George Pelecanos: The Turnaround

Larry and Charles had grown more belligerent behind the alcohol. Larry got louder, and Charles had become quiet, a bad sign. Raymond had taken them up on their offer to join them and was drinking a beer. He was three quarters done with it and could feel its effect. He had never had more than one, and he didn’t really care for the taste. But it made him feel older to drink with these two. He kept an eye out for anyone who might tell his parents that they had seen him drinking beer in the afternoon.

They talked about girls they’d like to have. They talked about the new Mach 1. As Larry had done many times, he asked if James and Raymond were related to Earl Monroe, and Raymond said, “Not that I know.”

There was a lull in the conversation while they swigged beer. Then Larry said, “Heard some white boys came through, couple weeks back.”

“White bitches, ” said Charles.

“Heard they talked some shit to your mom,” said Larry.

“She was walking home from the bus stop,” said Raymond. “They weren’t sayin it to her, exactly. She was passing by the market when they were callin out, is what it was.”

“So it was to her,” said Larry.

It wasn’t a question, so Raymond did not reply. His face grew warm with shame.

“Anyone did that to my mother,” said Charles, “they’d wake up in a grave.”

“My father say you got to be strong and shake it off,” said Raymond.

“Hmph,” said Larry.

“It was my mother, I’d go ahead and shoot the motherfuckers,” said Charles.

“Well,” said Raymond, hoping to put an end to the embarrassment of the conversation, “I got no gun.”

“Your brother got one,” said Charles.

“Huh?” said Raymond. “Go ahead, man, you know that ain’t right.”

“I heard it from the man who sold it to him,” said Charles. “A revolver, like the kind the police carry.”

“James got no gun,” said Raymond.

“I guess I’m lyin, then,” said Charles, staring straight ahead. Larry chuckled.

“I ain’t sayin that,” said Raymond. “I guess what I’m sayin is, I didn’t know.”

Larry lit a cigarette and tossed the match out into the street.

“He got one,” said Charles, looking into his beer can, shaking it to see what was left inside. “You can believe that.”

James Monroe liked to keep a clean red rag hanging from his back pocket when he worked the full-service pumps up at the Esso. Once he got the gas going into the car, he’d wash the windows, using the long-handled double-edged tool that sat in a bucket filled with diluted cleaning fluid. When he was done scraping the excess fluid off the windshield and rear window, he pulled that rag and wiped softly at any smudges or residue. Didn’t matter if it needed to be done or not. The act showed the customer that he took pride in his job and cared about the appearance of their automobile. Because of this one little thing he did, what he liked to call his “finishing touch,” he would occasionally receive a tip, sometimes a quarter and sometimes, around the holidays, fifty cents. Didn’t matter if it was only a dime, really, or even just a look in someone’s eye that said, That young man cares about his job. When you got down to it, it was about respect.

James had been the first black, to his knowledge, to be hired at the station. In his mind, he was not breaking a racial barrier but rather changing a tradition they had up at this particular Esso. In the past, the proprietor had always hired neighborhood white boys and their friends. James had been persistent, going back many times to talk to Mr. George Anthony, the station owner, a stocky, bearded man whose eyes crinkled around the sides when he smiled. Mr. Anthony had not hired him straightaway, but James’s persistence had paid off one day when Mr. Anthony said, almost as an aside, “All right, James. Come on in at eight tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a try.” Later, when Mr. Anthony had seen what James could do, how conscientious he was about reporting for work on time, never calling in sick, even when he was sick, Mr. Anthony said, “You know why I hired you, James? You kept on asking me for the job. You didn’t give up.”

James did good work, but he could only get part-time hours up at the station. Mr. Anthony tried to be fair to all the young men he employed and give them the equal opportunity to earn some coin. James took home about forty-two dollars a week. Not enough to move out of his parents’ house or buy a car on credit. But he did have a plan: he wanted to be a mechanic, like his father, Ernest Monroe. James thinking, Maybe I’ll have my own gas station someday, make real money . Enough to buy a house for myself in the city, and help my mother and father find one near me, too. Live in a place where redneck white boys don’t drive by my mother when she’s walking home from the bus stop up on the boulevard after getting off work. Calling my mother a nigger after she’s been on her feet all day, wearing that cleaning uniform of hers. She who has never judged anyone.

He felt his blood quicken, thinking of his mother taking that abuse. He had recently bought something, something to show in case that kind of thing happened again. Just to scare those punks, was all it was. To see the looks on their faces when it was them eating dirt.

He didn’t like to feel this angry. He moved the image of his mom from his mind.

As far as the ownership thing went, James realized he was dreaming, but there wasn’t anything wrong with thinking ahead. He had to concentrate and work to get to where he needed to be. He had signed up for the mechanic classes through Esso. They had a kind of training program set up for their employees, the ones they thought could cut it. Mr. Anthony had urged him to do it and agreed to pay for half the course fee. Working on cars was not a bad way to make a living. When you fixed something, you made someone happy. A car came in broke and it left out of there in running condition. You had accomplished something.

A career as an auto mechanic would separate him from boys like Larry and Charles, who he felt were already done. He’d get Raymond up here, too, teach him how to work, to get along with people outside their neighborhood, the way he, James, got along with the white customers and the white boys who worked at the station. Raymond had been in a little trouble lately, a shoplifting thing up at Monkey Wards and, more serious, getting caught for throwing a rock through the window of a house in that high-onna bring in somclass neighborhood near Heathrow. Mr. Nicholson, the man who owned the place, had paid Ray less than they had agreed for yard work, saying Raymond had not done a thorough job, and Raymond had gone over there one night for some get-back. The police, sent by Nicholson, had come to their house straightaway, and Raymond had admitted what he’d done. They gave him an FI for that, meaning no arrest or court if he paid for the damages, but now he had something on his record. One more thing like that, the police said, and he’d be in some real trouble. Ernest had given James the task of keeping Ray on the straight, looking out for him, reining in his violent impulses. He was just a kid, jacked up with too much energy, was all it was. The boy did have anger inside him.

James had been like that himself when he was younger, with big resentment and distrust, mainly of whites. That feeling had softened, somewhat, when he and the other kids from his neighborhood had been bused to the white junior high and then the high school on the rich side of the county. He didn’t run with those white kids at all, but at least they weren’t any kind of mystery to him, as they had been before. And most of these white boys he worked with at the station, he found them to be all right. Not that he hung with them outside the job. They were what they were, and he was from Heathrow Heights. But at work they were all young men, dark blue pants and light blue shirts, their first names written in script on oval sew-on patches. You could be the best of them or you could be average. He wanted to be the best. He wanted respect.