In the City of Shy Hunters (2 page)

Sunday morning.

Pauvre petit chien.

Crummy was his name, Crummy Dog, terrier mix. Arrogant little mutt. Crummy ran out, wild fool that he was, kamikaze under the big
wheel. There was the sound, the unmistakable sound, and my body did all those things people describe when they know shit has just happened, and I looked. Crummy went under the front wheel, then the back wheel. Sunday morning, in front of Café Libre, after my coffee, the sun shining,
Première Année.

The hardest part was Crummy running back to me, his back legs dragging, Crummy dragging his back legs back to me.

Frozen moments in time. If we could unfreeze them.

I knelt right there on the pavement, laid
Première Année
down, and that little golden dog, so uncomplicated and real and full of life, the one who loved me, looked up at me with all the understanding, sorrow, and bewilderment that goes with being aware of being alive.

I always said Crummy wasn't really a dog, he was a magic being who could do everything but talk, and right then, at that moment, Crummy talked. He said, This is death, Will,
au revoir.
Then Crummy's eyes rolled back up into his head, and he laid his head on
Première Années
open page, and a big gush of blood came out of his mouth and nose, blood on French, and Crummy wasn't looking at me anymore.

WHEN I ASKED
Rose about the one moment, I expected Rose's moment to be one of his Elizabeth Taylor stories or one of his
theah-tah
stories—how he dined with Sir Lawrence Olivier and Danny Kaye, cocktails with Cary Grant and Randolph Scott by the pool, or Carmen Miranda without any underwear dancing with Cesar Romero. One of those. But it wasn't.

Rose in his Saint Francis Is A Sissy look, his Marrakesh earrings and his new pedal pushers and the silver lamé top Mrs. Alvarez, Rose's personal tailor, made for him. His shiny oiled head smelling of rosemary and eucalyptus, and his black black skin and the gold loops in his queer ear, his jewels sparkly sparkly.

Drop-dead freshly fucked gorgeous.

Rose put out the cigarette I'd rolled for him and lit a Gauloise, crossed his legs, shook his head so his earrings picked up the green and amber light, lifted his arms up like a symphony conductor, bracelets clack-clack.

The moment that after you're different.

Rose raised his shoulders, lowered his chin, and looked his black eyes straight into my eyes.

Houston 1955, Rose said.

It was hard to look at Rose when he made his eyes so open. Rose hardly ever showed the world his eyes so open that way—a Shy Hunter wasn't supposed to do that—but that night he did. Rose opened his eyes and showed me vasty deep, his fire inside I would stand too close to. Roosevelt Washington King.

I was eleven years old, Rose said. A Saturday night, Rose said. And like most other Saturday nights, my father was slow driving us through the neighborhood on our way to Wooten's Ice Cream Parlor. My two brothers and I, Calvin and L'lrah, and my two sisters, Magnolia and Elnora. We were sitting all five of us, quietly, behaved, me the oldest by the window on my pa's side. My brothers' and my sisters' legs eight sticks across the seat stuck out in front of us, sitting on the old red blanket Mama put over the seat for Saturday nights because kids and ice cream and Texas heat together in the same place always meant trouble.

Ice cream the beginning of sacred, Rose said, Ice cream and riding around in the Buick Saturday night was always how Sunday began, Sunday and church and Sunday clothes and singing and preaching all day at the John the Baptist Church on Dowling, up from the corner of Dowling and Magown and the taxi stand and the Golden Arrow Bar where uncle Elasha King—my father Elijah King's twin brother—drove a taxi and drank and hung out with fancy women. My mother, Montserrat, called them fancy women.

The Buick was washed and waxed shiny with Turtle Wax by my father's big hands. Every Saturday morning, I sat on the curb and watched those hands scrub the whitewalls white with Old Dutch Cleanser. And every Saturday night, the whitewalls and the chrome Buick hubcaps rolling along residential streets, Elijah and Montserrat, waving at the neighbors, Elijah now and then giving the horn a honk at folks sitting on the gary of their skinny wood shotgun houses fanning themselves, heat lightning flashing across the purple sky, the streetlamps on the light poles a mess of mosquitoes, moths, and flying bugs. In the yards, barefoot children running after fireflies. The fireflies, now and then the flash of a TV, the lightning, the lights on the light poles, the headlights of the Buick—solitary illuminations in the night.

