If You Want Me to Stay (11 page)

Have you seen the Promise Land? I asked a boy who looked to be lingering at the ass end of teenaged, as if he hadn't quite got it together to pass over into his twenties. His sideburns were bristly and sharply razored to hide his extended chin, which all they did was exclamation point to it if you ask me. A tight T-shirt when he ought to of gone relaxed fit. The reason I asked him was, he was the only one to ask.

“You know, I just
did
see it,” he said, proof that I asked the right question at the right time. Proof of my mama, drawing me closer. Look: Frosty, Carla, magic caster, Angie, the kindly Mexican, the church lady, all of them when you think about it form a line orchestrated by my mama's desire to see me again. Even my daddy going off could be considered in this light. What it was, she'd hung out her wash between that high-rise hotel and another building and it was fixing to pour and she was reeling in her line. I was being passed from person to person on my way back into her wide-open window.

“You wanting to see it?” he said.

Sometimes I want to be Tank. Spread-eagle facedown on a pier mumbling to crustaceans about Otis. People stepping right over me as if nothing's wrong with this picture. Tank don't have to act right. He's got me to look out for him, asking him does he got to go, stealing shirts, buying him Sweetarts so he can walk around humming off-key and asking crazy questions and deciding he likes people randomly like surfer Glenn who he ought not to like and the kindly Mexican which he got that one right. He was half-right. But not all there. They say that about my daddy but Tank is not supposed to be all there. All of him has not even supposed to have arrived yet. That's why I wouldn't mind being Tank sometimes. I can claim that part of me gives a damn is in the mail.

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I want to see the Promise Land. “

“Well I will take you straight to it,” he said, “but first I got to ask you a favor.”

“Okay, ask.”

“Well, I got to show you.”

“Show me a favor?”

I didn't have time for his mess. I could smell the beer on him when I got up close and the longer I talked to him the drunker he looked.

“Naw, man, un-unnh. You got it all wrong.”

“Okay,” I said, as if this made some sense. It dawned on me he wasn't allowed back in that pool room. I thought of going in there myself for it seemed like someone in there would know the whereabouts of the Promise Land.

“Follow me,” he said. He took off down a alley.

“Hey, wait,” I said.

“I thought you were wanting the Promise Land.”

“I am.”

“Well, it ain't gonna come to you.”

“It's down there?”

“I told you I got to
something
a favor.” The word he used where I have substituted “something” was swallowed, or something else stomach-or throat-wise was going on and I didn't care to ask him please repeat that. He had stopped and was looking at my shirt. “Mario, I'm Landers,” he said. He looked at you after everything he said in a lingering way as if expecting some sort of reaction. But there wasn't anything to react to. I have seen this type tic before but only in people who say shit you don't know what to say back to them about.

Then he took off again, thank goodness. We came out on another street. It was one way going the opposite from the
one we'd been on. Away from the water. Away from the Promise Land. Away from my mama.

I stopped at the sight of it.

“What's the matter?” said Landers. “Come on, it's just a little ways.”

I felt so anxious I could not move. I felt like every small thing I ever had was lost to me. All because I had detoured slightly down a alley following drunk-wanting-a-reaction Landers, thinking I was for just a little while Tank.

Landers pointed to a car. Rather, it was one of those half-car/half-trucks. I don't care for hybrids. Broccoliflower, Ray Charles's country album. My daddy didn't care for that album and neither did I. The half-car/half-truck put me in rueful mind of
Modern Sounds in Country Western Music,
Vols. 1 and 2 by Ray Charles. I know it's not the same thing, Ray Charles and what they call a crossover, but to me it's similar. It's hard enough to be one thing, be it truck or big brother or landmark soul stirrer.

“I got to show you something,” said Landers.

