Say Nice Things About Detroit (4 page)

He was hoping for higher standards, but he'd take it.

“And you were Natalie's boyfriend,” she said. “I always wanted what she had, and suddenly I have it.”

“It isn't personal, you're saying.”

“It's very personal. But I'm married. I have a child. I have to go back home.”

“I'm thinking of moving back here,” he said. The words were out, and he found that they were settling well. The idea of a move, of change, lifted his mood. He was ready to start something new.

“Moving back?”

“It's home, where I'm from. It seems like a silly, hopeless thing to do, so maybe it will work for me.”

“It's like moving back to Hiroshima,” she said.

“People live there now, I'm pretty sure.” In the darkness he thought he saw her smile, or grimace. It didn't matter which. He had made a decision.

1994

I

M
arlon heard it, his name, three times, like an echo. He handed the joint back to Eric. “Gonna have to go.”

“What for?”

“My dad's calling.”

“I ain't heard nothing.”

“I hear him,” Marlon said. In truth, he didn't want to go. He had a good buzz and he just wanted to hang here, behind his friend's house, and let the afternoon wash over him, time sliding by like a river. It was what made this summer special, the afternoon high, enjoying what adults got to enjoy.

Marlon spent most every day with Eric. Sometimes they said they were brothers, and they meant it like blood. Better than blood. Eric was someone he could count on. Eric lived with his mother and a real older brother, and neither one was ever around, except the brother in the middle of the night. His mother could be gone for days, and sometimes there was nothing to eat. Eric took to hiding food in his room, so his brother wouldn't get it.

“You lucky, man,” Eric said.

“ 'Cause I gotta go?” Marlon asked.

“ 'Cause you got an old man who wants you to.”

“Usually he's pissed at me,” Marlon said, and this was true. Marlon could hardly do anything right. “He's always on me at home,” Marlon continued. “About doing good in school, what am I gonna do with my life, all that shit.”

Eric took a long drag, then talked while holding in the smoke. “So, that's gotta really suck, huh? Being loved too much?”

• • •

H
E WALKED IN
the back door and there was his father, Everett, waiting for him, showered and scrubbed. His father always did a lot of scrubbing to get the steel plant off of him. They had chemicals at the plant that floated in the air and left everything stiff and sticky, as if it had been coated in hairspray. Just last weekend Marlon had watched his mother dump the laundry on the floor and out came his father's work clothes, frozen in the circular shape of the laundry hamper.

“How you feeling, son?” his father asked.

“Good.”

“Took you a while to get here.”

“Just came on my own. Didn't hear nothing.”

“Anything,” his mother said. She was at the stove, and always on him to talk white.

His father tilted his head, a way of giving an order. Marlon took his place at the table. It wasn't so bad to sit here with a nice buzz. Also, he was starving. When the food hit the table, he dug in. At one point he looked up and both of his parents were staring at him.

“You want to take a breath?” his father asked.

“Hungry,” he explained. He finished his chicken, took the plate to the sink, and then headed for the back door. His parents were talking about some neighbor. He figured he'd head back to Eric's while it was still light, maybe watch a video or something.

“Marlon Booker!” his mother yelled.

“Sorry, Mom.” He was supposed to ask to be excused. He put on his best hangdog look and slunk back to the table. “May I?” he asked. “Please.”

“Yes,” she said.

“No,” said his father.

“But . . .” His father never said no.

“I want to talk to you. After you help your mother clean up the kitchen.”

“What the—”

“Watch your mouth,” his mother said.

He stopped talking. He wasn't going to win with these two. Better to stay quiet and try to save the buzz.

• • •

“
Y
OU'RE STONED,”
his father said. They were in Marlon's room, the place he went to be alone. Marlon hated it when his father came in like he owned the place.

“What?” Marlon said, stalling.

“You heard me. Thirteen years old, Marlon, and you're showing up to dinner stoned out of your mind. You think that's cool? Where'd you get it, that McCall kid?”

“Dad, there's so much smoke on the street, it's like we in Mexico.”

“
We're
in Mexico,” his father corrected.

“Shit.”

“Marlon!”

