The Jeffrey Porch - Fiction

Aside from the story collection, MILK TEETH, Tim Jeffrey has published other stories in magazines over the years. We present a selection of these that will periodically be added to and substracted from. Though two of these are from the collection, one - “Habits of Contact” - was first published in the anthology of best Michigan fiction writers, THE THIRD COAST, through Wayne State Universtity Press and has not been published since in any other form.

New stories will be posted on a regular basis. Feel free to comment.

By Themselves
Blackstone Massacre
Habits of Contact

BY THEMSELVES (back to top)

She lives at the time in a misery flat with a utility kitchen. Coffee table plants rest on opposing smoked glass insets. All around, chubby bear novelties, macrame, style magazines and a conventionally silver-framed Mardi Gras poster. Having had other changes in circumstances, she keeps boxes in storage.
The drapes are pulled. Out of doors, rain falls. That morning, a clock radio blares music. The man singing has long been accustomed to failure in matters of love, and has had the bad fortune to see history repeat itself. He may give up. If someone does not talk him out of it, that is exactly what he will do.
She touches a switch, returning the room to sepulchral quiet. Sits up on the side of the bed in her nightgown - an aureole of white cotton floating near his face where his head lies on the pillow.

Then he must have dozed: when he opens his eyes again, he is facing the other way. The dresser light illuminates a small midway teddy in a red vest propped against the mirror, china pin cups, a brush.
On the edge of his vision, her small foot points delicately out, toes poised to enter a slender dark pump. Sheathed in nylon, the leg crossed over and extended, her familiar small-boned ankle and foot. Their articulation rondured to fit inside the soft aromatic leather.
Privately appraising, the small pads of her lithe fingertips smooth.
Starting above the ankle in the silken under-calf, moving down, appreciative. As he might do for her. Touching herself.
Then up, massage. Glide and probe.
The exploration lasts only seconds. Using three fingers now, trace the curve of calf with deliberation, back up... down again.

Finally, the foot returns to the carpet. With a reflective sigh - another day of work - she begins dressing. Touching the vanity to balance and her hair, long flows over the shoulder, slips from its tuck.
Closing his eyes when he feels her sense him.
What her eyes contemplate in his sleeping face, what thoughts must swim through her, will be concealed from him.
As he had in a game as a child, holds his breath. Makes for her a face of innocent unconscious.
Opens his eyes again.
She is gone.

BLACKSTONE MASSACRE (back to top)
© Timothy Jeffrey

Aside from a minor fascination at times with the sound of her own voice, Mary Lou Pentwater would have you know she had several other characteristics that quite outweighed that failing. She was a model listener, for one; if a person needed to "vent" (she had begun using this word after her first semester back in school) Mary Lou would open her oblong hazel eyes and utter concentrative, intentionally subliminal encouragements that meant she embraced whatever message you most desired she should receive.
And if growing up on a farm was not the most intellectually complimentary characteristics one could carry into company, she was at least aware of her limitations enough not to push herself on people. She would not have said so --unless someone asked-- but Mary Lou sensed when a soul need to talk and when they needed to be alone. She was drawn to sadness, specifically; she had an uncanny sense of desperation. To "interesting" people, actually - which was not to say "peculiar," exactly, though you might. She quite expected to write a book someday that would collect --for a much more deserving and without a doubt more stimulating segment of humanity then she had the unfortunate opportunity to know in this town-- conversations she had held with human beings. She was going to call it "Human Beings" and leave the reader to draw her own conclusions. She reminded herself again now to buy the notebook she would need, writing this on a matchbook and depositing it with others she would have to soon organize in her knapsack. Self-consciously, she slid the bag further under her stool.
The reason for remembering was her proximity to someone --clearly a stranger -- who occupied the seat two over at the Blackstone Bar, where most of her "significant experiences", as she would refer to them in her book, had taken place. He was not well off, evidently, having to make do with an outdated, block- checkered jacket like one of those ancient Arizona retirees would, with white shoes. Broke her heart to see how he put on to distract from that, holding his drink with purpose, staring all alone at the bottles on the back bar, carrying this endearing air of belonging. He must have his stories. However her one beer might have muddied the apparatus, it wasn't sadness she intuited in this fellow. Desperation, maybe, but it wasn't bothering him any. Not invitation, because he was not the type to take chances, she decided. Not a conversationalist, but in need of information without knowing how to ask, regarding his surroundings.

* * *

So this woman says it can't get much hotter outside that it wouldn't kill largely two thirds of walking humanity and he, Borden Creel, surprised a tad at the forwardness of her, just stirred his drink. He observed for her benefit then as how it certainly was one hellacious worm-burner, at the height of the afternoon well over 93° and shimmering off what slice of street he could see through the door cracked open. He stayed dressed good with his jacket because even farmers knew you meant business when you were got up snazzy, and besides he had new sweat stains on his shirt.
Not to seem unsocial or nothing toward this woman, but he was feeling a touch neon anyway with the company emblem on the pocket there, having noticed driving into town the college students all around - even a couple in here, which, really, you'd have to wonder why they weren't in school. He kind of thought, to judge from all the smatterings of dog-kept shacks and scrub farms on the perimeter, that he was coming to see some half-breed sharecropper as he was pulling off the expressway. Indian women in braids with their greasy, squashy tennis-shoes and them urchins in loose drawers making out along the road there. He hoped not. The tribal elders evidently weren't sharing the new casino wealth too awful much.
It had been a long trip and Christian Brewster better be some potential business lead who was wanting for some equipment. With his three percent cut, it had better be a shitload of farm vehicle or tooling. Borden was losing enough confidence without he'd driven all this way for some Indian. He looked to his watch and, Chinese checkers, you knew one thing about Mr. Brewster straight off: he was not punctual.
"Pressing appointment, eh?" Mary Lou Pentwater once again attempted congenial dialogue. "I know what you mean. I've got about three hours of studying waiting for me when I get home." She consciously did not say "back at the farm".
Borden sold farm equipment. For two months he had. Two saleless months. He had called Brewster about a meeting here in town and was beginning to think he'd got the wrong place. Maybe go back to fixing school buses.
"I 'member that," was all he said about the woman's studying. He remembered no such thing. Borden's father used to say the only thing between covers Border had ever cracked got pregnant and had a sorry ending. Borden didn't follow up with nothing witty at the present time, as he usually had to get a little more under the belt for the jibs to loosen.
"Well," she said, evidently about her homework. "Whatever."
Didn't look like no college kid. He looked at his watch.
"Our two dash eight-five Field Boss sounds the right ticket," Borden had said over the phone. "Believe me, Chris, I got some proper hog nose sweet corn coming up my damn self." Too chummy, probably that was it. Truth to tell, he had about 14 stubby ears dying on paper dry stalks and some weedy chard. But there's a conversational trick to this selling, Borden Creel knew. He had an overlarge vegetable patch which his horse toothed, seesaw-hipped wife was supposed to tend, fallen on hard times by now, no doubt, what with his absence. She was a useless thing. Part of the reason he was glad to not be a mechanic no more was the travel.
"College town, huh?" Borden felt somewhat idiotic, but it was his contention that nothing much ever happened in a college town so he was being at least as boring as his subject.
Mary Lou, thinking he had mumbled something about her being a student, interpreted this as a green light and regaled Borden with the history of the university, which the accreditation people had recently - about time - renamed. She went from country normal school to the girl's field hockey team's second place finish two years ago and it the foot rail hadn't been there to balance him, Borden might have fainted dead away out of boredom.
As the guy appeared to politely listen, she talked about the anthropology class, but not her book yet. She was a hefty and still available thirty-two but her hair was long and straight and she was complimented that he might have taken her for part of the campus population she always felt like a foreigner around. Except of course that these kids had no manners anymore. Not that it bothered them.
"Anthropology," Borden Creel said as if mulling it.
"The study of people," she said. And: "Ethnicity," not for any further enlightenment but because she liked the sound.
"That's like," he wasn't going to say niggers if he could help it, "groups a people. Right?" He said he'd seen some Indians. "You study Indian type a people?"
She laughed to herself. "I ought to. There's plenty at hand and I've got one paper left to do. I grew up around here so I know enough about them. Even a couple were my friends, or we knew each other." He took this in. He might not like them. She panicked a little at this, desiring the company. "Sure, ask any question and I'll tell you my life story. Even if you didn't ask."
He said that was all right.
"It's really interesting," Mary Lou said. "This whole area was, or I should say still is, a Chippewa reservation."
"No shit."
"The town lives off federal and state grants, a university, old folks complex, the medical facility and the mental institution north of town..."
He'd seen it. Tall and square and shiny as a glass brick.
Borden said, "Thought you already mentioned the university." Caught her off enough to get a big whoop laugh. Happy lady. Teeth weren't too bad... iron-water dulled; the wells in these parts.
She mentioned the town people didn't care much for the university either, did their shopping downtown, where fewer of the kids came. But the J. C. Penny's had moved to the little mall out by the dorms. They didn't like Indians, though Mary Lou left herself out of that debate.
"Well, I like it better, a place like this," Borden said. And though she had taken this to promise more was following, he was silent then. Actually, it was just conversation to Borden, who knew bars back home where the bricks had been kicked out and dust sat on everything, not like this where the bricks seemed sent out for, custom-made chipped and put back in just crooked enough. Then they go and hang up hundred year-old pictures of the town when there was a general store and a porch and one barrel. And always two guys with a couple mustaches they were extra proud of, like the college kids probably wished they were back there, living then. This gal here would of been a beauty queen. Not much competition.
"It'll be filling up the next hour or so," Mary Lou Pentwater said by way, again, of supplying local interest. Borden bought a round.
He asked for a name.

