South Street (7 page)

“Five thou? Hell, no. Like I said, somebody’s got to win, best if it’s you. After the word gets around you Christians done hit for number one every nigger in the world’s gonna be throwin’ away his dream book an’ readin’ the Bible an’ puttin’ a quarter on the Twenty-third Psalm or some such shit. They gonna be thinkin’ all they got to do is pray an’ the number’ll come to ’em in a dream, like you tole them deacons a yours.” Leroy reached into an inner pocket and produced two thick envelopes, tossed them on the desk. “Here’s the jack, Jack. I woulda give you a check, but I figured you might wanna make it look like it come in the collection plate. Just for appearances, you dig?”

Mr. Sloan sat silently in his chair, beads of frustrated perspiration dribbled off his head, through his eyebrows, and into his eyes.

“Ain’t you gonna count it?” Leroy said gently.

“You wouldn’t cheat,” Mr. Sloan sighed.

Leroy smiled. “Always pays in full. Only way to do business. Now, in a few months when things cools off, we’ll just pump you out a little more cash. After you done had one a your di-vine dreams, a course. That’ll make the market go up like a shot. Course, you ain’t gonna be gettin’ no five thou, but I ain’t gonna be cheap.” He smiled toothily. “It’s been a pleasure, Rev, but now I got to be goin’. I got some other business that needs tendin’ to.”

Mr. Sloan raised his head. “Having a meeting with Gino, Brother Leroy?” he said, smiling.

Leroy stopped short. “Mr. Briggs,” he said automatically. “What about Gino?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Mr. Sloan. “The acquaintance you mentioned, at the track. He said perhaps you had some dealings with a friend of his named Gino. I just thought it might be he you were going to see.”

“No,” said Leroy. “No, it ain’t ‘he.’ It ain’t none a your damn business who it is.” He glared at Mr. Sloan for a moment, then his features relaxed. “But, speakin’ of acquaintances, I met somebody who says he knew you a few years ago when you had an, ah,
position
in California? I believe he said you were involved with the California state penal system in some, ah, capacity?”

“Chaplain,” said Mr. Sloan.

“Of course,” said Leroy. “What else would a preacher be doin’ in San Q.” Leroy smiled and adjusted his belt over his ample belly. “You take it easy now, Rev, you hear?” He winked and turned for the door. Mr. Sloan watched it close after him, reached out and opened one of the envelopes, stared listlessly at the wad of bills, let the envelope drop.

“Now, Brothers and Sisters,” came the voice of Brother Fletcher, the assistant, from the hidden speakers, “the time has come for us to worship with our tithes and offerings….” Mr. Sloan snapped his head up as the door opened and Leroy’s big head showed around the jamb.

“One more thing,” Leroy said. “I was talkin’ to this associate a mine an’ he said he might be comin’ around to talk to you pretty soon. Somethin’ about you havin’ a pretty big operation here an’ gonna be needin’ some insurance. Fire, theft, vandalism, you know what I mean. I tell you, Rev, these vandals is gettin’ to be a real pain in the ass. I don’t know what these kids is comin’ to. Gettin’ to be actin’ like a regular bunch a hoodlums. Anyways, don’t you forget about that insurance. The fella’ll be around. Name’s Willie T. You all oughta get along real good, you both bein’ so intellectual. Willie T.’s been to night school, took all kinds a correspondence courses.” He winked again, retracted his head, and closed the door with a soft click.

“Lay not up for yourselves—,” said the speaker, but the sound of Brother Fletcher’s voice ceased abruptly as the Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan turned off the amplifier, using, instead of the switch on his control panel, a heavy lead paper weight that had been given to him by the Association of Organized Pacifists.

“Goddamn your lazy ass! Why can’t I have it?”

“We ain’t got the money for it.”

“We would if you wasn’t some simple ass-kissin’ janitor.”

“We ain’t got the money,” Rayburn said again.

“All I know is, Charlene’s walkin’ around in a brand new dress, an’ I’ll be goddamned if I’ma let her be turnin’ her nose up at me just ’cause you ain’t got no better sense than to clean toilets for a livin’.”

Rayburn sighed. “I does what I does.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what you better be doin’. You better be findin’ some money from someplace, or I’ma get it maself.”

“You ain’t gonna do nothin’ like that,” said Rayburn, wishing he believed it.

