The Cruisers (3 page)

Y
eah, he did.” Kambui was on the phone and it was definitely a party line because I could hear his attitude was on with him. “Ashley didn’t want him running another guest editorial so now the Sons of the Confederacy are putting out their own newspaper. They’ve photocopied a real newspaper from 1807,
The Charleston Courier,
with ads in it about buying slaves. They Photoshopped a picture of Alvin and put that on the front page. He’s pushing the whole thing real hard. He’s thinking we don’t have the heart to do anything about it.”

“It’s a real newspaper?”

“Mr. Siegfried said it was one of the biggest Southern newspapers before the Civil War,” Kambui said. “So he’s saying he’s just putting out copies of a historical document.”

“So what you want to do?” I asked.

“Throw down!” Kambui said. “If he knows we’re not going to go upside his head then he’s just going to keep running with it.”

“And if we beat him up we’ll get suspended,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Kambui agreed. “I’m glad you’re finally getting the point because we’re in the same position the slaves were in. I think the least thing you could do would be to quit as head of the Cruisers. Maybe come on out in the cotton fields with the rest of us.”

Click.

Click?
I looked at the phone. Kambui had hung up on me. He was challenging me when he knew that what he was saying about beating up Alvin wasn’t going to work. I could dig him getting frustrated, though, and they were looking at me to do something.

The thing was that Alvin was tiptoeing around on the edges of the affair and maybe it would eventually come to blows the way Kambui wanted. But I could see something else going on, too. Alvin might have been tiptoeing but some of the other guys on the soccer team were beginning to kick it big-time.

Later at school, on the second floor, Billy Stroud caught Demetrius Brown coming out of the media center, grabbed him by the wrist, and started acting like he was auctioning him off.

“What am I offered for this fine young boy? We’re starting at one hundred dollars. Do I hear one fifty? Two hundred?”

Demetrius didn’t know what was going on. Some of the kids stopped to see what was happening and some walked away really fast. I went over to Stroud and pushed him against the wall.

“What are you doing, man?” I asked him. We were nose to nose.

I could feel my heart beating faster when Billy leaned in to me so that our chests were touching.

“What you push me for?” he asked.

“You know why,” I said. “What more you need me to do?”

He looked around, saw all the kids looking at him, and then waved me off. “Punk!”

I wanted to go after him, to punch him in the face, to do something. I was getting to feel like Kambui now, but I knew all the things I had said to him were true. If
I was going to fight Billy Stroud, or anybody, I had to see a win in it somewhere, not just the satisfaction of a few swings.

My first idea was that I needed to calm Kambui down so he wouldn’t get kicked out of school, and then deal with Alvin and Billy and anyone else who was starting trouble. Then I thought that I really needed Alvin to chill so that Kambui would calm down, and that would get me some time to think about what the Cruisers could do.

We had basketball practice, and some of the soccer players came to the gym. I knew what they were doing. Billy had got them to come with him for backup. I knew that what every bully needed was to make sure that if there was a fight it would go down on his terms. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I was okay in basketball, and I thought I had a chance against Billy, but I needed to think things through first. In a way I knew that Billy was winning the set because all I could think of was throwing hands. That had to be a loss.

We had a good practice, and when we went to the locker room Billy followed me in.

“I heard you were tough,” he said. “I just came to see what kind of body you have.”

“It’s black, and it ain’t slack, so get back,” I said.

“He’s making a list of the best-looking boys in the school,” Cody, our star guard, said. “The winner gets to take him to the prom.”

Billy’s face tightened up but his boys started to laugh. He turned and gave them dirty looks. Then he turned to me and pointed his finger toward my face.

“You and me,” he said. “You and me.”

Then he left. His boys went with him.

“He doesn’t know if he should try you or not,” Cody said. “You’re six feet with them wild dreads and stuff. You’re hard to figure.”

Good.

I wondered what would happen if Billy and his crew jumped me. I knew I could depend on Kambui and Cody. I thought of some of the other black dudes and about the Genius Gangstas. They were a bunch of guys who felt funny about being smart and needed a way of showing they were still down with the streets. But they were smart and they knew it and didn’t want to give up being bright. So when Phat Tony, their bulgy leader, starting calling
them the Genius Gangstas, they all went for it big-time. Maybe they would show if we got into a knockdown session with Billy’s crew.

After practice I went home and thought I had forgotten about the whole thing, but our neighbor Mr. Albert was sitting on the stoop working out some checker moves on a ratty old board when I passed him by.

“Don’t say hello, Zander!” he called after me.

“Hey, Mr. Albert,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going good with me,” he said, looking up from the checkerboard. “You’re the one walking and talking to yourself. Your face is going a mile a minute and ain’t a word coming out your mouth. What you thinking about so hard?”

“I’ve got a little situation going on in school,” I said. “We’re studying the Civil War and some of the students are making some remarks that make the black kids feel bad. It’s nothing, really.”

