George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

“Vasili,” said Mike to his son. “Derek.”

“Ba-ba,” said Billy.

“Mr. Mike,” said Derek, unable to correctly pronounce the family’s last name.

Darius Strange glanced over at his son without breaking the rhythm of his chore, looked him over, and nodded. Derek Strange lifted his chin in return.

“C’mon, boy,” said Mike, “help me count the money. Derek, the mop’s waitin’ for you in the back.”

Derek found the bucket, strainer, and mop back by the dishwasher. The place had a utility man, addressed only by his nickname, Halftime, but he left early on Saturdays to allow Darius’s son the chance to earn a little money. This suited Halftime fine.

Derek took up the webbed rubber mats behind the counter and rinsed them out in the sink. He carried the mats back through the small storage room, one by one, and laid them out in the alley to dry in the sun. He then waited for Ella Lockheart to fill the salt and pepper shakers, change into her street clothes in the back room, and leave the store. Lockheart, in her early thirties, was light-skinned, rail thin, pretty, quiet, unmarried, and deeply religious. She said to Derek, “Have a blessed day, young man,” before going out the door.

Derek mopped the floor while his father sat on a stool and read the sports page of the Post. His chef’s hat, which he wore at all times while working over the grill, was on the counter by his side. Mike was showing Billy how to enter numbers in a green-covered book. Derek had seen the pages of the book once, a grid of lines with small figures penciled into the squares.

Derek strained water from the mop to the point that it was damp, and put it to work on the floor. He made sure to get the area at the base of the stools, where grease tended to collect.

“Elgin Baylor had thirty-four last night for Minneapolis,” said Darius Strange, raising his voice some so his son could hear him while he worked. “Thirty-four in a championship game. That’s the Lakers playin’ against Russell, Cousy, Sam Jones, and them. That is some kind of accomplishment, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure is.”

“Boy’s got that quick first step.”

“Yep.”

“Came out of Spingarn, too,” said Darius, naming Baylor’s high school alma mater, off Benning Road in Northeast D.C. “The Green Wave graduates some superior athletes.”

Derek smiled to himself as he worked. Partly it was because of the way his dad always liked to make his point with those local-boy-makes-good stories. But mostly he was smiling ’cause he liked the deep sound of his father’s voice.

Darius Strange looked over at his son, bent over, pushing the mop. It was good for the boy to have this chore. After inspecting the finished floor, Mike would give Derek a dollar, which was walking-around money and also a simple work-and-reward lesson. The boy had a twice-a-week paper route, too. Darius wasn’t worried about Derek the way he was worried about his older son, Dennis. Basically, Derek was good.

It was nice that Derek could see him working this steady job here as well. Plenty of boys never did get to see that kind of example. Someday Derek would know that this had all meant something with regard to what he himself would become.

But beyond that, Darius Strange did enjoy, and take pride in, his work. After the war he had taken several jobs involving hard, mindless physical labor, finally landing in the kitchen of the house restaurant of a downtown hotel. He was a dishwasher there, but he closely watched the activities of the line cooks and chefs. One of the cooks, a white steam-table man, was nice enough to school him in the details of the job. It wasn’t long before Darius felt he was due for a promotion. But the manager wouldn’t bring him along, so he left and got his first cooking job as a grill man in a greasy spoon in Far Northeast. The owner was a hard, bitter white who looked upon him as an animal and paid him pennies, but he got what he needed there, and when he had learned his trade he started looking around for something else. He signed up with Conway ’s Employment Service, down on 6th Street, which listed him as “Cook, Colored,” and soon they had hooked him up with Mike Georgelakos, who had just let go of a good man who was bad behind drink. Georgelakos offered Darius forty dollars a week to start. Five years later, he was pulling in sixty-five.

“I’m finished,” said Derek Strange.

“Go talk to Mr. Mike,” said Darius.

Mike Georgelakos got off his stool behind the register. He was not much taller standing than he was sitting. He was bald on top, with patches of graying black hair on the sides. His nose was large and it hooked down over his mustache. Mike’s shoulders were broad, his chest barrel shaped. Both of these traits had been passed down to Billy.

Mike walked the house ceremoniously and inspected the floor. When he returned he gave Derek a clean dollar bill.

“Here you go, boy. Good job.”

“Thanks, Mr. Mike. Catch you around, Billy.”

“You, too, Derek,” said Billy, standing beside his father, smiling a little at his friend, sharing the secret of their day.

At the door, Darius Strange turned to give a short wave to Mike Georgelakos, as he always did.

“ Yasou, Mike,” said Darius.

“ Yasou, Darius,” said Mike. “Adio.”

Out on the sidewalk, Derek said to his father, “What’s that Greek talk mean, anyway?”

“ Adio means, like, adios. And Yasou? It’s just a greeting, a, what do you call that, a salutation. All-purpose, kinda like aloha. You know, how they do in Hawaii?”

Derek Strange looked up at his father. Strong and handsome, with a neat mustache and closely cut, pomaded hair. He had to go six-two or six-three.

“Speaking of Hawaii,” said Darius Strange, “Globetrotters gonna be comin’ to Uline. They’re playin’ the Hawaiian team, the Fiftieth Staters? I just read the announcement in the paper. You feel like goin’, I can get us tickets.”

“Yeah!”

“Trotters got this young giant, Wilt Chamberlain, played for Kansas. They’re payin’ him sixty-five thousand dollars a year. I’d like to see what that boy can do to earn it.”

“He come out of Spingarn, too?”

“Stop playin’,” said Darius Strange in a stern way, but Derek could see a smirk breaking on the edge of his lips.

They got into Darius Strange’s car, a ’57 Mercury he had picked up at a lot on 10th and New York. It was a repossession deal, nineteen dollars a month on an eight-hundred-dollar balance. There had been a “special” interest rate put on it, a kind of penalty imposed on colored buyers. Darius was aware of it, and he knew it was wrong, but he accepted it just the same. Any way he looked at it, he would be paying on that car for the next four years.

DARIUS STRANGE DROVE up Georgia Avenue, his son at his side. They passed Ida’s department store, where Derek had found trouble earlier in the day. It now seemed to him to have happened a long time ago. He was safe with his father now, and all of that mess he’d gotten into was tucked far away.

Just up above Piney Branch Road, near Van Buren, Darius Strange pulled into the lot of the soft-ice cream place, had mirror chips embedded in the stucco of its walls. The name of the place was Beck’s, but everyone called it the Polar Bears because of the animal statues out front.

Darius killed the engine, gave Derek some change, and told him he’d meet him back at the car. Derek went to the service window, bought a tall swirl of chocolate on a cone, and had a seat on the curb. His father had walked to the Hubbard House to buy one of their layered chocolate pies. Derek Strange looked forward to this Saturday ritual all week long.