“You don’t tell me what to do. I got along just fine without—”

“Damn straight,” Rayburn snarled. He slammed his beer can down on the kitchen counter, and the Formica strip around the edges burst from the restraint of the cheap glue, exposing termite-infested wood. “Damn straight. You was doin’ fine, drinkin’ like a goddamn wino, shootin’ shit into your arms, noddin’ out in doorways, cryin’ an’ screamin’ in some damn alley where some damn pusher left you after you tried to suck his cock for a hit. Yeah, you was doin’ fine. You was in great shape.”

“Fuck you,” Leslie said.

Rayburn picked up his beer and went into the living room. He reached over and snapped on a small transistor radio, turned it up as loud as it would go. Tinny soul music sliced into his ears, and then the self-consciously black hip voice of the deejay. Rayburn kicked at the wall.

“You act just like a baby,” she said, coming out and standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

“I
acts like a baby?
Me
? Shit.”

“You do.”

“So what’s that make you?” She didn’t answer. “Well, what’s that make you? ‘I gotta have a new dress just like Charlene.’ Next thing you want’s three fuckin’ bastards that belongs to God knows who, just like Charlene.”

“Maybe I would,” she said sweetly. She came out of the kitchen, smiled at him, moved toward him, her robe hanging open. “What you gonna do if I does get pregnant,
baby
? Least you’d know it wasn’t yours. Your little piece a limp licorice couldn’t knock up a mosquito.”

“Shut up,” Rayburn said tiredly.

“Some folks gots cocks, Rayburn. Sometimes I even feel—”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, don’t you like to hear about it? You might learn somethin’.”

“I don’t want to learn nothin’,” Rayburn said.

“You’re right. You ain’t never gonna learn nothin’, you ain’t never gonna be nothin’. You ain’t never gonna get nowhere. You’re too fuckin’ old.”

He came across the room and knocked her flying with his closed fist. She picked herself up, spitting blood, but there was a soft look in her eyes. “Janitor,” she said. He struck her again, full on the mouth, and he felt blood hot in his mouth from her cut tongue as she pulled him down and kissed him. He struggled to rise, to get away from her, but she clung stubbornly to his neck. He struck out at her weakly. Her lips were against his, soft and cool-warm, like the breeze flowing down the corridors between the buildings on a night buried deep in July. Her eyes opened, wide and brown, her teeth digging into his ear as his tongue clumsily battered at her throat. He felt frightened, moving his hands over her, avoided her eyes for fear of what he might or might not see. Her body tensed and arched against him as his hand found one tender spot. She gripped him with her wiry arms. She tugged at his clothing.

Then he looked into her eyes and saw them soften as he stroked her skillfully, harden terribly when, in his excitement, he fumbled. Her hand reached for him, hard and dry, hurting him. She moistened it with her own juices, grasped him once again. Suddenly he realized that, far, far too soon, he was coming. He saw her smile of contempt, of triumph. He wanted to scream and cry. He tried to stop himself, to twist out of her grasp, but her hand moved swiftly and knowingly. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them she was smiling at him, taunting. He lifted his hand and brought it flat across her face, seeing as he did so her eyes soften and mist over. He slapped her again, feeling something inside him rip and tear like a great white sheet. But her eyes were closing, slowly, in some strange ecstasy, and he felt a glow of power somewhere inside him as he slapped her again and again.

Somebody was dying.

In the vast deserted depths of Franklin Field agonized gasps echoed faintly but clearly, a death rattle, or a ragged orgasm. But the gasps were rhythmic, accompanied by the sound of pounding feet that approached, swept past, receded. The sun beat down out of a sky that was hard and high and very blue and exceptionally clean, even for a Sunday. It was hot. It was too hot to be running. Brown knew it. He had known it as soon as he had entered the stadium and stood looking at the immense and empty stands, imagining them filled with people, hearing dead echoes, feeling the hangover lurking like a sponge behind his nose and eyes. He had felt the heat bouncing off the concrete hidden beneath the artificial turf, and he had known that the most sensible thing would be to go home and go back to bed. But he had made a pile of his sweat suit and towel and water bottle and he had set out for one slow lap on the track. With the first spring of perspiration coating his skin, with his muscles just loosening up, Brown had felt full of optimism, and so he had settled down to run in earnest. Now, hearing his own gasps echo as he punched out his fourth lap, he felt fear. It sounded like he was dying for sure; the pain that managed to penetrate his fogged-over brain scared him, and the flat track, stretching and curling back on itself and stretching again, the track scared him. He considered stopping. But Brown had long before made a rule that, once he had begun, he would not stop until he had completed the distance. It had made him feel virtuous at the time. Just now, rounding the west turn and rolling into the stretch, it was making him feel sick.

