Magic Street (17 page)

"I've been tramping all over Fairyland and just asking you his name is going to make him see what he hasn't seen till now?"

"Do what you want, then," said Puck. "Just giving you good advice."

"I'm not afraid of him like you are," said Mack.

"Cause you dumb as a muffler on a '57 Chevy."

"I wouldn't be dumb if you'd answer my questions."

"Boy, if I answered your questions you'd probably be dead by now."

"What happened to you, when we took you to the hospital—he did that, right?"

"Birds did it."

There was some reason Puck was so scared of him. "His birds, right?"

"Who else's? That place is Fairyland, and he king of Fairyland."

"Bush is President and American birds don't do what he says."

"President ain't king and America ain't Fairyland."

"Don't you have someplace to go this morning?" asked Puck. "Like school?"

"Plenty of time to catch the bus. Specially since I didn't have to go home to shower."

"You don't ride with any of the other kids from Baldwin Hills? They all got their own cars, don't they?"

"Not all," said Mack. "Not everybody rich in Baldwin Hills. And even some of the rich ones ride the bus so they don't have to take any shit about their fancy ride when they get to school."

"All about money in your world," said Puck. "Money be magic."

"Yeah, like you're the great social critic," said Mack. " 'What fools these mortals be.' "

"Oh yeah. Will Shakespeare. I loved that boy."

"I thought he was an asshole. According to you."

"Even assholes got somebody who loves them."

"I'm still wanting answers," said Mack. "You going to be here when I get back?"

"I be somewhere. Might be here."

Mack was sick of the dodging. It's not like he was longing for Puck's company the past four years. "Be here when I get back, you got it?"

Puck just laughed as Mack headed out the door.

As Mack knew, it wasn't even seven yet, and his bus wouldn't be by for another fifteen minutes.

He had time to stop by the house and pick up his book bag, which would make the day go easier.

Miz Smitcher was eating her breakfast. "Where do you go in the early morning?"

"Exercise," said Mack. "I like to walk."

"So you always say."

Mack pulled up his pants leg and moved his toes up and down so she could see the sharply defined calf muscles flex and extend. "Those are the legs of a man who could walk to the moon, if somebody put in a road."

"A man," she sighed. "Has it really been seventeen years since the stork brought you."

"Not a nice thing to call Ceese." Mack poured himself a glass of milk and downed it in four huge swallows.

"How tall are you now?" asked Miz Smitcher.

"Six four," said Mack. "And growing."

"You used to be smaller."

"So did you."

"Yeah, but you didn't know me when I was little." She handed him ten dollars. "Spending money. Take out a girl for a burger."

"Thanks, Miz Smitcher," he said. "But I got no girl to take out."

"You never will, either, you don't ask somebody."

"I don't ask less I think she say yes."

"So you have somebody in mind?"

"Every girl I looking at, she's on my mind," said Mack. "But they always looking at somebody else."

"I don't understand it," said Miz Smitcher. "Whoever your daddy and mama were, they must have been real good-looking people."

"Sometimes good-looking people have ugly children, sometimes ugly people have beautiful children. You just shuffle the cards and deal yourself a hand, when you get born."

"Aren't you the philosopher."

"I'm in AP English," said Mack. "I know everything now."

She laughed.

In the distance, Mack could hear the whine of a high-powered motorcycle.

Miz Smitcher shook her head. "Some people don't care how much noise they make."

"Wish I had a bike made noise like that."

"Now, Mack, we been over that. You want to drive, you have to have a job to pay for insurance. But if you have a job, your studies will suffer, and if you don't get a scholarship you ain't going to no college. So by not driving you're putting yourself through college."

"Just don't ask me why I got no girlfriend."

"I don't care, anyway, Miz Smitcher," said Mack. "It's fine as it is." He leaned down and kissed her forehead and then strode to the door, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and started jogging down the street to the bus stop.

He knew the bus driver saw him, but she never waited for anybody. They could have their hand inside the door, she'd still take off when the schedule said. "I run a on-time bus," she said. "So you want a ride, you have yourself a on-time morning."