“What are we talking 'bout here? English grades or drugs?”

“Drugs.”

“Well, it's not like it's crack. Weed never hurt no one.”

“Smoking,” the old man said, “hurts everyone.”

Marlon just waited, and longed for this talk to be over.

“What do you want to make of yourself?” his father asked. Always that question: a week didn't go by without that question getting asked. It was as if his father couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing what his son would do for work twenty years from now.

“Don't want to work in no steel plant,” Marlon said. This was true. No way, no how did he want to go to that horrible place, hot and loud with machinery that sounded like metal breaking. Not that he had any idea where he did want to go. His friends all thought they'd make it at b-ball or rap, which Marlon thought was just stupid. The world already had too many stars, and not enough people doing useful things.

“Smartest thing you've said all night,” his father said.

Marlon waited for him to say more, but nothing came. “We done?” Marlon asked.

“You're grounded,” Everett said. “You're not to leave the property without a parent. One month. At night, no TV. You stay here in your room.”

“Dad!” He made fists, squeezed them so tight he could feel his nails digging into his skin. It was the only way to keep from shouting.

“This is serious,” his father said.

“Weed, Dad? You can't stop that.”

“I can try.”

“You gonna lose.”

His father left on that. Marlon flopped back on his bed, but the buzz was gone.

II

E
VERETT DIDN'T KNOW
if he would beat this cancer thing—the doctor said there was a decent chance—but what kept him awake at night was Marlon. He knew a man couldn't control the cancer cells in his body, and perhaps the same could be said of his son. Still, he reasoned it had to be otherwise; God, he thought, wouldn't have given us sons if we couldn't have an impact. He wouldn't have sent one to us himself. Everett just needed a little time. It was important. There was some shit in the world now; it was easier to go astray, and more dangerous when you did. If he could just get another five or six years he could see the kid off right.

He climbed into his truck, a '68 GMC pickup with three on the tree, touchy as hell when you wanted to find reverse and half junkyard under the hood. The odometer was broken, which was fine with Everett, because he didn't really want to know. The truck's upper reaches were still army green, which faded as the steel got closer to the road till there was nothing but rust from the salt of a quarter century of Michigan winters. The effect was something like a turning oak leaf. There was a spot on the floorboard where Everett used to be able to see the road pass beneath him, which he liked, but he'd had to close it with duct tape so he didn't get splashed when it rained. What Everett liked about the truck: nothing bad could happen to him in it. It wasn't anything to protect.

Everett needed his friend Dirk now, and he really didn't have much of a favor to call in. He just needed him. Over thirty years they'd known each other, and in all that time Dirk had asked Everett for only one thing. They were about twelve, walking toward school, through light flurries, stepping over a curb stacked with coffee-colored slush. “Don't tell no one,” Dirk said, “that I have a white mother.”

“I won't,” Everett said. And he never had.

• • •

E
VERETT WANTED TO
wait before starting the chemo, but the doctor wasn't having it. There wasn't a day to lose, said this scrawny, curly-haired guy, the kind of white kid who probably got beat up on the playground. Almost three weeks had been frittered away and now it was time to act, said the doctor.

“Where'd you go to medical school at?” Everett asked, fishing for a different diagnosis.

“McGill.”

That set Everett back. He'd never heard of the place, but the doctor said it with such pride that Everett figured he should know it, at least if he was going to keep pretending he was the kind of man who might actually know about medical schools. “That's in—”

“Montreal.”

“Ah, well, they teach you up in Canada that sometimes a man's got to be ready?”

The doctor set his clipboard down on the corner of the sink and sat on the stool, so that he was lower than Everett, who was sitting on the bed in his T-shirt and underwear. There ought to be a law, Everett thought, where you didn't have to talk to a doctor unless you were dressed.

“Look, Mr. Booker, I wouldn't expect you to be ready. No one is ready for cancer. But the fact is, cancer cells don't wait. They eat the body alive. We kill them now or they kill you later. And only a little later.”

“You said before they might anyway.”

“It's my job to try to stop them. Don't you want to?”

Of course he did. He just didn't want to tell his wife. Patrice would go all loopy on him and want him to quit his job, and then what was he going to do all day?