They were sitting down to a booth later when the fight started. The place was terrible narrow and the fight started up front by the lone pool table. Borden had put his jacket off on the booth seat; he reached out of reflex to put his hand in the pocket for the watch he had also taken off. He had all but forgotten his appointment and was doing something with his third martini to deaden whatever plain guilt smoldered about it. He had always been one to put off useless thinking.
Though drink hadn't dislodged the continual rehearsal inside his head that released itself incessantly, unspooling like ribbon, just in case: ...a windrower with folding tine augur to match crop conditions, stripper plates. The two Eighty-five has vertical and radial rotation of the header.. Angle turns? Borden would have slanted one eye, a wise guy salesman.
You kiddin me, Christian? You tell me what you need good buddy and we'll get you fixed up.
Borden was no longer watching for Christian Brewster to appear in the doorway. he couldn't even see it no more.The crowd probably contributed to the boys getting all up, everyone pressed together. Guy who started the fight was this hippie-looking bugger, blond hair. But big, thick, drill rigger paws. A little old to be a student. The other, smaller but a little tighter was hollow-cheeked with hot black pupils. Looked mean, Eye-talian mean, or Arab, Indian. Something on the order of a minority of the world in this college book. Indians being stolen from or no, it was truth unquestionable that they had poor maintenance of themselves for anger and on alcohol, clear out. Black hair and no expression except them eyes; maybe Indian all right. And you'd a thought so, quick as he got the feisty shot in there, hurt the blonde guy right off. Moved him back. You couldn't tell, there was a lot of pushing in the few seconds; they'd plowed, the two of them, into the Miller's sign and brought it, and a couple beers, down in a confusion of chairs and shouting. The blond didn't mind. He even smiled, Borden noticed. When he landed full with a punch on the poor little fella what cheek there was broke with the sound of a cue ball jumping on hard tile. That was that. Someone helped the wounded one out. The blond had vanished.
"Students?" Borden said.
"Those aren't students." She was going to apologize for her tone, but she decided to leave it. She poured herself a beer from the pitcher. "They aren't anything."

As the evening progressed, the place filled with students who all seemed to know each other. Not a one of them appeared to have been unhappy with anything ever. Borden kept up a pace of drinking and charming, he thought. He folded his wire rim glasses. He had been told his eyes were nice and clear and green. The glasses might impede. Couldn't recall who'd said it. He could hear some of them talking about sailing they'd done. Damn spoiled brats. He set the glasses on the table.
Mary Lou had already skipped her class, third time, but this was for the book. Everybody any more was so self-possessed and ironic but this person, despite his unfortunate name, was genuinely unconcerned by all appearances with looking smart. She would have to remember to ask him later about his parents. They continued talking about movies. That Mary Lou saw more first runs allowed her to expound, which he seemed to like. She quite appreciated his encouragement.
The patrons were pushing each other around familiarly. Made Borden a mite nervous. A lot of the boys wore these greasy baseball hats, like grease monkeys --when you knew not a one of them ever had an honest job. Let alone get dirty.
For a moment he wondered what he would do if he kept not selling anything and had to go back to fixing cars. He smiled at whatever her name was, but this time with a trace of thankfulness. Her quizzical expression rushed him into a retreat for an old standard:
"So where you from? Here, I mean...where was you born?"
Mary Lou, remembering her artistic mission, instead gave him as diversion the name of where she always expected to go someday.
"Chicago? That right?" Borden smiled.
Mary Lou liked him, he knew one thing. You could tell right off about these things. City girl. Better slow down the drinking before all the dumb came out of him too fast and fussed up his deal, possibly.
"You ain't true," he said because she didn't want to talk about it. Like: Ain't you cute?
"I'm serious."
"Tell me something."
"What?"
"Where you from?"
Mary Lou did not like being dickered with, but she had a need at the moment for staying put, and keeping Borden with her in case the one she feared came back. "Are you playing with me?" she said.
"Now," Borden felt them getting along nice, "Would I do a thing like that?"
The waitress came with his next drink.
"Don't mind me, I'm just crazy." He gave the scrawny, stoic girl waiting on her money a good hard grin. "Just ask this waitress. Ain't I?"
"Four twenty," the waitress said as if she hadn't heard.
"Well I think we can handle that," Borden said, and when she had gone with his money: "She's a regular 'Miss Friendship', wunt she?"
But Mary Lou's reason for staying put had emerged now, as she expected he would, from the crowd milling in and out the Blackstone's open front door. She gave Borden a flat smile.
Borden didn't pick it up, only saw the blond fella looking over once curiously, like he had a question. They hadn't kicked him out. Loose place. College town.
When Borden turned, Mary Lou stalled, just roused out of a stare. Then asked him quickly: "What?"
"Nothing in the world." He clicked her glass. "They let that boy back in."
She said Oh, but that had been who she was looking at all right.
First, when the sliver of ice hit the table, Borden jumped, thinking it was the blond kid for some reason. Hadn't known he was nervous. He merely assumed then that the crush of students, which was giving him a needle pointed headache anyway, had caused someone to spill. For a while Mary Lou went on about school and such. He half liked her. A chunk of ice shattered against the pitcher.
Now he felt obliged to react. He was sure it was the blond fella.
"Would someone mind telling me..." Borden swung around.
In sweat-stuck flannel shirt and suspendered trousers, the old Chip, road apple-shade skin standing out among the unruly students, smack in the middle of them, blunt old bloodhound face looking their way. With thick, old pig skinned fingers, he took the ice from his glass of booze. He flicked, and his ice hit lamps, winged drinkers on the hands and shoulders. No one seemed to know where it was coming from.
"Do a study on him," Borden suggested. "How he stays alive doing that."
A woman rode a fella's shoulders in. Another woman came in her wheelchair, wearing a cowboy hat and bright lipstick and a dead huge giant tree branch which several had to help her fit through the door. "Long Branch Saloon," somebody shouted and Borden thought of all the Indians he had seen and that he'd overheard someone in town as he was walking from his car call it Indian Summer as he passed, referring to a corner with a bunch of them. Borden thought it good for retelling but probably not with her.
Beer cans and potato chip bags were hung on the branch; righted, it was set into the corner, awaiting presents.
"You do this every night here?" Borden was going for some laughs.
Mary Lou was not paying attention.

He was up by the pool table again and his eyes held on her, long enough. He waited until Mary Lou's own eyes gave up the dodge and fell on him. She made herself weary, crooked her mouth down on the one side, unimpressed with him. His mouth, and it must have been a minute coming, instead turned up, knowingly.
"Someone's gonna knock that old boy's block off," Borden was saying, referring to the Indian, taken by all the sights, and just turning back. "This place is somethin', I'll tell you right now!"
Sometimes she thought her life might end up being this, the Blackstone and its carnival Fridays --an endless round of predawn feedings around the yard, seasonal cannings and classes to break the monotony... then the Blackstone. Year after year. Apparently this Borden person saw her expression.
"Don't you be sad," Borden said. "After all, you got me." Which when you heard yourself say it, was the kind of thing that could wind up back in your face, so he made his pinched pout that was his smile to keep her at bay. The book he learned it from said it was another winning way to convey to buyers his deep interest in their well being. Though he felt himself sound on that count, had even sent out Memorial Day cards just to keep the touch on, he’d as yet to sell a shovel, and the more he drank, the more wrong that seemed.
Peculiar smile or no, men weren't usually this perceptive, Mary Lou knew, and she was thankful for his kindness. Paying attention. Not trying to get something out of her. She touched his hand to thank him, which made the guy jump a little. No reason to bring that up. They don't like that, men. That’s all right. He just needed someone to listen. Mary Lou could listen, too.
Stand out in the aisle and the passing rivers of people - into one another, calling for their drinks with a wave not getting their arms back down without the accommodation of someone else - would literally lift you along toward the bathrooms and the exit through the kitchen in the back, or the pool table and the front door the other way. The Indian was oblivious, however, and the drawn-back cue struck him just above the waist. The kid studied his shot. The Indian stopped throwing ice to watch him. His eyes were rheumy, half-mast.
"Cut it off the twelve."
Playing for money, the kid concentrated the advice.
"Draw it slow off the cushion. Hit it right, you're in behind him."
The boy started to do this, and had to stop because of the Indian. "Excuse me." Second time he hit him, but the Indian just looked. "I've got a shot, could you look out?"
The Indian fished out a cube. It arced and disappeared half way down the line of people massing toward the bathroom.
"Move out a the man's way, Tonto." The big solid imposing hippie interceded. His long blond sweep of hair might be needing of a head band to put it out of the way. His skin was real white, especially that close to the Indian's.
The old man said something back, deepening concentric creases around the black stones of his eyes with the movement of his slow mouth. He stepped aside, but seemed to want some help in pursuing redress from others around the table, as though grave insult had been done them as well.
The twelve ball came to rest against another ball blocking it from the pocket.
"Goddamn Indian asshole, " said the one making the shot.
The Indian wore a cold Buster Keaton blankness now.
Even when the failed shooter came up in his face: "Duhhh..Yeah, you. You're out past curfew, Cochise."
"Look at that zeb, man, he don't know what you're saying."
"See," Borden said to Mary Lou. "That ain't right."
She had seen the blond and the other boys in this town do this so often she didn't notice all of the exchange. She was meant for bigger times. She would maybe get computer skills.

