His Own Where (2 page)

Holding her hand in his is large and hers almost loose inside it. She feel visitor-stiff, but the music make a difference, and his hand.

Cars make Buddy mad. Right now his father lying in the hospital from what they call A Accident. And was no accident about it, Buddy realize. The street set up that way so cars can clip the people easy kill them even. Easy.

“What you say?” she ask him.

“Damn,” he answer her. “Another one. Another corner. Street-crossing-time again.”

“You crazy, Buddy? What you mean?”

“I hate them. Corners. They really be a dumb way try to split the people from the cars. Don’t
even work. Look how a car come up and almost kill my father, minding his own business, on the corner. Corners good for nothing.” Buddy frown so bad that Angela start laughing. Buddy swing around her waist.

“Show you what I mean.”

He jump back behind her. Walk forward like a flatfoot counting steps: Left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-one-two.

 

“Here come the corner!”

 

Down
. Buddy buckle at the knee for
down
. When he really reach the corner then he drop to one knee. Seem like a commando on the corner. Wild looking left then right. Arms like a rifle in rotation: Covering the danger east and west. Buddy standing on his two feet urgent. Put his face an inch from her: “Watch now. Here. It’s here.” He roll the radio dial to loud yell over it. “Not clear! Not clear at the crossing. On your mark,” (whispering in her ear) “get set.” Buddy stop. “Green. Where’s the green? You seen it, Angela?” He fold his arms and spread his legs and hold everything right there. “Well my Lookout Man is out to lunch.” Buddy sitting on the curb, to wait.

Angela feel a question, but the radio so loud she would have to scream. With him, she rather not be screaming.

Angela not laughing and no smile. Buddy sitting on the curb and she beside him, so he roll the dial to soft.

“You see them signs. The curb-your-dog signs. But the people be like slaves. Don’t need no signs. Just do it. Curb-the-People. Step right up, then down, then up. Then out. Into it. Into the traffic, baby. You be crucify like Jesus at the crossing. Traffic like a 4-way nail the joker on his feet. It be strictly D.O.A. for corners. Danger on Arrival. D.O.A. Even dogs can smell that danger, smell it just as good as looking at the lights. You tired?”

“No,” She is. But nothing they can do about that. No bench. No sidewalk, walkway tables, benches. Only fences fixed outfront.

“Buddy, this no place to stop.”

Rises from the curb, his arm around her, moving on together, slower walking easy on the edge. The sidewalk is a concrete edge.

 

The lined-up traffic multiplies. The fenders blur. Windshield swiping windshield chrome and autocolors. Hold her close, his side comes long and close beside her.

At the intersection they will cross together. Intersection circus stunt for everyday.

“Angela, look out.”

She hear his shaking inner sound. She listen to him. Coordination is together trial.

Matched to her to him out in the middle of the mess machinery. He be strong enough and she be fast enough to swerve it safely through, across, around, ahead. Landed on the other edge, the sidewalk opposite. She smell intoxicating leather jacket, how he wears it, how he smells to her.

 

He slowly flaming from the small size of her neck, its naked expectation.

“Buddy, this is a cemetery. Let’s go back.”

“No. Let’s go on.”

“I don’t like it here.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Angela, where can we go beside the cemetery. What else is there?”

“We can go home.”

“Home.” The idea, the memories, the fact of home straightens him away from her, from what she probably mean.

“Just trust me five more minutes. Trust me.” They step ahead, single file. She following him. He leading them, both of them. Trees like a skinny curtain start appearing. What they can see are cemetery furnishings. Somebody leave a potted plant. The flabby petals from the $4.95 racketeer store close to the scene of the absolutely dead.

 

They notice the one-by-one increasing trees. She watch Buddy how he walk ahead of her, how
he seems a bit ahead of her. They come to a silent place. The only sounds, the engine highway sounds.

They climb up sidesoil to a fence that stretches high above their heads and out beyond arm-stretching.

Angela be blinded by the light wiggles blinding in the silent waterfills her eyes. They say nothing, just look and feel full. It be like a big open box, sides of sloping stone, moss covered rainy dark and, behind them, a little to the left, there be a small brick tower room, a locked-up house where no one ever live.

 

Buddy say, “This is the reservoir.” Angela be thinking water and, over by the furthest rim of it, they see the roof of streets and houses that they know. Nobody close to them. Buddy and Angela begin to make believe about the house next to the reservoir. They see how they would open it up, how they would live inside, what they would do with only the birds, the water, and the skylight fallen blinding into it.

“What they saving the water for? Who suppose to use it.”

“Saving it for birds. This a bathroom for the birds.”

They laugh about the pretty water bathroom for the birds.

“Be nice if we can swim here.”

“They not hardly let you swim in it. Unless you be a bird.”

Go over to the doorsill of the house, sit down for talking.

“Why you bring me here?”

“You don’t like it?”

“So quiet. I don’t know.”

“How come you always want some sound?”

“Real quiet bother me. But then again, when I go to like the supermarket they be playing loony tunes and you be looking at a can of soup, or pork chops, but you have to hear dah-dah-blah-blah and violins and mustard and potatoes dahdah-blah-blah-violins, it can make you feel really weird.”

“So what you want to hear with mustard and potatoes?”

“Well, could be somebody like that kind of music, but I don’t. I rather be hearing other things. Like if you play the radio and we decide what we want to hear I mean at this very moment.”

“What you want?”

“You talk to me, Buddy. Tell me what you thinking.”

 

They have to leave soon. Reservoir growing dim. They have to walk back.

“What you doing tonight?”

“Study, can you stop by after you see your father?”

“I don’t know. Might be really too late.”

“Is he better?”

