Darius & Twig (10 page)

Then I started thinking about my story again. Maybe the boy did have faith in the dolphins. Maybe he had just lost faith in everything else.

I liked being on the roof as night fell.

Don't go dark on me, Darius
.

It was as if I were invisible, and alone in my invisibleness. Looking down at the street, not being seen by the kids or the old-timers taking their places for the night, I felt untouchable. The way I felt Fury would be untouchable.

Day sounds, buses honking, children screaming, slowly gave way to the night sounds of blaring radios. The voices rising from the darkness became harsher, more strident. Words meant as curses and arrows lifted quickly. Across the street, the blue neon lights of Victory Tabernacle, House of Prayer, came on. I could see the abstractions, the angles and colors of a poet's eye.

Did you know that kestrels can see ultraviolet light? And that a peregrine falcon can see three times better than a human?

Twig pushed into my mind again. I imagined him running with a weight around his waist. Three pounds, then four, then five. I wondered if it would help his racing.

A light caught my eye. On a building across the street, over the Pioneer food market, there were shadowed figures. The night was warm and I thought they might have been crackheads paying the five dollars to sleep on someone's roof for the night. From where I sat, I could see four, perhaps five people. They weren't much more than shadows, and I moved against a chimney, into my own dark space. There was another, smaller glow, which I thought was probably a flashlight. Then I heard a shot.

It is Harlem. It is night. No big deal.

I looked over at the figures on the roof across the avenue. Had someone been murdered? Nobody was running. The bodies still seemed posed in casual attitudes. Then I remembered it was where Mr. Watson had said someone kept guns. They looked as if they were passing something around.

I watched them.

Movement on the roof. Silhouettes drinking from paper bags. Shadows smoking. One of them, it could have been Diablo, began to take something from the brick chimney. At first I couldn't see what it was, but then I saw a shiny object. They were hiding the guns behind loose bricks on the roof. That was why no one had found them.

More weight.

“You don't look good,” I said. “You look like you've been up all night. What's up, Twig?”

“I decided to run in Delaware,” Twig said. “Coach called me this morning and asked me. He called me at freaking seven a.m.”

“Why are you upset?”

“You know what I feel?” Twig sounded shaky. “I feel like it's over for me. I'm going to go down to Delaware and run one last time and then forget about it. Coach was running his mouth about how this was going to be some bitching opportunity. How I could be a standout. I don't want to be a standout kind of guy. You know what I mean? If I'm standing out, then my family has to worry about some guy starting a fight with me or cutting me.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “This isn't about gangbanging, Twig.”

“Yo, Darius, you're talking some good stuff, but at the same time you got me confused, man,” Twig said. “You're always laying it out that the reason we're pushed around—that we're picked on—is that we stand out. You stand out a lot because you're friggin' smart, and I'm standing out because I can run. So you want to push standing out, and yet you don't want to be out. You getting what I mean?”

“If the world was different—”

“It ain't,” Twig said quickly. “It's just the way you always run it. If we stand out, it's cool. But we got to pay a price for standing out and we don't have any guarantees we're going to get over.”

“You get a scholarship, you can go away to college,” I reminded him. “Get away from the streets and find your own world. Maybe even
make
your own world.”

“No, not get away, Darius,” Twig said. “You mean run away. We're talking about leaving our families here and looking for a new life. Maybe get rich and shit and marry white girls like the Yankees do. You want that?”

“The girls?”

“Okay, I can deal with the girls.” Twig smiled. “But you want to be away from your people?”

“I don't know,” I said. It was a question I hadn't wanted to deal with but one that was eating at me something fierce.

“Darius?” Twig, waiting for an answer.

“Twig, I think I do want to be away from here,” I said. “Maybe I can come back and help, or something. I don't know. When I think about living a good life—you know, daydreaming and stuff—it's never about being around here.”

“Amen to that, bro, but I don't want to be no Jesus or nothing like that,” Twig said. “I just want to be me, man. I'm thinking I go down to Delaware just for me, to see what I can do. Then I walk away from everything. And you know something? You know what I know?”

“What?”

“I know if I walk away, then they'll forget me so fast it'll be like I never was,” Twig said. “If I can't help them get over, then they don't need me.”

“And Midnight and Tall Boy can say that they knew you weren't all that good in the first place,” I added. “You want that?”

“What's gonna be is what's gonna be,” Twig said softly. “But I don't care anymore. It's all getting too hard.”

“When you going to Delaware?”

“Thursday night,” Twig said. “Coach Day said he can get you out of school and pay your way down, too. You coming with me?”

“He's going to pay my way, too?” I asked. “Why?”

“I think somebody else is footing the bill,” Twig said. “Somebody—maybe that college scout—thinks we got something he can sell.”

“That's what's scaring you?”

“I don't know what's scaring my ass,” Twig said. “But I know I'm scared. What you think?”

“It could be something good,” I said. “We should probably check it out.”

“You going with me?” Twig asked. “If I'm going to run as hard as I can, I'm going to need somebody in my corner.”

“Your folks can't go?”

“I need somebody who knows what I'm feeling,” Twig said. “I need to look up in the sky and see Fury.”

“We'll be there,” I said.

The trip down to Delaware took about two hours from Penn Station on 34th Street. It was me; Twig; Willie DeWitt, a sprinter and a running back; Willie's mom, who was pretty hot; Coach Day; and a short, kind of weird guy named Herb. Coach Day said that Herb was “connected” with a number of colleges.

“Willie, what you need to do is hit 10:02 just one time in the trials, or in the finals,” Herb was saying. The Amtrak train had already pulled out of the station and was going to Newark, New Jersey. “So what the colleges can see is that you've got the moves for a halfback, but you also have the breakaway speed they're looking for.”