I had to stop thinking I wanted to be Tank because I was too old to be acting like Tank. Okay, what you got to show me? Tank would say. But I was too old. I had got sidetracked and was going upriver, away from the signal, opposite direction of that sweet music. I have been old for so many days. Which is why mostly I just want to go live on a hill near a silo. My kitchen will be in a basement. The house will slant down the hill so that the ass end will be level with the planet earth. The head of the basement will be up under ground. In
the heat of the summer I will take all my meals in the kitchen plus sleep, do puzzles, and listen to music up in there. A car ought to be a car, truck all truck. Once when he was three Tank asked me did houses live inside or outside. His question got away with me big-time, liked to made me cry, I don't know why, I guess because I could not answer it and also it stirred up something so deep inside me only music could normally reach it. The walls of my basement kitchen will be of an ancient, dusty brick and quite thick. Rugs on the floor would be nice in the winter. Landers was walking right out into traffic. I was watching from the safety of the sidewalk. The Queen of Soul was singing “Call Me.” My mother stood at the sink running water into a teakettle. I don't trust any hybrid. You either live inside or outside, either you hear the song or you got no ear. The thick and ancient dusty brick will retain heat in the winter and keep me cool in the heat of the summer. The water bubbled over as my mother stared out the window. Call me the minute you get there, my mother sang along with Aretha. In the summer I would pull up the rugs so my toes could feel the earth up under the brick floor. Cars were swerving around Landers who had kneeled down and was fiddling with something up under the dashboard. It's either a car or a truck it seems to me. The water bubbled out of the teapot and on down the drain. “Come here, come here,” said Landers. He was waving me out into the road and cars were providing a horn section to the song in my head and in my mother's which was “Call Me.” I got to show you something, sang Aretha. I stepped out into the road. Landers
waving me over to where he crouched holding a tube connected to the dash. That half-car/half-truck was all over ugly. “Blow on this,” said Landers. “Do what?” I said. “Just blow on it, I want to show you something.” “Show me what?” “Goddamn, country, just blow on the motherfucker if you want to see the Promise Land.” I took it in my hand and looked at it. “It won't fucking bite just blow like you would a whistle.” Cool in the heat of summer, toasty in the dead of winter. Call me, my mother sang with Aretha as I blew into the tube and Landers said, “Or like you would your boyfriend, you little redneck,” and pushed me away nearly into a pickup which though it damn near ran over me was all-the-way pickup, not half Chevrolet or something, I couldn't tell what half the car was because Landers had that ugly specimen cranked and had pulled out into traffic before I could even move out of the middle of the river of cars going the wrong way from babies say mama I hate a hybrid call me call me I don't care what time it is day or night just call me the moment you get there.

M
Y LITTLE BROTHER
Carter's favorite song was “Tighten Up,” by Archie Bell and the Drells. He had it all memorized. Me and Tank had to perform this routine he'd worked out on the porch or in our room or wherever to “Tighten Up.” He always got to be Archie Bell. Me and Tank were the Drells.

“What's a Drell anyway?” Tank was always wanting to know.

“I'll tell you one thing, Tank,” I was always happy to tell him, “a Drell don't get paid as much as a Archie Bell.”

We Drells doubled up as musicians and roadies. Archie Bell fined us if we took too long to tune his guitar or came in a half second late on the bridge. My daddy told us James Brown did this to his band too. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business sounded to me like the meanest boss in it too.

Archie Bell would holler at me. I'd throw down some rolling chords.

“Tighten up on that bass,” Archie Bell would point at Tank. Tank would thump-pluck his air bass. It was twice the size of him. He could barely hold it if a wind was to blow across the porch.

There was the sweetest horn break in “Tighten Up.” The thing about it is, I never would of tolerated being a Drell if I did not dearly love “Tighten Up.” You could not listen to it and sit still. If you could you were either a dried-up schoolteacher, a man like fat Frosty, too big to shake it, or perhaps I don't know a eunuch.

I went down to Bulkhead trying to find the Promise Land. Old Landers had me blow the breath of life into his butt-ugly hybrid. That half-bull/half-man we studied in Myths and Legends was another ugly sapsucker. I don't know why I prefer things all one way or all the other but it aggravates me no end to see something stuck in between. All this time Tank had been waiting on me to tell him did houses live inside or outside. Since Landers and his hybrid, Tank's question had come back to buzz me like a mosquito in the night. Bulkhead aggravated the question. Which is it, Joel Junior, said the still nighttime streets and open-mouthed alleys of what they wanted to call downtown Bulkhead. Inside or outside? It was like we won't even talking houses anymore. Can a boy be big damn brother and steal named shirts and negotiate with Frosty for a half tank of gas and some Ruffles and also answer to the song up inside his head? Or does he got to choose between the two to make his way through this world?

