Darnell Rock Reporting (9 page)

“No,” he said, pushing her hand away from him.

“Johnny, come on!” she called to him.

“No,” he said, pushing past her and heading toward the track. “I got to practice.”

“What are you doing?” she called after him.

“Leave him alone.” Darnell spoke softly to Angie. “Hey, Angie, don't worry, he'll be okay.”

Angie walked away stiffly, tears running down her face. She was worried about her brother. Darnell watched her for a long moment, thinking about how concerned she looked, thinking about her brother,
thinking about how some of the people from the Corner Crew were doing some really good things. Then his thoughts went from the Corner Crew to the guys standing around the fire on Jackson Avenue.

Larry was at Darnell's house on Saturday morning and was watching television in the kitchen with Tamika when Darnell finished dressing. They were having cookies and milk.

“Larry's got a milk mustache,” Tamika said.

“Why don't you kiss it off for him,” Darnell said.

“What is your problem, Darnell?” Tamika threw a towel at her brother.

“Larry, you ready?” Darnell asked his friend.

“Just because you're in a hurry to interview that homeless dude don't mean that Larry has to be,” Tamika cut in.

“Suppose he's not there,” Larry said, putting cookies in his pocket.

“Then he's not there,” Darnell said. “He was there the last time.”

“How come Benny and everybody is going to coach Angie's brother in track?” Tamika asked.

“So he can beat you,” Darnell said, grabbing his pad and pen off the counter. “I'm going.”

“Wait up!” Larry called.

Darnell hit the street and felt the cool wind in his
face. He had heard earlier that it might rain, and he looked up at the late morning sky. There were clouds in the distance, but they were light, almost fluffy against the graying sky. On the apartment building across from where he lived, a flock of pigeons was being rousted from their coop by a thin man wearing dark shorts and a brown T-shirt.

“That's Benny's father/' Larry said.

“What do you think I should ask him?” Darnell walked near the edge of the sidewalk.

“Ask him why he keeps so many pigeons on the roof,” Larry said.

“Not him!” Darnell shot a glance at Larry, saw that he still had a smidgen of the milk mustache, and smiled. “I mean Sweeby.”

“You better say something nice,” Larry said. “My mom said you better not mess with homeless people because they ain't got nothing to lose.”

Darnell was quiet the rest of the way over to Jackson Avenue. He kept going over questions in his mind, but none of them sounded right.

There were usually a few people, mostly women, on Fairview Street where Darnell lived. But as he walked toward Jackson Avenue, there were more and more people on the street. Darnell knew that there would be even more people on Jackson Avenue.

“You know whose idea it was to coach Johnny Cruz?” Larry asked.

“Whose?” Darnell buttoned his jacket.

“Sonia's,” Larry said. “She saw some guys from
the eighth grade cracking on him and she caught an attitude.”

“ She's always got an attitude,” Darnell said. “But usually she's right. Anyway, I'd like to see if we can get him to run fast.”

“We ought to get Tamika to coach him,” Larry said. “She can aggravate you so much you'll want to run fast just to shut her mouth.”

“You going to marry Tamika,” Darnell said. “You always talking about her.”

“Hey, look.” Larry nodded with his head. “I bet you that's not a real store.”

They had turned onto Jackson Avenue from Ege Street. Darnell saw bags of onions piled on a wooden box in front of the window. The sign on the window that read
MACK'S GROCERYS
barely covered the old sign that read
LA CARNICERÍA FAMOSA
.

“Let's get on down the street,” Darnell said.

“You scared to look in there?” Larry asked. “I'll go on in.”

Darnell stopped and leaned against a utility pole. “Go on in, man,” he said. “I'll wait for you.”

Larry smiled and kept walking. Darnell caught up with him and punched him on the arm.

Sweeby was standing in front of Ace's Barbershop. Darnell and Larry reached him just as a light rain began to fall.