“You think I can get a scholarship as a sprinter?” Willie asked.

“Too hard, too many guys fighting over less than five tenths of a second,” Herb said. “I'm not saying it's not possible, but every day you have some kid coming up with a 10:01, a 10 flat, or a 9.9. But as a running back, especially someone with your size, you got a lot of potential.”

“Willie can run,” his mom said confidently. “Even when he was little, he could run fast.”

“And Fernandez, what I want from you is even simpler. . . .” Herb leaned back in his seat.

“What
you
want from me?” Twig looked toward Coach Day.

“Let me put it this way,” Herb said. “What would be best for you is for you to make the finals in either the 1500 or the 3000 and hit a fourth. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that puts you on record. When all the coaches across the country read the results, they're looking for young talent. Everybody knows everybody in these races. There aren't any secrets anymore.

“But half the guys running tomorrow are either college guys who don't have a consistency record, or they're past college and still hanging on to a dream. Either way, nobody is looking for them. What they're looking for is young guys. Guys like you and Willie. You show up fourth in the finals of either race, and they're going to see a high school kid they can reach out and grab.”

“How come you want him to run?” I asked Herb.

“Because it's a chance for him to get a scholarship!” Coach Day said. “That's not rocket science, Austin.”

“That's not what he's asking,” Herb said. He took out a cigar and put it in his mouth.

“I don't think you can smoke on the train,” Willie said.

“I'm not smoking it, just holding it in my mouth,” Herb said. “What my man here is saying is, what's in it for me? That's right, isn't it?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“He's working for Fernandez!” Coach Day came in again, this time sounding irritated.

“No, I'm working for both these kids, but I'm also building up my reputation as a person who can spot young talent. If Willie comes through, the football coaches are going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is the young stud that Herb told us about. He was right.' And when they want somebody to fly to California or Red Neck, Georgia, or Perugia, Italy, they're going to call me and ask me to go for them and scout the kid they've heard about because they'll trust my judgment.

“And if Fernandez comes through, they'll call me up and ask me if he's really as good as that and I'll say—‘Hey, he was running against the best young guys in the country and he did okay.' What more do they want? And they got to respect my judgment.”

“You get paid?” Willie's mom asked.

“I'm glad I'm riding with some savvy people,” Herb said.

We got to Delaware and took a cab to the Holiday Inn. Me and Twig were in one room; Herb and Coach Day were in another room; Willie and a kid from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who was already there were in another room. Willie's mom had her own room. Herb gave us each twenty dollars to eat with.

“You can eat out or bring food back to your room,” he said. “But don't order nothing from room service.”

We checked out the room, and it was cool. There was a cabinet that had sodas and liquor, but that was locked. We turned on the television and ran through the channels until we found one we liked.

“Maybe this won't be so bad,” Twig said.

I told myself three times not to ask Twig how he thought he was going to do in the morning.

Then I asked him.

“Herb told me I had to try harder in the 3000 than in the 1500, which sucks. He said I could run trials for the 1500, but he thinks I have a better chance in the 3000 open because the field is light. Sixteen guys running on a 400-meter track. That's not bad.”

“And?”

“He still wants me to finish fourth,” Twig said. “Don't take any chances. Just make sure I know where I am so I can work fourth place. The first four guys are listed in the reports they send to colleges. He thinks he can work a deal if I make fourth.”

“You going to go for more?” I asked. “I don't see a risk.”

“If I go for too much, I could get tired and fade bad at the end,” Twig said. “I have to see how the race feels and what the pace is. What do you think?”

“If you come in fourth, then people like Herb take out their watches and notebooks to decide just how good you are, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You want that?”

“My head is in a fight with my heart, man,” Twig said. “My head is talking about being cool and doing what the man says. My heart is saying, ‘Bust a move!' What you think I should do?”

“Could something else happen?” I asked. “Like, if you're cruising in fourth and some guy makes a move on you? Or, like, if everybody has somebody like Herb telling them to hang back for fourth?”

“And the guys out front are kicking it for one-two-three and the rest of them need to jump bad at the end for fourth?”

“Yeah, you could find yourself sweating for fourth.”

“You know what else I was thinking? Maybe it's not even about me, man. Maybe all he wants to do is to show off Willie,” Twig said. “And he's dancing around Coach by bringing me along.”

“Let's go get Willie and find something to eat,” I said.

We called Willie's room, but there was no answer. Then Twig and I went downstairs, found a 7-Eleven, and bought fruit and cookies and stuff to eat. We went back to the hotel and saw Willie in the lobby with the other guy.

“What's going on?” Willie asked.

“Just copped some fruit,” I said.

“What do you run?” Twig asked the other guy.

“Sean,” the guy answered. “Hurdles.”

“Oh.” Twig looked away as he nodded. “You play football, too?”

“Linebacker,” Sean said.

Willie and Sean were on the fifth floor and me and Twig got off on the third. I asked Twig what he thought about Willie.

“I could smell the shit on him,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “I don't know how he can run if he spends the night smoking weed.”

“It's only a hundred yards,” Twig answered. “You can do that on two breaths. Bam! Bam! Maybe even one breath. But I don't think he's serious enough to win anything. You don't go out looking for weed the night before you compete. And check this, his mom is sitting downstairs in the bar with Herb.”

“Whatever.”

Morning. Coach Day was rubbing the tops of Willie's shoulders, and Herb was standing in front of him telling him what a great opportunity this was.

“You hit 10:02 and we can go to all the coaches in the country and lay it down the way they want to hear it,” he said. “The only thing you got going against you is that your school didn't play in a tough football league.”