George Pelecanos: The Turnaround

Everything was in front of him and new.

Two brothers walked up a slightly graded rise toward a small market and general store called Nunzio’s. They had just finished playing one-on-one at the outdoor court of a recreation center that adjoined an African Methodist Episcopal church. The older of the two, eighteen-year-old James Monroe, held a worn basketball under his arm.

Both James and his younger brother, Raymond, were long and thin, cut in the solar plexus and flat of chest, with good definition in the shoulders and arms. Both wore their hair in blowouts. James, a recent high school graduate, was good-looking and fully formed, and stood over six feet. At fifteen years old, Raymond was just as tall as James. As they walked, Raymond used a fist-topped pick to upcomb his hair.

“James,” said Raymond, “you seen Rodney’s new stereo yet?”

“Seen it? I was with him when he bought it.”

“He got some big-ass Bozay speakers, man.”

“Call it Bose. You sayin it like it’s French or somethin.”

“However you say it, those speakers is bad.”

“They are some nice boxes.”

“Man, he played me this record by this new group, EWF?”

“They ain’t all that new. Uncle William got their first two records.”

“They’re new to me,” said Raymond. “Rodney put on this one song, ‘Power’? Starts off with a weird instrument -”

“That’s a kalimba, Ray. An African instrument.”

“After that, the music kicks in hard. Ain’t no words in this song, either. When Rodney turned it up… I’m telling you, man, I was trippin.”

“You shoulda heard those speakers at the stereo store we went to,” said James. “Down on Connecticut? They got this sound room in the back, all closed up in glass. Call it the World of Audio. The salesman, long-haired white dude, puts Wilson Pickett on the platter. ‘Engine Number Nine,’ the long jam. Got to be the one record he spins when he trying to sell a stereo system to the black folk. Anyway, Rodney, you know he don’t play that. So he says to the dude, ‘Don’t you have any rock records I can hear?’ ”

“Messin with the white dude’s head.”

“Right. So the salesman puts on a Led Zeppelin. That song with all the weird shit in the middle of it, music flyin back and forth between the speakers? One where the singer’s talking about, ‘Gonna give you every inch of my love.’ ”

“Yeah, Led Zeppelin… he’s bad.”

“It’s a group, stupid. Not just one dude.”

“Why you always tryin to teach me?”

“You shoulda heard it, Ray. Those speakers liked to blow us out the room. I mean, Rodney couldn’t pull his wallet out fast enough. Fifteen minutes later, the stock boy is cramming a couple of Bozay Five-Oh-Ones into Rodney’s trunk.”

“Thought it was Bose.”

James reached out and tapped his brother’s head with affection. “I’m just playin with you, son.”

“I’d like to have me a stereo like that one.”

“Yeah,” said James Monroe. “Rodney got the baddest stereo in Heathrow Heights.”

Heathrow Heights was a small community of about seventy houses and apartments, bordered by railroad tracks to the south, woods to the west, parkland to the north, and a large boulevard and commercial strip to the east. It was an all-black neighborhood, founded by former slaves from southern Maryland on land deeded to them by the government.

By geography, some said by design, Heathrow Heights was both self-enclosed and cut off from the white middle-and upper-class neighborhoods around it. There were several traditionally black communities, most of them larger in area and population, like this one in Montgomery County. None seemed as secluded and segregated as Heathrow. The people who grew up here generally stayed here and passed on their properties, if they had managed to retain ownership of them, to their heirs. The residents were proud of their heritage and generally preferred to stay with their own.

The living conditions were far from utopian, though, and there certainly had been challenges and struggles. The early residents had owned their properties through deeds, but many houses had been sold to land speculators during the Depression. The properties were bought by a group of white businessmen who razed them, then built minimally sound, cheap houses on the lots and became absentee landlords. The majority of these homes had no hot water or indoor bathrooms. Heat was provided by wood-burning kitchen stoves.

Children had attended a one-room schoolhouse, later a two-room, on the grounds of an AME church. Elementary-age kids were educated there until the big change of 1954. Residents shopped at a local market, Nunzio’s, founded by an Italian immigrant and eventually passed on to his son, Salvatore. Consequently, many grew up without much contact with whites.

Most of the roads in Heathrow had remained unpaved by the county until the 1950s. By the ’60s, community activists had petitioned the government to force landlords to make improvements to their properties. Officials did so reluctantly. A women’s association in one of the neighboring white communities had joined Heathrow’s residents in forcing the government’s hand, but by ’72, the neighborhood was blighted still. Ramshackle houses, improperly constructed and “improved,” were in disrepair. Rusting cars sat on cinder blocks in backyards among broken toys and other debris.

To liberals, it made for dinner conversation, the stuff of slow head shakes and momentary concern between the serving of the roast beef and the pour of the second glass of cabernet. To some of the middle- and working-class white teenagers of the surrounding area, who learned insecurity from their fathers, Heathrow Heights was the subject of ridicule, slurs, and pranks. They called it “Negro Heights.” To James and Raymond Monroe, and to their mother, a part-time domestic, and their father, a D.C. Transit bus mechanic, Heathrow was home. Of them, only James had dreams of moving out and on.

James and Raymond came up on a couple of young men, Larry Wilson and Charles Baker, sitting on the curb in front of Nunzio’s. Both were shirtless in the summer heat. Larry was smoking a Salem, drawing on it so hard and rapidly that its paper had creased. Both of them were drinking Carling Black Label beer from cans. A brown bag sat between them.

Baker had a wild head of hair that was matted in spots. He looked over Raymond with hazel eyes prematurely drained of life. Baker’s face had been scarred by a young man with a box cutter who had casually questioned his manhood. Several people had gathered to witness the fight, the subject of rumors for days. Charles, bleeding profusely from the slice but visibly unfazed, had downed his opponent, kicked aside his weapon, and broken his arm by snapping it over his knee. The crowd had parted as a laughing, wounded Charles Baker had walked away, the boy on the ground convulsing in shock.

“Y’all been ballin?” said Larry.

“Down at the hoop,” said James. It was the only one in the neighborhood, and he didn’t have to elaborate.

“Who won?” said Larry.

“I did,” said Raymond. “I took him to the hole like Clyde.”

“You let him win?” said Larry, with a nod to James.

“He won square,” said James.

Larry hotboxed his cigarette down to the filter and pitched it out into the street.

“What you all gonna do today?” said Raymond.

“Drink this brew before it gets too hot,” said Charles. “Ain’t nothin else to do.”

Of them, only James had a job, a twenty-hour-a-week thing. He pumped gas at the Esso up on the boulevard and was hoping to move up from there. He planned to take a mechanics class. His father, who occasionally let him work on the family’s Impala, changing the belts, replacing the water pump, and the like, said he had skills. James was hoping to hook Raymond up with an entry-level position at the station when he turned sixteen.