Them (3 page)

Barlowe considered that as he studied the two white men. They sat there a moment, taking notes and talking. Finally, the car cranked and drove away.

It was odd, Barlowe thought. Long before the planes struck, he had felt like he was under surveillance. His whole life he'd felt people—
them
—watching like they expected him to do something violent or strange. In a weird way it would seem almost fitting if the suspicion that had dogged him so long somehow got formalized.

The boys at the store swore Barlowe was paranoid, and to a certain extent he agreed. He was born here but he couldn't recall a time when he felt he belonged. He had never been outside the country, yet he didn't feel safe inside it, either. In fact, he felt downright vulnerable. And now all the public hysteria had left him even more on edge.

Later, Barlowe ate some pork chops and macaroni and cheese and washed the dishes. Afterward, he sat down in the living room and picked up the newspaper. As he read, a pang of loneliness whipped through him. After all the musty manliness in jail, he craved a woman's scent and softness. He thought about Nell:

“You too cozy.”

Normally, Nell's words would have rolled off his back like so much rain, but her timing—and Barlowe's history—made them stick. He would be turning forty soon, and he had begun to ponder what that meant, or what it was
supposed
to mean. Somehow, forty seemed miles apart from thirty-nine. At forty, he figured, a man should be firmly established and grounded. He was approaching the fourth decade of his life and the truth was, he hadn't yet figured out how to live.

Still, Nell had no right to put him down the way she'd done. It proved she wasn't right for him. He might have seen it before now if his two heads hadn't collided so.

Now he shifted focus back to the strange white men he'd seen earlier, and he was reminded that Nell wasn't his only problem. His court case was scheduled two months out. Then he'd have to face Caesar. His court-appointed attorney predicted he'd likely get off with a lightweight fine. All he had to do, the lawyerman said, was go before the judge and explain why he busted up that stamp machine. He made it sound easy as pie, but Barlowe feared otherwise. How could he explain to a judge, a
judge
, the way flags affected him?

Ever since the planes struck, he couldn't get away from them. People hung flags—the biggest ones they could find!—on porches and trees in front of their houses; draped them from buildings in every big city and poot-butt town. Folks wore flag T-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets and hats; plastered them across the sides of garbage trucks. TV newscasters wore flag pins on their freakin coat lapels! Flags screamed from huge billboards and fluttered from gigantic poles in front of car dealerships. One day, Barlowe passed a bunch of long-haired bikers—a motorcycle gang!—with flags pasted across their sleeveless leather jackets.

Is crazy.

Barlowe wasn't sure how other folks felt. Maybe they felt the same as him and just weren't saying. Who knew these days? The trip to jail had taught him one thing, though: He would have to exercise more self-control. He would have to, or he wouldn't last long, not with all the paranoia since the planes struck.

He got up to go take a leak. It would be nice, he thought, standing over the commode, if he had someplace safe to go. Not someplace far or foreign or isolated, like jail. He never wanted to go back there. It might be nice to live beneath the radar and, at the same time, be free to move about in the open air.

He flushed the toilet and returned to the living room, chewing on that idea. Then he considered something: He actually felt halfway safe on the ragged patch of land where he now stood. He cherished having his own dark, separate corner of the world, where he wouldn't be judged or watched or pushed around.

Funny; that notion hadn't come to him like that before. It came now as a kind of dawning, an epiphany. He was at least partly insulated in the neighborhood, nestled among people who looked like him. These were
his
people. They were all he had. These were
his
people. These were the people of the Old Fourth Ward.

N
early two months to the day after the arrest, Barlowe stepped outside the courthouse, where blistering sunlight bore down hard. It was a searing June heat, a bit like the anguish burning inside his chest.

Driving home, he sighed and contemplated the verdict: Guilty. Disorderly conduct and destruction of property. The judge ordered him to pay for the broken stamp machine, then pointed a crooked finger and lectured him about the sanctity of the law.

“…You understand?”

“Fug you.” That's what Barlowe had a mind to say. “Fug you
and
the law.”

He would have loved to say it and storm from the courtroom, leaving the words dangling in the air to marinate. But he kept quiet. With an elbow prod from his lawyer, he shot His Honor a stony stare and nodded, yes. The gavel struck, and it was over.

Now the strain of holding back, of not speaking his mind, sloshed around in Barlowe's stomach like sour milk. That judge had lectured him like he was a child. He was a man, a grown man deserving of a man's respect. He was a man, yet he had been unable, unwilling maybe, to pay the steep price to demand that Caesar properly reverence him.

He didn't feel good about that. He didn't feel good at all.

Beyond the verdict, though, there was one small comfort to be had. He had been doing some thinking lately. He had been thinking that a man don't always have to eat what he's fed in life. If he wants, a man can fix a meal of his own choosing. Barlowe planned to get to work on that; he planned to get on it soon.

For now he craved distraction, something to help him get past the public lashing he'd endured in court. For starters, a pair of lotto tickets might boost the spirits some. And then, maybe, the camaraderie of friends.

