throwing the same hard face Little Nene had, letting each of them know. “We got to handle our business. Square business, know what I'm sayin'?”

Eugene didn't say he wasn't down with that, that legally he couldn't afford to be around any kind of drama. He didn't remind them that none of them had come to see him, only his Moms and Pops. He couldn't say, “But I'm doing so good.” In group Darrin made it sound easy, like all you had to do was make your case and the life would just stop and let you off. Put that negativity behind you. Give yourself an alternative. It was easy when you weren't in it, when it wasn't where you'd come from, who you were.

It didn't get easier when he went up to see Nene in his casket. It had been a shotgun, and he'd taken some pellets in the face. The holes were plugged with something and painted over with makeup, but the light was bright and you could see everything. The organ was going on and on, wandering through some tune. His Granmoms had bought him a new suit, with cuff links even. Little Nene had laid his black belt across his hands. Eugene remembered playing Bruce Lee with him, seeing how high they could leave a sneaker print on his bedroom wall. He had a poster signed by Willie Stargell and a model of Battlestar Galactica hanging from the ceiling on nylon fishing line. Long summer days they walked the train tracks, peeking in boxcars, pretending they were riding the rails, heading down south, home. That's where he'd be now, Eugene thought, a better place. He bowed his head and said a prayer and went back to the pew.

Fats and Leon and Smooth were bored, folding their programs, scratching the back of their necks, looking toward the door. Didn't look like B-Mo was going to show. Eugene settled himself and looked back at the casket. It was a small
chapel and there was hardly anyone there. Above the minister, Jesus gazed down sorrowfully from his cross, and he thought of his mother dragging him to church as a boy, how when his attention wandered he'd flip through the prayer book, searching for the good parts. The Burial of the Dead was a favorite, and the Psalms. Lately he'd found them again, all the complaints to God by the lost, the trials and tribulations of faith. Maybe he was supposed to find them as a child so he could appreciate them now, try to live his life by them.

He looked over at Fats leafing through his program, Smooth picking his nails. They hadn't mentioned his getting religion, but he knew what they thought—that he'd gone crazy, that he'd been brainwashed. It was what Chris thought, and Pops. Only Moms thought it was a good thing, and even she wanted to know what happened, how he'd changed so completely.

Had he?

Yes, for the better.

He remembered the last time he and Nene were together, a late night at his crib when he still had a crib, beamin'. They'd smoked up everything and didn't have enough to get any more. They'd been chopping the rock on the coffee table. First they scraped the top with a razor blade, then they got down on their knees and leaned in over it to see if they'd missed a piece. They licked their fingers and then their palms, trying to swab up some dust. They got down on all fours, pushing the furniture out of the way, their fingers going over the carpet, reading it like a blind man, feeling for any little bump, any crumb, rooting around the room like hound dogs—total ghostbusting.

He shook his head, smiling, trying not to laugh. But it wasn't funny, it wasn't funny at all. Not then and not now, and if no one understood the changes he was going through, that was fine with him. He knew.

The organist switched tunes, James Cleveland's “Peace Be Still,” one of his mother's favorites. Little Nene and his Granmoms went up to see Nene, to say good-bye one last time. He gave her his arm, and she leaned into him for support, every step an effort. Like Fats, she seemed smaller to Eugene, as if she'd withered. She had to be in her seventies, her hair one of those superglue jobs, stiff as a wig under her bonnet. Still with that big old Godzilla butt. Used to take the back of a hairbrush to Nene's behind, make the two of them fresh blackberry cobbler. She'd buried Nene's grandfather before Eugene was born, and then her daughter, Nene's Moms, when he and Nene were in first grade. Now she was burying Nene.

He'd pictured his own Moms leaning over him, imagined her tears, her screaming. Oh Lord, don't take him now. Throwing herself on the coffin so all those biddies from the choir would have something to chew on at coffee hour. It wouldn't be like Miss Fisk standing pinch-faced over Bean for just a second, stunned, still in shock from the news. He was ready for Nene's Granmoms to go off, to fill the empty chapel with her beseeching. It wouldn't embarrass him the way it would Fats or Smooth or Leon. No, Eugene thought, she'd earned it.