The Dying Ground (19 page)

“Heads up,” he says, and tosses the shoe to me. It falls into my outstretched hand and burns a hole right through my Little League glove. I drop it and watch the skin of my palm bubble into the worn leather.

“Put some mud on it,” Billy advises. I scoop up a handful of mud and use the sticky dirt as a salve. The tennis shoe, caught in a new stream of water, makes its way back to him.

Billy lifts his chin toward the car and his own corpse. “That’s a damn shame.” He shakes his head. “What you gonna do about it, man?”

I’m speechless.

“Ain’t got nothing to say? I feel ya. I tried to dodge this shit myself, but it caught up with me.”

A bullet whizzes past my ear.

“I knew it was coming,” he continues. “I just didn’t know when and why.”

I try to work my mouth in order to ask him how it happened, but my lips are locked together.

He shakes his head as if he’s read my mind. “I can’t do it, man. This shit has to play out on its own.” He throws his hands up. “I can’t give you the reason and I can’t help you. This train’s been coming for a long time.”

He drops his head and brings the dripping-wet shoe to his lips. He kisses it deeply and affectionately. Water runs down the side of his mouth—thick red water, like blood.

I
woke up to the bright, glaring sunlight and the stifling heat of the Cougar. I was slumped like a drunk over the steering wheel, the windows sealed tight as a drum with the car oddly angled under a sliver of shade in the parking lot of the Nickel and Dime. Against the protests of my grandparents I’d left them at the Dover Street house and driven my car to the bar. What started as a quick rest before entering the bar had turned into another haunting visit from Billy.

I wiped sweat from my forehead and noticed a shadow at the passenger door. Alixe stood there, bewildered, tapping lightly on the glass. She motioned for me to roll down the window, but I opened the door instead. She slid into the passenger seat and reached across me to roll down my window.

“It’s a hundred degrees in here, Maceo! You’ll pass out.”

“I’m alright.” My tongue felt thick and mossy in my mouth.

“No, you’re not.” She loosened my tie and unbuttoned the rigid collar of my dress shirt.

“I’ll live.”

She put a hand to my forehead. “And you’re hot. You want to get out and take a walk?”

I shrugged her hand away. “I’m cool. Don’t worry about it.” I straightened up and popped the ignition. “I need to get out of these clothes, though, if you want to ride to the house.”

“Sure.”

We pulled out of the lot as a caravan of cars arrived from the funeral. I knew the bar would become the designated gathering place, but I wasn’t in the mood for a crowd. As I hit the corner and headed toward the house I saw Holly stare after my car with a look of displeasure. I ignored it.

Clio was curled into a corner of the porch when I arrived. She jumped up eagerly when she saw I had company and followed us inside. I pointed Alixe toward the living room while I walked upstairs to change. She followed me instead. The heat had succeeded in wearing me down. My mouth was filled top to bottom with acidic cotton balls and my limbs felt heavy, like bricks.

My bedroom, little more than a closet with room for a bed and dresser, faced my grandmother’s vegetable garden. Alixe took the director’s chair beneath the window and looked down at the rows of plants. “What a pretty garden.”

I didn’t answer. Instead I dropped onto the bed and stared across the room at my St. Mary’s championship jersey. It was stored in a glass case alongside the winning cleats and my mitt. Both items were still caked with the mud of a long-ago game. I focused on the cleats and used the memory of a simpler time to pull me back from the edge.

Billy and Holly were in the stands when I pitched my alltime best against Pius X High School. The southern California
team hadn’t stood a chance against an arm in perfect condition and an owner in his prime. The first two innings were no-hitters. I didn’t even give my teammates an opportunity to break in their uniforms. When the game peaked at 5–0 in the ninth I stood triumphant on the mound, soaked through from the exertion of unfiltered concentration.

“You want water or something?” Alixe watched me cautiously.

“No, just give me a minute.”

She moved closer to the bed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I shrugged off her concern. “I’m fine. Maybe a little spooked from the funeral, but I can handle it.” I moved my legs so she could sit at the edge of the bed. “Why you so concerned anyway?”

She shook her head, for once at a loss for words. “I don’t know, something about today. Seeing you there with your grandfather. All the people in the streets. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Welcome to Oaktown.”

“How did all that make you feel? The honking horns, the cameras, the police? He was your friend, wasn’t he? That’s what my sister said.”

“You’ve been asking about me again?”

“Here and there.” She paused and looked at me. “I can’t figure you out. It made me curious so I asked.”

“Anything interesting?” I opened a drawer to locate a T-shirt and jeans. It wasn’t post-funeral attire but I wanted to shake the remnants of the day as soon as possible. I watched as she climbed off the bed and studied the items in my room. She stopped in front of the glass case, flanked by the Bash Brothers poster of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco.

“Baseball nut?” She reached for a baseball signed by the 1972 A’s.

“Something like that. I’m gonna change. Then we can head back to the bar.”

When I came out I could see her at the bottom of the stairs looking at the pictures that lined the wall. Gra’mère had done most of the decorating, making the cottage a small replica of the main house. There was little of me in the space besides the ashes of my baseball career.

“This place is nice,” she said, as she took a quick look toward the kitchen. “How long have you lived here?”

“Since I was about fifteen.”

“Did your parents live here too?”

