Telegraph Avenue (51 page)

“Y
ou can ride with us,” a voice was saying, sounded like the undertaker. “Funeral can’t start without the deceased.”

In reply, only a silence, partial, intensified by the sounds of departure from the front of the store, chairs scraping, people offering rides, vouching for their own or somebody else’s sobriety. Burial-suit thugs from the funeral home handing out maps to the grave:
Miss, a map?

Titus zipped his pants. The way to play it, saunter out of the bathroom into the workroom, alone. Kid coming out of the toilet zipping up his Levi’s, so what? He communicated his intentions to Julie by means of Special Ops hand signs:
I, turn out light. You, stay. I, go, create diversion. You, count thirty, exit bathroom, slip out the back.
Julie nodded:
Understood
. That turned out not to be the case, because the minute Titus switched off the light, Julie just went and opened the bathroom door. Eased it open, at least a show of stealth, half an inch, an inch.

Then the answer: “I’ll give you five minutes.”

His father. Archy. Tightness in his voice. Fronting. Bored with the undertaker, bored with using boredom as a front. Angry, tired.

Titus and Julie exchanged a look in the darkness: change of plan. The lonely science of eavesdropping, another mad love they shared. Two of Julie’s fingers keeping the door open that one little inch.

“All I need is five
seconds
,” the undertaker said. “To say you are the stupidest, most self-defeating negro I have ever seen. And my experience in that category is long and bitter.”

Archy said, “Let me save you the five seconds, then, ’cause I already know that.”

“How about this, then? You have played yourself now.”

“No surprise there, either.”

Archy was leaning against one of the rolling bin tables they had humped into the workroom that morning, his wide ass in those ugly black suit pants pinned against a corner of the Disco section. On the tab of the white section divider behind him were written, intriguingly, the words
YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA
. Titus briefly imagined the warm, candy-flavored music that might go by that name.

“I hope you were not counting on going to work for Gibson Goode anytime soon. Because as far you are concerned, Gibson Goode has moved on.”

Archy Stallings looked uncomfortable and unhappy, arms crossed, scowling, sharp corner of the record bin poking him in the ass. Maybe he was using the pain to focus himself, keep himself on his guard. Titus was not sure how loaded or sober the man was.

He had made his funeral speech, flowing all over the place, Indians, Vietnam, gumbo, Sly Stallone. At the end of his disquisition on what an undifferentiated mess life was to him, the man had choked up. In that instant, Titus had played a scene in his mind: The pregnant lady got up, put her arms around her baby’s daddy, he put his hand on the giant-size belly, and they decided that in the end, as long as life was going to be an undifferentiated mess, they might as well not fight it anymore. Make a place in the mess for a baby, a baby who would have a mother and a father, one small victory for the good kind of doubt and confusion over the bad. But in reality, when the movie in Titus’s mind came to an end, it turned out to be Julie’s father, Nat, giving Archy the hug of consolation. The box of tissues got passed around.

Then there was some drinking, for sure. Beer, wine, Cokes. People drank it all. They ate up the food, bum-rushed the buffet like freed prisoners, bees on a melting Popsicle. An hour later, it was all gone. A lone can of tonic water floated in a cooler, untouched among the ice cubes for quite some time, and eventually found its way into the company of a bottle of gin that never made a public appearance. The last Saturday afternoon of the summer went about its business, and it got to be time to ride on over to the cemetery, if you were going.

When the food was gone, the undertaker gave out instructions to his nephews and organized the procession to the cemetery, suggesting to some people that they let others do the driving, speaking in a kindly whisper far from the warlock voice he was using on Archy Stallings. Then the lid got lowered for the last time on Cochise Jones, and Titus played a scene in which he persuaded a few trusted confederates to join him in a heist operation to steal the clothes off the dead man before they were lost forever to rot and darkness and oblivion. Trap the hearse between a couple of tractor-trailers at an intersection, pull up in another hearse, switch caskets. Never let that beautiful thing, the Aztec number, go wasted in the ground. By the end of the scene he was cutting in his head, Titus found himself deep into creeping himself out, picturing a piebald cadaver rotting in the stainless leisure suit. Thing was made of space-age materials, no worm was ever going to touch it. Eternal as a Twinkie.