His hair had been greasy then, but that just made it more yellow. He had been kind of handsome and nobody thought the drinking would age you so much. He said he wanted to be a tradesman. She was good at listening. He loved her for it. He'd even used that word.
He was doing the same thing now, acting like he had in those teenage midnight raids on the reservation. Injun-bopping. Called himself a "Buffalo soldier." Jump them at the roadsides. Ask them for directions and then drag them into the car. You could live a whole summer on one story. He was still at war. Maybe she was thirty-two, but there was still school, doing something with her life.
She had seen him fight but she had thought it was like the drinking: what you did when you weren't eating, sleeping or working. He'd served his time for using the railroad spike on that boy from across the ridge; she had made herself listen until he was only repeating himself. He was proud of it. Plans. Then she knew the fighting had been the only defense against the sadness, that to protect himself from becoming as dead as the Indians he held dominion over them. She knew all this because she was gifted with insight. Without school, there was the Blackstone, and there were farms. And a hundred more unemployed tradesmen.
She had made herself listen, but he was only at war. He said the Indians would not work- and took it somehow personally as if the closing of the nuclear plant had been bad blood they brought to the project by virtue of its sitting on their reservation.
She enrolled at the college. She was leaving. Chicago? When the Res got the gambling casino everybody spent more time there, what they called trying to "beat the chief." No one had ever seen an Indian in a tuxedo. Chippewas in charge, speaking clear English. Some of them built homes for themselves. People seldom beat the Chief for much.

"A swell time was being had by all," Borden shouted as he burst through the door leading into the stinking bathroom. Its hanging ceiling was water stained and fastened, where two slats met, with baling wire. "Charming shit," Borden shouted. It was something the old man used to say, or would have, or must have. The old man was quite some joker. Tied Borden to his bed one night while he slept, then shouted fire in the morning for school get-up. Borden still had nightmares, but he couldn't deny it was funny. Or maybe he didn't care. That was it.
"I don't," he said unzipping himself and looking to the expressionless men at urinals to either side. "How you doing boys?"
Something had happened because his doohicky wouldn't give any water at first and he put himself into giving it more room. When he finally got it to go by pretending he didn't care, even his shoulders seemed to drain. "Gentlemen," he murmured, though one of them had already left and the other was unconversational apparently. "We have ignition." He looked straight ahead. He didn't get the graffiti, cut into the broken formica over the urinals.
JESUS SAVES
AND GRETSKY SLAPS IN THE REBOUND
Some queer stuff with phone numbers too, he suspected.. He stared at something else about Harp seals. Nigger jokes, Indian ones. College, Jesus boy.
RESCUE EGYPTIAN TANGELOS
"Civilization," Borden said aloud.
"What's up?" The blond boy was next to him and putting his eyes right at Borden. Never had no one staring at him when he was letting go. It sounded more like a challenge than a question. Sounded like he already knew the answer to his own question.
"Right about fine," Borden said.
Getting himself put back together, he lost his balance, and caught his doohickey in the zipper. “Ahhhh,” said Borden. A palm jarred him hard at the shoulder.
"Easy partner. Easy." Borden was pure scared for a second there.
"You sure you're having a good time?"
He pushed Borden again, who nonetheless tried in vain to rescue his little guy from his situation. Guys were passing in and out but no one offered a hand.
"Having a fine time."
"Yeah?" Smiling like he had earlier, hitting the dark maybe Indian kid. A drop of ice-cold mercury slid down Borden's middle.
"Me too," said the blond. He let the grin all out. "Part-tay!" he shouted. "Get fucked UP!"
He shook Borden by the shoulders, like an old friend, only Borden saw a blur when his head vibrated uncontrollably and could feel the spots where each finger had been for minutes after the kid blew out of there. Borden pretended, still shuddering a little, to fool with his hair.
"...why they don't put that freak away somewhere..." a guy in one of the stalls was saying. Before going back out, Borden held and privately massaged his released member in a manner unbefitting a tractor sales representative - or anyone, around these kids, who at least was employed and pulling his own weight. Whiffers.
Not only had the Indian taken Borden's seat but he was wearing Borden's sport coat with the company emblem. From somewhere in his pinned-up pants he had produced a pencil and begun drawing horse riders, using the backs of folded placemats he evidently carried around with him. He drew quickly: they were scratchy, though capturing a startling breadth of movement.
In his first, three horses were being reined out of a gallop, riders yanking them into turns, raising a terrific moil of dust and stone. In another, stampeding horses, manes blowing, drove in a sweep out of an arroyo under a summer storm.
"Isn't he good?" Mary Lou wanted to know.
Borden mentioned the jacket first, but she waved him off. And Chinese checkers, he could be here or he could be home. That's the whole story there.
Then the Indian finished a deer. Soft snow depressions made with the side of the pencil lead, shadows drifting off to silty depths and the graphite-blackened cut of a creek. By a brittle and skinned birch, the deer lowered its graceful head. The old Indian's hands move deftly. He was showing messages by drawing instead of speaking. Borden couldn't decipher the message.
Periodically, appreciative folk sent over a glass to the Indian filled with something; he was the local favorite. Then, sure as rain, the ice would fly and someone would say hey.
To cheers and whistles, a young woman did a headstand on her table. Someone near Borden was discussing her absorptive properties. Most of them had disdain for anything on the television showing some commercial nonsense from a corner pedestal. He sat next to Mary Lou, across from the Indian. This was working out.
"Think a what you could take outa place like this in one week," Borden was telling Mary Lou. She was saying uh-huh. "In one week now," he made this point extra clear.
She seemed to think, courteously, about this. "You know I couldn't even guess."
"See in my travels I give these places a close look," Borden told her. "You don't know how many them go under for just poor management practices?"
"Oh," she replied. "I'll bet."
"Over seventy-five percent in the first year." He was making this up, but he must be close.
"Really?"
"Seventy-eight, something like that." Lying like a dog. She thought he was great. Maybe this was how he'd squired the wife too. Too long ago. Snow them, they love it. This occurred to him as inspiration, as valuable information.
"Wow."
There you go. "I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled," Borden told her. "There's a lot you don't know you're gettin' into until you get under the operation." He had only thought of it now, but he bet he could make a go of the bar business. What would there be to know, except to keep the help from stealing?
"You're going into business for yourself?"
The old girl listened sometimes, but this Mary Lou, she seemed to hear, even believe. Concentrated. She was a gem. He didn't have no room to stay in yet either.
The Indian had been continuing a discussion with Borden unabated while drawing, explained something now with flips of his hands. Drooling a little, eyes impassive, what he said sounded like "Gadfly egg death."
"Wouldn't put it past them," Borden retorted.
The guy was shooting people in cold blood. He mimed raising an imaginary barrel with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. Dang if it didn't look to be the real movement. You could feel the gun stock. The Indian met the stock with his right shoulder -- looked heavy. Feathered back the trigger by his sighting eye, closing the other. He steadied it.
He snapped his fingers, the recoil sending both hands up a bit. The students he'd shot sensed nothing, maybe thought he was pointing at something a distance off.
"What has 500 legs and can't walk?" Some spoiled brat who had these large tinted glasses made her look like a bug, talking in the aisle to her friends.
"Two hundred fifty polio victims." She bent over, cannily making giddy squeaks and passing a shy hand over her mouth, as if to thwart her own guilty laugher. "Aren't I terrible?"
"That's what I go to school with," Mary Lou told Borden.
"Laugh-o-matic," Borden said. "Wonder what the half of them would do if their daddies made 'em work?" He and this Mary Lou were getting along like ham and eggs.
The Indian, fishing out his cubes, seemed to be soaking up their conversation. Every now and again he hit Borden fraternally in the chest with a cube. He had a sobering truth to tell about college students in this town. He seemed to play two parts in an argument, raising an index finger to punctuate. His eyes remained emotionless but wise.
He was wearing Borden's glasses.
Borden reached for them. The Indian intercepted his hand good-naturedly, squeezing the fingers together, bone to bone. Which didn't feel great. With Borden’s attention thus focused, he told yet another story, which seemed to sadden him.
The pain was as nothing to the embarrassment. So Borden relaxed the tension in his wrist, in hopes of getting the whole hand back.
Mary Lou asked him, "Isn't he hurting you?"
"Okay, bud," Borden croaked, playing along, "You can wear the glasses. You look bettern' me in them anyway, don't he? Just let me have them back before we get done here, okay good bud?"
The Indian shook his head. No. Then let the hand go. He had people to shoot, pointedly illustrating for Borden the solution. He shot three more people close by. He shot out the lights.
The glasses weren't wide enough, so one arm had sprung off his ear. He squinted severely to see through the blur of the panes. He looked like the phantom of Wall Street. He swung his sights, tethered back, paused. Fired.
"I shouldn't ought to tell you this," Borden said to Mary Lou, "but I was married once. I'm older than you. Not a lot, but..."
She kind of knew why, kind of not, but didn't ask what he had on his mind. She said "Oh," and was aware of trying to make a smudge of her own intentions, despite better judgment. As she peered around, nervously wondering where the blond had got to, trying to anticipate him, Borden launched into a deeper discussion about women's rights - which she had instigated so long ago she'd already lost interest.
"Now I know women are saying 'How about us,' and all that happy shit and I say more power to them, see, but --and it's not popular to admit, I'll give you that-- my former wife, all right? An she ain't the only one, I would have to say most women. In general... now, I don't say all. You're a college student am I right?"
She wasn't saying uh-huh anymore. She wasn't saying anything.
"They want to know where the fuck you bin all day, pardon the slip there. 'Well then get the hell off your ass and git a job. Who the hell is stoppin you?'"
The Indian man shot patrons with their bladders full and he shot them mid-conversation as they thought of something smart to say.
The silence dropped between Borden and Mary Lou like a fence line. What had Two hundred fifty legs, he thought.
"I seen you was alive right away," Borden said. "I'm that way bout people."
Mary Lou had stopped thinking of Borden as interesting. But neither was the farm. And she was, for the moment, interesting to him.
Future shop teachers and former valedictorians were dying, a man who would someday be a hospital equipment salesman, an English major. Joggers and swimmers with strong hearts and young women with rich honey tans were massacred. Idle propositions and suggestive chatter were abruptly cut short, buffalo shot ripping breasts, blood spurting from gay-colored Hawaiian shirts and torn western dungarees, once bright cheery faces erupted into garish, bone-sprung pulps.
Most had only been making useless witticisms and unlearned observations, none speaking with their hearts, of honoring their fathers or of preserving their peoples’ traditions, even of what shared history they could recall. They wanted things and described to one another where they would live soon and where they would travel whenever they wanted. They spoke of bad, thieving politicians. Only a few of them had known each other longer than a few months and still they touched and laughed and showed themselves. He shot them like a diseased herd.
“She balked...” and Borden looked up to see a particular shaggy guy holding a pitcher and his own glass there in the crowd. It said Edgar Allen Poe on his shit and his jeans had the knees torn out with some special tool, looked like, just this afternoon. “...as her pendulous breasts made gyroscoping loops over his slick, buttered thighs.”
“Oh yeah?” Borden said.
“I could live in New York,” Mary Lou was telling Borden. He wasn’t sure of the connection.
“The thirst of her glass crotch. She was game. He had brown shoes and the torn pages of seafood cookbook. He threw her the pike. ‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘It has bones.’”
Borden said as how it was great talking to him. Freak.
“Jism floats like palm fronds on the surface of my life.”
“Jesus,” Mary Lou said.
Borden told the Indian to at least not miss this guy,
The Indian lined him up like a pool shot and blasted. The boy said, “Ah. Ya got me.”
The Indian banged off rows of lives like a Father had taught him to do at the dump, out at the edge of the land with peach and pea cans on a fence post. Idly watching the Indian’s carnage, sensitive to the baking body odors and beer fumes, smoke cooking the bolus in Borden's throat to a dry burr, he couldn't swallow down or talk much. But nerves it was too: The question he had raised to her made it necessary not to look back at Mary Lou. Like it was no difference to him.
The Indian blew out the juke box. There was an imploding pop and fizzle of sparking lights and one of the pool players fell dead into its gaping and smoking shell. No kind of music anyhow.
"I'd like to go out for a cup of coffee and talk a little more first," Mary Lou said. "Can you understand that?"
Borden was on the road to luck.
"Mon Cabiero," somebody wailed to the waitress as she wiggled through the crush in the aisle. She gave the finger back, without looking at whomever it might concern.
“Don’t care a slip nor a shit for their appearance,” Borden observed, patting vermouth sweat off his lip.
The Indian had something of urgency to say, indicating this with an ice cube he shot into Borden's chest. He confided a true story. This had to do with the Army of the United States. He had been inducted into the army, trained as a marksman, to shoot the life from strangers. They had assumed he wouldn't mind.
He always had.
If he had said anything, it would have gone hard for him. They did nothing for him, so he had not gone for his due care when the teeth went out and it didn't matter now. At this point he shrugged, the weight of years in his eyes, an elder tribesman's weary wisdom. To illustrate this he made a long, almost comically jowlish frown. The glasses down his nose and the long curled-under thickness of hair at his collar made him Ben Franklin.

