Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

Harrold is back at the car door, two plastic bags in one hand as a cop car pulls in two spaces away. There are no vehicles between them. Harrold pops the unlock button, then opens the back door. He doesn’t notice the officer. Rob looks over to the fat young man in his uniform sitting with his head back, hat off, engine still on, both idling; the rims are filthy and the bottom four inches of both doors he can see. Harrold gets in the car but has forgotten his keys. Finally he notices Rob intently staring and runs back to the store, but slow enough to avoid suspicion.

Eventually the officer looks left, to Rob, who still watches. The young man nods and smiles but Rob sits cold-faced and unwavering, long enough for the cop to shrug, open his car door and walk inside. He and Harrold do not pass each other on the way out, they are in the store together. The place has a fruit stand but displays only tomatoes and bananas. The bananas are divided evenly between too green and too brown. The tomatoes are smallish but not meant to be; they look hard, even from the car, and it is doubtful those things have a swallow of cool pulp in them. They are sour.

Rob decides that whoever exits first, Harrold or the cop, he will go with him. He does not love Harrold and the police can also take him someplace different from the apartment he shares with Andre and the others. A group home. He has been in them before, briefly, repetitively. Eight months ago he was in one and contacted by his family, an aunt, who told him that his mother and father were all cleaned up. At any time, he could return. She gave him their new address. At the place, his counselors gathered before him once a week with notepads, an audience, wanting to hear his whole life explained. Harrold was like this. The cop would be too, he would need to hear of Rob’s days for his reports: juvenile crimes, those kinds of records. They can’t get too many stories, most people, and always they demand: worse, worse. As though the more fucked-up meant the more authentic. They are slaves to this idea.

In the only letter he wrote home, Rob told himself to dispense with lying. Why make anything up? If being honest, life in New York is as mundane as anyplace else. The strangeness, the terror and joy of selling your ass, subsides. Eventually you can’t remember which of the things you do would be called wrong by your mother and father now and inadvertently you’ll mention that when you first started working your butt bled again and again. The only correspondence you’ll receive will be from your father, saying you’re an awful son for making up stories to hurt your mother. Still, he will have put forty dollars in with his harsh words. It will be a sign of his renewed goodness and love when this happens. But you, if you’re Rob, will no longer be sure of those realities and will instead wonder if the money is your father’s way of hinting that he wants you to come home, so he can try you out.

Horse’s girl was a socialist and not too pretty. They had had a kid. She was taking all his time. Me and him hardly knew each other anymore. We were months out of high school.

She learned to avoid us — when she visited we gave Horse hell and her silence. It was purely a mistake when she pulled up to Horse’s crib and we were on the stoop. She had their baby wrapped tight in a gray blanket, saying good-bye to some friend who was driving; she was smiling, but when she turned her face fell. Melissa watched the four of us: Horse, Asia, Mel and me. Except for Horse, we began laughing. I did, then Asia and Mel followed. This had become so regular it was a kind of greeting. Horse walked to her and his arm went out like a kid grabbing the side of the pool to get steadied. He dipped his head to see his son. Asia went inside to use the phone. — I thought you were going to be alone, she tried to whisper.

He said, — They just showed up. That’s how I knew he was still, a little, my boy Horse: he had lied, we had been around forever.

At the stairs she trudged between me and Mel; he looked up, was going to nod because Mel was polite, his dad raised him that way. Mel was fat and dumb, but the two had no connection; Asia was fast and dumb, but no one ever tried to blame one on the other. But Mel was going to nod so I reached out and mushed his cheek to move his gaze. Even though he got mad at me, it was like I’d shaken it loose — how we wanted to act toward her — so Mel looked down as she passed.

Melissa had given a plastic bag to Horse, who carried it as tender as she did that kid. When he got to where I was on the stairs I snatched it from his hands, looked inside. She had brought a loaf of banana bread, fresh enough it was warm through the bag. I loved the smell but wouldn’t inhale in front of them, it would be like approving of something. There were sheets of paper too, flyers, black ink on yellow paper, printouts stating that next Wednesday was the seventy-first anniversary of the founding of the East Side Chamber of Commerce; listed all the wrongs they’d done to the poor, the struggling. There would be a rally. This was the stuff that did it, she was a little older, a college student; quick to teach, quick to lecture. Horse would try to preach to me her thirdhand theories when all I wanted was to watch a movie. I ripped the ten identical sheets and handed them back to my boy.

Melissa asked, — Do you ever go home?

Horse laughed a little, straining to get out a sound. I looked at them. I wasn’t going to hit her. I was. I said, — Horse, take this bitch back to Kent State.

He shook bad enough for both of them and I waited for him to do something. To swing on me. Imagine, if he had thrown blows over a woman, that would’ve been it, even stupid-ass Mel would have spit on him. I mean, I’d heard of men dying over that shit and once you’re dead, what do you think, the girl mourns you for the rest of her life? Please, sooner than is fair she’s fucking again. Men and women aren’t that different. But Horse didn’t have to decide, Melissa touched his neck and whispered, — Let’s go inside. So they did.

Asia came along in a minute. Across the street and half a block right was the small space quarantined behind a tall gate. It was a grassy yard; in the center a light green metal dome popped out of the ground. Kids said it was a reservoir, but I wasn’t sure. Horse would have known, but I didn’t ask him too many questions anymore. Plenty times, Horse asked my opinion about some female he was spending time with, if I thought this one would cheat, if another seemed like good ass. But with this one, Melissa, she had just appeared. I couldn’t even imagine where they’d met. Horse never explained.

The three of us left together; we made no noise, not even feet hitting heavy on the pavement; there was just the sound of Horse locking his front door.

I went with him, went in, but it was a mistake. I was out shopping for Melissa when I came around the corner and Ahab was opening the door to the recruiter’s office. Marines. He was more than surprised, seeing me; he hadn’t gone to the office near us. He had traveled. — Oh shit, Ahab cried when I touched his shoulder. What the fuck you doing way out here, Horse?

I pointed to the door. — I wasn’t going in there. What about you?

There was no excuse coming, just his big mouth, open. You’d think I’d caught him kissing a man, he was so shocked. Ahab couldn’t even move when two guys tried to get in; I had to push him back. They passed between us. I looked inside — the whole front of the place was glass; the Marines watched us greedily. I was sure that already their hands were on the sign-up contracts, ready to flash pens like knives. He explained, — I need to do something.