George Pelecanos - The Way Home

Ben finished counting the one stack, then counted the number of stacks in the bag and multiplied.

“It’s damn near fifty thousand in here,” said Ben.

“Now you know,” said Chris. “Zip up the bag and put it back.”

Ben pointed a finger at the money. “That’s two times what I make in one year, Chris. Working on my knees. I could buy something nice for my girl, take her out to dinner to one of those restaurants got white tablecloths. I could have some real clothes, and not the off-brand shit I got now. A pair of designer shades-”

“Put it back.”

Ben stood up and faced Chris. He was going for confrontational, but he couldn’t get there. There wasn’t anything like that inside him. Instead, he looked hurt.

“How you gonna do this to me, man?”

“I’m doing you a favor.”

“Nobody would know, so what’s the harm? You can’t tell me I’m wrong.”

“My father gave us a chance here,” said Chris. “Wasn’t anybody else looking to hand us a decent job, was there? Someone does find out, it’s his reputation we’d be messin with. That’s his name on the truck.”

“And yours,” said Ben.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means that I got nothin. Someday, whatever your father’s got, whatever he built up, it’s gonna come to you.”

Chris moved his eyes from Ben’s. “I’ve never taken anything from him but a paycheck.”

“Comes a time, you will.” Ben’s features softened. “You know I appreciate what your pops did for me. But this thing we’re talkin about here, it could change my life.”

“It’s already changed,” said Chris. “You don’t see it yet, is all. I’m sayin, there’s no shortcut to where we’re trying to get to. Just work, every day. Same as how it is for everyone else.”

“Don’t you want more?”

Chris stared at Ben. “Put the bag back in the hole. Let’s finish the job.”

“Damn, you just stubborn.”

While they were laying down the new carpet, Mindy Kramer called and said she was on her way to the row house. She arrived shortly thereafter, just as they were finishing the installation. Mindy eyeballed the work, walked on it, questioned the bubbles, and carefully inspected the line where the carpet met the bead at the edge of the wall.

“I guess it’s fine,” said Mindy Kramer, constitutionally incapable of telling them that their work was satisfactory. “I need a little time to let it marinate. If I have any problems, I’ll call Mr. Flynn.”

“Any concerns you got,” said Chris, “he’ll take care of it.”

They cleaned up the work site and packed the old carpet and padding in the back of the van. On the way out the door, Ben looked for an indication of an alarm system and saw none. He and Chris climbed into the van and took off.

Driving down U Street, Chris said, “Hungry?”

“You know I am.”

“I’ll buy.”

“That’s gonna make us late to our next job.”

“I’ll handle my dad,” said Chris. “You earned lunch.”

Ben adjusted his W cap on his head and slouched in the bucket. “I coulda bought a whole restaurant with what I left back there. I had what was in that bag, I could eat a hundred half-smokes every day for the rest of my life.”

“You’d get sick of half-smokes,” said Chris. “You’d shit like a horse.”

“In my gold bathroom.”

“Okay.”

“And I’d have a butler to wipe my ass.”

“Every man should have a dream,” said Chris. He pulled the van to the side of the road and locked it down.

They walked toward the diner on U.

“I don’t like wearing these things,” said Ben with petulance, fingering the short sleeve of his Flynn’s Floors polo shirt.

“Neither do I,” said Chris.

“You know what it reminds me of,” said Ben.

“I’ll talk to my dad.”

Ben Braswell pushed on the door of the eat house. He was hot and tired, and still thinking about the money. Chris was, too.

Ali Carter sat in a rickety chair behind an old metal desk, manufactured and used by federal government workers before he was born. On the other side of the desk, in a chair just as suspect as Ali’s, sat a young man named William Richards. He wore a Bulls cap, Guess jeans, a We R One T-shirt, and Nike boots. Richards was seventeen, full nosed, slightly bug-eyed, and annoyed.

“Mr. Masters said you been fighting him on the uniform shirt,” said Ali.

“That shirt stupid,” said William.

“It says you work for the company. It identifies you so when you do those events, the clients and the kids know who you are.”

“That shirt got a picture of a clown on it. And balloons. I can’t be walkin down the street wearin that mess.”

“The clown’s part of the logo,” said Ali with patience. “You work for a company that sets up parties for kids. That logo is what makes people remember the business.”

“The younguns where I stay at be laughin at me, Mr. Ali.”

“So put the Party Land shirt in a bag and wear another shirt to the job. When you get to the site, change up. That’ll work, right?”

William Richards nodded without conviction and looked away.

They were seated in a storefront office situated on a commercial stretch of Alabama Avenue, in the Garfield Heights section of Southeast. Ali was a junior staff member of Men Movin on Up, a nonprofit funded by the District, local charities, and private donors. Though there were many such organizations, set up in churches, rec centers, and storefronts, to help young men find their way and stay on track, Men Movin on Up was specifically designed to work with offenders, boys on parole or probation and boys awaiting trial. Its director, Coleman Wallace, was a career social worker and activist Christian who had grown up poor and fatherless in Ward 8. A lifelong Washingtonian, he stayed in contact with many locals from his generation, and he put his hand out to those who had made it and asked them without shame to donate their money and volunteer their time to help young men who, like them, had come up disadvantaged. This group occasionally brought the boys to their places of work, counseled them, coached them in rec basketball, and took them on day trips to ball games and amusement parks.

Occasionally they made a difference in the boys’ lives. There were many disappointments, failures, and setbacks, but Wallace and his friends had long ago stopped laboring under the illusion that they were going to save the collective youth of the city. If they could reach one kid, plant a seed that by example might grow into something right, they felt they had achieved success.

Ali was the sole staff member on the payroll. Coleman Wallace had hired him right out of Howard, where Ali had earned a bachelor’s degree at the age of twenty-five. Coleman was attracted to Ali’s intelligence and commitment, and also to the fact that Ali had done time at Pine Ridge and made the complete turnaround from incarcerated youth to productive member of society. He was smart and accomplished but also had the cachet of the real. His history bought him respect from the clients.

Also, Ali’s relative youth was an attraction. Coleman Wallace was well aware that many of the boys he counseled could not relate to him, a middle-aged man. Most of them didn’t even know that the organization’s name, Men Movin on Up, referred to the Curtis Mayfield lyric. Or that the hand-lettered lyrics framed and hung on the office wall were from Coleman’s favorite Curtis composition. Nine out of ten in this current crop didn’t even know who Mayfield was. To these young men, Ali Carter was go-go and hip-hop, and Coleman Wallace was slo-jam, tight basketball shorts, and way past old-school. Coleman needed an Ali Carter to help him connect.