C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

Unhurried, on the low, the man said, “What you got there?”

Allmon tried to peer behind him into the house, into the clubhouse darkness where he detected the dampened, private sound of grown men’s voices. His crew. But he couldn’t see anything. He just said, “A dictionary,” and hitched the book higher onto his chest.

The man’s mouth half smiled. “Ah,” he said, “we got a smart niggah up in here. You got a name, Smartie?”

“Allmon.”

“What you eleven, twelve?”

“Nine.”

“Oh, damn,” the man said, and laughed a baritone laugh under his breath. “I thought you was older than that. You look older.” The man licked his upper lip, then bit it and gazed up the street, squinting as if he were turning something over in his mind. Then he said slowly, “You know who I am?”

Allmon shook his head, and the man just grinned. “I’m Aesop. And I seen you running all over this neighborhood, all over this motherfucking place. That’s some nice speed you got — you gonna play ball?”

Under that careful, watchful gaze, the child shrugged but blushed hard.

“You black, you tall, you play ball, right?”

Shrugging again: “Yeah.”

“So you Marie’s little man?”

Allmon’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yeah.”

Now the man leaned toward him slightly, his head cocked. “You want to make some rolls?”

“Huh?”

The man’s mouth laughed like it was funny, but those green eyes were serious, steady, and sharp. “M-o-n-e-y. Spell it in your dictionary. You want to make some c-a-s-h?”

“Yeah,” said Allmon, startled, an electric grin jolting across his face.

“Then I got a proposition for you, Smartie. But first I got to see how you run for me.”

“Run? Like now?” said Allmon, the meaning whipping right past him.

“Yeah, all right. Like now,” the man said, laughing in his throat, his tone half-mocking as he glanced behind him into the shadowy building.

When he turned around, Allmon was gone. He had taken him at his word and sprang away from the stoop with impulsive delight, clutching the red book as a marathoner’s bib and tearing down the street, leaving only the impress of his speed in his place. He was going to run over to Mad Anthony, down to Knowlton, then back up Fergus to Chase, where the man would be waiting, where the man would say, “Young, you mad quick,” and then hand him a ten-dollar bill or something. He’d never realized how fast he was before this moment. Even with the dictionary at his chest, he was fleet, particular, his knees pumping in perfectly timed intervals. He was rounding the corner onto Knowlton, barely out of breath, when his foot slid on something and he nearly went down in front of a shotgun house, so he had to catch himself with one hand on the gate, crying, “Whoa!” but it was really more of a screech, a girlish sound, so he looked around, abashed. When he took a step, his shoes clicked. He limped around the corner of the black wrought-iron gate, so he could stand on a patch of grass, out of the brilliant afternoon light. With the dictionary perched on his hip like a baby, he twisted his leg so he could rest his left foot on his right knee and inspect the bottom of his shoe.

“Oh, dag,” he said. Lodged into the sole of his high-top, which had come to him in almost perfectly new condition on a very lucky day from Goodwill, was a two-inch-wide curved shard of green glass. It looked like a piece from a Mountain Dew bottle. With extreme care, so he wouldn’t slice his fingers, he pried the convex glass out of his sole. Then, after carefully inspecting the curious gradation of green along its sinuate edge, he flicked the shard out into the street, and just as he was about to turn back, just as he was easing his leg from its awkward position so that he could properly balance his weight on both feet, and he was wondering whether the man would still give him money, a woman appeared on her tiny porch, pointing at him, her face cinched up with hate.

“Nigger, get off my lawn!”

He sprang back in shock before his face even came round. At first, all he saw was her mouth, a rictus of scorn. She didn’t know him, but then she seemed to realize his age, and some contrition, or the ghost of contrition, arose there. He saw it in her eyes. But her finger still trembled with accusation in the air.

Before thought, before decision, his body took off at a frightful pace down Knowlton. Nigger. He ran with his mouth open and the dictionary clutched to his nigger chest. Across Langland without looking to either side, then Hamilton, where he had to dodge one car that screeched, the driver jerking forward with her palm to her chest. He came sprinting up to the apartment, on the back side of the block up to the building where Gladys threw herself off the top, round the side of the building and someone who knew him called out his name hey nigger why you running, God there was trash everywhere why didn’t anyone use trash cans white folks did then three guys standing out front the building in conversation he was normally afraid of them but today he cried “Move!” and they laughed uproariously as he runs up the stairwell in through the front door slams it wakes his mother they think she’s a nigger too sleeping on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, Allmon! she says, Can’t you respect I’m sleeping? He has to pee so bad it stings but he can’t do it can’t go into the bathroom where you can look into the mirror at yourself he just stumbles into the bedroom where there’s no light on and there’s no windows so when he shuts the door and feels his way to the bed he lies down his blood is up flying he’s still running his legs spasming he lays his migraine head on his pillow for rest he’s a crier not anymore he is not crying — he reaches out snaps on the bedside light shocks the room and opens his new dictionary smudged and leafed by the white lady’s hands flips through the pages for what he is looking for and reads niggler niggle nigging niggery niggerwool niggerweed niggertoe nigger-shooter nigger pine nigger in the woodpile nigger heaven niggerhead niggergoose niggerfish nigger daisy nigger chaser nigger bug nigger baby and finally there it is nigger : to divide by burning.

* * *

In the morning, when his mother said, “Allmon, why are you looking like a zombie?” he had a one-word answer at the ready, but it pooled like hemlock on his tongue. He couldn’t open his mouth or it would spill out.

He made a halfhearted gesture toward school, taking up his backpack and leaving the apartment, but he just circled the block with its cement heart, and when he was sure that Marie had dragged herself to work, he climbed the stairs again, unlocked the apartment door, and lay on the couch for four hours straight. He stared at the television the entire time, watching horses run in meaningless rounds. He didn’t get up to eat or even pee.

Then at one, he rose and left the apartment, waiting no more than a minute on the corner before the number 17 bus came drafting up. He was undersized, dishevelled, and groggy, so the driver looked at him askance, but took his change and with some kindly misgiving said, “You all right?” Allmon just nodded, his eyes flat.

In fifteen minutes he was downtown, standing on his grandfather’s stoop, pressing the bell repeatedly and with such force, the color drained from his fingertip.

It was the Reverend himself who answered the door. He looked down at the boy in honest surprise, his nostrils flaring once, and said, “It’s a weekday. How come you ain’t in school, boy?”

Allmon had no words of excuse. He just stared ahead, not daring to look up into the Reverend’s face, only at the buttons on his shirt. His lips formed an inscrutable line.