“ Raymond, ” said his father.
“And where were you this afternoon?” she said to Raymond, pointedly ignoring his off-color comment.
“Just around,” he said. Raymond had been chewing on wintergreen Life Savers up until dinner, hoping his mother and father would not smell beer on his breath. It had been hours since he’d had it, but, being inexperienced as a drinker, he did not know how long the stench of alcohol lingered.
The opening credits ended, and the network went to a commercial. Something caught Ernest’s eye in the newspaper and made him smile.
“Listen to this right here,” said Ernest. “Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm visited George Wallace in the hospital today…”
“He still over at Holy Cross?” said James.
“They did some operation,” said Almeda, “trying to get the bullet fragments out of his spine.”
“See if they can get that cracker to walk again,” said Raymond.
“That’s not very Christian of you, Ray,” said his mother.
“Anyway,” said Ernest. “Shirley Chisholm is walking out the hospital, and some reporter asks her why she is visiting this man. Does this mean that she would support him in a presidential election if he moderated his views? You know how Shirley Chisholm responded? All she said was, ‘Jesus Christ!’ ”
“Heard Wallace gonna get the sympathy vote if he runs again,” said James.
“From who?” said Ernest.
The show came back on. The boys chuckled at the story line, which had Mannix being blinded by the powder of a close-to-the-face gunshot, then, still sightless, spending the rest of the hour going after the man who did it.
“How he gonna find the dude if he blind?” said Raymond.
“Peggy gonna help him out,” said Ernest, cigar smoke streaming from the side of his mouth.
“Your father likes that Gail Fisher,” said Almeda.
“I don’t like her like I like you,” said Ernest.
“I remember when she did that commercial for All detergent.” Almeda liked to follow the careers of black actors and actresses, whom she read about in her magazines.
“She was fine in that, too,” said Ernest.
They talked through most of the show. It was predictable, and it was also a repeat of a show their father had seen the previous fall. As he did many times, Ernest mentioned that the actor playing Mannix wasn’t a white guy, exactly, but some kind of Arab. “Romenian, or some such thing,” he said.
“ Ar menian,” said Almeda. “And they are Christian people. Orthodox Christian, matter of fact. Not Muslim. The ones I know are, anyway.”
Almeda cleaned the house of an Armenian family up in Wheaton, out there by Glenmont. It was one of two daylong jobs she’d held on to since the riots of ’68. Many of the domestics she knew had stopped doing maid work after the fires of April. She had continued to work part-time because her family needed the money, but she had given notice to those she didn’t care for and stayed with the people she liked. The cutback in hours hadn’t even hurt her much. The homeowners who employed her, the Armenians and a Protestant couple out in Bethesda, had given her raises after Dr. King was assassinated. She hadn’t even asked.
“One of you boys,” said Ernest, “go get your father a cold beer.” James got up off the couch.
Ernest read from the paper. “Redd Foxx and Slappy White coming to Shady Grove. Since the Howard got messed up, they’re having all the good shows out in farmer country. Who’s gonna go all the way out there?”
James returned with a can of Pabst and pulled the ring off its top. He dropped the ring into the hole and handed the beer to his father.
“You tryin to choke me?” said Ernest. “Throw the tab away next time.”
“That’s how I see other guys do it,” said James, who had only drunk beer a couple of times.
“Those other guys are fools, then. I ain’t about to swallow a twisted piece of metal.”
“I can get you another one,” said Raymond.
“That’s all right. Now that it’s open I’m gonna drink it. Shoot, I paid for it.”
“Barely,” said Raymond.
“Watch your mouth, boy.”
PBR was only a dollar and change for a six-pack up at the Dart. The Tiparillos that Ernest smoked were fifty for one ninety-nine at the same store. Ernest Monroe had habits, but they were cheap ones. Almeda never complained about his smoking or his drinking. The man worked hard and came home every night.
James and Ernest began to talk about the difference between small- and big-block engines. Raymond said he was tired, kissed his mother on her cheek, and touched a hand to the shoulder of his father, who grunted by way of acknowledgment.
Raymond went to the back bedroom, which he and James had always shared. There were two single beds placed against opposite walls. The beds had become too small for them as they had grown, and now their feet hung off the ends. At the foot of each bed was a dresser, previously owned, that their father had brought home, having found them or bought them for next to nothing. Ernest had strengthened the dressers with nails and fortified them with carpenter’s glue and vises. He had then refinished them, making them better than fine. One closet held shirts and church trousers that needed to be hung.
On the wall was tacked a team photo of the 1971 Washington Redskins, who had reached the playoffs for the first time in twenty-six years. The man who ran Nunzio’s had given Raymond the photo, having obtained it in a Coca-Cola promotion, saying he had no use for it. Raymond suspected the man was just being kind. Raymond was into the Skins, but his first love was basketball. The Knicks were his team. He was a Clyde Frazier fan, and James was partial to Earl Monroe. Some folks called Earl Monroe the Pearl, and some called him Black Jesus. James and his friends just called him Jesus, but not around Almeda, who said that this was blasphemous.
James had a white T-shirt on the back of which he had Magic Markered the name Monroe, with Earl’s number, 15, carefully written below. He’d put the number on the front as well. Raymond Monroe had decorated a T-shirt in the same way, with Frazier’s jersey number hand-printed on the front and back, along with the single name Clyde.
Raymond picked up James’s Earl Monroe T-shirt off the wood floor and smelled it to see if it was clean. It didn’t stink much, so he folded it and went to James’s dresser, opening a drawer and placing the shirt inside. His hand lingered on top of the shirts, and he looked over his shoulder at the open door. He didn’t hear footsteps. There were the sounds coming from the television and the muffled voices of James and their father, still talking.
He ran his hand under the T-shirts and felt nothing. He closed the drawer and pulled on the one below it, which housed jeans and shorts. Beneath the shorts, Raymond found steel. A short barrel, a crenellated cylinder, and a checkered grip.
It was as if a match had been struck inside him. Strength and manhood could come to a boy at once with the touch of a gun.
Charles was about bullshit most times. But this time, Charles had spoken true.
Three
Alex Pappas had the ticket stub from the Rolling Stones concert up on the bulletin board in his room. The Stones had played RFK Stadium on July 4, a few weeks earlier, and Alex and his friends Billy Cachoris and Pete Whitten had been there. Alex had spent hours in line at the Ticketron outlet at Sears in White Oak, waiting with the other heads to score seats, but it had been worth it. Alex did not think he would ever forget that day, not even when he got to be as ancient as his old man.
Also on the board were tickets from Baltimore Bullets games he had attended with his father, who had generously driven him and his friends up to the Baltimore Civic Center. Earl the Pearl, Alex’s player, had been traded to the Knicks this midseason past, and with him had gone some of the attraction of the Bullets. It wasn’t the same, rooting for Dave Stallworth and Mike Riordan instead of Monroe.
Alex was in his bedroom, waiting for his girlfriend to call. The record by that new group Blue Oyster Cult was playing on his compact stereo system, an eighty-watt Webcor home entertainment unit that included two air