"Out!"
Borden dimly recognized he'd heard the bartender bellow twice already before waking to it now. The doorway was clotted, frantic humanity, sending up their common disapproval, rushing up current because some tousled and for a moment it appeared there would be another row, resisting the bartender's shoving and directing. Two of the drawings, sopped and tearing, were trod underfoot.
"Fire?" Mary Lou asked.
Although Borden thought the same, he’d caught sight of the khaki uniform and badge in the kitchen. Everyone was being ushered out the front. Out of some vague theory about running into a constable at the wrong time, Borden held his seat. Mary Lou tickled her lower lip a moment and stared, thinking. He hoped she wasn't changing her mind. The Indian guy blew the head off one of the policemen.
The bartender was rounding up the stragglers. The front door was wide; cars out on the street were starting up.
Mary Lou went to the window set in the kitchen door.
By the stainless hot table,the police spoke some last words to the owner, a man in a golf hat. He appeared to accept with burning humiliation, but also a little dazed, like he'd been awoken. All then trooped out to the alley.
"Where are you going?" Borden whispered, but Mary Lou ignored him. In the kitchen, the several of the help were talking urgently among themselves as she passed.
She sidled up to the heavy door opening into the alley. The cop bubble whirled, looping its beacon on brick backs of old town buildings. Lit, passed, and lit again the blond hair on the dusty pavement blocks.
The bed was trundled out of the ambulance, but one of the attendants stopped to loosen the straps and the other put his pen back into his pocket, saying, “...these things never work when you want them to...” to himself, before remembering to go back and shut off the headlights.
"You want trouble?"
Mary Lou did not know the officer was speaking to her, then saw him, a locally familiar sight around the bars on these nights - an oafish, rude and witless pug, two inches from her face.
"I asked you something."
"No," said Mary Lou Pentwater. "I certainly am not, don't..."
She turned, shaken, to go.
"Indians're some piss poor excuses, man," said one of the men who had followed her out. There were seven or eight, all going now.
"Wow," said a student.
“We oughta raid the chief,” said someone else she passed. “Burn down their casino.”
“...just come in and do what they like cause they got the money...”
“Go!” the cop ordered.
"Let's get sumpthin’ eat, buddy. Then we'll go over De’Charm’s. We haven't did shit yet."
"Depends what side a town, far as for me."
“’Fraid of ol’ Indian Joe?”

* * *
SEVEN-ELEVEN, FRAZEE'S GLASS, ACE HARDWARE, BURGER KING...
Signs spinning up and by him. The air only felt like a wet hot compact on Borden’s face. He used to like hanging out car windows like this when he was a kid. Daddy say, ‘Some old dump truck’ll come by and shut that face like a cellar door, you don’t pull it in, boy.’
Daddy was some wit, by God.
TACO BELL
Like anything about that place is even Mexican.
Hanging out the window wondering could he get sick. He shoulda ate. That’s it, just hadn’t eat nothin since some time ago. Wind felt good.
CINEMA, SHELL, BIG BOY'S...
Better out here. She wasn’t making no sense. Talking about change their lives and get out of this place now, tonight. Run away to New York. For what? Borden wanted to know. But had to humor her, upset like she was and all and him feeling slightly out of the weather. She must be pretty loaded her damn self.
BOBBY’S PARISIAN
French food they had in this town even, small place you bet, but not one coney island. Now that's one would go. Ever coney island he ever seen was full. They had some down to the big town, open all night, and ever hour you want to go in, people. Ever damn one.
"Can you tell me now?" she asked, sounding like a radio, steering carefully through the blinking yellow light. "I have to stop at an ATM and we can get you something for how you feel..."
"Oh," he said. "I'll be dandy in just a minute here.” Have to get some gum for after I blow the big tuba or no hanky panky tonight, tell you one goddarn thing.
“Was it the Indian fella?” Borden managed to ask in a convincingly nonchalant voice, he thought. “Somebody hurt him?"


* * *
Christian Brewster had gone where he shouldn’t oughta; then he'd decided to go looking for this salesman fella. Hard to believe but maybe the guy took 'Blackstone' for when Christian said ‘...over to Malone's’. He was out of his pickup and walking back up the street to it, but the place looked empty from here. Nobody around but this guy meandering...
The salesman, by God. Coming his way.
Curious what a reputable company let them get away with, but this day and age you see whatall and here he come, longish greasy hair and laceless, army-issue boots. And crooked glasses.
But sure enough, a company emblem on the pocket.
"Hey, hiya. I'm the Brewster you was supposed to meet. This afternoon? We musta mistook each other, huh?" Christian was trying to be congenial. Even this guy being a scrub and all.
They looked at each other a moment.
"With the farm?"
The Indian was politely attentive to anything worthwhile that might be said.
"Listen, if that shithole Blackstone is still open why don't we go and have us one, just cause you been a good ol...” Brewster cut himself short and didn’t call him “boy” - any more you had to watch your p’s and q’s with them. Everybody wanting their rights and now what with they got money and all kinds a happy shit. “I'll buy cause I put you behind."
The Indian had seen enough drink. He shrugged, demurring. He was largely spent.
"Just for good times, bud." Brewster was having trouble jibing a mute Indian with the squirmy rascal he'd pictured from the phone call.
He spotted the watch on the man's wrist. It was upside down.
"I wasn't gonna buy nothin’ from yuzz anyways," Christian said.
The Indian assumed the spirit of the snubbed party and frowned, considering this.
"You got the time there?"
And the goddamndest thing, this fella, he takes him off his watch, give it over, and directly he slumps off. All the same to him.