“Excuse me, Mr. Sweeby.” Darnell waved his hand in greeting. “I'd like to have another chance to interview you.”

“Read about your little narrow butt in the paper,” Sweeby said. “Think you a big deal, huh?”

“No,” Darnell said with a shrug.

“What you want to ask me?” Sweeby said. “And how much you going to pay me for an interview?”

“Pay you?” Darnell looked over at Larry and saw that Larry was looking at Sweeby. “I ain't got no money/ ‘

“You ain't giving out no free cans of beans?”

“Naw.”

“Okay,” Sweeby said. He turned and looked in the barbershop. “Come on in here.”

Ace's Barbershop was one of the best places to go on a Saturday morning. That was when the men who were waiting to get their hair cut sat inside and talked man talk with Ace and Preacher, the two barbers. Preacher was bald but wore a big, curly wig. Ace was big with a rough, gravelly voice. What they talked about was just about anything. Sometimes they talked about how the city was being run, and sometimes they talked about what the Arabs or the French people were doing. A lot of the time they just talked about what was going on in the neighborhood.

“Preacher, you mind if this boy interviews me here?” Sweeby asked Preacher. Ace wasn't there. “He's that kid that said they should turn the basketball court into a garden for the homeless.”

“Who's your daddy?” Preacher asked.

“Sidney Rock,” Darnell said. “He works for the post office.”

“Yeah, I know him,” Preacher said in a flat voice. “Go on, do your interview.”

“I'm going to tape the interview, okay?” Darnell asked.

‘‘Yeah, go on,” Sweeby said. He straightened up and squared his shoulders.

Larry sat down as Darnell set up his tape recorder. A man who was sitting in one of the chairs reading a paper folded it and put it down. He crossed his legs and turned toward Darnell and Sweeby. Darnell felt a lump in the middle of his stomach.

“So, where were you born?” Darnell asked.

“I was born in Live Oak, Florida,” Sweeby said, in the year nineteen hundred and forty-three.”

Then what happened?” Darnell asked.

Then what happened?'!”
Preacher stopped clipping hair. “You want the man to give you his whole life after he was born? You got to ask him some questions!”

“You have a job?” Darnell asked, wishing Preacher had kept his mouth shut.

“Had all kinds of jobs,” Sweeby said. “Good jobs, too. Worked up in Kentucky for a while as a driller in a mine, worked in New York City down on the docks, worked in Jersey City for Western Electric. That was a sweet job.”

“Till they closed,” Preacher said.

“I know whole families used to work for them,” the man who had been reading the paper said.

“So how come you … you know … you don't have a job now?” Darnell asked.

“Why you think I don't have a job?” Sweeby said.

Darnell looked at Larry, then at Preacher. “You don't dress so hot,” he said finally.

“Did I tell you that you don't dress so hot yourself?' ‘ Sweeby said. “You got a job?”

“No.”

“But you got somebody to take care of you, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Sweeby Jones don't have nobody to take care of him,” Sweeby said. “And the little piece of job I got don't pay nobody's rent today. When I was a young man I used to get a job here or there and I could keep a roof over my head. Today, if you don't have a woman or some kind of partner, you got to make big money to keep an apartment.”

“So how come you don't have a good job?” Darnell asked.

Sweeby took off his hat and turned his head from side to side. “You see these ears of mine?”

Darnell looked at them. They were small, like Larry's. “I see them.”

“Well, I ain't got a good job because I ain't got nothing between these ears that anybody is going to pay any good money for.”

“You know what I always say”—Preacher was giving a guy in the chair a nice fade—”it's a good thing your stomach don't control your feet. Because you know that if your stomach controlled your feet it would be kicking you in the hind parts every time it got hungry for all the dumb things you did in your life.”

“What dumb things did you do?” Darnell asked.

“Did what folks expected me to,” Sweeby said. “They expected me to sit in the back of the room like a big dummy, and that's what I did. Then they
expected me to get out of school with nothing but a strong back, and I did that.”

