Only the Strong (15 page)

Crenshaw was still laughing when Guts hung up.

The next morning, after a breakfast of nine fried eggs, ham steak, a loaf of bread, a stick of butter, and a pot of coffee at Nat-Han, Guts parked behind a red sports car. The license plate said
MVP
. He got out and leaned against his door. The temperature was already 75 degrees, typical for late June. The recent end of the school year meant the park was busier than usual. Kids roamed the grass, skipped rocks across the pond, played catch, hung around waiting for the pool to open. Guts could see Crusher Boudreau jogging on the far side of the park. At the courts, the tennis family pounded balls into fuzzy submission. The fisherwoman sat stone-still in her chair, minding her rod. At the memorial garden, its
two faithful tenders appeared to be giving Crenshaw a lesson in horticulture. The ballplayer was dressed in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap but Guts marked his distinctive, athletic gait. He watched and waited until Crenshaw finished charming the ladies and joined him at the curb.

“How'd you know that car's mine?”

Guts folded his arms across his generous belly. “Wild guess,” he said.

Crenshaw chuckled. “A razor blade company gave it to me last year for being top dog at the All-Star game. I finally had it shipped to Gateway.”

“Nice. I see you've met Mrs. Means and Mrs. Tichenor.”

“Man, did I. They don't follow sports but they both subscribe to
Jet
. They recognized me from the cover.”

“They're a couple of sweet old ladies, right?”

“Brother, them broads are hot to trot. The tall one kept looking me up and down like she was picturing me with no clothes on. The short one made a joke about rounding all the bases and sliding into home. You weren't lying when you said the North Side was full of surprises.”

“I said that, huh?” Guts rubbed his eyes. Bits of egg and grease glistened in his beard.

“Big man, you need to take better care of yourself,” Crenshaw said. “You look tore up from the floor up.” He fished his keys from his pocket and unlocked his car.

“Yeah, good to see you too.”

The ballplayer opened the passenger-side door and pulled out a baseball bat with a ribbon wrapped around it. He handed it to Guts. “Here. Don't say I never gave you nothing.”

Guts examined his present. It was a Louisville Slugger. Crenshaw's signature was branded on the barrel. “This is hefty,” Guts said.

“Forty-two ounces. Heaviest in the National League.”

“Thanks, man,” Guts said. He shook hands with Crenshaw. “No one's ever given me a bat before.”

“I bet you've taken a swing a time or two. Just not at a ball.”

“Why you being so generous?”

“That conversation with Slick Daddy had me thinking about how I should carry myself. People do shit for me, I act like I'm the one doing them a favor. I could do better about that.”

“One conversation with a Negro Leaguer was all it took to make you straighten up?”

“Not really. Next week I'll probably be back to my usual jackass self.”

Both men laughed.

Crenshaw turned serious, if only for a moment. “I know you were probably just trying to take my mind off my ring,” he said. “But still, you know, it did get me thinking for real. I'm glad you and Mr. Logan did that for me. 'Preciate it.”

“Not a problem,” Guts said. He unlocked his trunk and put the bat inside. “It helped me take my mind off some things too.”

“So, Guts, what do you do when you come out here? Work out? Watch the females?”

“Something better,” Guts said with a smile. “Come on, I guess I'll let you in on it. Just let me get my crumbs.”

Crenshaw followed Guts to a nearby bench. The ducks, nearly as brown and mottled as the grass surrounding the pond, eased gracefully across the water. They kept the same pace even when the first crumbs appeared. Majestic and sure, they gathered near the bank and dipped their bills.

Guts looked at Crenshaw and grinned. He held out the bag. “You want to toss in a few?”

Crenshaw shook his head. “No, thanks. Really? This is what you do? You sit and feed the ducks?”

“Don't knock it til you've tried it.”

Guts and the ducks fell into their natural rhythm. He tossed. They nibbled. The sun glistened on the water.

Crenshaw stood up suddenly. “Man, this is driving me nuts. I'm going to take a walk.”