It took a few moments. Finally, spluttering, "You pile a shit..." Christian Brewster flung the watch back, so mad he didn’t aim.
It shattered on the flaking column of a storefront just ahead of the Indian. Who stopped walking, studying the wreckage a moment.
All slowness then, turning. Raised his arms.
Fixed his sights.
Then cocked what would have seemed - to anyone who had ever used one, to anyone in the world - a gun's hammer.
Snapped his fingers.

And the town settled under a cricket silence, and the deepening peace, of an ancient midwestern darkness.

Habits of Contact (back to top)
© Timothy Jeffrey

After work, Howard put some Brubeck on the ancient box player. He shaved, wearing only a pressed pair of Gatsby baggies. Thin-muscled chest taut as drum parchment, a light cream-coffee brown sensuously highlighted in the shadowed hollows of his biceps and rib cage, these Howard inspected further in the full length mirror of his mother’s room.

Muffin poked her head through the hank of heavy drape he used in lieu of a bedroom door. He didn’t bother to remove the joint from his mouth. “I smell sumptin’.” At thirteen, she was the baby of the family.

“You don’t smell shit. Get outa my be’room girl.” Without removing the joint, he pulled on a white, open-necked top, made of an indeterminate silk-like fabric,

“Mama say feed Blackwell.”

“I done fed Blackwell, fool. Now what else you want ‘cause I’m fittin’ t’ step and you in my room.”

“Didn’t feed no Blackwell, How’d.”

“Nigger you a lie, too.” He changed the record. “I done thu the muthafucka scraps outside, bitch, and if you goes an axim dumb dog probably burp on y’ass.”

He picked at his hair, got it all nice then, put on some tasseled gray leather Sibleys and he splashed on some Quorum. Every nigger alive wear Brut. Howard know some nasty ones wear it the more they don’t bathe. Got atrocious habits. He changed records again. The speaker crackled and popped like an old fire. A dull bass leading in, getting stronger, calling in some horns that fell behind, smooth. Violins. An orchestral section of brass pounced, repeating the rhythm line. He lay on the bed. The singer growled in, flew up on a sustained wail, banked it, circling the musicians, then dropped perfectly into the loop and ride. They all moved together.

Sweet.

Howard groaned with the singer, “Leeme all alo-aww baby...,” taking up the time on the bed with his hands,”...way y’ domay, bay-bay, awww-domay...”

Muffin again.

“Chu want?”

“You goin’ out wi’ Deke? He call you.”

“Whus up? He ain’t goin’ now or sumpthin’?”

“He just callin’ see if you is.’ She caught his look. “I tole him you was.”

“All right. Get out my face.”

She backed almost all the way out, holding only her face through the drape. “Deke say, ‘Tell ‘at dumb nigger Train on his sorry black ass.”

Howard stared back for a moment. The record needle clicked on the empty track between songs.

“Train after you?”

“Ain’t checkin’ me out. If he do, I be takin’ a ride on his train.” Muffin watched him. He stopped laughing. “I am too cool,” he said. “Ain’t I? Move, girl.”

When the curtain fell back, he stared out at the yard through a dingy window, no longer moving his feet or hands to the music. What it was, Train had come up with some nice Colombian. On a half a pound, he wanted Howard to “double,” sell it and return half. Howard agreed, but the month’s money got all wrong and he got his price from a white boy.
So Train was beefing Howard, who told him he’d only got straight money from the swish. Times was tough. “Gimme gimme gimme some sweet thang baybay,doncha ugh, domay, ugh, say you do–” he sang now.
Fuck Train.

Eight-thirty Howard was jumped hard in silk and his neck chains. He was prepared to be at large. Deke had been out front in the car a good while, minutes or so. He hadn’t bothered to beep or come up, he never did: when Deke said he’d come, Deke was there. Like smoke, the elemental life force holding down some silence. Or “the elementary mental”, as Howard called him. Howard thumped down the wooden steps slow, studiously cool, and as he walked added the coup de grace, a pair of fifty dollar rose tint wires, gazing everywhere but at the car, arms pinned rigid, hands crippled back a little so the wrists looked like stubs.

Howard climbed in “S’happenin’.”

Hooked fingers, fists tapped quick, light. Done with the affectionless, ritual movements of habit.

“You got it.”

“All right den.”

Both looked off, Deke into the rearview mirror as he started the car, Howard straight ahead. Howard’s high was easing away. “What it actually is,” he said as Deke headed the car up the street toward Dexter, “is some ‘lumbo, so it ain’t what it is, it’s where it is, so’s I can be where you is.”

“You a goofy nigger, boy. Glove compartment.” Howard snapped the compartment open and took out the cellophane bag. Deke appeared lost in thought. Although, more than anything, he was concentrating on driving the car. No one put as much into the act. His shoulders were back, he was leaning a little with his elbow on the armrest, wearing his grim countenance, seemingly but not at all oblivious to others who checked as they rolled past; he knew what the black Riv would look like, two extremely aloof brothers floating inside. Even the guys who didn’t catch the looks on their ladies’ faces, they pretended to look beyond the car checking it, but glancingly, so as not to appear interested.

Howard used his own papers to roll, one, then another, which he stashed in his pocket. He used the dash lighter to gun up the third, toked, and handed it over to Deke. “Reefer, reefer,” Howard said, gasping it in. He sniffed, then exhaled. “All ‘round my soul.’

Deke stopped a cautious distance from the cars ahead at every light. Howard slumped against the window, watching. They passed a young woman with straightened hair, in a cool green leather, waiting at the opening of the bus stop enclosure. Deke gave a langorous crane, falling again into his preoccupation at the wheel. Howard made as if he hadn’t seen her. Weed always turned the floor to velvet under his shoes. “Whose deal this we goin’ to?”

“Brother-in-law house, “ Deke mumbled.

“Wonderin’ why y’all jump so cool.”

Deke smirked. “Talkin like I ain’t always down.”

“Didn’t know they done built a K-Mart in the hood.”

Deke muttered, “Talkin that crazy bu’shit.”

“Talk louder, man. You did a deb or sumpthin’?”

“Mean a deb? Nigger, ain’t did a deb in so long. Been listenin’ to yourself all day, why you can’t hear shit. Listen this fool. A deb.”
“Hear you now, nigger. Must be you gotta have someone come up side yo’ head once in a while.” He backhanded Deke’s outstretched palm. Partners. Howard chewed on an uncracked, nut-hard seed from the joint. They passed a gas station which, for all its appearance of disrepair, would have seemed abandoned, but for a man in greasy overalls and some friends standing about the pump island amid crooked wrecks. A German shepherd, still as a picture, stared out an empty pane in the service bay door. The men laughed, slapped hands, pointed at each other. “Yeah,” said Howard, drifting, “Somebody got to get on y’ass.” He took the seed off his tongue with the pad of an index finger. “Them old mugs. Thas us about two years. Promise. Gashead wino vaudeville clowns.”

“Fact, this ain’t sharp,” Deke said, “This ain’t nowheres near sharp to what I wear like when I wanna move for real.”

“Ain’t nowheres near halfway neither.”

“Kiss ma dick.”

Howard laugh-hacked. He pointed to the seed on the finger. “Want some? Get you high.”

Abandoned cars in the heavily-leafed weeded lots littered with exploded diamonds of windshield glass, lots so irretrievably soaked in motor oil as to be hardened to an unnatural sheen approximating asphalt, mullen and lamb’s quarter edging wastes of gray board fences covered in torn-away layers of posters, scrawled over with spray-painted obscenities, store windows frosted with street soot.

“Detroit fucked, man.” Howard said.

“Heard that.”

They banged over railroad tracks that gave, to either side, into rotting storehouse docks on rusting, overgrown sputs. “Shit look like Germany, man. Been won by the Allies.”

“They gonna be some Allies at the party tonight, so don’t be bogue now.”

“Goodness gracious, Chauncey, I would not have white peoples think poorly of me and mines.” This time Howard put out his palm to catch Deke’s backhand. “Cool huh? I gots mucho linguistics.”

“Is this place anyway?” He asked after a while. “New York?”

“On down Grand River. Punch some jams.”

Past the deep multiple-flat dwellings, some boarded up, flowerless trellises, stashed in porch lattices. Taking Grand River west then, storefront churches and drycleaners, discount shoes, the usual bars, repossessed furniture stores, rib and pizza shops. Every sight memorized. Howard let his arm dangle out the window. “Check m’ man. Think he the bomb. Check it out, Deke.”

Deke disturbed his poise enough to assess the middle-aged cat decked in upholstered heels, a Borsalina hat, and red walking suit. Deke said nothing. The man was only a little older than them. Howard giggled. “Ooh boy, tickle me. Niggers extremely flamboyant.”

“Gonna get me somethin’ on the up and up,” Howard said after a while. “Get me a business, jump ship on this reservation.”

Deke shot him a sarcastic smile. “The fuck kinna business you do?”

“See at drugstore?”