So he'd jog to school. He'd done it often before. He usually beat the bus there, since he didn't have a circuitous route and a lot of stops, and he could jaywalk so he didn't have to wait for lights.

Only this morning, as he ran along La Brea, the whine of the motorcycle got close enough to become a roar, and then it pulled up just ahead of him. Riding it was a fine-looking black girl in a red windbreaker and no helmet, probably so she could show off her smooth henna-colored do. She turned around to face him.

"Miss your bus?"

Mack shrugged.

She turned off the engine. "I said, miss your bus?"

Mack grinned. "I said:" And then shrugged again.

"Oh," she said. "So you're not sure?"

"So I don't mind walking."

"I'm trying to pick you up. Don't you want to ride my bike?"

"That what you do? Pick up high school boys who miss the bus?"

"Big ones like you, yeah. Little ones I just throw back."

"So you know where my high school is?"

"I know everything, boy," she said.

"You call me boy, I get to call you girl?"

"So tell me your name, you don't want to be boy."

"Mack Street."

"I said your name, not your address."

He started to explain, but she just laughed. "I'm messing with you, Mack Street. I'm Yolanda White, but people I like call me Yo Yo."

"Not yet. It's Yolanda to you."

"What about Miz White?"

"Not till my gee-maw dies, and my mama after her."

"May I have a ride to school, Miz Yolanda?" asked Mack in his most whiny, obsequious voice.

"I thinks you owes me a ride now, since you stopped me running and now I be late."

"What a Tom," she said. "Next thing you'll be carrying mint juleps to massuh."

For all his bravado in talking sass to her, he wasn't sure about how to hold on, once he was straddling the bike behind her. He put his hands at her waist, but she just grabbed them and pulled his arms so sharp around her middle that he bumped his head into the back of hers and his whole front was pressed up against her back. He liked the way it felt.

"Hang on, Mack Street, cause this is one little engine that can."

There was no conversation possible on the way there, because the engine was so loud Mack couldn't have heard the trumpets announcing the Second Coming. Besides which, Mack couldn't have talked, what with all the praying. She took corners laying over on her side and he was sure she was going to put the bike right down, a dozen times. But she never did. Her tires clung to the road like a fridge magnet, and she let him off in front of the school before half the buses had arrived. He kind of wished there were more kids there to see him arrive like this, riding behind a woman so fine. Only it wouldn't matter—they'd just make fun of him because she was driving and he was the passenger. Not that he minded. Those who didn't resent him because he studied hard and got good grades made fun of him because he didn't drive and took long walks and didn't dress cool. "Your mama buy those pants for you?" one boy asked him one day. "Or she sew that out of one of her own pantlegs?"

"No," Mack told him. "I thought you recognize it—these pants your mama's old bra."

Brother wasn't even his friend, he had no right to start talking about his mama. So when he gave Mack a shove, Mack casually shoved him into the lockers hard enough to rattle his teeth and make him sag, and then walked on. Whole different story if he hadn't grown so tall. Lots of things missing in his life, but God was good to him about his size. Guys wanted to get in his face sometimes, cause they thought he was a likely victim, dressing like he did. So he showed them he wasn't, and they left him alone.

You can't have everybody like you, but you can make it so the ones that don't, keep their distance. Not that Mack ever fought anybody. They'd call him out, he'd just ignore them. They say, Meet me after school, and he says, I ain't doing your homework again, you're on your own now. And if they lay in wait for him, he just run on by. He was fast, but not track team fast. Thing was, he could run forever. Nobody ever kept up, not for long. Guys who pick fights, they aren't the kind to do a lot of solitary running.

So Mack Street had a name for himself, and the name was, I'm here for my own purpose, and if you ain't my friend, leave me alone. Senior year, it was okay now, none of the kids his own age would try to pick on him. Anybody taller than Mack was on the basketball team. But even so, there was nobody who'd be all impressed if they saw him on this bike with this woman. Wasn't that a shame.

