Raymond showed the boy how to insert the thick end of the tire lever between the tire and the rim, and how to hook it onto the spoke. He instructed him to use the second lever the same way, hooking it two spokes down. By working it around in this fashion, the tire could be removed from the rim.
“Now run your hand real careful inside that tire. You’re gonna find a bit of glass or a sharp twig, something like that in there. Whatever it was punctured that tube.”
“It was this,” said Marcus, holding a small triangle of forest green glass carefully between his fingers.
Monroe gave the new inner tube a couple of pumps of air and fitted it into the empty tire. He pulled the valve through the hole in the rim and seated one side of the tire into the rim’s edge. He turned the bike around and used his thumbs and muscle to fit the other side. He completed the replacement by inflating the tire to its suggested pressure. All the while he talked to the boy, describing the process with simple language.
Marcus watched him as he worked. He noticed the veins jump on the back of Mr. Raymond’s hands and how they stood out like wire on his forearms. The tight way he wore his knit watch cap cocked a little sideways on his head. His thin, neat mustache. Marcus was going to grow one just like it someday.
“You should be good now,” said Monroe.
“Can I ride it down to the Avenue and back?”
“It’s too dark. I’m worried about the cars seein you. But you can walk with me to the market if you want. I noticed your mother needed some milk.”
On the way to Georgia, Monroe talked to Marcus about body language. “Chin up, and keep your shoulders square, like you’re balancing a broom handle on there. Make eye contact, but not too long, hear? You don’t want to be challenging anyone for no good reason. On the other hand, you don’t want to look like a potential victim, either.”
“How’s a victim look?” said Marcus.
“Like someone you could rob or steal in the face,” said Monroe. He had said these things to Kenji when he was a little boy. Raymond’s father, Ernest Monroe, had said them to him.
Down on the Avenue, as the foot traffic increased, Marcus reached out and held Monroe’s hand.
Charles Baker sat in the passenger seat of Cody Kruger’s Honda, looking through the windshield at a gray four-square colonial at the corner of 39th and Livingston. Deon Brown was in the backseat, shifting his considerable weight. They were parked down the block, near Legation Street. Two blacks and a white, sitting in a beat-up car in one of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. Anyone who came up on them would know they were wrong.
“These houses are nice,” said Cody.
“Big trees, too,” said Baker. “This here’s a burglar’s paradise during the day.”
They were in Friendship Heights. Baker had done some break-ins in neighborhoods just like this one. Two men in, one lookout in the car. Go directly to the master bedroom and toss it. People liked to keep their jewelry, furs, and cash close to where they slept. But he and his crew had been retired from that game by the law. He wasn’t about to go back to prison for a fur coat. If he was going to fall, it would be for something worthwhile.
“All this money,” said Cody. “Why they not drivin nicer whips?”
“Look careful,” said Baker. “They’re showing that they got it in a quiet way, but they’re sayin something else, too.”
This was not the new-money, look-what’s-in-my-driveway lifestyle of a Potomac or a McLean. The residents here had it, but they did not care to advertise it. Their cars weren’t flashy, even when they were fast, but they were fairly new and environmentally correct. All-wheel-drive Volvos, Saab sedans, SUV hybrids, Infiniti Gs, and Acuras lined the streets.
“They sayin, ‘Look at me,’ ” said Baker. “ ‘I can afford a Mercedes, but I choose not to own one.’ They gonna spend fifty thousand dollars on a Lexus hybrid so they can save a few miles per gallon on gas and boast about it at their next dinner party. But ask one of these motherfuckers to give a thousand dollars to a school on the other side of town, so a poor black kid can have a computer and a chance? You gonna see the door slam right in your face.”
How do you know? thought Deon, tiring of the cynical drawl in Baker’s voice. When have you ever done anything for any kind of kid, poor or otherwise?
“Ain’t that right, Deon?”
Deon adjusted his body. He had big legs and was uncomfortable in the small backseat. “Right, Mr. Charles.”
“I can’t stand these people,” said Baker, and Cody nodded his head.
“Can we go?” said Deon.
“In a minute,” said Baker.
Deon wasn’t comfortable in this part of the city. Even when he dressed right, even when he was straight, he got looks. It wasn’t just his color, though that was a large part of the reaction. The locals could sense he didn’t belong here. Once he bought a shirt from one of those stores over on Wisconsin Avenue, on what they called the Rodeo Drive of Chevy Chase, and when he took it to the register, they asked for his ID, even though he was paying cash. His mother told him he should have asked why, but he had been too humiliated to question the clerk. He never went shopping on that fancy strip of stores again.
The side door to the four-square colonial opened. A tall, thin man in a sport jacket and slacks stepped out of the house. His hair was thick, gray, and on the long side, falling a little over his ears. He held a leash, and on the end of it was a fat dachshund. The man stopped to light a cigar, then walked north.
“Every night,” said Baker.
Cody touched the handle of the door.
“Not yet,” said Baker. “Let him go some.”
“How you know he’s not gonna be right back?”
“He’s off to that nice little rec center and ball field they got, just a block or so away. Takes a little while for him to get there ’cause his poor excuse for a dog got them short little legs.”
“Dark ball field be a good place to rob his ass,” said Cody.
“What I want can’t fit in a wallet,” said Baker. “His debt is bigger than that.”
The man cut left on Livingston and disappeared.
“Here you go,” said Baker, handing Cody a security-tinted envelope. The name Peter Whitten was printed on its face.
Cody got out of the car, jogged down the block, and placed the envelope in the mailbox beside the door of the colonial. He returned to the Honda, excited, pink of face, and short of breath.
“Go, boy,” said Baker.
Cody turned the ignition and pulled out of the space. They drove east, headed back to their side of town.
Vicki had gone to bed early, as she tended to do since Gus was killed. She could not bear to watch the serial-killer and autopsy shows that dominated the television schedule late in the evening, and she had never been a reader. Alex spent most nights in his chair in the living room, alone, with a trade paperback and a glass of red wine. He still read novels but alternated them with biographies, battlefield memoirs written by soldiers, and nonfiction books about the politics of war.
The house ticked and settled. Johnny was out with his friends, and Vicki by now was asleep. Alex dog-eared the page and poured out the rest of his wine in the kitchen sink. He left a light on for Johnny and went upstairs.
He entered Gus’s bedroom. They had kept it as it was. Neither he nor Vicki had been able to box up his football trophies, give away his clothing, or take down the posters Gus had tacked to his walls. Alex had talked about relocating, selling the house and moving on, but both of them decided that leaving the house would mean leaving Gus behind.
Alex wasn’t mentally unsound. A year ago, he had been close enough to madness to know how it felt to be scrambled. After that day, after the men in uniform came to the front door, after they’d buried what was left of Gus, Alex went half crazy with bitterness and rage. He took to hard liquor for the first time in his life. He thought of burning his house down. He had violent thoughts about the president. He talked to God aloud and asked him why he had not taken him first. One black night he asked God why he had not taken Johnny instead of Gus, and cried out for forgiveness until Vicki came to him and took him in her arms.
The woman the army sent explained the stages of grief. He said, “Fuck your stages of grief,” and repeated it
