The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man (6 page)

“I sure wish Perry was here,” he grumbled.

“Why, Daddy?” Byron asked in a very respectful voice.

“Well,” he directed his answer to his wife, “he's gon' be livin' in this place too, so I don't see why we couldn't all sit down like folks and decide what we was goin' to do, together.”

Diane, slightly exasperated, pursed her lips. “Now Nathan, we've been over this fifty times in the last two months. Perry has already told us he's gettin' married and that he won't be livin' with us, so I don't think what he would have to say would be too important, one way or the other.”

Nathan mumbled into his mustache and blew a thick patch of smoke across the table.

Mother and son exchanged meaningful glances.

“Nathan, we've got to get this straightened out right here 'n now, for all time. We have a home paid down on, we've made all the legal arrangements and everything … Now just tell me, do you or don't you want to move out of this lousy ass neighborhood and into this nice home out south, or not? Which is it, damnit?!”

Father and son both reacted, slightly shocked to hear the lady of the house use profanity, an unusual act for her.

“Awwww bay-beee,” Nathan began, trying to cool her out.

“Don't awwww bay-beee me, Nathan Holt! We've been up 'n down, in 'n out about this thing, and all you come up with is negative vibes, now let's get it ironed out now, once 'n for all!”

Nathan straightened up a little, determined not to be bullied. “Ahhemmm, Byron, leave us in here for a lil' while, me and your mother have some important business to discuss.”

Byron, Momma's boy, nineteen years old and feeling older, bristled slightly at his father for the second time in his life, confident that his mother was going to back him up. “Why should I have to leave? This concerns me just as much as it does anybody. I mean, like, after all, I'm still livin' at home, and I'm gon' be helpin' to make the payments 'n everything.”

Diane Holt shot protective words between them quickly, preventing Nathan from heaving the table onto Byron's rebellious head. “He's right, Nathan! right! right down to the bone! This concerns the three of us more than anybody me, you and Byron, he's right! Whatever you and I have to say should be said, right here 'n now, in front of By',” she concluded, patting Byron's shoulder protectively.

Nathan Holt, his eyes squinched half shut with anger, slowly relaxed, seeing, despite his urge to kick Byron's ass, the validity of her statement.

“Awright! awright! I'll say what I got to say. Number one, I told you a long time ago, Diane, that I didn't give a mule's fart for the idea of ownin' no house, nowheres, bein' stuck for no twenty year mortage …”

She interrupted, bearing down, “Yeah, uhhn huh, that's true! but you did agree, if I remember correctly, that it wasn't makin' too much sense to keep on payin' the kind o' money for rent that we've been payin' for the last twelve years.”

“With all the rats 'n roaches,” Byron added helpfully.

“Number two, if you all will kindly let me go on?” he continued sarcastically. “Number two, I was against the idea of movin' way out south where this place is, with all them ol' saddidy niggers 'cause …”

Diane, on top of his semi-arguments unmercifully, “Yes, Nathan, you
were
against the idea of movin' out south, at first but then you rejected the northside 'cause you said you didn't know anybody over there. You said you didn't like the westside because of what you called ‘all them crazy ass Miss'ssippi niggers runnin' 'round with switchblades.'

“We don't have anything but the lake to the east of us, so actually it was your idea, to begin with, to move out south, if we were goin' to buy property anywhere.”

“She's right, Daddy,” Byron added solemnly, feeling more heroic with every moment that passed without his father attacking him.

Nathan Holt stubbed out the fag-end of his cigarette, lit another one and stared out of their front room window, pissed off. The el train, passing by a couple blocks away, shot past his view and gave the apartment its customary tremor. The squalling of a police siren, shotgun blasts, or the backfire from someone's car, coupled to an obscene argument being had on the sidewalk below their window filtered up to their ears during Father Holt's silent interim.

“Well?” he asked finally. “Whatchall want me t' say?”

