Odyssey (24 page)

Arm in arm the brothers walked into the apartment. They sat side by side on the white sofa, all four hands holding on to one another.

Sovereign had the urge to kiss his brother on the lips but did not, this prohibition brought about by a dream he once had of kissing his father’s corpse good-bye.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah, Jimmy J?”

“You said that they called you Jinx nowadays.”

“I been lucky.”

“I don’t know whether I should ask you where you’ve been or why you’re here.”

They released hands.

Drum-Eddie got up from the sofa and moved to the red chair, where he sat back expansively and crossed his left leg over the right.

“Nice place you got here,” he said. “How long?”

“More than twenty years.”

“I’ve changed countries more often than you’ve moved out of neighborhoods.”

Eddie’s eyes were the same. He’d lost his hair but maintained a young man’s physique. His eyes still danced and played.

Sovereign felt like Scrooge in the presence of a magical sprite that had come out of time to laugh at him.

“I missed you, man,” Sovereign said.

“I knew it must’a hurt you when I ran but I didn’t have a choice. My, um, confederates weren’t of the proper quality, and so when the law got their hands on one of ’em I had to go.”

“But you could have come back. There’s a statute of limitations, isn’t there?”

“Once the law marks you there’s no loophole big enough to wriggle through, Sovy. Shit. Feds throw you in jail for havin’ knowledge of a crime or for crossin’ a border without proper notice. Anyway, North America’s all right, but there’s fun to be had on at least four other continents—fun and profit.”

Tears flowed from Sovereign’s eyes and he was not ashamed.

“Damn, JJ, where’d you learn how to cry?”

“It was goin’ blind. Blindness opened up my eyes.”

The brothers talked well into the night. When Sovereign suggested that they go
out for dinner, Eddie said that he’d rather have delivery pizza.

“You know the one thing I always miss the most about the U.S. is its pizza. Thirty years go by and pepperoni and tomato sauce is still the same.”

The man named Drum spent a long time explaining his crime.

“It just happened,” he began. “You know I had that job for the construction gang in downtown L.A. that summer—the one that Pops made me do when the lawyer got me off of that joyridin’ beef. That’s where I met Landry and Peters.”

“Who were they?” the older brother asked.

“Two white ex-cons got jobs through this federal program. They told me all about prison and robbin’ liquor stores. I was young and thought their stories were cool.

“And then I got to know this girl work in the main office named Tricks. I think it was Trixie at first but it just got cut down. She took a likin’ to me, and because she was five years older she thought that maybe she could give me a biology lesson or two. It was up in her bed that I learned about the deal that a whole group of construction companies had with Manufacturers Bank. They would switch off which branch they’d use for the money when the workers cashed their checks. That way a bank robber couldn’t predict where to hit. But they hired a teenager, two white ex-cons, and a young white woman hungry for a boy like I was. You know, it seemed like a perfect setup, and I made the plans with Landry and Peters. And it would have gone off without a hitch, but Landry liked to drink and he talked about me in some bar.”

“You?” Sovereign asked.

“Yeah, man. He hated black people before he met me, but once we started hangin’ out he realized that he was wrong. He was braggin’ on how smart I was, bein’ a fool in doin’ so.”

“That’s how the FBI found out about you?”

“The morning after the robbery they grabbed Peters and he told them that I was the mastermind, which was true, and that I had stoled the money for the Black Panthers, which was not true. He said that we were buyin’ guns and was gonna kill cops in Culver City or sumpin’. Landry disappeared. I think he was killed. He had expensive tastes and was in debt to some rough people. They held Peters for a long time while lookin’ for me. He confessed to the crime but never had to face his day in court.”

“So they think you’re a terrorist?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why are you here?”

“ ’Cause I’m worried about you, my brother. I’m worried about you.”

“That’s like the raja worried ’bout the earthworm,” Sovereign said.

“You remembah that story?” Eddie asked. “Granddad loved that one.”

It was a tale that someone had told their grandfather about an East Indian king who was so steeped in his belief in God that he wouldn’t even step on an earthworm. The story was supposed to explain a reverence for life, but Eagle James just laughed.

A man cain’t kill a earthworm would starve in three days. You know he wouldn’t be able to eat a rabbit or even a potatah. Shit. Scientists say that there’s all kindsa life too little to see in your water. Man cain’t kill a earthworm
really have to love God, ’cause he’ll be up in heaven before you know it
.

The boys loved telling the story to their grandfather because he used the word
shit
and that was taboo in their house.

“You’re my brother,” Eddie said, “and I had to come to make sure you’re all right.”

“Are you in danger of being arrested?”

“Some. But you know the men lookin’ for me don’t have any idea of who I am or where I might be. They lookin’ for a smell rather than a style, and so we could pass each other in the street and they would never know.”

“I’m okay, Eddie. I mean, it was worth a few months being blind if when I opened my eyes you were here like you are right now. I missed you.”

“What about this Toni Loam?” Drum-Eddie asked.

“Monte told you about her?”

“That’s why he was here … to find out about you.”

“What’d he say about Toni?”

“That she was street. That she seemed to care about you. That you reached out and touched her every few minutes or so and she smiled whenever you would.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I’ve been in kind of a dream, Eddie. I know what I’m thinking but that’s about it. I like Toni. I like her a lot. And she likes me but it’s complicated. Her boyfriend, the one I almost killed, is still in her life. He’s in a coma but she’s worried about him. And I don’t know what to think.”

“About her and the boyfriend?”