“So, you and he,” the undertaker was saying, “you are calling it quits. Is that what I am to understand?”

“I know you would be happy about that.”

“I would only be partway happy,” the undertaker said. “Which is the same as not happy at all.”

“We close the store, Nat’s bound to drop this whole protest thing. You won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Your friend already did his damage to me,” the undertaker said. “Now Rod Abreu has come sniffing around this whole deal, acting to the world like he is trying to eighty-six it. Letting Gibson Goode think he’s an enemy and needs to be kept close, as the saying goes. Needs to be
won over
. Right now, today, Rod Abreu is sitting at the Coliseum, letting G Bad pick up the tab for the nachos.”

Titus could not see the undertaker’s face, only the steely curl of the pompadour thing at the back of his head. But from the sound of his voice, he must be looking disgusted, contemptuous. It was an easy enough expression to imagine on the undertaker’s face.

“Tell me this,” he said, “if you close your store, curl up in a ball like a little pill bug, what are you going to do for a job to support your child?”

Only a second before, Archy had seemed fucked up, puzzled. He had this pudding look to his cheeks. Now it was all concrete and stone.

“I am going to see Mr. Jones on home,” he said. “And we ain’t finished doing that yet. I don’t need to ride with you. I have my own car.”

“Do you have a map to the gravesite? You’re going to need a map.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Mountain View, two hundred and twenty acres. Hundred and fifty thousand people buried there. Five, six funerals a day. You got the Jews in one place, Chinese over there. Black folks sprinkled all through it. Talk about Brokeland Creole. Mountain View Cemetery, that’s the only place you ever actually going to find it. But you need a map. You need
guidance
.”

“Oh, okay. You’re going all Jedi on me now.”

“Hear me out.”

“Going Morpheus.”

“You don’t deserve it, boy. But I am still willing to help you. We can get this mess straightened out. Luther has something I want. Nothing crazy, illegal, not drugs, guns, stolen goods, none of that. All right? Or yes, the thing was stolen, but it was stolen
from me
! It’s mine! I mean, seriously.” His voice broke, raspy almost to the point of a wheeze. “It’s mine, he has it, and I want it back. I have money, Luther’s broke. I figure maybe you’ve heard one or two things about me over the years that might have planted a seed in your imagination. When you are an undertaker and you come from a whole family of undertakers, people are going to hold all kinds of wild beliefs about the way you go about your business. So I want to reassure you. I don’t want to hurt Luther, do not want to mess with him, the Lord knows, Archy, I want nothing to
do
with that man any more than you do. That old boy wore me out a long time before he got around to wearing you out. I am a respectable businessman, I sit on the city council. I am not a gangster, and I know what people say about me, but it’s lies and rumors and folks letting their imaginations run away with them. One time when I was a young man, I made a mistake. A long time ago, right out of the navy. I made a mistake, but I was lucky, and one way and another, with some help from your father, credit where credit is due, I was able to put it behind me. Stopped running wild and acting a fool all the time. Got serious about life and settled down and did good for myself. Things did not go so well for your father. The whole time I was rising, he was sinking down. For the past ten, twelve years, he’s been coming around here, sometimes sober, most of the time so high or so drug-sick, he could not even really talk. But most of the time he managed to get his palm out, and I always crossed it with some cash for him.”

“He was blackmailing you.”

The undertaker didn’t respond to that. “Everything gets put where it belongs,” he said. “You can still find yourself standing behind the information desk in the Beats Department at the Dogpile store on Telegraph Avenue, dropping science on the youngsters when they stop in to pick up the new Lil’ Bow Wow, getting that employee discount to bring home one of those
Baby Mozart
DVDs, teach your new child to play the cello while he’s sleeping.”

“And I have to do what?”

“Son, I know you know where he is.”

“I honestly don’t.”

Crouched down in the bathroom with Julie leaning in over him, Titus heard the man lying. At the body shop, it had made him furious to see the contempt his father showed toward his own pops. Now Titus felt sorry for the dude, so twisted up with hate that he could not even let his poor, old kung fu ex-junkie daddy get paid back money he was free and clear owed.

