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I can’t afford to double after that — I’ve only got four more dollars. So I throw two in. I’m betting ten. Next round, my winnings are up to twenty. Not a bad return on a five-dollar bet. I throw in my last two dollars. “Here we go again,” Fat Frankie says. My skin is sweat slick. His hands move faster and faster. Forty-four dollars will be the most I’ve ever held in my hand at once. But then again, I’m on a roll. Maybe I’ll let it ride, without adding anything. Eighty-eight? Unimaginable.

The cards fly. My gaze darts along with them. “Where’s the lady?” Frankie says. “Show her to me. Keep your eye on the skirt, man. Where’s the lady?” He stops. The cards wait. With confidence, I point to the center.

Fat Frankie’s slow grin. Right away I know. My heart sinks. I swallow. He flips the center card. Sure enough, it’s one of the two jacks. He scoops my twenty-two dollars off the windshield and adds it to his roll.

In my room that night, I write a letter to Philbert, telling him all about my failed wager with Fat Frankie. We used to go down to the creek or up into someone’s barn and play cards or flip coins and bet on them. Cards, we could win, but matching nickels, Richie always had some kind of crazy luck. You each flip a nickel, and it comes up heads or tails. If it matches what you called, you win. If you both match, or both don’t, it’s a draw, but if one matches and the other doesn’t, the winner gets to keep all the money in the pot.

I scrawl the whole story for Philbert. How I recognized the wily grin on Fat Frankie’s face, at the moment when he knew he’d hustled me but good. I warn Philbert not to match nickels with Richie Dixon anymore. Richie used to smile just like Fat Frankie when he won. We only
thought
it was luck.

Lansing, 1938

Walking home from school, I pretended to be Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, the greatest boxer who ever lived and the only black boxer headed to the heavyweight championship. I tried out my uppercut, right hook, and blocking with the left. Philbert had given me some moves to practice.

Philbert was a really good boxer. He trained and took on real matches and everything. My own skills left something to be desired, but I was working on it. I thought about Joe Louis and the sound of the crowd on the radio, the thump of gloves and the grunts and the cheers. I pretended it was all around me right now. I went up on my toes.
Boom. Swish. Pow. Pow.

“Look at this,” said Richie Dixon, coming up from the side, along with some of our other friends. I hadn’t seen them coming. I dropped my fists, embarrassed to be caught swinging into midair.

“Hi, Richie,” I said.

“Hey, nigger. You think you’re some kinda Joe Louis?”

“Maybe,” I retorted. “I could be.” This was not entirely true, but that was the whole point of practicing.

“Oh, yeah?” Richie started rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s see what you’ve got, nigger.”

“You’re on.” We danced around each other for a moment, all in good fun.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Right here?” I asked. “On the road?” I wasn’t about to walk away from the challenge, but it didn’t feel right to go it alone. If I was going to beat Richie’s behind once and for all, I wanted witnesses.

Richie looked like he was thinking. “OK,” he said. “Let’s do it official. How about up by the Coleman barn? Meet you there tomorrow, daybreak. Then you’re going down.”

It sounded sufficiently dramatic to me. We shook hands to settle the deal. A day meant all the time in the world to gather an audience. It wasn’t just a challenge; it was a showdown. I ran ahead, to meet up with Philbert. If Richie was going to bring some people, I had better, too.

The Coleman property had been abandoned for a number of years. For as long as we could remember, at least. Behind the barn was nothing but a patch of dying grass. We had heard that by night it used to be a moonshine spot, where the booze runners would make secret deliveries to paying customers. But now it was just a place kids would meet and kick a ball around or set up a makeshift diamond for stickball or whatnot.

Richie Dixon was on one side of the group. I was on the other. I thought about Joe Louis and how he ruled in the ring. Today I could be Joe Louis. Today I could fight. Today it would be easy.

I thought about my victory lap, knee-high jogging with my gloves in the air. Not that I was wearing gloves; it was just a backyard fistfight, but still. I could imagine it.

