meat that sold for sixty-nine cents. He grabbed two packages, beef and ham. Raymond got himself a bag of Wise potato chips and two bottles of Nehi, grape for him and orange for James. They stood on the porch and ate the meat straight out of the package. They shared the chips and drank their sweet sodas as they looked down at the street, where Larry and Charles now stood, having risen off the curb but still inert.
“What you gonna do now?” said Raymond.
“Go home and get ready for work. I got my shift at the station this afternoon.”
“Rodney home, right?”
“Should be. He’s off today.”
“I’m ’a see if Charles and Larry wanna go over to Rodney’s and check out his stereo. They ain’t seen it yet. Maybe if Charles get to know Rodney, he won’t be so, I don’t know…”
“Charles gonna be what he is no matter who he gets to know,” said James. “I don’t want you runnin with him.”
“Better than bein out here alone.”
“I’m here.”
“Not all the time.”
Raymond had been stressing about recent incidents in the neighborhood, cars of white boys driving through, yelling “nigger” out their open windows, leaving rubber on the street and then speeding back up to the boulevard. It had happened more often in the past year. In one way or another, it had been going on for generations. Their mother had been the recipient of such a taunt a few weeks earlier, and the thought of someone calling their mother that name had cut James and Raymond to the heart. The only white people with reason to be in this neighborhood were meter men, mailmen, Bible and encyclopedia salesmen, police, bondsmen, or process servers. When it was drunken white boys coming through in their jacked-up vehicles, you knew what they were about. Always driving in quietly and turning around at the dead end, then speeding up around the market, where folks tended to hang in groups. Yelling that stuff and driving away fast. Cowards, thought James, ’cause they never did get out their cars.
James handed Raymond the bag of chips. “Do what you want. Just remember: Charles and Larry, they ain’t headed no place good. You and me, we weren’t raised that way.”
“I hear you, James.”
“Go on, then. Mind the time, too.”
James stayed on the porch of Nunzio’s as Raymond went down to where Larry and Charles still stood, the bag of Carlings under Charles’s arm. They talked for a little bit, Charles nodding as Larry lit another smoke. Then the three of them walked slowly down the block, turning right at the next intersection.
James kept his eyes on his brother. When he could see him no longer, he dropped the empty soda can in a bin and headed home.
Rodney Draper stayed with his mother in their old house on the other east-west-running street of Heathrow Heights. This street, too, dead-ended down by the woods.
Rodney lived in the basement of the house, which was small and boxy, with asbestos siding. The basement took in water when it rained and got damp at the threat of rain. It always smelled of mold. He had a double bed and a particleboard chest of drawers and an exposed toilet that he and his uncle, a handyman and odd-jobber, had plumbed in themselves back by the hot-water heater. His mother and sister lived upstairs. Rodney’s setup was not luxurious, but his mother did not charge him rent the way many parents did when their children turned eighteen.
Rodney, nineteen, had a thin nose with a small hump in the bridge. He was skinny, bucktoothed, and had knobby wrists and large feet. His nickname was the Rooster. He worked at Record City, on the 700 block of 13th Street. He loved music and thought he could combine his passion with work. He spent most of his earnings on albums, receiving a small employee discount. The new stereo had been bought “on time,” a revolving-credit thing, a small-print contract he would be paying off for years.
Rodney was showing off his stereo to Larry, Charles, and Raymond. Larry and Charles were sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking beer, watching without apparent interest as Rodney pointed to the components the way the white, long-haired salesman had done, presenting them piece by piece.
“BSR turntable,” said Rodney, “belt drive. Got the Shure magnetic cartridge on the tone arm. Marantz receiver, two hundred watts, driving these bad boys right here, the Bose Five-Oh-Ones.”
“Bama, we don’t give a fuck about all that,” said Larry. “Put on some music.”
“All that gobbledy-goop don’t mean a motherfuckin thing,” said Charles, “if it don’t sound good.”
“Tryin to educate you, is all,” said Rodney. “You drink a fine wine, don’t you want to read the label?”
“Black Label,” said Larry, holding up his can, grinning stupidly at Charles. “That’s all I got to know.”
“Stereo looks real nice, Rodney,” said Raymond with a smile. “Let’s hear how it sounds.”
He put America Eats Its Young, the new double album from Funkadelic, on the platter and dropped the needle on track 3, “Everybody Is Going to Make It This Time.” It was a number that started off slowly and built to a kind of gospel-like fervor, and it got Larry and Charles to bobbing their heads. Larry studied the album cover, which was a takeoff on a dollar bill, with a zombied-out Statue of Liberty, her mouth a bloody mess, cannibalizing babies.
“This shit is wild,” said Larry.
“Paul Weldon drew that cover,” said Rodney.
“Who?” said Larry.
“He’s an artist. Black artists making their mark in this country, and not just on record covers. We had a woman living here in the nineteen twenties whose work got showed at a gallery downtown.”
“Man, fuck a history lesson, all right?”
“I’m sayin, we got a rich past in this neighborhood.”
“We don’t care about that,” said Charles. “Just turn the music up.”
“Sounds good, right?” said Rodney.
“I heard better,” said Charles, unable to give Rodney full respect. “My cousin got a stereo make this one be ashamed.”
Later, Larry, Charles, and Raymond sat on the government fence, a barrier painted yellow and white at the end of the street. Rodney had politely asked them to leave, saying he planned to meet a girl he knew, a customer he had met at the record store. Raymond suspected that Rodney just wanted Larry and Charles out of his basement and had made up the date.
Larry and Charles had grown more belligerent behind the alcohol. Larry got louder, and Charles had become quiet, a bad sign. Raymond had taken them up on their offer to join them and was drinking a beer. He was three quarters done with it and could feel its effect. He had never had more than one, and he didn’t really care for the taste. But it made him feel older to drink with these two. He kept an eye out for anyone who might tell his parents that they had seen him drinking beer in the afternoon.
They talked about girls they’d like to have. They talked about the new Mach 1. As Larry had done many times, he asked if James and Raymond were related to Earl Monroe, and Raymond said, “Not that I know.”
There was a lull in the conversation while they swigged beer. Then Larry said, “Heard some white boys came through, couple weeks back.”
“White bitches, ” said Charles.
“Heard they talked some shit to your mom,” said Larry.
“She was walking home from the bus stop,” said Raymond. “They weren’t sayin it to her, exactly. She was passing by the market when they were callin out, is what it was.”
“So it was to her,” said Larry.
It wasn’t a question, so Raymond did not reply. His face grew warm with shame.
“Anyone did that to my mother,” said Charles, “they’d wake up in a grave.”
“My father say you got to be strong and shake it off,” said Raymond.
“Hmph,” said Larry.
“It was my mother, I’d go ahead and shoot the motherfuckers,” said Charles.
“Well,” said Raymond, hoping to put an end to the embarrassment of the conversation, “I got no gun.”
“Your brother got one,” said Charles.
“Huh?” said Raymond. “Go ahead, man, you know that ain’t right.”