“Have it your way, then,” the undertaker said.

For the first time, you could tell, Archy was thinking. Going back over it all. Making up his mind to do what he was going to do.

“I have no reason to want to enable that man,” he said. “And I have known you all my life, Brother Flowers. But I can’t help feeling like I’m seeing a side of you I never really believed was true.”

“Just conducting business.”

“Nah. You’re an undertaker. A mortician. Burying a dead man, supposed to be more than just business.”

“Well—”

“You never once told me, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Mr. Jones was a fine man and a sharp dresser,’ or anything of that type.”

“Well, I
am
sorry,” the undertaker said.

But by that time, man was already on his way out the workroom door, headed for the cemetery and whistling “It’s Too Late.”

L
ook at this. Here the boys come out of the bathroom, Alfalfa and Stymie. The only thing missing, the little eye-patch pit bull. Both of them with their eyes wide, boy detectives, the black one saying nothing, the Jaffe kid all,
We know where he is.

“You were eavesdropping,” said Chan Flowers. “That is wrong, morally and ethically. Every civilized people from the dawn of time has recognized that fact.”

“We didn’t mean to.” Julie, his name was, a girl’s name for a girlish boy. “We’re sorry.”

Flowers said the one thing there was to say to an eavesdropper. “What do you think you heard?”

Julie said they had not really heard anything, just that Flowers was trying to find Luther Stallings to pay him back the money he owed Luther. Also that, while they had been sworn to secrecy, they would be willing to act as messengers.

“Messengers? What do you mean, messengers? Why do I need a messenger? Can’t you just tell me where he is?”

The boys exchanged looks. Flowers was busy managing his impatience, a skill he had acquired without ever quite internalizing, but despite his irritation, he did not fail to detect a spark of genuine friendship between them. It astonished him.

“We heard there was maybe, some kind of”—the boy turned bright red—“uh, beef.”

Flowers asked Titus, didn’t he know how to say anything? “You two remind me of the old man and that parrot,” he said. “Frick and Frack.”

He glanced through the door, across the deserted store to the front door. Feyd and Walter, Bankwell waiting in the hearse. Time to start the parade.

“Fine,” Flowers said. “I tell you what.” He reached into his breast pocket for his checkbook. Then and there, leaning on a stack of records, he wrote out a check in the amount of $25,000.00, payable to Luther Stallings. Signed it with a flourish that he hoped implied magnanimity. “There is no beef,” he said. “That was all a long time ago and far, far away. You can tell him I said that. Bygones be bygones.”

“Forgiveness is an attribute of the brave,” Titus said.

Julie almost smiled, looking pleased and dubious. But Flowers recognized it as one of forty-nine Proverbs, Meditations, and Words of Comfort printed in the last two pages of every funeral program that Flowers & Sons handed out.

“I’m going to have to be careful around you,” he said, handing the check over to Titus. “I can see that. Here. You take that to him. Put it in your wallet. You carry a wallet, don’t you?”

No, of course he did not, just a dense wad of small bills. So Alfalfa put the check into a toy plastic wallet he carried around. Flowers waited until this business had been seen to, concerned about the fate of that check, which he had postdated and would cancel first thing Monday morning.

“That’s no strings attached, right? He doesn’t have to forgive me. It’s his money, he can do what he wants with it. Got that? We good? All right. Now, I know you boys want to ride with the body.”

H
aving laid aside their frogged jackets this once in favor of the drab and Day-Glo splendors of the Jones Memorial Leisure Suit Library, Bomp and Circumstance cut loose. They played “Nearer My God to Thee.” They played “The Old Rugged Cross.” Their order was good as they led the caravan along Piedmont Avenue to the cemetery gates. Perhaps the brass sounded a touch pallid, like the headlights of the cars in the cortege. Maybe the drumbeat got lost in the heat and hum of the afternoon. But once the casket had been fed by the belts into the ground, they turned from the graveside, the bass trombone taking up the opening groove of “Redbonin,’ ” which had gone to number thirty-two on the R&B charts in July 1972, and began, as promised, to swing.