Hard Revolution

Now Jones was sitting in the cramped living room of Ronnie’s apartment, watching television, wanting a drink. But Ronnie wasn’t into liquid heat. Boy didn’t even keep beer or wine in his crib, and he didn’t like to burn the gage, either. Jones couldn’t relate to a man wasn’t looking to get his head up in some way.

Every man had something, though, made him get out of bed in the morning. For Ronnie it was ass. Sure, it drove every-goddamn-one, but Ronnie was sick behind it. Even took those instant photographs of all the girls he had, kept the pictures in a book, had a label glued on the front of it with childlike handwriting scribbled across it, read, “My Pussy Portraits.” Matter of fact, Ronnie had recently bought a new Big Swinger, thirty dollars at the Peoples Drug, ’cause he’d worn out the Polaroid he had.

Ronnie had gone off to his job after lunch. He worked as a stock man down at George and Co., the big-and-tall-men’s shop on 7th. Ronnie went six four or five and claimed he took the position there for the discount. He couldn’t find clothes anywhere else that fit him right.

Soon as he was gone, Jones went and got the photo album. All kinds of girls in that book: dark-skinned girls, white girls, redbones, skinny bitches, and some fat-ass heifers, too. All cupping their titties, pushing them together and out, smiling and lying across Ronnie’s bed, some kind of stuffed bunny rabbit placed beside ’em, the same pose every time. Some of these girls were so ugly, God couldn’t love ’em. At least no one could accuse Ronnie of discrimination. All kinds of females, and Ronnie didn’t have any problem getting them over to his place or getting them to pose. Jones had seen him plenty of times, walking around the apartment in his altogether. Man should have been wearing a saddle on his back, with that pipe of his.

After Jones had looked at the pictures and jacked his rod, he had sat down to watch TV. Nothing on but the Match Game, Mike Douglas, and Pat Boone in Hollywood, had Flip Wilson as a guest. Flip was wearing a dress and looking like he was digging it, giving white people their idea of black, talkin’ about “Sock it to me,” that same old tired shit. Jones changed over to channel 20, the UHF station, where sometimes they showed the bullfights from Mexico. He often wondered what that would feel like, to push a sword down into the head of one of those motherfuckers, straight into its brain. You got to wear those tight pants, too, and hear those cheers from the stands. In that way it was different than killing a man. But only in that way. You got down to it, anything alive just suffered in the end.

The bullfighting show wasn’t on. Just something called Wing Ding, had to be for kids. He switched over to Movie 4. They were running some picture called Francis of Assisi. He wasn’t gonna watch no sissy movie, that was for damn sure.

Jones decided to go out, get a cheap bottle of something, and bring it back. If he was going to have to be bored, he might as well be bored with his head on fire. He was out of Kools, too.

STRANGE WENT UP to 9th and Upshur and made the funeral arrangements at a home his father had used for his own mother. He had always liked this short stretch of 9th, which was quiet, faced Georgia Avenue from the east, and held a few small businesses: a barbershop and a butcher and such. Inside the home, he met with an overly polite, fastidious man in a pinstriped suit. Strange arranged it so that the viewing would be closed-casket, with the schedule dependent upon the completion of the autopsy and lab work by the police.

When he came out of the funeral home, Lydell Blue was waiting for him, standing on the sidewalk, in his uniform. They hugged roughly and patted each other’s backs.

“Your father told me you’d be here,” said Blue.

“Glad you got up with me, man.”

“Us,” said Blue, rapping his fist to his chest.

“Us,” said Strange.

His parents’ house was crowded with sympathizers upon his return. As it tended to do in the city, word had spread of Dennis’s death. Relatives, neighbors, friends of Derek and his parents, and some of Dennis’s friends from Park View Elementary, Bertie Backus Junior High, and Roosevelt High had gathered in the apartment. Dennis had lost touch with many of them since going off to the navy, but they had not forgotten him. Alvin Jones and Kenneth Willis had not dropped by or phoned.

Someone, maybe his father, had put an old Soul Stirrers record on the box, Sam Cooke singing pretty and rough, and it was playing low under the conversation in the room. People were having cigarettes and cigars, and the smoke lay thick in the air. A little bit of beer and wine drinking had commenced. Mike and Billy Georgelakos were standing in a corner together, still wearing their work clothes from the diner. Derek went to them, shook Mike’s hand, hugged Billy, and thanked them for coming, knowing they were uncomfortable being here, knowing it was an effort, appreciating the effort, making a point of telling them that they were family. Derek had a conversation with Troy Peters, who had arrived in his uniform, his hat literally in his hand. He told Troy how much it meant to him that he had stopped by. He spoke to James Hayes and said he would get up with him later. He spoke to the German, now an old man, now contrite, who had once thrown hot water at him and Dennis when they were kids. He spoke to Mr. Meyer from the corner market. He took a condolence call from Darla Harris, who asked him to stop by that night. He told her that he might, and ended the call. And he went to Carmen Hill as soon as he saw her come through the door. As he brought her into his arms, it seemed they were alone in the room.

“I love you, Derek,” she said, her mouth close to his ear.

“I love you.”

When she had gone, he looked around the apartment and noticed that his parents were not among the crowd.

He asked the woman who lived downstairs if he could use her phone. In her apartment, he phoned Detective Dolittle at the station. Five minutes later, his call was returned. There was little to report on the case. No usable fingerprints had been turned up at the scene. No witnesses had come forward. Kenneth Willis had been picked up on a gun charge the Monday afternoon before the murder. Dolittle said he would interview Willis in his holding cell soon as he “got over that way,” and when Strange suggested he do it now, Dolittle said, “Don’t worry, Willis isn’t going anywhere.” Lula Bacon had been located, but Alvin Jones was not at her apartment. He had left her place, she said, in the middle of the night, and had not revealed his destination.

“You talked to Bacon?” said Strange.

“On the phone.”

“Why don’t you go over and see if he’s there instead of taking that woman at her word?”

“That’s an idea,” said Dolittle, his voice slow and heavy with sarcasm. Strange wondered what bar Dolittle had come from last.

He asked for the location of the Bacon apartment, and Dolittle gave him the address. He asked for the make of Jones’s car, and Dolittle told him that a green Buick Special was registered in his name.

“Find him,” said Strange. “Focus on him.”

“I’m workin’ on it,” said Dolittle.

Strange hung up the phone, his eyes fixed on nothing across the room.

He returned to the impromptu wake, made his way through the crowd, and found his parents back in Dennis’s room. He closed the door behind him, muffling the rumble of conversation coming from the main area of the apartment. His father stood with his back against the wall, a beer in his hand, his sleeves rolled up. His mother sat on Dennis’s bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Alethea looked up. “Who would do this, Derek?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

Alethea glanced at her husband, then stared at Derek in a way that made him feel ten years old. “You’ve got to let the Lord settle this in his own way. Do you understand me, son?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Derek.

CHARLIE BYRD HAD that sound. You could close your eyes and listen to his guitar and know that it couldn’t be anyone playing it but him. Frank Vaughn found himself smiling, hearing it now.