Wooten's Ice Cream Parlor, bright windows on Dowling.

My father's big hands, a nickel to each one of us, his children, placed in the our palms. I herded Calvin, L'lrah, Elnora, and Magnolia inside the bright and sat us down at the counter on the high red stools that turned. Each one of us each clutching our nickel, elbows on the
counter, plastic-covered menus next to the napkin holders, one napkin each.

In the car, driving down Dowling, licking chocolate, licking pineapple, strawberry—no one ever got vanilla; I always chose chocolate—my father, Elijah King, driving his Buick Special home toward Sunday.

The red flashing light pulling us over, another illumination.

My father steered us to the curb just in front of the Golden Arrow Bar, in front of the neon Lone Star Beer sign. My father looked over to Mama first. Mama looked back. Then my father opened the door, pulled up his weight, stepped out of the Buick saying, What's the problem, officer, sir? Was I traveling over the speed?

Two white cops, the one of them threw my father up against the Buick, frisked him, calling my father, calling Elijah King nigger, over and over again: nigger-nigger-nigger. I was looking out the open back window of the '49 Buick Special at my father's face, his eyes right into my eyes.

Close the window, son, my father said.

So I rolled up the window slow, eyes right into my father's eyes.

There was the split concrete of the sidewalk, the Lone Star Beer sign, Uncle Elasha in his black-and-white cab, the door to the cab open, Elasha smoking, spread-legged, fancy women standing around watching.

Eleven years old, Rose said. Roosevelt Washington King, Rose said, Rolled up the window all the way into the felt slot, my father's face pushing against the window. One cop took his gun and hit Elijah King upside the head, then my pa down and the cops kicking him.

Not a sound, only the blows to my father, the cops' nigger-nigger-nigger, and the breath going out of my father.

Inside the car, from Mama not a sound, not a word, only the horrific whisper, the admonition to us her children in the backseat of the '49 Buick Special to hush, eat your ice cream, don't make one peep, keep your eyes on the floor, keep your mouths closed no matter what.

I never said a word, Rose said, But I did not look at the floor. I looked out the window, watched my father, Elijah King, watched Elijah King's face while the cops broke his ribs and busted his nose.

It was the blood on the whitewall, Rose said, Father's blood on the whitewall tire and the chrome Buick hubcap. The bloodstain on the whitewall when we got home that never scrubbed off for good. The blood there on the whitewall was the moment, Rose said, The moment that after, life and living was different.

* * *

SARAH VAUGHAN WAS
singing “Slow Boat to China.” After Sarah Vaughan, the jukebox would go through Etta James, “At Last,” Chuck Mangione's “Children of the Sanchez,” and Aretha singing “Drinking Again.”

Fish Bar sounded like dogs barking. That night at Fish Bar when Rose stopped talking, all around us, dogs barking.

Rose went to pee; we ordered more drinks around. When Rose got back, I rolled cigarettes with one hand like I can, lit each cigarette. Fiona sat back, put her leg over my leg. Rose wiped the sweat off his shiny head with the Fish Bar cocktail napkin from under True Shot's soda and lime.

True Shot. Extra lovely urban Injun, Spirit Schlepper, AA. True Shot at the table, drinking his soda and lime same as ever. A silver ring on every finger, even his thumbs, the red bandanna around his head, his hair tied back in a bun, the way I like it. The blue-beaded horizontal and the intersecting beaded-red vertical buckskin bag hanging on the strand of buckskin around his neck. Designer mirror sunglasses.

True Shot put his index with the silver ring onto the bridge of his mirrors. All his rings catching the green and amber light. The light of the flame in the red candleholder. Then True Shot moved his hand down to his neck, put his palm against the buckskin bag.

The moment that after you're different.

It is this way, True Shot said, Let me tell you a story.

It never failed. Whenever True Shot started out with It is this way, the drums and the rattles always started going in my mind. Like he'd brought his own sound track with him.