“That's what they expected all of us to do,” Preacher said. “And it didn't make much difference if you knew something or not, unless you were a preacher or a teacher.”

“Or an undertaker,” the customer waiting said. “ ‘Cause you know down South the white undertakers didn't take no colored business.”

“You never got your high-school diploma?” Larry asked.

“Hey, who's this?” Preacher asked. “He your coanchor person?”

“He's my friend,” Darnell said.

“You think they don't have any high schools in Live Oak?” Sweeby said. “Sure they got high schools, and sure I got my diploma. But when you got a piece of paper in your hands it don't mean that you got something between your ears.”

“When I was a young man …” Preacher stopped cutting hair and put his scissors down.

“I'm going to be an old man if you don't finish cutting my hair,” his customer said.

“You free to go anytime you want,” Preacher said. “You can just pay me for half a haircut.”

The customer gave Darnell a dirty look.

“When I was a young man you could always get a job if you were willing to work, and just about any old job would see you through. Didn't mean you ate high on the hog, but you ate. Now if you don't have a decent job you can't make it for nothing. You
could just be strong then and make a living. Lifting and carrying and stuff like that.”

“You could dig a ditch,” Sweeby said. “You remember when they laid that cable under Jackson Avenue?”

“Yeah, and colored folks were the last ones to get their homes wired up,” Preacher said.

“They must have had a hundred men digging for three weeks steady,” Sweeby went on. “Today they get two men with a back hoe and dig up from here to Bayonne in four days.”

“So what you going to do?” Darnell asked.

“Try to eat enough to keep my body and soul together,” Sweeby said. “Then hope I can sneak up on some learning so I can make a decent living.”

“Can you read?” Darnell asked.

“Didn't I just tell you I read about you in the paper?”

“Then how come you can't get a good job?” Darnell asked.

“Can you read?” Preacher asked. “And are you working?”

“He ain't nothing but a kid,” Larry said.

“Well, kid, ask your coanchor over there what difference it makes if you're a kid or not. If you can't do nothing the man is going to pay for, then you're in a world of trouble.”

Darnell looked out the barbershop window. Across the street, two young men leaning against a fence were talking to a girl holding a baby. The light rain had already stopped.

“So what are you going to do?” Darnell asked.

“You already asked that question,” the waiting customer said.

“If I knew what to do to get myself straight, I would go out and do it,” Sweeby said. “You can sit in your house and think about what it's like out here in the street, but unless you out here, you don't know. You just don't know.”

“What you think about the garden idea?” Darnell asked.

“It's something,” Sweeby said. “It's not a great idea, but it's something. You letting people know we here. People want to forget that poor people exist. We ain't pleasant.”

“Are you homeless?” Darnell asked.

“Homeless?” Sweeby leaned back as far as he could and looked at Darnell. “No, I'm not homeless. I sleep in these buildings right here on Jackson Avenue. They're my home. Or I go over to St. Lucy's and sleep, and then that's my home. Homeless don't mean anything to me. I could sleep on the ground in the park and it wouldn't mean anything to me. I ain't homeless, I'm hopeless. I don't see a way to do anything better.”

“That's why you got all this crack out here,” Preacher said. “People know they in trouble and can't see a thing to do about it. Then they get into that crack and make believe they don't know what's happening to them.”

“They know if they want to know,” Sweeby said.

“All I know,” the man sitting in Preacher's chair said, “was I come in here an hour ago for a haircut and I got to sit here and listen to all this talk instead
of going home and spending some quality time with my family. I told you I was in a hurry.”

“Man, your hair's been growing every minute you been here. It's just about all I can do to keep up with it. You lucky I'm not falling behind!”

“What you think about the garden?” Darnell asked Sweeby. “You want it?”

“Yes, I do,” Sweeby said. “It'll be good for the people who don't have regular meals, and so on, and then it'll be good for the kids to see a different side of things.”