He reached home and stepped across the street. Nearby, a group of children played along the curb. They uncorked a fire hydrant and squealed gleefully as bursts of water cooled them off.

Barlowe went to the corner store, the Auburn Avenue Mini-Mart. The size of the average matchbox house, the one-story, wood-frame store was stocked from floor to ceiling with everything short of bicycles and auto parts. Among the mini-mart's most loyal clients were three men (Barlowe called them the elders) who lived as boarders in the shotgun rooming house next to the store. On most days, they hauled rickety kitchen chairs outside and held court in the shade of a maple tree. They came out early mornings to critique the rush-hour traffic and retreated indoors at noon to escape the smog or sun. Like clockwork, they returned in the cool of evening time.

Grizzled old coots, the elders were the self-appointed eyes and ears of the Old Fourth Ward. Nothing much escaped their notice. They were quite nosy and, they thought, keenly perceptive, too. Rough-edged and straightforward as rumbling trains, these were men Barlowe could talk with and be listened to in the way he most needed to be heard. Which is to say, without judgment, and sometimes, without reply.

All his life he had preferred the company of older men. People back in Milledgeville had said it was because he was an old soul himself, a change-of-life baby, born when his mama was going through menopause. So he joined the elders around flameless campfires, where they spoke, sometimes through gritted teeth, about matters that pertain to life and men. They shared fantastic stories, about good, pretty women they'd conquered and lost, or fistfights or poker games they'd managed to win. And sometimes, if the liquor loosened their manly restraints, they even shared deep regrets—over jobs quit, rejected or yanked away; over words spoken too hastily, too harshly or not at all; over what might have been if not for roadblocks thrown up by
them
.

At the moment, the one called Ely had gone inside the mini-mart for liquor, thanks to a newly arrived Social Security check. His comrades, Amos and Willie, sat outdoors waiting with plastic champagne glasses.

As Ely browsed, the door swung open, and a brooding Barlowe came plodding in. He was trailed a few steps behind by Lucretia Wiggins, the neighborhood diva. Barlowe said hey, but Ely didn't hear. He cut a sharp eye at Lucretia, who drifted quietly down the second aisle. Ely could have bought his whiskey and left right away. Instead, he scooted to another aisle and pretended to consider some sardines and soda crackers on the shelf.

He often saw Lucretia switching her pear-shaped bottom through the neighborhood on the way to and from her mama's house. But Ely rarely got a chance to get close up on her.

While he spied, she glided to the last aisle, her trim hips bouncing softly on flat-heeled shoes. When she breezed past Ely on the way to the register he noticed she held a pack of hair extensions in one hand and clutched something tightly in the other fist. Ely moved in closer and stood near the crates of bottled water as Lucretia paid the store owner, Juliette. When she left, Ely's eyes trailed her firm bottom through the door.

He bought a pint of Wild Turkey, then rushed outside to his friends. He sat down and prepared to pour himself a drink, rolling his big false teeth around in his head.

“Eh! Y'all see Eye Candy come through heah?”

No response. The boys resented that he'd taken so long to bring the spirits. Ely downed a few swigs and peered at Amos, who blithely waved at the mailman across the street.

“That gurl oughta be shamed a hurself.” Ely leaned forward, pushing his teeth outward from the gums. The teeth were uncomfortable, mainly because they weren't fitted for him. Ely had bought them from a low-rate dentist who'd had them made for another client. When the client died unexpectedly, the dentist offered them on sale to Ely, no extra charge for installation, of course.

Now Barlowe came outside, carefully studying his lotto sheets. Amos and Willie prepared to start a game of checkers.

“Barlowe,” Amos called to him while Willie set up the pieces. “How did yore court case go?”

“It went.”

They all took that to mean the topic was shut down for the day. Willie moved a checker piece and changed the subject.

“What that gurl oughta be shamed for, Ely, wearin them britches tight like that?”

“I ain't studin the britches. I'm talkin bout what she
bought
in there.”

“Wha she buy?”

Ely sipped from his glass and let the warm liquor glide down real slow. Then he winked at Barlowe, who was pouring himself a drink.

“Don't look at me,” said Barlowe. “I didn't see nothin to speak about.”

“Ely, go on and tell us, gotdammit,” barked Amos. “You done started now.”

Amos had a scraggly beard and a shock of salt-and-pepper wool that looked like an Afro but lacked enough symmetry to call it that. He topped it off with a baseball cap, which he now removed and used to wipe his round forehead.

Ely rolled his eyes and set his glass down easy, taking his sweet time.

“Come on, Ely. Wha she buy?”

When he could no longer stand his own suspense, Ely leaned forward and whispered: “Rubbers.”

The men's eyes widened bright as full moons.
“Rubbers?!”

“Yeah. The spensive kind.”

Willie grinned. “I ain't got no problem wit that. I jus wish she was buyin em for
me
.”