Carter lost his earlobe and worse than that to him I bet, his
hair. Therefore, wandering around Bulkhead, I put “Tighten Up” on the box in his honor even if, as Archie Bell, he was all the time telling somebody what to do.

There are people in this world you just want to help but something in them won't let you. I believe Carter was like this. I wanted to be his brother and to love him like I did Tank, my daddy, my foul-mouthed sister, my mama, but Carter did not listen when I said stay in this boiling truck.

I loved Tank so I had to leave him behind. If you love someone, set them free. What does that mean? It's not for me to question, I'm just one of the Drells, it's not like I'm Archie Bygod Big-Time King-Bee Bell.

Bulkhead, Bulkhead: why'd you get so all of a sudden quiet? I walked up the one-way street going the wrong way. Kids my age and older cruising in their jacked-up, fat-tired vehicles called me names. You want to help people but they won't let you. “Tighten up on that guitar,” I yelled at one of them, which this cracked my tired ass up big-time.

Oh I was so old. I just wanted to reach whatever body of water dead-ended this miserable town. Nothing's promised you in the Promise Land. It's just a low-lying area where people'll tell you low lies.

I came to a strip of grass resembling a park and there, rolling black with strips of white breaker, lay the sound. I stood on the bulkhead, staring out at the water, wondering couldn't they think up a better name for this place? Why not, say, Sidewalk?

Did my mama come here because she craved the Sanitary
hush puppies. That sounds like a question but I'm going to go ahead and leave off the mark because I don't want to know the answer. Something probably like: here is where my crazy-ass husband and aggravating boys particularly are
not
.

She didn't want to see us, said my sister. I remembered that and it liked to make me cry. What kept me from breaking down was old Archie Bell barking at me to tighten up.

A bench appeared to which I availed myself. It was way dark. But you could see the surf and the lights of the tankers headed up to the port and you could see across the water tiny beach towns twinkling. Maybe my mama had gone over to one of those places for the evening. Maybe she had located some tastier hush puppies. It pained me to think that tastier hush puppies were all she had on her mind. So I conjured up those “Tighten Up” sessions on the porch. We'd put the speakers in the window, sling open the screens so nothing would be in the way of that sweet horn break. Carter would choreograph the bridge, me and Tank sidestep swaying while I pantomimed trombone and Tank, sax. Carter, I meant to say Archie Bell (he'd get mad at us if we just called him Archie), would be hollering phrases he was wanting us to respond to: Hole up, he'd say and we'd repeat it. Check that out,
check that out,
What'd I say?
What'd he say?
I talked back to Carter for a while which put out of my head the idea that my mama had nothing in hers but the satisfying of some taste buds.

I thought someone else would happen by, that my mama would send them like she'd done kindly Mexican and the others. Even Landers. He allowed me to realize my potential
and breathe to life a half-car/half-truck. This was something I previously had no iota I could pull off. He too was sent to me by my mama, his ugly attitude after I cranked his car for him all a part of tightening me up. It's a sad fact that people you try to help will do you like dirt.

I stretched out on the bench, on the bulkhead, waiting. Cars beeped the horn break of “Tighten Up.” Though I am a fool for “Tighten Up” and it never fails to move me from the waist down, heading north from my belt buckle we are talking no whatsoever reaction. Ain't nothing wrong with a hip shaker. Repeated listenings still bring on the sway. But Tank favored “Dock of the Bay” which even if you took away those deeply sad lyrics—for surely the saddest notion of all is that nothing is going to change, everything will stay the same—would still strike you somewhere between the nervous stomach and the I-can't-take-it-no-more heart. Yet it moved your ass too. It was half-car/half-truck, much as I hated to call anything I favored after that blow-on-a-tube-to-crank-it crate.