You may tell of power, True Shot said, And how power is received only when you are on the battlefield, only when approaching the enemy ready to fight for life, only then are things told—what power has been given, what power you must use. It is at such a time that power, previously hidden, enters you.

It is this way, True Shot said. It was a time of fasting. I call it fasting, True Shot said, But really I was out of frog hides. Flat broke.

One morning I woke up, True Shot said, Put my clothes on, walked out my apartment door, and just started walking. At Washington Square, I started walking up Fifth Avenue, walked up Fifth Avenue, past Fourteenth, through midtown, the Plaza, walked along the park until the park ended, walked across town on 110th Street to Broadway, kept on walking up, through Harlem, kept walking until the city was behind me, the riches to rags behind me, and I was on the palisades of the Hudson River. There was the river and the sun on the river, big
brown smooth lava rock, and trees everywhere. I found me a rock under a tree and I sat. The little people—the lizards and salamanders—were laying out in the sun, dashing under rocks, playing hide-and-seek.

Something about the rock, the rock and the little people, made me sit on the rock for three days and nights. I didn't even know I was on the rock for that long until after.

I'd lost three days and nights before, True Shot said, But never sober.

But we've all been captured by the little people, True Shot said, At one time or another; we just always forget.

When I came to, when the rock and the little people let me go, it was dark. My heart felt good, my head was clear, and my belly was empty.

At Dyckman Street, I jumped the stile and got on the A downtown. The clock on the platform said two-eighteen. There were only three people besides myself in the subway car, a middle-aged African American woman in a nurse's uniform, a young Puerto Rican man in a shiny suit, and a drunk, a white man, laying across the seat, a stack of
The New York Times
for a pillow. At 190th Street, a white man in a gray trench coat and a Yankees ball cap got on. His black horn-rimmed glasses were taped together in the middle. Two more stops went by. Nobody got on or off.

At 168th, the train stopped. There was no one on the platform and no one got on the train. When the doors closed, the man in the trench coat and ball cap pulled out a gun. He started yelling something about foreigners, waving the gun around, pointing the gun every which way.

The man turned his ball cap around, and all at once, in the light, his skin was white like milk and his eyes were huge and blue through the magnified glasses. The white man told the people on the train to sit next to each other, to where the white man pointed with his gun, told them to sit next to the drunk man.

Nobody looked at anybody else. Nobody moved.

The white man screamed, high-pitched and crazy, shot the gun, the bullet going out an open window. The nurse and the Puerto Rican man got up, moved next to the drunk. I got up and sat down with them.

At 163rd Street, the train stopped, the doors opened. Nobody moved. There was no one on the platform and no one got on the train. The doors closed.

The white man went to the woman first. He held on to a pole, sliding down as he knelt in front of the woman, the white man with the blue eyes a smiling mask, the gun always pointed at her. Made the woman hike up her white dress so you could see her through the panty
hose. The white man with the huge blue eyes put the gun onto the woman's crotch.

At 155th Street, the train stopped, the doors opened. Nobody moved. The white man kept the gun on the woman down between her legs. There was no one on the platform and no one got on the train. The doors closed.

The white man went to the Puerto Rican man next, holding the gun straight-armed, pointed at the man's face. Just then the drunk rolled over, shouting something from his dream. The white man hit the drunk man hard in the face with the gun. Blood gushed out his nose and the drunk man went limp.

Then: Suck this, Pedro! the white man yelled and he put the gun into the Puerto Rican man's mouth.

At 145th Street the train stopped, the doors opened. The white man kept the gun in the man's mouth, pulling the man's head back by the hair, the white man's huge blue eyes not a blink in the neon. There was no one on the platform and no one got on the train. The doors closed.

When the white man got to me, True Shot said, The nurse was crying and the Puerto Rican man was sobbing. The white man told me to take my pants off. My intention, True Shot said, Was to stand up and do that very thing, but something got into my arm and my arm reached out and slapped the white man's face, knocked the glasses off his face—his poor squinty blue eyes—then slapped him again. Then my arm reached out and grabbed the gun and then I shot the white man, where the tape had been on his glasses, shot him between the eyes.

At 135th street, the train stopped. There was no one on the platform and no one got on the train. Everyone got off. I carried the drunk man out over my shoulder, laid him down on the platform.