“Shei-hit.”
“Hey now. Drug store right up my alley. Deke’s and Howard’s Discount Drugs. You dispenses with the money for the drugs, and we counts it. Sound cool, bro?” He burst into the consumptive laugh, worked himself up. He spit out the window. He slapped the dashboard. “Pre-posterous, man.”

They passed Leroy’s U.S. Star Bar. People were parking in lots across Grand River, all gotten to get them some at Leroy’s, crossing through traffic in couples and groups of young males. Their hair was out with odd angle parts, or into platforms–like caps–the sides skinned military style. The colors of their cotton shirts were more subdued. Look like versions of Arsenio Hall. Two blocks beyond Deke turned down a street. “Train be there tonight,” he said.

“Makes you think that ring a bell with me?” Howard snapped quickly. He had been thinking the same. Train almost always made it to the Star sometime on Friday, sometimes alone, sometimes with a couple of his boys tagging.

“Muffin tell you I call?”

“Yeah, she telt me. She telt me Train lookin’ for me, too. I say like, hey, the fuck that to me? He goin’ the Star, hey, I wish the muthafucka ha’ himself a marvelous time, man. Hope he get some pussy. If the muthafuckin’ trick can.”

“At ain’t cool in the least.”

“You see me scairt? Shoot. Don’t owe his monkey ass nothin’.”

“You tell him that.”

“I’ll tell’m.”

“You tell him then.”
“Where this place, man, you gettin’ me mad.”

“Down the street,” said Deke. “Where you think?”

“All right den, cool.” Two cars could barely pass in the narrow corridor between the lines of parked cars at the curbs. They had to wait behind others in the lane, stopping and starting again. Howard said, “I’m leavin’ that shit downtown pretty soon anyways, man, foolin’ with dope pushers come up on me say, ‘You owes me. Shit, I don’t even be needin’ that. See maybe I can get me a cool job, lay up for a minute, get me a ride.”

“Work at the factory, man. I done told you that.”

“Naw man.”

“You talkin’ ‘bout a ride,” Deke tapped the steering wheel. “Make some long ass money in a car factory, blood,”

“Done already worked in one a them.” Howard snorted, sat up, put the bag of grass away. “Wondered what is these muthafuckas makin’, man, they’s manufacturin’ nigger complexes. American cars outa business any goddamn way.”

“Got Japanese company down to Flat Rock there–”

“Japanese just ‘nother kind a grevious Nigger, telling you. Won’t work for no Tojo bitch.”

The streetlight in the middle of the block was out. Houses large and looming close to the street in the darkness of great crowding trees. Deke said, “The fuck that spose’t mean?”

“Ain’t about nothin’, anyways.” Howard slumped back against the door. “Got some crazy ass nigger on my ass for sumpthin’ I ain’t even did. My habits a contact ain’t shit. I’m in a, like, extremely questionable element, man.”

“What’s that got to do with factories, answer me that? “Deke asked, as if speaking angrily to a child.

“It don’t.” Train. Always some fool badder than somebody else.

Howard knew he had more intelligence than anyone, even more than Deke, and that he would outsmart Train. Had to. “I means like everybody down here on a reservation. And they don’t know it. But they likes it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s it.” But Deke wouldn’t slap his hand.

“But you cool,” Deke said. “You about somethin’.”

“Look, they either dressin’ like muthafuckin’ zebras or they talkin’ like, hey, we gonna get over brother. Revolution. Ain’t heard no plan yet.” Howard waved in the general direction of several parked cars. “Drivin’ Cadillacs like the script say niggers should, Marks, Deuces...”

“But you don’t want no Mark, now...”

“Heyall naw. The fuck for?”

“Listen this boo-shit.”

“You know, like people in this town either buildin’ cars, stealin’ cars, or parkin’ them in lots so’s they can get stolen.” He paused. “Called the assembly line.” This was funny to Howard. The car stopped completely.

“Got an attitude, man. all the time you talkin’ shit.” Howard started to reply but Deke overrode him: “Ya’ll be talkin’, but what you is, you just another nigger tryin’ get over runnin’ you mouf like you ain’t and put y’foot knee deep in y’peoples’ ass.”

“Ain’t mines. Maybe they yours.”

“Aww man. They y’brothers and sisters–”

Howard drummed on the dashboard. “Hey, like sometimes my brothers is sisters.”

“Fuck you.”

“I appreciate y’all lookin’ out for my better interest, now. It’s the bomb. Mean to thank you.”

They stopped across the street from a brick home on the corner which had been divided into flats. They climbed out and composed themselves, putting themselves in order and checking and brushing. The flat was upstairs. At the door they were greeted by Deke’s brother-in-law, a sturdy, intelligent looking man in gold-rimmed spectacles and a clean tight natural that engaged the carpet of his beard so uninterruptedly even Howard admired it, self-consciously touching a small constellation of shaving bumps on his neck.

“Billy Charles. It’s a pleasure.” Billy Charles diplomatically let slide the second stage of intricate handplay, urbanely patting Howard, instead, on the shoulder, and ushering the two inside.

First of all, there were white people, nine of them exactly. They had some connection to Billy Charles’ work. Whoever else he was speaking to at first, Howard could not keep his eyes off them, laying for the opportunity to look back at them. It seemed a kind of confirmation that the white women sat on their chairs or the couch edge and rarely moved, waiting on drinks from their boys like southern belles, feet planted together, eyes either moving quickly about them or evidencing the same type of unease by laughing inordinately at any simple remark by a black person. He watched the black men, instantly rebuking in his mind any who spoke to the white women, scrutinizing their looks and gestures from his remove. Talk ranged between business and television.

It was a small place and as the guests milled there was the confused jockeying for space, the undulant conversation, college talk, near as he could tell. Howard found himself standing off a good deal, attempting to appear preoccupied without drawing any eyes. Several times Billy Charles invited him to mingle, to help himself to anything. Others inquired about his job, his education, though it never occurred to him to ask the same of anyone else. Managing a civil air in the midst of all the hale goodfellow cheery party talk wore on him. Deke was ever immersed, however, with several brothers, in talk about sports, money, plans.

“I can see you looking out the window there,” Billy Charles said from behind, obviously having cultivated an affinity for him Howard could not have been responsible for encouraging. “Every Friday night, or nearly–you see that streetlight? There’s some guy, comes down the street from this way here. You can hear him singing. Then he stops out there in the streetlight. You can’t see him awfully good through the tree branches. He’ll stop cars if he has to, but he’ll put on one show.”

“That right?” said Howard, rubbing an eye. “That’s beautiful, you know.”

“I swear,” said Billy Charles.

“Incredible,”said someone from behind, a white, who had been listening. “Love it.”

After Billy Charles’ preliminary introductions, Billy moved away, leaving the white man with Howard. To no avail, without even succeeding in getting Howard to turn from the window and acknowledge his presence, the man asked, “You’re with Deke, right? Your name is Gibson, Billy said?”
In his best nigger drawl, Howard replied, “We’s all name Gibson, man.”

The rest of the evening improved little. No one again made the mistake of addressing Howard. That none of them dance, that this was supposed to be a party and no one even brought up dancing appalled him. When he could get Deke aside, he told him, “These macaronis talkin’ politics and smoothin’ down the road like muthafuckin’ cotton salesmen, Deke. Les hit it. This shit make me sick. You done put in your ‘pearance.”

“Lay on that a minute, bro.”

“Come on, man. Les do it like we ain’t even came.”

“Why y’all got to be so nasty?”

“I see. You gotta see about coppin’ some white pussy, guess that’s what you say.”

“You is foul,” Deke hissed. “Ain’t goin’ nowheres with your ornery ass.”

“All right den,” Howard made a brief fist. “In a minute.” And headed for the door.

“Not even,” said Deke.

Howard walked back up the street toward the Star. What Deke had said might very well be true, that Train would be there, and that he would want to be paid. “Deke ain’t shit,” he mumbled to himself. He did, however, consider, as he walked, taking the bus home, the night having been such a disappointment. He made no connection between this and his possible fear of Train. Although he checked his pockets, then on the possibility that he’d forgotten his money for the cover charge. He had not.

He reached Grand River and stood in the splashes of neon, car lights, and street lamps. A bus grumbled up and rocked to a stop with a screech, its doors sucked open, disgorging passengers, then broke audible wind and wheezed away, black fumes from blackened exhaust grates hanging in the air like clouds of anger in a comic strip.

Until the last moment he debated with himself about going in, but finally entered Leroy’s Star Bar, reservedly casing it, affecting the distracted air of one who had better places to be. And though he had no quibble with the music, he loitered by the bar without speaking to anyone, nursing a gin and tonic. Howard leaned his back against the bar, stretched his legs, self-satisfied. He told several women who passed within earshot that they stimulated his mind. By all appearances he had not done the same for theirs. He looked for familiar faces, for anyone. No one. And he hadn’t seen Train. He stretched.

But Train had stationed himself in the crowd along the aisle to the front door. And when Howard moved to a file of people leaving, it was not until he was nearly abreast of Train that he saw him. Train stared, implacable, into Howard’s eyes. Train with those hard Milk Dud irises, taller than Howard, larger in every respect, a Jamaican beaded top opened on a chest which seemed, however implausibly, to be blacker than his midnight face. A corruption of beard invaded the strop of his jaw like chickweed and his nose was interrupted by a smooth detoured crescent of lighter, dead tissue under a nostril. It sometimes shown like a paint splotch.