But you got to live out the life you made for yourself. High school was a dry run for the real world, the principal said at least once per assembly. Mack figured in the grownup world, people wouldn't resent him because he was a hard worker and did good. They'd hire him because of that. He'd make a living. And then he'd get the right kind of girlfriend, not the kind that went for flash and strut.

"You said that just like Martin Lawrence," he said.

"You too young to be watching shit like that," she said.

"Old enough to get a ride from a babe on a bike," he said.

"No, you did that cause you 'crazy, de-ranged.' "

They both laughed. Then she said it again. "See you when I see you, Mack Street."

She peeled out and was gone. Everybody turned to look, but at her, not at Mack. She might have dropped off anybody.

Why am I suddenly so hungry to be famous at high school? Famous at high school is like being employee of the month at the sanitation department. Famous at high school like being the last guy cut from the team before the first exhibition game. Nobody seen you play except at practice.

But the smell of her was on his shirt. Not a perfume, really, like some of the girls dumped on themselves every morning. Nor a hair product, though her hair had given his face kind of a beating, to the point where he wanted to say, You ever think of cornrows, Yo Yo? only the bike was too loud so he kept it to himself.

Mack didn't eat alone—he had a lunch group he sat with—but mostly he just listened to them brag about their prowess in some game or on a date, or talk raunchy about girls they knew would never speak to them. Some of these guys lived in Baldwin Hills and he knew their cold dreams. Not one of them cared about girls or sports as much as they said. It was other stuff. Family stuff. Personal stuff. Wishes they'd never tell to a soul.

Well, Mack didn't tell them any of his deep stuff, so they were even. Only difference was, he didn't talk about girls or sports, either. Only thing he ever talked about at lunch was lunch, because there was no lying about that, it was right there on the tray in front of them. Apart from that and the weather and was he going to the game or the dance, he just listened and ate and when he was done, he threw away his garbage and stacked his tray and tossed his silverware and went to the library to study.

Usually he studied his subject, though sometimes he still went back over the Shakespeare stuff, just to see if maybe he'd understand any of it better now—and he sometimes did.

Today, though, he looked up motorcycles on the internet till he found the Harley that Yo Yo was driving. It was a fine machine. He liked the way it rumbled under him. Like riding a happy sabertooth, purring the whole way as you hurtle over the ground.

PROPERTY VALUES

Between his long walks and his cold dreams, Mack once knew everything that was happening in his neighborhood. But now the long walks took place in Fairyland, and he had the skill of shutting down all but the strongest dreams before they were fully formed. So there were things he didn't know about. Nobody was keeping it a secret, he just wasn't there to notice it.

He knew somebody was moving into the fancy white house just below the drainage valley—he heard all about it when Dr. Phelps died and his second wife got the house in the will and sold it. And he saw a moving van come and guys unload stuff.

What he didn't know was who the new owner was. There was no hurry. He was bound to hear, especially because the house was above the invisible line—it was up the hill, where the money was, and so whatever happened there was big news to the people who lived in the flat.

He was eating dinner with Ivory DeVries's family even though Ivory was a year older than Mack and was off at college down in Orange County. Maybe they missed Ivory and Mack was kind of a reminder of the old days, when they both took part in neighborhood games of hide-and-seek. Back when there were enough kids that they could fan out through half of Baldwin Hills.

So Mack was standing at the sink, helping Ivory's sister Ebony rinse the dishes and load the dishwasher. Ebony had always hated her name, especially because she was very light-skinned. "I mean why did my parents choose each other if it wasn't to make sure they had kids that could pass the damn paper bag test. And then they go and name me Ebony? Why did Ivo get to be Ivory? They name the boy the white name and the girl the black black black name?"

"I hate to break it to you, Ebby," said Mack, "but both those names are definitely black names."

"I guess you right, I ain't never going to see no blond boy named Ivory, am I?"

Mack and Ebony got along okay, like brother and sister, not that Mack didn't notice how she filled out lately. But she was still in ninth grade and she was so short he could have fit her under his arm. And there was no sign she was interested anyway. So they did dishes together.