Ely reared back. “You cain't do nothin wit that. Young gurl like that would bust yore heart. You'd haveta turn her over to ol Barlowe there.”

Barlowe beamed, thinking that might not be such a bad idea. By now, the liquor had soothed his torment some. He flung the court case from his head and turned his attention to all the rusty bravado being tossed around. He threw down another drink and talked awhile, then left the elders and started home.

Heading up the sidewalk, his thoughts were jarred by something he picked up from the corner of his eye. There was a white man knocking at the house next door. When no one answered, the man left and paced up and down the sidewalk, carrying a legal pad. He appeared to be writing down house addresses.

“Who is he?”
Barlowe wondered,
“A salesman? A detective stalking somebody on the run?”

He watched the man a moment longer, then tossed it from his mind and rushed on home. He had an important meeting coming up.

 

William Crawford stepped into the living room and stood by the doorway like he intended to keep the conversation short.

“Sit down, Mr. Crawford.” Barlowe waved an ink-stained hand toward the couch and set a bowl of stale peanuts on the coffee table. “Have a seat right there.”

It seemed strange saying that to the man who owned the house he rented. Still, he needed practice. This was how you did business with white people.

Crawford sat, reluctantly, and slid a thumb and forefinger under his chin. He had no real chin to speak of, which made his face look like it was hanging on the edge of a cliff, or of a thought, perhaps pondering a way to squeeze an extra dime from some person or circumstance. A retired air traffic controller, Crawford dabbled in real estate. He owned a few houses in the Old Fourth Ward.

“Now, son,” he said, “what can I do for you today?”

“I asked you to come over cause I wanna talk.”

Crawford said nothing. He took off his tinted gold-wire-rimmed glasses and wiped a sweaty brow. He didn't really need the glasses. He used them to shade his eyes, much like a poker player. The eyes moved all the time, like he was thinking hard, always plotting ways to add a few more coins to his pockets.

“I'm forty now,” Barlowe declared. “I been thinkin is time to start settlin down.”

“Good.” Crawford waited, certain there was more to come.

“Thas why I wonted to talk—about the house.”

“The house?” Crawford slid forward and clasped his fat fingers. “What's wrong with the house?”

“Nothin. Nothin's wrong with the house. I like livin here. I like this place a lot. In fact, I like it so much that I wanna buy.”

Crawford studied him closely. Barlowe guessed he was calculating, maybe crunching numbers. After a moment, Crawford shook his head.

“To be honest with you, Barlowe, I don't know. You're a good man and all, but I don't know about breaking up my property. See, that house is parta my portfolio…I don't think you understand how much a house like this is worth nowadays.”

Worth?
Barlowe looked into the old man's eyes with the certain conviction that Crawford couldn't possibly grasp the gravity of his desires. Crawford may have known the assessed value of the place he owned, but Barlowe doubted that he knew, or even cared to know, its history, which could hardly be quantified in dollar bills.

Such was the case with the Old Fourth Ward. When the neighborhood was first built, whites lived in most of the area, especially up on the northern end of Randolph Street. In the 1920s, blacks following factory jobs moved down on the opposite end, near Auburn Avenue. To keep the boundaries clear, whites changed the name of their end of Randolph to Glen Iris Drive. When blacks kept coming, white folks hauled tail out of town. Blacks moved into the fine Queen Anne cottages, bungalows and shotgun houses and claimed the place for themselves. The main drag on Auburn Avenue eventually came to be widely known as “the richest Negro street in the world.”

In time, though, the ward suffered as black tax dollars were steered to the white areas in Atlanta. City neglect and more integration gradually siphoned middle-class blacks from the neighborhood. As the single-family homes, duplexes and apartment buildings fell into disrepair, the Old Fourth Ward declined.

In the late '80s, a smattering of blacks began trickling back. By the time Barlowe Reed showed up, twitchy and desperate, a decade later, blacks had begun a sturdy push to revive the ward.

Barlowe moved onto Randolph Street. Randolph was a classic street, with sidewalks that people actually used each day, and modest yards and even some driveways leading to cozy houses owned by families with long ties to the ward.

Through generations, they worshipped at churches, frequented bars, celebrated births and mourned deaths; they raised children who sprouted tall and were sent off to colleges and wars and penitentiaries; they fed their dogs, attended parties and wept at weddings—all in a swatch of land spanning less than one square mile.

With the few pesky crack and liquor houses operating, the ward remained a work in progress. Still, in his years living there, Barlowe had found it to be a fine retreat. In fact, it was more than a retreat. It had become a need. It was the kind of place where a man could get genuine conversation and a sincere smile.

These were
his
people; these weren't the pretenders, the self-absorbed buppies, puffed-up over fancy houses and big-shot careers. These were
his
people. He liked talking with them, exchanging notions about life and the world. And their dreams; he especially liked hearing them talk about their dreams. Their dreams were simple and straightforward, like his own: They wanted to get along in life and do all right.