“Come on, Malcolm. You can beat him,” Philbert urged. Just because I always lost to Philbert didn’t mean I didn’t have skills. He was just really good.

I hopped up into the makeshift ring, which was a circle of our friends and classmates.

“Go, Malcolm,” some shouted.

“Go, Richie,” others proclaimed.

I thought I had a fair share of the cheering section, and I was feeling pretty good about it until Richie stepped forward, fists raised. His knuckles flew at me.

I saw stars. “Malcolm? Can you hear me?”

Philbert’s face loomed over mine. “How many fingers am I holding up?” he said.

I honestly could not have told him. His hands and face were swimming. “Uhhh . . .”

“The fight’s over, buddy.” Philbert reached for my hand and helped me sit. “He knocked you out in one punch!”

Not possible
, I thought. “That’s just the first round, then, isn’t it?” I said.

Philbert’s worried face gave way to a laughing face. “Not when you stay down as long as you did,” he chortled.

“Why? How long was I out?” I noticed that the other boys were already some distance away. Were they leaving?

“About a minute,” Philbert answered. “Boy, you are never going to live that one down!”

“Noooo,” I groaned.

“Richie Dixon, boxing master?” Philbert shook his head. “I should never have let you go up against him.”

“Let’s get a rematch,” I said. “How about that?”

“That seems like a good idea,” Philbert said, dripping sarcasm. “How bad did he ring your bell?”

I rubbed my neck, and we started walking. I tried to work out what had happened. It should have been a fair fight, me and Richie. But Richie Dixon always seemed to have the upper hand.

Boston, 1940

Richie Dixon’s greasy pink grinning face floats in front of me, keeping me awake. Damn him. He was hustling us all along. How can you cheat at nickels? I wonder. Nobody could really be as lucky as Richie seemed to be. How did we not see it?

I pound my fist on the mattress. And the knockout. It should’ve been a fair fight between me and Richie. I should’ve at least got a punch in. Maybe he cheated at boxing, too. Did he throw his punch too early?

Hey, niggers
, Richie’d say.

Hey
, we’d answer. Like it was no big deal. Just what they called us. A nickname.

I thought Richie was our friend. I even thought I had one up on him, actually. I could boss him around, get him to do things the way I wanted, like tip outhouses for a Halloween prank.

We got caught tipping outhouses once. Some old farmer dragged me and Philbert out of his yard by the elbows, so screaming mad we thought he was going to kill us dead. Meanwhile Richie and Ben, who were just as guilty as we were, scampered off into the woods lickety-split — as if they hadn’t even been there.

I never noticed at the time, but whenever there was trouble of any kind, Richie and his friends got off scot-free.

It makes me want to pound him, for real this time. Him and everyone like him, the lucky sons of guns who slide through life like they’re greased.

Boston, 1940

Through the window, the pool hall appears dim but inviting. Low strains of music drift out through the cracks in the door. Shorty, the guy I met over bets with Fat Frankie, is in there corralling balls atop each table with a wooden triangle. Shorty seems nice enough; he tried to help me and all. He might be someone I’d like to know. I could use a friend who plays everything straight up and real. I go on in.

Inside, the pool hall is brighter than I expected. A dozen or so tables are spread around the room, their smooth green-felt surfaces looking pristine. Most of the tables have a triangle of colorful balls all laid out and waiting, plus one white ball at the opposite end. Lamps hang from the ceiling over each table, casting cones of light. The uneven wood floor creaks and rocks with every step. A hundred pool sticks of different lengths stand at attention in their cradles on the walls.

Shorty sees me coming but keeps on racking balls. I go on in, get pretty close. Trying to figure out exactly what to say. Not sure what I want from him, except maybe a few words of advice.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a billiards man,” he says.

I run a hand over the edge of a table. The green-felt surface is firm but smooth under my fingers. “I dabble.”

Shorty grins. “Right. Well, go on, then.” He spreads his hand wide over the table, as if inviting me to just dive in.

I hesitate. My gaze flits from the sticks to the balls to the can of white powder on the side of the table.

Shorty’s amusement deepens. “You even know how to play?”