Guts barely acknowledged his departure. The ducks' serene motions, the circles emanating from their soft fluttering, was always mesmerizing. He envied the slow, inevitable certainty of their lives. Being a duck was beautifully simple. You were born a duck, had ducklings, and, no matter how you raised them, they
would grow up to be ducks. With people it was different, painfully different. You could be a chauffeur, for example, and your son could grow up to be a leg-breaker. You could welcome an orphaned teenager into your home, take him to church and to the library, and he could grow up to become someone who kills an innocent man with a shoelace.

Guts fed the ducks until he was out of bread. He stood up. Crenshaw was nowhere in sight. Guts turned gradually, sweeping his gaze past the vigilant fisherwoman, past Mrs. Means and Mrs. Tichenor, past Crusher Boudreau, who was now bounding up and down the softball bleachers, until he spotted Crenshaw on a distant ball field playing with two young boys. Guts strolled toward them until he reached the cyclone-fence backstop behind home plate. He recognized the boys as the younger sons of Reuben Jones. Crenshaw stood at the plate with the younger boy, a wispy youngster in a baseball cap. They both gripped the bat while the older boy, curly-haired and dimpled, wound up and delivered the pitch. With Crenshaw's guidance, the smaller boy made solid contact and sent the ball into center field.

“See?” Crenshaw said. “Keep your eye on the ball, not the pitcher. Follow it all the way out of his glove. See it turning, floating toward you in slow motion, big as the world. You're all set, you're just waiting for it. Then boom!

“Now give me five,” Crenshaw said, extending his palm. The boy slapped it and Crenshaw turned his palm over. “On the black-hand side.” They slapped five again. Crenshaw saw Guts behind the backstop. “Hey, fellas, I'll be right back.”

He smiled at Guts through the fencing. The diamond-shaped holes reminded Guts of the lines on the glass windows in the visitor's boxes in prison.

“Hey Guts, want to play some ball?”

“I'll pass. I wouldn't want to upstage an All-Star.”

Crenshaw pointed at the boys with his thumb. “These boys play Little League over here. I told them I might come see them one day.”

Guts nodded. “I know their father.”

“This is how it used to be for me,” Crenshaw said. “Just me and my brothers in a field. We had a sawed-off broomstick for a bat and a ball made out of rags. We played until it was too dark to see. No fans, no press, no pressure. Just some boys in a field. That's when I fell in love with the game.”

Guts tried to recall a moment when he fell in love with beating people to a pulp. Maybe he'd loved it all along but could never admit it to himself. In contrast, he could clearly recall the first time he knew he was in love with Pearl. It was when he told her he'd been locked up.

Ten years before, police raided an after-hours gambling spot that Guts and Carmel Green had been running. Usually, Goode was tipped beforehand and could get his men away clean. But something had gone wrong, resulting in a snarl-up not even Goode and Grimes could untangle. Guts and Carmel were sent to Joliet for two years. He had Goode's protection, even in jail, and who would have been stupid enough to fuck with Guts Tolliver anyway? His name rang out long before he strolled into the prison yard for the first time. He did his bid like a good soldier and returned to find his spot in the organization waiting for him, along with a small house with the deed in his name, a reward for his loyalty and silence.

“So you've been a prisoner,” Pearl said. He had been sitting at her kitchen table eating banana pudding. She was sitting on his lap naked, feeding it to him. “Well, now you're my prisoner. A prisoner of love, baby, and I'm sentencing you to life.” She stuck her finger into the meringue and sucked it off.

Guts was relieved, but skeptical. “That's all you have to say?”

“What else is there? I know there are lots of bad men in prison. I also know there are men in there who've never done any harm in their lives. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they were forced to defend themselves, or they were mistaken for somebody else, or they were just plain black. My father was one of those—that's right, my father. I can't tell you which men behind bars are bad and which ones don't belong there. But I can tell that you're a good man, even if you've done some bad things.” At first
Guts had thought the glow he felt came from a belly full of good pudding and a lap full of warm woman. Then he realized it was something much more.