“Happenin’,” said Howard, so taken off balance that he failed to put a look on his face, though at least he succeeded in not betraying his dismay. By the changing lights it was hard to tell, but Train may have nodded. He may have said something too, but the music was too loud for him to tell. Train looked like a tall Joe Frazier with a terminal dose of Ugly-Dumb.
Just when Howard thought he would pass without a hitch, the line help up. Train blew smoke into his ear. Howard watched back at him, warily, but cool enough that he could manage an expression of vague displeasure. Train put the cigarette to his lips again, inhaled, teeth showing. “Seem we ain’t talked about sumpthin’ I need.” No smoke. Must have swallowed it. Thus absorbed, Howard said nothing. The line was completely stopped; ostensibly, there was a commotion outside the door.

“Where my money?”

“Don’t owe you, Train. You know that.” Trembling, Howard fixed his eyes ahead, attempted an abstracted look, as if contemplating moving to the front of the line to straighten things out.

“When I gettin’ it?” Train’s voice was too low for anyone else to pick up.

“Told you man,” Howard made a lame play at impatience, though he rightly suspected his face gave him away.

“Where my money?”

“Maybe y’all gots a hole in y’pocket. Call the police.” Always mouthing. Couldn’t resist.

The plum softness of Train’s big nose pressed into Howard’s hair and fingers wrenched shut on his forearm. “I am the polices, silly mutherfuck, you know?” Howard heard Train’s teeth come together. “I ax you did you know–answer me, punk.”

It took a second to get the tone right, like he might not answer, then Howard croaked. “Hear you.”

“All-of-it. Right?”

Howard nodded.

“Be sweet.” Howard resisted rubbing the arm. Outside, the commotion earlier had been caused by a woman– still standing and stamping around in her blue sheer dress– fronting off her man. He stood apart, utterly indifferent. The exiting bar patrons and stragglers in the street sagged with her, as she stomped about, in a loose circle like a cell wall. The dude withstood her rage stolidly, lips compressed but his eyes, quite possibly, amused. “Anybody fuck w’me get they ass shot off,” she screeched, out of control and pointing at him.

“Slap that silly bitch,” one brother said. “Tear’m up, baby,” said someone else. “Say what you do,” another; “Oww, do it.” Laughs, heads nodding, trying to see.

The man, imperturbable, said something to her. His arms remained folded.

“Tell me shit...” she started away, arms flailing.

Howard’s leg hurt. Standing still in the milling circle of onlookers, he tried to will it away. Burning into the thigh. He put a finger there to scratch, but with self-restraint; it stayed like a needle, and without removing his widening eyes from the woman, he held the pant leg away from his skin. The pocket burned a knife point into him. His teeth clenched. In one frenetic jerk he thrust his hand in, burning his finger, trying frantically to act calm...

“Ch’all lookin’ at?” The woman wailed at them all. “Who you laughin’ at?”

The pocket flew inside out, an explosion of change on the sidewalk and the solitary butt of Train’s still-burning cigarette.

“Somebody throwin’ money around.”

“Axim do he got some foldin’ money.”
The woman shouted, “Hit on no Marlotte,” stumbling, rickety on her heels. “I don’t be playin’ that shit. Don’t tell me you didn’t neither nigger. I ain’t goin for it.”

Howard saw him. Across the circle, Train held a pack of cigarettes toward Howard, eyes innocently congenial, inviting him to have another.

Howard’s scalp itched.

With a sickening crumple, the woman was racked up against the bricking of the bar front, slid over and was caught again by an uppercut before she was all the way down, head snapping up and hair blowing to one side. She cried out, seeming then to awaken from the first blow, unable yet to believe. Then her bleeding face cracked down on the cement and she lay moaning at the man’s feet, moaning through her nose and weeping both, as one would who was being chased in a dream by terrible shadows. A few of the women called the man names. There was a disappointed pause when no one closed in on her to help. One man began to help the woman up. The consensus moving in from the periphery behind was that it had been the guy’s woman, no reason to get shot over. Howard could only concur. Like bored spectators at a construction dig, they began crossing Grand River, some returned to the bar, new conversations already starting.

The man bent over his woman, and the other let her go, shouted hoarsely for her to get up, but the louder he demanded the louder she howled. She was missing one shoe, her hands crawling over her eyes and mouth, arms and dress powdered with grains of the sidewalk. She was conscious, quieter when he quit demanding, seemingly sober again. She cried tears into her fingers.

Howard caught up with some others, walking away from where Train had been, without conceding to himself the truth of his motivation. He swiftly cut in ahead of a crowd departing the bar and heading for their cars in a lot adjacent to the building, keeping just ahead. He put on a step, walking on the gravel of the lot and letting his eyes wander up at each set of headlights and roar of an ignition, obstinately persuaded that he was not going to let a crazy brother run him down. He slowed his walk on that account.

Ain’t no swishy punk. Ain’t a fool neither.

He walked then down a sidestreet parallel to, but three or four blocks east of, where he had been with Deke at the party earlier. He had no intentions, really, of returning. Nor had he speculated about the direction he had taken, unless it was away from the beating. “Can’t stand niggers don’t maintain and got t’be loud and shit,” he’d told Deke before. Fool enough, the woman had to be talking on her man in front of people. “But the dude extremely uncool put his shit the Main ,” Howard murmured. The block was too dark. He reminded himself not to talk out loud. He tried to see ahead to any buckles in the sidewalk. Because there were no driveways and there was a row of parked cars between himself and anyone approaching in a car, he felt confident he could make the run between the houses. Not that he would have to. Not that he would.

He paused to slip out his smokes and pinch one out. When he lit it, he looked back up the street where he had been and, sighting down the tunnel formed by the canopy of trees, thought he glimpsed a silhouette intruding the glare of the neon and traffic of Grand River. At that distance, he could not tell whether it was approaching or retreating. Only a little he stepped up his pace, still undecided about where to go. He turned the corner left, onto the sidestreet, generally in the direction of Billy Charles’ flat. When he looked back over the hedge, however, he had lost the backdrop of Grand River as the lines of oaks and ashes shut off the lights. But he could hear the footsteps. Not Train. He had a Mark and would have come after him in the car.

Rather than use the sidewalk and make noise, Howard used the grass strip all the way to the corner, then turned right and walked north again. He held up for a number of seconds. The figure turned onto the same sidestreet and clicked up the sidewalk.
He inhaled deeply of his smoke, concentrating on his stride, he let the smoke out, smooth. Took another draw and flicked the spiraling stub off on a lawn. He might have been overheard talking to himself.

Have to stop that shit.

Like a yacht riding into dock with the engines cut, the Mark IV swept up with its lights off. It never occurred to him to run, even when the three of them jumped out and strode over to the sidewalk ahead of him. It was then he heard the running behind, coming up the block. He stopped, took his hands out of his pockets to avoid being misunderstood, and backed a little off the sidewalk against a tree, as if he had been expecting them.

Train had stopped running, huffing a bit as he walked up. It was too dark to see, but Howard knew the other three by their size, especially the small one in the hat. He stared with a belligerent curiosity, hands shaking as he took out the cigarettes. The Mark idled like some great muted vacuum cleaner.

“This the nigger, Train?” said the shrimp.

“Got cigarettes, Howard?” Train took the pack. “Mind if I ha’one, do you?”

“Long’s you don’t put it out in my pocket.”

He squeezed the package into a ball. “Ought t’slap the taste out yo’ mouf.”

“Fuck this trick up, Train.” One of the others said it, but Howard tried keeping the little one in sight. The balled cigarettes hit him on the shirt front. Howard’s stomach muscles tensed. He was sure they hadn’t seen him flinch.

“Whup’is dumb ass.”

Train opened his hands, “Whas’ up, Howard?”

“Can you get t’that, brother?” said one of the three. Howard kept his eyes on Train.

“You know, like I ain’t said shit about y’all bein’ into me fo the money. That’s the truf now, ain’t it?”

“Not me,” Howard replied, and was distressed to find himself quivering.

“Shut the fuck up,” the little one shouted suddenly.

Couldn’t resist. “You the seventh dwarf, ainchoo? Dopehead?”

His reaction was late. Should have expected it. Train’s fist caught him high on the side of the head, followed by a glancing kick on the shoulder as he fell. Howard stumbled on a raised knuckle of tree root and sprawled on all fours, trying to stay off his pants. Numbed, taking the kicks and punches in his ribs.

“Put my foot knee deep in y’ass.” Train followed him about the lawn as Howard tried to regain his footing. Howard could hear the others making remarks. (“Sorry ass;” “Don’t hit me please, suh,” said another in a high, teasing voice. “Please, kine sir.”) Howard scrambled up, hoping someone would come out on one of the porches. No one. They would figure him lucky not to get shot. Old fashioned fist-fight. His face and the back of his neck humming with adrenaline, he breathed through his mouth. There were a couple spots, above his right eye and below the shoulder blade, where the muscles, though he couldn’t feel pain, tightened like a tissue harder than skin. He couldn’t lift his arm. His lip itched, but in a place that seemed a little off the face. he stood, hands on hips awkwardly, appearing oddly disapproving, as if they were taking his time.

“Le’s do it, punk.”

“I ain’t fightin’ you, Train.” A flash again in his eyes. Howard got up with some effort. “Ain’t.” He said this unevenly, trying to get his breath. He felt like a bitch for the sound of himself. His vision blurred.