“You sure I'm going to have to stop working?” He hadn't told the doctor that Bethlehem was closing the plant anyway.

The doctor nodded. “Yes. You work in a steel plant, right? You're going to be weak at first, and not feeling well. There's no alternative, really.”

“A man's got to work to be a man.”

“We'll get you back as soon as we can.”

“Why'd you come to the States?” Everett asked.

“My wife grew up here.”

“In Detroit?”

“Yes.”

“A white girl?”

“Yes, from Southfield, actually. Not a girl. She's thirty-three now.”

“Still young.”

“Yes,” the doctor admitted.

“You think I coulda caught this cancer working in the steel plant?”

The doctor opened up his hands, soft and pink, hands like you found in a library. “Who knows? Maybe. Then again, you said you used to smoke. That's the surefire way to get lung cancer.”

“I got a boy,” Everett said. “He's gonna need me.”

“Then we better get going,” said the doctor. He looked down, and then up again. “But, Mr. Booker,” he said, “I can make you no guarantees. Now is the time to put your affairs in order. Write up a will, if you don't have one. Make sure your wife knows where your important papers are. And if there's any unfinished business with anyone who matters to you, now is the time to finish it.”

“You're saying I'm going to die.”

“I'm saying I don't know when,” he said. “I say this to all my patients. Take my advice. There's nothing to lose in this. With a little luck, you'll be organized and alive.”

III

D
IRK'S ARCHES ACHED,
standing around all day in shit-kicker boots popular with a certain type of brother in a certain type of business. Miles had even commented on them, and Dirk told him about a store on Grand River Avenue that would have his size, fourteen, which wasn't exactly Bob Lanier but it was big. Miles had ambition in heroin. He sensed a comeback. He'd apparently trained with remnants of YBI, and this meant he was likely to be a disciplined trafficker. He'd caught Dirk's attention because he was quiet, operated with a very small crew, and was said to move size, God knew how. Dirk promised Miles quantities equal to Miles's ambition; the goods would come over in trucks filled with auto parts made at a Delphi plant in Ontario. The story was Dirk's idea. Everyone, he told his boss, McMahon, believed that the auto industry had privilege at border crossings. Today he'd driven across the Ambassador Bridge and had Miles meet McMahon in Windsor. McMahon was hopeless for normal undercover work, but he was white bread enough, and nervous enough, to play a crooked Canadian with auto industry connections.

“Where'd you get a name like Miles?” Dirk asked while they waited in line at Canadian customs. Dirk was fishing; you never knew what would come out.

Miles looked over. “What's it to you?”

“Just wondered.”

“Where'd you get a name like Barry?”

From the FBI, Dirk thought. “My momma, after her pops,” he said.

Miles looked straight ahead. “I got mine from my momma, too.”

“You're the first brother I've ever met with that name,” Dirk said.

“That's 'cause my momma's white.”

“Wow. That's something,” Dirk said.

“She's a good woman, my mom. She'd have a heart attack, seeing me here with you.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said. “Mine would, too.”

“What you tell yours, when she asks you what you're doing all the time?”

“She's dead.”

“You're a lucky man,” Miles said.

• • •

D
IRK LOVED BEING
home. He loved the house, with its solid walls and wood floors, its open spaces. After a day on the streets, coming home was like getting back to the garden. He could hear his wife, Shelly, in the kitchen with their daughter. They were talking, conspiring maybe. He couldn't make it out, but he liked listening to them. Not much of a talker himself, Dirk liked the voices of women.

“Whatcha doing, Daddy?” Michelle called out, walking toward him now from the kitchen. It was shocking to look up sometimes and see how tall she'd become.

“Resting,” he answered.

“Long day.”

“Very,” he agreed.

“Mom wants to know if you want a drink.”

A minute later his daughter served him a vodka and soda, the perfect antidote to a day fighting drugs. He asked her about her schoolwork, if she wanted his help with her math. He would have helped, but he was thankful when she said no. He didn't want to move.

The phone rang. Shelly got it in the kitchen. He watched as Michelle stood perfectly still, listening.