“Tell Momma you dig the idea of us ownin' a pad of our own, Daddy!” Byron blurted out, an earnest look on his thin, sensitive face.

Mrs. Holt waved away the suggestion with a fluttered movement of her hands, her head lowered sadly. “No, no … By', don't ask your father to do no such thing …” She paused, as though searching for something to say that she couldn't find the words for, heavy old woman's lines suddenly etched in her face.

“You know something?” she continued thoughtfully, speaking to no one in particular. “Just about all my life I've had someone accuse me of wantin' more than they thought I was entitled to. When I was young, down home, with my light skin and what they used to call ‘good hair,' colored folks was on my case 'cause they thought I was tryin' to be white, while the peckerwoods called me an uppidy nigger wench who was always fulla sass.…”

“Diane!?”

She ignored her husband's attempted interruption, speaking through it as though she were in a trance. “Then, later on, after we moved up north and I had a chance to go to a junior college for almost two years, I had people tell me that it didn't make sense for a black girl to be wastin' time in school 'cause all I was gonna do was get married 'n have babies anyway.…”

“Momma?”

“I resented that for a long time, that is, 'til I got married, got lucky would be a better way to put it, and had a couple beautiful sons.…”

The apartment had developed an eerie look, lit in the front room by the flickering neon lights from outside, from within from the kitchen light shining through the hallway.

“Nathan?” she veered off at him suddenly.

“Yeah, baby,” he responded in a low voice.

“You remember what it was like for us when we first got married, how hard things were right after the Depression?”

Nathan nodded, his face a glacial African mask in the dim light.

She looked at Byron warmly, mother's memories swelling her mind. “Raising two screamin', hungry at one point, I thought Perry was gonna eat me alive. People were havin' it harder than they'd ever had it, but we kept right on pushin' yes indeed, we kept right on pushin'.”

Byron folded his arms and leaned on the table, staring at his mother reverently.

She reached across the table and placed her hand on top of her man's big work-veined paw. “We kept right on pushin' because I have a man who has never let me down.”

Nathan patted her hand, stroked it on top of his, warmly.

She spoke directly to Byron, “He's made fun of me, from time to time, about listenin' to classical music, white folks' music, and going to art shows or doin' a few other things that we don't see eye to eye on, but,” and here she turned back to her husband, “he's never let me down. Now, after we've gone through all the trials 'n tribulations to make ends meet, fought with your folks and mine … yours, 'cause they didn't think I was good enough for you, and mine 'cause they thought I was too good for you … after we've gone through all that, in addition to raisin' two wonderful sons in the middle of all this.”

She swept her hands out to embrace the grimy apartment, shaking slightly again from another train, the wandering roach trekking up the wall behind her and the hip rats patiently waiting for them to split so that they could check out the scene for leftovers.

“Don't worry, baby,” Nathan reassured her grimly, before she could go on, “I'm not gon' let you down this time either. When're those people movin' out of our house?”

Byron resisted the urge to go around the corner of the table and kiss his father, knowing he would never understand.

Mother Holt, taking it all in stride, replied, easing away from the table with their dessert saucers, “Next week. We can start packin' Friday.”

Byron followed his mother from the table into the kitchen, gave her a peck on the cheek and moved on to his room, George Cain's
Blueschild Baby
waiting to be read. Nathan Holt sat in the darkened front room thinking evil thoughts.

Bet the goddamned President would be happy as a pigeon with a perch on city hall to see me settin' here in the dark, with his save-the-energy bullshit.

“Nathan! I'm goin' to bed, you comin'?” his love called from the kitchen seductively.

“In a few minutes, honey,” he called back, his baritone huskier than usual, and lit another cigarette. Why in the world should I
not
be wantin' to move to a more decent place? he questioned himself as another train rumbled past. He sat smoking, fighting with the question, rejecting all of his old objections one by one. Friends? Shit! I can see them on the weekend. Or whenever. Being farther away from work? Transportation was better out south, and you wouldn't have to fight a bunch of young gangsters with no respect for their elders for a seat Well, not all the time anyway.