“Back in Lansing, I never even set foot in a pool hall,” I admit, surprising myself a little. I’ve been pretending to everyone as much as I can, about what I’ve seen, where I’ve been, what I know. But Shorty brings out something honest in me.

“My man,” Shorty exclaims. “You’re from Lansing? I’m from Lansing.”

“Really?” We slap hands. I’m thinking,
This is great — what crazy luck to meet someone who’s been where I’ve been.

“What do you know.” Shorty glances around, as if looking for someone to tell the good news. “My homeboy!”

So we chat easily for a couple minutes, about people and places from back home. Shorty throws out names, and I know some, but we don’t have friends in common. He’s almost ten years older than me, so we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. I go along with it, because any talk with Shorty is good talk, but I don’t really want to think back on Lansing anymore. What I really want is to know about Roxbury.

Shorty is dark black, like Papa. Not really as dark but close. He’s thick and muscled, but doesn’t have much height. Hence “Shorty,” I suppose. I’ve got inches on him, even though he’s in his twenties. He’s not treating me like a kid, though. He talks to me like we’re the same. Just two guys from Lansing, getting to know each other.

“How’d you get to work here?” I finally ask, twisting the conversation. “Seems like an OK setup.”

Shorty nods knowingly. “You’re new in town. You need a slave?”

“What?”

“A slave. A job, homeboy. You working someplace?”

“Naw. But I’m looking,” I lie. Ella’s plan aside, I can’t have it around that I’m the kind of guy who isn’t earning his keep.

“We’ll find you something,” Shorty says. “Yeah, my boys’ll keep their ears out.”

“Thanks,” I tell him.

“Sure thing, Red.”

“Red?”

“Look at you,” Shorty says. “I never seen a Negro with red hair, high yellow or otherwise.”

“It’s not so red,” I say. “Only in the right kind of light.”

Shorty grins. “Yeah, we got the best kind of light down here in the pool hall.”

I shuffle my feet, feeling self-conscious. Nothing to say, except I want to fit in, not stand out.

“We also got to do something about that fuzz,” he says. “Get you a clean conk, like so.” Shorty smooths his hand over his own slicked-back hair. “You’ll see, Red. I’m gonna hook you up.”

I know enough to know that everyone needs a street name. Red. It has a ring to it. Real definitive. Real simple. Sleek.

When I get back up on the Hill later that afternoon, Ella’s on the phone. “Yes, actually, here he is now,” she says. She holds out the phone to me, wearing a pinched expression that says she doesn’t quite approve. “Someone called Shorty, for you?”

“Hey, Red. I found you a slave,” he says straightaway.

“Really?” I tuck the phone closer. Turn away from Ella’s hands-on-hips, narrow-eyed scrutiny.

“Freddie, the shoe shine down at the Roseland, hit the numbers. He’s quitting tonight. Job’ll be yours if you want it.”

“That’s fast work,” I tell him. Meanwhile, my pulse starts thumping, about to beat out of my skin. Work at the Roseland Ballroom? Where all the bands would come to play?

“I said I’d take care of you,” Shorty says. “You in?”

Did he even need to ask? “What time do I need to be there?”

“About seven. Ask for Freddie.”

“I’ll be there. Hey, thanks, man.”

“No problem, homeboy.”

We hang up.

“New friend?” Ella says.

“I got a slave.”

“You
what
?” Ella catches me in a sharp gaze.

“I got a slave, down at the Roseland. Shining shoes.”

“What are you talking about, Malcolm?”

I feel swelled up for a second, knowing something that she doesn’t. “A slave. You know, a job.”

Ella wipes her hands on her apron. Her weighty stare unyielding. I squirm.

“Well, I told you, you don’t have to work yet, but if you’re ready . . .”

“My friend Shorty hooked me up,” I say. “It’s a good slave, he says, in the ballroom, with all the people and the music. Gotta jump on it.”

Ella shakes her head. “I don’t want you up in this house talking about ‘slaves,’” she says. “You don’t know slavery, so don’t act like you do.”