“No. I don’t care about that; I just know it. What I’m trying to say is that either I wasted my life or I left it behind. It’s like I wake up every day without the slightest idea what will happen. It might be a war or the Garden of Eden out there.”

“I could promise you both,” Drum-Eddie said. “Come on down to South America with me, Sovereign. Learn Spanish and Portuguese and we could go into business together.”

“What kind of business?”

“Import, export, and services rendered.”

“Legal?”

“Whatever you do, it’s legal one place and a death sentence in another. You know that, Sovy.”

“Why are you here, Eddie?”

“Mama asked me to come.”

“Mama?”

“Yeah, man. I hope you don’t think that Lurlene Twyst is checkin’ up on you because you were her favorite cousin. It’s because Mama is her favorite aunt. Mama don’t care that you turned your back on her. She will not do that to you.”

“I haven’t called for one birthday,” Sovereign said.

“She’s had seventy-seven birthdays, Sovereign. She don’t need no reminders.”

“I can’t go,” Sovereign said.

“Why not? You want to give the district attorney the chance to put you in jail ’cause a man broke into your house?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“So? If you get in the ring with a man can’t punch, that don’t mean you don’t put up your gloves. Survival is practice. That’s an exercise you got to do every day.”

“Granddad told me that another man fathered Pops.”

Drum-Eddie was good-looking but not extremely so; that was what Sovereign was thinking. The potency of Drum was the way he talked and how he paid attention. Just seeing him you knew that this was someone you had to take seriously.

“Who?” Eddie asked.

“Grandpa Eagle didn’t know,” Sovereign said, and then added all the rest that he knew.

“But you never told me?” Eddie said.

“I wasn’t supposed to,” Sovereign said, feeling like a little boy again. “Maybe … maybe if I had you wouldn’t have ever robbed that bank.”

“That’s what you think? You think that it was your fault that I did what I did? You got that on your shoulders too?”

“You and Pops were always fighting, Eddie. I think that if he knew better, if he knew the kind of love that Granddad had for him, then maybe he would have tried harder with you.”

“Damn,” Drum-Eddie James said. His grin seemed to fill the room. “Sovy, there you were, quiet as a mouse, thinkin’ that everything was your problem and your fault.”

“I knew about Eagle’s pistol,” Sovereign said.

“So did I,” Eddie replied. “So did Zenith. All the kids knew, man. And me an’ Pops fought because I’ve always been what I am. You know I was born to live my life, brother. Born to it.”

“But you were just a kid.”

“Not really, Sovy, not really at all. By the time I was thirteen I’d had sex with half a dozen girls. At fifteen I’d already stole a car with Porky Kidd. We sold it to a chop shop that Porky’s brother knew about in L.A. and took the bus home.

“No, Sovy. I wasn’t a kid long enough to talk about, and I’m grateful for the life I got.”

“So if that’s true,” Sovereign James said to his long-lost and now found brother, “it means that I was born to my life and I should be grateful for what I got.”

Eddie smiled and held up his hands.

“That’s your problem right there, JJ,” he said. “You think that life is an argument. There you are, thinkin’ that if you could just say the right words then you could make everything make sense. But you know that ain’t so, brother. It’s not some game you playin’ that you just count up the points at the end of the night and go to bed havin’ played your best. People wanna bring you down, Jimmy J. And even if you got the high score at the end, they’ll just say you cheated and throw you in jail anyways.”

Sovereign understood the wisdom of his brother’s words. He appreciated the fact the Drum-Eddie had risked his own liberty to give that speech eye-to-eye.

“You’re right, Eddie,” Sovereign said. “I know you are. I knew before you got
here, but hearing it makes me know even better. You got to understand, man; you got to understand that I’m not like you are. I don’t know how to pick up and run. I’m like a tree, rooted in the ground. For me there’s only here where I am and that’s it. There’s no there. There’s no elsewhere. There’s only right here where I am.”

“So you not comin’ down to Brazil?”

“I can’t.”

“What if you went to sleep tonight and then when you woke up you found yourself in a cottage on the shores of Bahia? What if you didn’t have to move but somebody dug up your roots and replanted you on a beach somewhere?”

“You could do that?”

“Man, the government and the television got people thinkin’ that they ain’t free, not really. They make you believe that the only way to get to the end of the road is to follow the street. But the street is a lie, man. The street is a lie. You got alleys and buildings and shortcuts. You got the long way ’round and you don’t even have to go where they say you wanna go. They don’t own you. They don’t own the street. They don’t own a mothahfuckin’ thing. All they got is you agreein’ that they know and they own and they control. But all you got to do is say no and that’s all she wrote for them.”

Sovereign realized that his uneducated brother had encapsulated his entire graduate career in those few words.

“I want to wake up in my own bed, Eddie. I know I’m small-minded and a slave to the system of my mind. I know too that the thoughts in my head don’t belong to me, that what I see isn’t necessarily what’s there. I live a life informed by corporations, ancient religious belief systems, and governments that care more for their own maintenance than the people who comprise them. I used to think that it was racism that blinded us, but now I know that all of us, except for the special few like you, are tied by our necks to an unstable anchor—that that weight can pull any or all of us down at any time.

“It’s like living at the base of an active volcano or volunteering for the army while there’s a war raging. There’s nothing wrong with giving up, brother, not while there’s people like you out there keeping the truth alive and refusing to accept the lies.”

“You talk pretty, Sovereign. They teach you that in school?”

“What else do you want, Eddie?”

“Let’s go to the airport in Hartford.”

“Why?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I thought I just told you that I don’t like surprises.”

“Trust me, JJ.”