“Gra’mère and Daddy Al are my parents. My mother died when I was born. My father died when I was four. I didn’t know them.”

“Well, both my parents are alive, and I don’t know them either.”

“How’d that happen?”

“How does anything happen? Are you sure you’re okay to go back to the bar? We could stay here if you wanted, talk, have a drink …”

I moved to the porch and sat on the front steps. Alixe propped the screen door open with her shoulder and continued to look at the pictures just inside the door. She reached up to pull one down from the wall. It was the same picture displayed at Crowning Glory.

“Is that you and Holly?”

I nodded. “And Billy.”

She let the screen door slam shut to come and sit beside me. She held the picture on her lap and traced the lopsided nine-year-old Afro I wore in the picture. I didn’t bother to look. I had no desire to see Billy’s droop-eyed, grinning face.

“You’ve been friends so long. I can’t think of a single person I knew when I was that young.”

“Part of being a nomad, ain’t it?”

“Something like that. Were you and Billy close?”

I shook my head. “Not in a long time. But you couldn’t separate us when we were little.”

“When did that stop?”

“When we were about fourteen. Billy and Holly liked the same girl and it just escalated from there. No, actually it started before that.” I thought of the death of John Claire, but I kept it to myself.

She reached for a cigarette stored inside her boot. “And you chose Holly?”

W
e waited for the sun to go down before heading back to the Nickel and Dime. The place was surrounded by police cars and mourners from the funeral. In the center of the crowd I spotted two police officers, Phil Blakenhorn and Ron Sullevich. The duo were well known and hated within Oakland’s Black community, especially in their North Oakland playground. The two of them embodied the worst stereotypes of White cops in Black neighborhoods.

Blakenhorn, the larger and more senior of the two, had a baton he referred to as his “nigger stick for nigger knocking.” It hung vulgarly at his side as he rudely shuffled people around. He was proud of the notches created by splintered heads and cracked knuckles, and he loved to tell the stories of each indentation. At least two of them came from dark-alley encounters with Holly.

I drove backward down the street, until I was closer to Dover than Shattuck, and helped Alixe from the car. “We can
walk from here.” Our entwined hands were the first thing Holly noticed as we pressed through the crowd. He took a full minute to stare at our hands before speaking.

“Where you disappear to?” he asked.

“I went by the house to get out of the suit. What’s going on here?”

“Same old bullshit.”

“Jonathan.”

Holly didn’t bother to turn around at the sound of his name. Sullevich stood behind him, grinning at me and Alixe, his notoriously bad breath singeing my eyebrows. Dirty-blond strands of his hair peeked out from his hat, contradicting all rules of personal hygiene. He placed a firm hand on Holly’s shoulder.

“Jonathan.” He grinned sarcastically. “It’s always nice to see you. I was sorry to hear about your friend, but it looks like someone’s doing us a favor, picking off the lice one by one by one.”

Holly shrugged free and slipped away. Sullevich turned to me but Noone stepped in before it went any further.

“Sullevich, can you assist Blakenhorn in breaking up this crowd? We need to get these people moved out of here as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, okay.” His reluctance was evident.

The three of us watched as he ambled roughly away, his right hand caressing the nightstick.

“What do you make of this, Maceo?” Noone looked me up and down. “You keep popping up at the center of things.”

I remained silent.

“Have you heard from Felicia? She’s the key to this, you know. We know she was a witness, and we know the two of you were close at one time.”

I felt Alixe’s hand slip from mine. When I turned to look at her she glanced off toward the hills and refused to meet my eye.

“Maceo, look, I’ll be honest with you.” He tried the good-cop tone and lowered his voice. “We don’t have anything on this. It’s clean. There’s a real chance this could go unsolved.”

I let the lie hang between us. It might be classified as unsolved on the police books, but we’d all know, sooner or later, who killed Billy.

“You could help us—me—by letting me know if you hear anything.”

“Sure.”

He studied me, then looked at Alixe. “I know you were very close to Felicia, and I’m sure you’re concerned about her safety. We all are, so we should work together on this.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I’ll call you.”

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

He walked away and left me and Alixe to our awkwardness. She spoke up. “Listen, I need to get to the hospital. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Alright.” I leaned in to kiss her but she backed away, gave me a weak smile, and walked off.

Holly came up to take her place. “Maceo,” he said, “if you gonna be a player you can’t fuck with chicks that don’t know the rules. Trouble. Capital letters. Guarantee it.” He hit me on the back. “Run me up to the Avenue.”

“There he go.” Holly pointed to Black Jeff, standing in front of Blondie’s Pizza shoving a slice of pepperoni down his throat. Behind him his multicolored skateboard was propped against a wall. Jeff spotted the Cougar and pointed toward the campus. He took off on his board and turned on Bancroft. The new location allowed me to pull over without stalling traffic.

“Wassuper, Black men?” Jeff leaned into the car and gave us both a pound. He continued to devour the pizza. “Man, I’m
hungry as a motherfucker. I been practicing for a new tournament.”

“Yeah? When you taking off?” I asked.

“I’ll be outta here this weekend. Heading down to Orange County to show the White boys how to rock a board.”

“You cool for money?” Holly offered.

“I’m straight. That funeral was something else, wadn’t it? Everybody was out.” He shook his head. “Man, what the fuck was up with them dudes from L.A.?”