“Play me fo some okeydoke?” The slap jogged his head like a wooden thing, like a camera. “Huh?” Again the impact and his sight jumped. He could not feel. Maybe train had said something else.His hearing, the order of things were out of cinque.

“Fight!” shouted the little one.

Howard was suffused in a great calm, dabbing with his fingertips along his upper lip, his heart racing but his movements settled and thorough. With great concentration, he inspected the fingers.

“Ain’is a bitch?” said one.

“I seen sorry muthafuckas befo’, but ‘is one–”

Train came up to Howard’s face. “Want m’money, boy.”

Howard heard himself say, thickly, “Like that’s beautiful. But I ain’t got it right now. My management a funds is in serious jeopardy.”

“Deep,” Train whispered. “ Thass deep.”

“He playin’ a humble, Train.”

“Fuck him up.”

Train struck again. Howard went to his knees, got up immediately, brushing them off.

“Huh? You just talk, ain’t you, punk?”

In utter despair at the uselessness of it, Howard said again that he couldn’t produce what he didn’t have. A bubble of blood formed in one nostril.

“Tell you boy, you in a bad town t’ be runnin’ that shit.”

Dulled, Howard blinked several times. “Ain’t front’n, Train.”

“He playin’ y’ shit fo’ the cheap, Train.

Like dogs, Howard thought. Done brought his simple dogs.

“Who gots it, Howard?”

“Hey, I can get it, few weeks probably.”

‘You get a loan.”

“Can’t get no credit, man. You gotta be somebody and shit.”

“An you nobody.”

“Dig that.”

“This ain’t nowhere to be nobody, Howard,” levelly Train said it, and Howard stiffened, not expecting the blow, but viscerally anticipating the shot. Train was known. He had stayed out of the organizations and never sold rock, a conservative business man. But he took care of business hard.

A car came. When its lights caught the Mark everyone turned to the street, Train in front of him, tall dude on the right, one near the sidewalk and the little one to Howard’s left. Which was where Howard ran when the car horn sounded. He was dipping his shoulder and in one motion following through with a fist to the fool’s throat, the hat flying, Howard already by him, putting on a kick of speed, over the lawns toward Grand River...
“MUTHAFUCKER–HEEYY...”

...wind cold on his forehead, feeling the dried blood of his nose like a skin of bubble gum, faster than the punks, than anybody, like it was a beating he was administering (come-own now muthafucka, you in my game now), showing them how, shuffle and cut, prancing his legs out like Walter Payton, broken field, (come own), moving down the sidestreet, then juking down the street where the party had been.

Halfway, he saw they weren’t coming, slowed down to a walk. Again he started running. He looked back. Then he stopped. He glanced up and down the block. He considered going down to Grand River, but could see the shirt was ripped. He walked toward the party, trying to catch his breath (ain’t played roundball so long).

Down the other end of the block as he approached: headlights coming up the sidestreet. He shot between the houses, hopping a backyard gate without using his bad arm, and slunk behind the house. By the sound of the engine he knew. The Mark. It idled, the sound enlarging suddenly in the corridor between the houses. Howard’s heart percussed against his throat and rib cage and he pressed, ready to run, against the cinder roughness of the imitation-brick asbestos. letting his breath out of his mouth, slowly, when it had gone.

The car remained there.

A dog.

It sniffed Howard’s hand. If it could do that, if it was that large, it might be a shepherd, or a Doberman. In this city, it might be a rat. Howard had to restrain the scream.

Carefully putting his feet ahead without bending the knee. Dog came too. He couldn’t see in the darkness, not wanting to make a sound. He stepped easing toward the corner of the house. He could not outrun it. To the fence.

A long breathless minute or two and the car, finally, began to move away.

He burst forward with two measured high jumper strides and met the ball of the fence post with a foot coming over, an unrestrained hoarse explanation and went sprawling to the other side. After a second, a dog nose lethargically prodded the fence mesh.

“Muthafuckin’ dumb ass shit dog, you ain’t shit, get my shit all crazy–” Rubbing his pants and limping slightly, Howard made off, remindful to whisper.

With a peremptory snort, the dog nose backed off and vanished, its outline swallowed in the blackness of the yard.

Howard had only gone a hundred feet or so before another car came and he had to slip between two houses.

When he arrived at the corner brick house where Billy Charles’ party went on, he first tried the doors of Deke’s car. They were locked. Skirting the glare of the corner streetlight, he hurried across to the house. He would wait for Deke on the steps beneath the small shingled overhang. He sat feeling the face bruises, touching the proud flesh of his lips and the bulb of his eyebrow. His back ached. And worse, the shirt was ruined. The Gatsbys, though dirty, were still cool, which was something.

It had to be late. Deke would be along soon. The lights of a car startled him. He stooped around the side of the house, crouching, frog-hopping under the cover of some large bushes which ran close to the house and parallel to the sidestreet, in the sheltering darkness of a lawn tree which blocked most of the streetlight.

The car passed, yet he remained in his uncomfortable stoop for some time. He listened to the city, to far off buses, brothers wheeling down the streets with the jams playing full, gunshots. No matter how accustomed you got to that and no matter how similar the sound to the distant rattle-clap of semis banging heat-buckled pimples in the street or a backfiring engine, still you knew some fool shooting his piece. Neighbor used to go to drinking every Friday, get so sloppy and, ready for sleep, he gone out the front lawn, fire off a couple rounds and yell, ‘Salute mother fuckers.” Then off to beddy-bye.

Before long, rain pattered in the leaves overhead, popping and snapping on the sidewalks and in the street. He waited in a kind of compromised catcher’s crouch, electing this over the risk of getting his pants any more dirty than they were. Listening to the thump of the music from the party above, entranced by the rain on a piece of intersection visible from his hiding place. When he saw Train again, be dancing on his ass. He pictured himself shuffling smart, riffing jabs off Train’s square fool head, back pedaling, slipping wild punches, shooting the left, toying with him. (Just goofin’ the punk tonight ‘cause he be with them other guys.) Pick away, talk on him, “This what you like alone?” Cranking up the bolo for the crowd watch him in a circle. Do what you do, brother. Gonna do you no good.

A man, coming up the street. Howard ducked. He saw him only when the cat passed through the shed of the alley vapor lamp.
He heaved along with a spastic’s compensating jerky lurch, shoetoe set down, then heel, toe then heel, leaning, stamping flatfooted every fourth or fifth step.

He was staggering.
When he got into the light at the corner, Howard guessed him to be about thirty-five or forty, not any more certainly. He wore patent leathers, gray sans’ belts, a print on white shirt. He carried a burgundy sportcoat under his arm. Howard was tickled. Dress like a ole gashead.
Then the man danced in place, stumbling. Making choreographic sweeps of his hands, he skipped forward, turned on one foot and smacked the other down. He snapped his fingers on the beat.
Out came a sweet baritone that stunned. It had a deeper reach and could fly, nasal, imploring.

How can you say that I’m
Cheating you of your time?
Tell me darlin’ now–

No edges. He sang the loves betrayed, always, by a woman’s wiles or impatience. He sang the sad parts with an awesome loss and grief, cracking on the pain words–

What can I do to make up to you
The hurt I have started?
Love cannot be charted.
Only the broken-hearted
Can make it improve, baby, baby,baby...

He danced with it, dipping, shaking his head in disbelief, weakened, but not in his soul. Pointing at his heart and his eyes, he found the voice to admonish, moaned, softly, or deception. He knew, brother, knew what must come to pass. Indicating the sky, he entreated heaven to witness it, and the anguish of his begged understanding was transformed. It moved through him to his feet and his chest, too good to bear, gonna be right–gotta be right–because he was staying on.

Faith of the strong don’t easily end,
Columns of steel ain’t apt to bend
In the wind, darling–

The darkness began to show out through the drenched shirt. When he swung his beaded face back, water flew. Howard tried to remove himself from the fantastic sight. Still, absorbed in it, dude wasn’t bad, had to admit that, crazy as the muthafucka be.
To avoid him, another car had to inch by, for he was dead in the middle of the intersection and wouldn’t budge, nor did he interrupt his singing. he pivoted with it instead, calling on another unappreciative lover–

I don’t mean to be abrasive
But lately you’ve been evasive
Could it be someone else is filling your hours?

The same songs, old Temps and Four Tops and Jerry Butler. Everybody else either into some deep jazz or they discomanic.
But this was soul, pure brother–singing like you teach yourself to do on the school field or walking with bloods. It made Howard still. Songs, same ones of blame-placing and pure want transcended by the music of hope, the repetition of chant. Not gospel singing. maybe testimony. At times they could shame him, the lyrics so simple and alike, even anger him. Just like niggers sing that silly booshit. It could anger him, seeing the man out there alone, but mostly it was the urge to cover him with something and take him into the darkness of Howard’s own cover. But he wouldn’t. Because what the brother did he had to do, put into the air what don’t do you no good nowheres else. Nowhere to be nobody.
In his spectacular delusion, the man bowed three times, left, right, then forward, the last most ingratiated and deep, the longest held of them all. Then he strode off into the rain and the darkness, soaked to the skin, heels spraying puddles.
Howard shifted his position to get out his joint, at the same instant realizing he had lost the glasses.
Laughter and clapping and talk above from the window of Billy Charles’ apartment. He was positive he heard someone say, “Love it.”

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