judge. Dennis also knew that it was easy for a man to let you slide on things, and be your friend, when you were not his son.
“I’ve got a woman,” said Hayes.
“Ray Charles,” said Dennis, laughing at his little joke, laughing because he was high.
“What I’m sayin’ is, I’ve got a lady friend comin’ over tonight.”
“I hear you.”
“I don’t mean to put you out.”
“Ain’t no thing,” said Dennis. “We’re cool.”
Dennis didn’t want to leave. He had no place to go. But he got up from the floor, where he had been sitting cross-legged, and stretched. He finished his cognac and put the empty snifter on the small table beside the chair where Hayes always sat. He shook Hayes’s hand.
Near the front door of the apartment, in a bowl on a telephone stand where Hayes kept his keys and things, Dennis saw the check, written by Jones’s lady friend, that he had brought over on Sunday night.
“You ain’t cashed this yet?” said Dennis.
“Was feeling poorly the last couple days. Haven’t had the chance to get to the bank.”
“I was just wondering if it was any good.”
“If it isn’t, I’m gonna need you to
“You
Dennis said this with bravado, but he didn’t know what he’d do if the check were to bounce. He didn’t want to deal with Jones again, not after what he’d done to him and especially Kenneth. He wondered what had happened to Kenneth, if the police had took him in, and if they had, would he do time. He hadn’t really thought the whole thing through, the consequences and such, when he’d talked to that old man down at the market. Just an impulse, really, nothing like a plan. He wasn’t sorry he’d done it or anything, ’cause it was the right thing to do, but… whatever. He didn’t want to think on it, not right now. His head was up too good.
“Take it easy, young man,” said Hayes.
“You, too.”
Dennis went out the door. He took the stairs down to the foyer of the row house where Hayes had his place and stepped out to the street.
The moon hung low and bright. Dennis could see no clouds. But to him it smelled like rain.
He walked up Otis toward the school, passing many parked cars. Mustangs and Novas for the cock-strong, Dodge Monacos and Olds 88s for the middle-aged and elderly, Caddys and Lincolns for those who liked to show. This was not his street, but he could match many of the vehicles to the houses where their owners stayed. He could match them all when he was straight. He passed a green Buick Special, then a VW Bug owned by this brother he knew who was always high, and a new Camaro, white with orange hood stripes, whose owner was a mechanic up near Fort Totten. Dennis had always been able to identify large things with small pieces of information. Like the dogs barking in the alleys. He could tell you the names of those dogs. Though maybe not right now. His head was all torn up.
He found himself on the grounds of Park View Elementary. He limped across the weedy field. He found the last quarter of the joint they’d smoked in his pocket and lit it with a match. He had a seat on a swing that he barely fit into and hit the jay. He snorted up the smoke that was coming off its tip and held the whole draw in his lungs.
His parents had finished dinner by now. His mother had washed the dishes, taken her bath, and gone to bed. His father would still be up, nursing his one beer, watching television. What was it, around eleven? He would be into
Dennis chuckled as he exhaled his smoke. He rubbed at the top of his head.
His father had listened to him the night before, when Dennis had told him about his plan. How he was gonna turn it all around, get a job, work hard like his brother, and get his own place like his brother had, because his eyes had opened up and he’d learned. His father had nodded patiently the whole time he was talking. Yeah, there was the usual flicker of doubt in his eyes, and his hands were opening and closing at his sides, the way they did when he was impatient. But he had
That plan thing, it was all bullshit, anyway. Dennis had looked through the want ads in the morning but had made no calls. Basically, he’d done nothing all day. And here he was, sitting on a swing set late at night, no friends, no woman, no one to talk to and no one looking to talk to him. Just high. Sitting in the same swing he’d sat in over twenty years ago. Still a child, gone no further than a child.
His plan had felt electric last night. It felt like nothing now.
Derek’ll find me something, though, thought Dennis. My little brother will hook me up.
He wet his fingers and extinguished the roach, putting it into his pocket because there was a hit or two to be had later on. He got up and limped across the field.
Otis Place was up ahead. He could hear the bark of the dogs in its backyards. He cut into a short stretch of alley that joined the long common alley that ran between Otis and Princeton. Behind the corner house, he passed a mongrel named Betty who was growling with her face up against her owner’s fence. Betty knew him by sight and smell. Dennis said a few calm words, but Betty did not cease, and Dennis shrugged and moved on.
He knew every stone in this alley. Didn’t even have to look at his feet to mind the uneven parts. When he and his father had played catch back here in the late ’40s, around sundown on summer nights, his pop would throw him grounders along with flies. Got so he knew when the ball would take a hop, depending on where it got thrown. He could picture his father, the white sleeves of his work shirt rolled up on his strong forearms, the easy motion of his throws. Coming out here and playing ball with his boy, even though he was bone tired from his job.
I didn’t hug my father last night, thought Dennis. That’s what I forgot to do. I am high tonight and I might be high tomorrow, but I will hug my father when I get inside his place and I will tell him how good it felt for him to listen. What it meant, and how good it felt to me.
Halfway down the alley, a German shepherd mix ran back and forth behind the fence, baring his teeth and gums, barking rapidly. The shepherd’s name was Brave, and Dennis stopped to pet him every day. Dennis approached the fence and leaned forward, extending his hand so the dog could smell it through the links.
“Come here, boy. It’s me.”
Brave barked wildly, snatching at the air with his jaws. Saliva dripped from his mouth, and his eyes were feral and desperate. The dog snapped at Dennis’s hand.
Dennis drew back and stood straight.
“Smart nigger,” hissed a voice in his ear as the edge of a straight razor was pressed against his throat.
Pop, thought Dennis Strange.
TWENTY-TWO
ON WEDNESDAY, THE Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Tennessee. The city of Memphis received a Federal Court Restraining Order against Friday’s planned march, claiming that officials there would be unable to “control” the participants.
On Wednesday, in New Haven, Connecticut, Senator Eugene McCarthy, energized by his primary victory in Wisconsin, appeared at a rally six thousand strong. A band played “When the Saints Go Marching