And what was really wrong about owning somethin' of your own anyway? Even if it did take twenty years?

Perry popped in, eyes shining and pants front stiff from a half hour of declared love and wonderful promises.

“Heyyy, Dad, what's happenin'?” he asked in his usual flighty manner. “Why you sittin' up here in the dark, fuses blown again?”

Nathan Holt stubbed his cigarette out and strolled past his number one son growling, “Where were you when I needed you, boy?”

Perry followed his departure through the narrow hallway leading to his parents' bedroom, extremely puzzled by his old man's morose question.

Wowwww wonder what that was all about? Oh well, wonder if Momma left me somethin' in the stove?

Lubertha tiptoed through the short hallway, heading for her room.

“Lubertha!” her father's gruff voice stopped her, caused her to roll her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.

“Yes, Daddy?”

He leaned around the corner separating the hallway from the kitchen, in his tattered, plaid, horse collar, terry cloth robe. “C'mon on in here 'n have a beer with me,” he said to her, the invitation sounding more like an order.

She slouched through the hallway, tired from a full day's work and four hours of Club business. She sat across the kitchen table from her father, watching him pop the top on two beers. She smiled her thanks at him as he pushed the can out to her with gruff grace.

Fathers are really funny, she thought, looking over the edge of her can at her own. The beer ritual, for example, had started exactly on her twenty-first birthday Prior to that she had received every threat that an authoritarian like Ed Franklin could hand out on the subject of intoxicants of all kinds. Since that time they had been into a jug of Jack together a few times.

“You up pretty late, ain't you, Daddy?”

He belched twice and stroked the suds from his walrus mustache, filled with gray hair, Lubertha noticed, a little surprised at the sight. “Couldn't sleep,” he answered in his usual, laconic fashion. They matched sips a few times, each waiting for the other one to lead.

She watched him spin his beer can around slowly in the wet ring it had made on the table, knowing that he wanted to rap, but that his basically conservative nature wouldn't allow it to happen, not right off, anyway.

“How's Kwendi?” he asked, leading off finally.

The thought slipped through her head before she answered That's really sweet, ol' man really sweet of you to ask that.

“He's doin' o.k. I got a long letter from him Friday.”

Ed Franklin tensed his jaw muscles and took a long dip. “You know somethin'? I been doin' a lil' thinkin' about that conversation we had the other night.…”

Lubertha stifled a full-fledged grin, knowing that he would have had to do more than just a “lil' thinkin'” on the subjects they had tripped through a six pack on.

“First off, I'm gon' say this, I ain't never been 'shamed to admit when I was wrong.”

“What were you wrong about, Daddy?” she asked sweetly.

“Well, a couple thangs,” he admitted cautiously, getting another brew from the box “You want another one o' these?”

She quickly drained her can and nodded yes. It looked suspiciously like a three can discussion brewing. A bit of her weariness dissolved with the prospect of rappin' with her ol' man.

“O.k., now then,” he continued, “I still don't go 'long with all the funny styled ideas you and Kwendi and y'all's bunch believe in, but I go 'long with what you was sayin' 'bout the political parties … there really ain't too daggoned much difference between the Democrats 'n the Republicans.…”

“What made you reach that conclusion?”

“Well,” he searched for the right answer for a few seconds, “hell, I been studyin' 'em all my life.”

“But what made you come to that conclusion?” she persisted.

“Let's just say I been studyin' 'em but I hadn't been thinkin' about 'em.”

They smiled at each other and took unison sips.

“But anyway,” he went on, lowering the can, “even if there ain't too much difference 'tween 'em, we still need 'em.”

Ohhh ohhh, here we go, Lubertha thought, knowing that he was egging her into one of their pet discussions, one that she was forcing him to pay more and more attention to all the time. She placed her can on the table and leaned toward him, the cords in her throat pulsing out.

“Daddy, you know that ain't true.”

“What ain't true?”