George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

But in this apartment, with his mother, father, and big brother, Derek felt safe.

“Where Mom at?” said Derek.

“Kitchen,” said Dennis.

Derek walked by the Life magazines stacked on a table by the sofa. The cover story of the issue on top was one in a continuing seven-part series called “How the West Was Won.” Darius Strange had collected every one. Dennis called it “How the West Got Stole” just to annoy their father. The same way he made fun of those programs his father loved to watch at night during the week: Wagon Train, Bat Masterson, Trackdown, and the like. These days, seemed like Dennis and his father were at each other all the time.

Next to the eating table sat a Sylvania hi-fi console combination with records stacked on top. His father listened to some jazz, but mostly the rhythm and blues singers who had started out in gospel. Derek liked to look at the album covers, photos of people like Ray Charles and that Soul Stirrers singer, and a big boy on the Apollo label named Solomon Burke. He wondered what it was like to sing for all those people up onstage, have that kind of money, have the finest women and the Cadillac cars. He wondered if his father, who smelled like grease, sweat, and burned meat when he came home from work, was envious of these men’s lives. Derek didn’t like to think on it too much, because it made him feel bad to imagine that his father would ever leave their home.

As Derek tried to walk by him, Dennis grabbed hold of his shirt and pinned his arms at his side. Derek managed to place the bottle of milk he was holding atop the stack of records. Once he had done this, he tried to break free, but Dennis was too strong. Derek did the only thing he could, dropping to his knees, taking Dennis down with him. They hit the floor and rolled.

“You can’t get away from me,” said Dennis.

“Punk,” said Derek.

“Call me that again and you’ll be lookin’ like one of them polio kids. They’ll be havin’ to fit you for some of them braces and stuff.”

“That’s enough,” said their father, his eyes on the TV.

Derek rolled Dennis so that one of Dennis’s hands was pinned beneath him. Derek felt around and tried to get purchase on Dennis’s other hand. Instead he grabbed Dennis’s crotch.

“You like that, boy?”

“Like what?”

“You got your hand on my rod!”

They rolled into the hi-fi and laughed.

“I said that’s enough,” said Darius. “I ain’t even finished payin’ on that console yet.”

Darius Strange had bought the hi-fi and the television on time. He had first gone downtown to George’s, on 8th and F, but the salesman there, a chubby white man, had treated him with disrespect. When he walked in, Darius had heard Chubby laughing with one of his coworkers off to the side, talking about he was gonna sell that guy a “Zenick” and saying, with his idea of a colored voice, “Can I put it on lays-aways?” Chubby hadn’t thought he’d heard him, but he had. Darius hadn’t raised a stink about it, but he’d left right away and driven over to Slattery’s on Naylor Road, where the man himself, Frank Slattery, had written him up for the Zenith and the Sylvania, gotten him credit, and delivered it all the next day. The colored money got put together with the white money in the register, and once you counted it out come closing time, you couldn’t even tell the difference. That’s what Chubby didn’t understand.

Like the car, he’d be paying on these things for a long while. Darius didn’t worry on it, though. He expected he was going to be working for the rest of his life.

“You gettin’ strong,” said Dennis, looking his younger brother over with admiration as they both got to their feet.

“Bet I can take you soon, too.”

“You can try,” said Dennis. He made a head motion in the direction of the kitchen. “Go ahead, man.”

“I’m gone.”

Dennis chuckled as he pushed Derek’s forehead with the flat of his palm. He tried it again and Derek ducked away, snatching the milk bottle off the record stack and walking through a short hall back to the kitchen.

“Boy wrinkled my shirt,” said Dennis. “I was gonna wear it tonight, too.”

Darius Strange looked over at his older son. “You goin’ out?”

“I’m fixin’ to. Why?”

“Who you goin’ out with? That no-account I seen you with down on the Avenue?”

“Kenneth?” said Dennis. “He all right.”

“He ain’t look all right to me.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. We just gonna drive around a little with his cousin, is all. Maybe check out that All-Star Jamboree they got down at the Howard. They got Baby Cortez and the Clovers on the bill. Anyway, I won’t be late.”

“Don’t be. You comin’ to church tomorrow morning with us, right?”

“I’m going to temple. There’s a service in the afternoon.”

“ Temple,” said Darius with a grunt. “You mean that place on Vermont Avenue?”

“Minister Lucius presiding,” said Dennis.

“He gonna be presidin’ now, huh?”

“The man is a disciple of Elijah Muhammad.”

“I know who that is.” Darius tapped the newspaper in his lap. “There’s an advertisement your man paid for right in here. Calls himself the Anointed Leader. Asking for donations, says he wants to build a hospital. Ain’t they got hospitals already in Chicago?”

“This one’s for our people.”

“Oh. If you so taken with him, why don’t you send him some of your money?”

“If I had any I would.”

“The man is just another hustler. He ain’t no better than any old pimp you see out here on the street. And he ain’t even Christian.”

“That’s the point. Jesus is the white man’s god.”

“Don’t let your mother hear you say that, boy.”

“Look, to me the Christian church is like that paper you readin’. Supposed to be for us, but it’s not. You see the ads they run in there?” Dennis picked up the newspaper in front of him, opened it, and read off the page. “‘Black and White Blanching Cream-a brighter, lighter, softer, smoother look.’ Here’s another one: ‘Dr. Fred Palmer’s Skin Whitener.’ And the pictures of the women write these social columns they got? Those women all got light skin, and the way they got their hair fixed, I mean, they look like they’re trying to be white. So who is hustling who? What you think this newspaper is trying to sell us here, huh?”

“I got eyes. You might think I’m blind, but I am not. Things are changing slow, but they’re changin’. It ain’t all good in this world, but for right now, it’s what we got.”

“You just gonna settle for what we got, then.”

“You’re young,” said Darius. “Sooner or later you’re gonna see, you got to go with some things to get along.”

“You mean like last summer, when we went down to the shore? Remember when you got Jim Crowed, how you just went along? How’d you feel that day? How you think it made us feel?”

Darius had driven the family down to the Annapolis area, looking for Highland, the beach that allowed colored. But he drove to the wrong place, and before he could back up and turn around, he got told by some man in a booth that they didn’t allow his kind. Got told this in front of his wife and sons. Anger was what he felt. Anger and shame. But he didn’t answer his son.

“Things ain’t changin’ quick enough for me,” said Dennis. “I don’t want to just get along. And just so you know, I’m gonna be goin’ to that march next week, too.”

“What march is that?”

“Youth March for Integrated Schools. They say twenty-five thousand strong gonna meet down at the Sylvan theater.”