“That’s why you walking down the street talking to yourself?” Mr. Albert asked, “because the situation ain’t nothing? Let me tell you something, Zander. People start making remarks and causing trouble because it makes them feel good and it makes them feel special. And you know
something? Trouble is like a party. When it don’t cost you nothing to start you can bet somebody is going to start it.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“You guess so?” Mr. Albert looked up at me. “You can take that down to the bank and put it on deposit.”

“Then I got to make it cost something,” I said.

“But you got to have a win in it, too.” Mr. Albert lowered his voice. “These young people going around this neighborhood fighting and killing each other up for mess that ain’t got no win in it just drives me crazy.”

“They’re getting violent, and there’s no win in it for them,” I said.

“Amen, brother,” Mr. Albert said, looking back down at his checkerboard. “Amen!”

I went upstairs, put on some shorts, and started doing deep knee bends and wondering what I looked like to Mr. Albert when he said I was talking to myself.

First I did fifty deep knee bends, then I did some push-ups and thought about how many push-ups Billy Stroud could do. Then I forced myself to stop thinking about Billy. Almost. Then Ashley called.

“Zander, I feel so terrible,” she said. “I really do because I know that Alvin was using
The Palette
to make things
terrible between the whites and the blacks. I’m really sorry.”

“So, if you’re the editor, you don’t have to publish those things, right?” I said.

“Alvin is saying that you are trying to stop his freedom of speech. And I know that everybody should be able to speak, even if what they are saying is not what we want to hear,” Ashley said. “And you know, my grandfather was an editor in the old Czechoslovakia. He published some stories that the government did not want printed and they came and beat him up and put him in jail for seven years. But that was the thing he was most proud of in his entire life. I want to be like him, to publish all sides of the truth.”

What Ashley was saying was true, but sometimes something just being true wasn’t very useful. It was like having a doctor tell you that the bone you thought was broken really was.

“Your grandfather must have been really brave,” I said.

“He was,” Ashley said in a soft voice. “But what is happening now is very embarrassing to me.”

I told Ashley that everything was cool between me and her and that I would handle Alvin.

“The Cruisers should publish a rebuttal,” she said. “Tell your side of the story. I’ll publish it.”

I told her I would think about it. I liked the way Ashley ran
The Palette.
She was really fair and always checked her facts before printing them, but she was conservative and said that
The Cruiser
was a “little on the wild side.” I liked that.

I heard the key in the door. Mom.

She came in, took off her coat, threw it on the couch, then held her hands up for me to hold a minute. I watched her as she turned away for a few seconds, then whirled around with her hand on her hip and with this big smile on.

“Have you been trying to sell your time-share property for months without success? Are you ready for some action? Call 555-9495 today! Ta-dah!”

“That’s good,” I said.

“But it’s only on cable,” Mom said. “Starvation scale. Oh, yes, Marc wants to know if you want to play ball this weekend. How did school go today?”

“Not so good,” I said. “Everybody’s on my case. We’re doing this Civil War thing—”

“Oh, yes, Kambui’s grandmother called. Something about you starting a gang.”

“Peacekeepers,” I said. “We’re supposed to be
preventing
the Civil War but we got into a fight with this group that calls itself the Sons of the Confederacy, and—”

“Real fight or fake fight?”

“Sort of both, because—”

“Can’t be. It’s either got to be real or not real,” Mom said. “And why are you starting a gang?”

“I’m not starting a—we’re just the opposite,” I said. “We’re peacekeepers.”

“That’s good,” she said. “You want to make hamburgers, we’ve got some frozen patties, or you want to go out and get some Chinese food? I’ve got the money.”

We went out for Chinese food and all the time she was telling me why she should play the role that Marc was trying to get for her. It was like the time she spent an entire Saturday morning telling me why we shouldn’t be ashamed of our bodies and ended up with showing me a picture of herself in a fashion magazine wearing a bikini. It was okay with me because the magazine cost over nine dollars so I knew none of my friends would see it.

“So you think you shouldn’t be in this film?” I asked her. We had ordered shrimp chop suey but they had put mushrooms in it and I was taking them out of mine.

“I just think some people aren’t going to like the images of black people in the movie,” Mom said. “They won’t understand that it’s supposed to be funny.”

“Some guys in school are making jokes about slavery and saying it’s funny,” I said. “Maybe some things just aren’t funny.”

“Well, there was a lawyer at the studio I went to today,” Mom said. “He said that if my income was good and I wasn’t doing anything indecent that the court probably wouldn’t take custody away from me.”

“He say anything about how
I
was feeling?”

“Just that the courts would decide what was in your best interest,” Mom said. “But it would help if you made it clear you’re on my side.”

“Okay.”

“You are on my side, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard they have snakes in Seattle, anyway.”