The stands watched him, and Brown kept himself going by thinking of the people that had occupied them at one time or another to watch powerhouse football games in the good old days when the University of Pennsylvania defeated Penn State instead of being confused with it. Brown labored before gathered ghosts, smiling coeds, Ivy Leaguers waving pennants, wearing boaters. Brown ran past old alumni with white hair and ten thousand dollars to contribute to the building fund. Brown ran them down.

The track got harder and the sun got harder. A little man with a hot ice pick floated down from the sky and took up a station over Brown’s belly button, poked his ice pick through Brown’s side, and teased. Brown kept going. The little man grew slightly more insistent. Brown got the message, kept on.

The ninth lap was always the hardest. The little man replaced his ice pick with a brace and bit, and turned away merrily. Brown felt his hip tighten and gave up. The little man smiled as Brown slowed and let his legs stretch out. Nine laps wasn’t bad, Brown told himself. Not for a hot morning after a heavy drunk. Nine laps was okay. The little man snorted and floated away. Brown forced his aching back muscles to keep his torso erect, his head up as he moved down the backstretch, past the ranked hordes. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abe Lincoln. Brown kept his dignity, kept his hands loose, kept his breathing in precise cadence with his footfalls. He swept down a backstretch filled with giggling ghosts, into the east turn.

Every black schoolboy runner on the East Coast dreams of the east turn of Franklin Field, dreams of rolling down the straight and pouring on the coal through that final turn and streaming on to a victory in the Penn Relays. The black faces mass in that turn, black voices clot. A last-place runner will save something for that turn. The second-place runner will make his move in that turn. Everything beyond that turn is downhill drag. Brown, defeated, years beyond high-school spirit and schoolboy fervor, rolled into that turn and heard dark murmurings of disappointment. Brown cursed and started pulling himself back together again, floated into the straight, and let himself go.

The little man reappeared, clucking sadly, unlimbered a buzz saw, and set to work, humming. Brown’s face twisted in agony as his body protested. He pounded through the west turn, no longer running easily, and laboring, came up on the south stands, spitting on the track as he moved through the ghostly glares. The east turn came up. Brown shortened his stride and kicked into the straight, hearing no cheers beyond his own gasps, almost but not quite catching up to his own shadow as he powered across the finish line, head up, back straight, legs and hands outstretched and grasping.

Twenty feet beyond the line Brown fell apart like a puppet with its strings suddenly sliced, his breath coming in irregular gasps, his arms and legs going in all directions. He slowed, stopped, his head hung, sweat poured from him. He would have thought he were dead, except he hurt too much. He let his head hang but started moving again, fighting the urge to lie down on the track and turn into a knot. By the time he had completed one slow circuit he had his body under some semblance of control. At the end of the second lap he decided he had begun to think he was going to live after all. By the time he had finished a third lap he had decided he might as well. He bent over and pulled on the sweat suit, allowed himself a small swallow of water, picked up the towel, and left the stadium.

His hangover was gone. He walked to the corner of Thirty-third, contemplating an accident of the city’s geography: on his left was South Street; on his right, the same street was Spruce. Brown looked to his left. Then he turned the other way and began to move west on Spruce, breaking into a jog as if he were in a rush to get away from the intersection. The street was deserted except for parked cars. Brown dodged construction sites, made his way toward a trio of high-rise apartment buildings that erupted from the asphalt like acne blemishes. Brown slowed as he approached one of the buildings, fished in the pocket of his sweat suit for his keys, but the door opened before he got to it. Brown let the keys fall clinking back into his pocket. “Mornin’, Speedy,” he said to the doorman.

Speedy grinned up at him from his bucket seat behind the electronic security console. “Hey, Adlai,” Speedy said. “Seen you comin’ on the TV.”

Brown peered over the console. “What the hell?”

“Brand new,” Speedy said proudly. “With this here contraption, all I got to be doin’ is watchin’ TV. See, you switches the channels just like a reglar TV, an’ you can see in the garage an’ in the elevators an’ everywhere. I had ma eye on you a long time, so you be careful, nigger, or I’ll have the Man on your black ass.”