savages, but at The Empire we were ambassadors for our race, acting not like the normal white people we'd grown up with but like the exceptional white people we vaguely remembered from random episodes ofMasterpiece Theatre. Doors were held open, and great blocks of time were spent encouraging each other to go first.
'After you, Father.'
'On the contrary, son, afteryou.'
Were it not for my mother, we might have stood there all day. 'Just go into the damned apartment!' she'd shout. 'Jesus Christ, you two are like a couple of old ladies.'
When it came to The Empire, my parents' roles were oddly reversed. My mother was still the more personable one, but if a tenant wanted any kind of a break, he soon learned to go to my father, who displayed a level of compassion we rarely saw at home. His own children couldn't get a dime out of him, but if Chester Kingsley lost his wallet or Regina Potts broke her collarbone, he was more than willing to work something out. When Dora Ward fell behind on her rent, he gave her an extension, then another, and another. On discovering she had moved out in the middle of the night, taking the stove and refrigerator with her, he said only, 'Oh, well. They needed to be replaced anyway.'
'The hell they did,' my mother said. 'That stove was only two years old. What kind of a landlord are you?'
I'd hoped to make money remodeling Dora's empty apartment, but the dream died when an interracial couple showed up, introducing themselves as Lance and Belinda Taylor. My parents and I were assessing the empty kitchen when they knocked on the door, asking for a tour and announcing in the same breath that they loved the place just the way it was. All it needed was a stove and refrigerator, and everything else they could take care of on their own. 'Carpentry and whatnot, that's what I do,' Lance said. He offered his hands as proof, and we noted that the palms were thickly calloused.
'Now show them the other side,' his wife said. 'Let them see your knuckles and whatever.'
My mother suggested that the couple come back in a few months, but my father saw something almost biblical in their situation. A carpenter and his wife in search of shelter: all they lacked was an exhausted donkey. He moaned when told they were living in a motel, and buckled completely when shown a photo of the couple's three children. 'We were going to touch the place up a little, but what can I say? You've got me.'
'Let's just think about this,' my mother said, but my father had thought enough. Lance paid the deposit in cash, and he and his family moved in the following day.
On seeing his new neighbors, Chester confided that it was the kids he felt sorry for. 'Them and the husband. I mean, is that white woman ugly, or what?'
My father took the high road and tried to talk him out of it. 'Oh, you don't mean that.'
'Yes, he does,' my mother said.
They did make for an odd-looking couple, not because of their color but because they were physically so mismatched. Lance was handsome and accustomed to being admired, while Belinda was gaunt and, 'well,' my mother said, 'unfortunatelooking. That's the kindest way to describe her, isn't it.'
When they first moved in, the Taylors were polite and gung ho. Could they plant a vegetable garden? Certainly! Paint the living room? Why not? But the garden was never sown, and the paint cans sat untouched. They fought often, and loudly, and more than once the police arrived to pull the couple apart. The first time he fell behind in his rent, Lance called the house, demanding that my father distribute pebbles over his driveway. 'I'm not paying three hundred dollars a month to walk over crushed oyster shells,' he said. 'It's bad for my tiresand for my shoes, and before you get any more of my money, I want something done.'
Distributing pebbles over Lance's driveway meant distributing pebbles over everyone's driveway, and it surprised us all when my father agreed.
'I'm not talking cheap pebbles, either,' Lance said. 'I want the nice kind.'
'You mean gravel,' my father said.
'Yeah. That.'
The driveway was hardly urgent, but still it was heartening to hear someone stick up for himself. This was exactly the sort of thing my father would have done had he been the tenant, and in admitting it, he was forced into a grudging admiration. 'The guy's got gumption,' he said. 'There's no doubt about it.'
A dump truck was sent, and I spent three days slowly spreading gravel. Lance paid his rent and called a few months later, complaining that birds were congregating in the tree outside his bedroom window. Had they been vultures, we may have seen his point, but these were songbirds, whose only crime was happiness.
'What do you want me to do?' my father asked. 'Come down there in person and scare them away? Birds are a part of life, buddy. You've just got to learn to get along with them.'
Lance insisted that the tree be cut down, and when told no, he went ahead and did it himself. It was just a pine, not necessarily old or beautiful, but that didn't matter to my father, who loves trees and admires them the way playboys admire women. 'Will you look at that!' he'll say, pulling to a stop at a busy intersection.
'Look at what?'
'What do you mean, 'Look at what?' The maple, idiot. She's a knockout.'
When told what Lance had done, my father retreated to his bedroom, staring at the oaks outside the window. 'Trimming is one thing,' he said. 'But to cut something down? To actuallyend its life? What kind of an animalis this guy?'
Lance felled the tree with a hatchet and left it where it lay. A few weeks later, now a month behind on his rent, he complained that rats were nesting in the branches. 'I'll call the city and report you,' he said to my father. 'And if one of my kids gets bitten, I'll call the cityand my lawyers.'
'His lawyers, right!' my father said.
My mother had tried to look on the bright side, but now she worried that Lance might bite the children himself. In talking to other landlords, she'd come to identify him as a type, the sort of tenant who'd live rent-free, biding his time until he eventually bled you dry. If there was a skill to renting out property, it was the ability to spot such a person and never let him through the front door. Lance and his wife had made it in, and now my parents would have to get rid of them, delicately and by the book. They didn't want to give the Taylors any ammunition, and so it was agreed that the tree would be removed. 'I really don't see any other way,' my mother said. 'The son of a bitch says jump, and we'll just have to do it.'
I went with my father to cut it up and carry it away, and from the moment we arrived I had the distinct feeling that we were being watched. It was like one of those scenes from a Western — high noon and the street was empty. 'Be cool,' my father said, more to himself than to me. 'We'll just do our job and be on our way.'
We'd been at it for all of ten minutes when Lance stepped out, dressed in jeans and toffee-colored cowboy boots. Maybe the boots were too small or not yet broken in, but for whatever reason he moved slowly and tentatively, as if walking were new to him.
'Here we go,' my father said.
Lance's first complaint was that the noise of the chain saw was disturbing his children, one of whom was supposedly sick with the flu.
'InSeptember? ' my father asked.
'My kids can get sick any damn time they want,' Lance said. 'I'm just warning you to keep it down.' There was no way to keep down a chain saw, but that wasn't really the point. My father had been put on notice within earshot of the other tenants, and now there would be complications.
Lance hobbled back into his apartment and reappeared a short while later. The boots were gone now, and in their place he wore a pair of sneakers. I was dragging a branch toward the curb, and he complained that in doing so, I was disturbing the integrity of his yard, which was alternately bald and overgrown and had all the integrity of a litter box. 'You need tolift those branches,' he said. 'One of them touches the ground and you'll be answering to me. Understand?'
My father was a good six inches shorter than Lance, and he raised his head skyward in order to meet the man's eyes. 'Hey,' he said. 'Don't you talk to my son that way.'
'Well, you talked tomy son that way,' Lance said. 'You called him a liar. Said there was no way he could have the flu in September.'