“Big Man, you're not even listening,” Crenshaw chided.

Guts came back to reality. “Hmm?”

“I was saying that tonight I choose what we do for fun. You can bring your lady friend.” Crenshaw turned and jogged back toward the boys.

Watching the athlete approach, the younger boy spoke to his brother. “We're playing ball with Rip Crenshaw. Think anyone will believe us?”

“Nope,” his brother said, “not even Mom and Pop.”

While Crenshaw played catch, Guts went looking for LaRue Drinkwater. He hadn't had much on his mind lately besides Pearl, but LaRue had managed to squeeze in at inconvenient moments. Guts had concluded that if he was going to think about someone all the time, that someone should be Pearl. Somehow, he had to nudge LaRue aside and create the space he needed.

“LaRue? Ain't you done enough to her?”

“Come on,” Guts protested. “It's not like that.”

Kevin Hawkins was better known as Hot Link. He sold hot pork sandwiches from a pair of tubs straddling the back wheel of a bicycle he rode all over the North Side. Like Playfair, Hot Link was one of the street-savvy operators who served as eyes and ears for Guts.

“She's about to go to work, never misses it,” Hot Link reported. “She catches the bus at Leffingwell and Cass.” Guts thanked him and he pedaled away.

Guts had kept his eye on LaRue and her two kids over the years. He'd seen her move from one rundown flat to another, noticed her waiting for buses in the early dawn, looking exhausted as she shuffled to some dead-end job. One blistering day, he saw her appeal unsuccessfully to her able-bodied teenage son before shouldering a heavy sack of dirty clothes down the street to the coin laundry. Later, when Playfair got hold of some washers and dryers, Guts arranged to have a pair of the appliances delivered to the woman's address. And he convinced Gabe Patterson to meet
her son and give him a guided tour of the boys club. Periodically, he ordered Nifty to leave sacks of groceries and the occasional bag of cash on her back porch.

Cecil Drinkwater, her husband, had been a loudmouth, an idiot, a drunk. He owed Goode no money and hadn't interfered in the operation in any way; his only mistake had been to tease Guts in public on a day when Guts was off his game. It was the anniversary of his father's death, and Guts was chatting with Roscoe, the shine parlor proprietor. Roscoe had known Chauncey Tolliver since both men were boys.

Already juiced at 11 a.m., Drinkwater had compared Guts to Hayseed the Magnificent, a huge bearded wrestler whose resemblance to Guts could not be denied. Guts interrupted his conversation just long enough to unlace his boot and strangle Drinkwater with the string. Roscoe pleaded with him as he dragged the dying man across the floor, told him the man was only kidding. But it was too late. Guts had broken his code, such as it was. Until then, killing had only been what he did on the job.

Guts parked across the street from the bus stop. He walked over to LaRue. She was small, tired, and looked much older than her years. She leaned against the wall behind her, under the shade of a shuttered drugstore's faded canopy. LaRue was wrapped up tighter than an Arab in the desert, but Guts was still able to see the thick, horrible rash splattered across her fingers and the backs of her hands.

Guts tipped his hat. “Afternoon,” he said. LaRue looked straight ahead. “I'm worn out, mister,” she said. “You come here to say something or do something, best get it over with.”

Guts looked down and saw the knife poking from her sleeve. It was a dull butter knife, couldn't slice toast.

“I knew your husband,” he said.

“You mean you killed him.”

Guts said nothing.

“You're the one that leaves us things,” she continued. “Groceries. Money.”

“How come you didn't say anything?” Guts asked. “How come you didn't tell the police?”

“Everybody in there was scared you'd come after them. I wasn't no different. I had two kids to raise.”

Guts waited. A lazy-looking mutt ambled out of the alley bordering the bus stop. It crossed the street, lifted its leg, and pissed on Guts's tire. A slight breeze carried the whimsical notes of an ice-cream truck from two blocks away.