“No. My relatives rap strong about insurance and inheritance. I say he be dying, but not dead. And at the hospital they be fooling with him. Half the time I go, can’t see him. They exploring this or that, testing him for what not. The other half, he be sleeping, from the pills they give him. The dude that knock him down, you know that dumb-head driver? Last week he actually come by, call himself paying some respects. I tell him that respect don’t make him better, but I say well let him come. Don’t make no difference. My father dying lonely and I figure that respect don’t hurt a lonely man.”

Call it accidental but to him, to Buddy, was no accident. Things set up like that. You cross the street you taking chances. Odds against you. Knock his father down, down from the sidewalk stop, down from the curb, down bleeding bad, ribs crushed. The lungs be puncture, and his father living slow inside a tent.

the hospital seem nice.
Nothing too loud or filthy, beds adjustable, regular food. Different people, men and women, asking how you are, how you feel. Friends drop around. Privacy. Whole attitude all allright. You suppose to heal, be well, stay well in the hospital.

Don’t let no rumbly trucks rock through the streets. Floors be clean enough to eat on. Buddy sure the whole city should be like a hospital and everybody taking turns to heal the people. People turning doctor, patient, nurse. Whole city asking asking everybody how you are, how you feel, what can I do for you, how I can help.

Fantastic if the city turn into a hospital the city fill with a million people asking a million other people how you feeling, how’s everything, what you need. Dig, policeman move up to this Momma, ask her do she sleep well.

She say no. Explaining how the heat turn off at midnight. Policeman make a note. Act like a nurse.

That was how he meet her, Angela. Inside the hospital. Father dying in a semiprivate room more
private than the room he share so many years ago, with Buddy’s mother. Semiprivate room for dying seem all right. Who want to be alone, completely. Seem all right for living too; a semiprivate room for keep alive. Buddy by the bed, sitting still. His mind remembering home.

 

Brownstone and cigar smoke. Women pocketbooks and peppermint. Shined shoes. His father sharpening the Sunday razor slap the leather slap the blade to silver sharp. In the bureau drawer blue enamel cufflinks, brassy bullets from the war. Few photographs. His mother prim-sarcastic posing straight ahead. Old box of contraceptives. Blow them up. Bounceback old-timer tricks from when.

When his mother and his father in the doublesoftbed underneath the walnut crucifix cost not so much as you might think. It be so heavy hanging there above the double-decker pillows too clean for anybody use them. But they use them when they use to be asleep around the morning after Buddy father do his downtown nightwatch. And before when Buddy mother leave without him, Buddy. Disappear his father say without no reason.

But Buddy remember how his mother use to stay gaze on the ground around the neighborhood. She brokenhearted in the brokenland of Brooklyn small-scale brokenland. She cry the day they rip
one tree right out the concrete ground in front of the dining-room windows. Tree already attacked by lightning on a rainy afternoon when Buddy watch the men their caps firm to the eyebrows walking to the corners, carrying a paper bag of lunch. And when he watch the women breasted motherly and crooked walking with a Horn and Hardart/Bargaintown/Macy’s Christmas shopping bag. The dining room, where she cry that day, on other days unusual with celery and olives.

Sweet port wine and soda, flower wineglasses, crochet lacy tablecloth, and two red candles definitely lit. The greens and ham the rice and peas and cheese and crackers and tomato juice standing in small glasses on small glassy plates. The perspiration smell of toilet water. Buddy, helping carve, he feel the swarm of aunts and uncles cousins. Feel them sweaty near, amazing and predictable. And rhinestones and the wellmade gray-plaid special suit. The hugging and the jokes. The sudden ashtrays and his mother in a brandnew apron serving. Serving and remote. Retreating to the kitchen sink excuse from laughter where the family relax drink rum to celebrate another year survival. His mother serving her way out of the loosely loving festival of food and thankyou to the Lord.

His father when he help to dry the dishes silverware pots cup and saucers try to bring her into
the ordinary comfort of his arms and she collapse in them unhappy. “We need another cabinet,” she tell his father. She continuous in putaway and polish: sort and starch. “This is our own house,” she would repeat. “We sacrifice, we save and borrow for this house. At least it is our own. Or will be.” And then say, “I know it is not beautiful, but it is clean.”

She leave it, finally. When she leave them then his father turn to him, to Buddy and the house. The house become a house of men strip to the basic structure truth of it, the four rooms gradual like one that spreads around the actions of a day. His mother hungering for order among things themselves, for space she could admire, simply hungering and gone. Where did she go, and Buddy wondering about this last disorder she did not repair. This disordering of life of marriage of her motherhood. Strange lovely woman warm and hungering and gone.

Buddy father clean the house down to the linoleum. Remove the moldings. Take away the window drapes and teach him, Buddy, how to calculate essentials how to calculate one table and two chairs, four plates, two mugs. Together they build shelves and stain them. Throw out the cabinets and bureaus opening and closing like a bank. His father teach him hammering and saws and measuring and workshop science. House be like a workshop where men live creating how they
live. Throw out the lamps and build lights into the ceiling. Indirect direct white/lavender. Buddy working with wires and pliers rush from school to work beside his father on the house.

 

On duty in the night his father dream and draw the next plan for the next day, working the house into a dream they can manage with their hands. Years like this working on the way they live with open shelves and changing furniture from store to slowly made in wood they pick up awkward.

Buddy see him sleeping and unconscious. Bandages a brace a cast a bruise black swollen on the brown skin of his face. His father face asleep, unshaven. Thick lips promising to speak to smile again. Eyes closed. No intimation of their waking focus gentle calculating inches and diameter or grain. A short man, Buddy’s father, short and powerful and maybe handsome. Buddy not sure what handsome mean, in general, but to him, to Buddy, this man, his father, is a lonely, handsome man, powerful and short.