Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

He asks me when and where I’d like to meet and I say as soon as we can at the coffee shop near the mall. How’s today? he says.

It’s easy (it ain’t but two customers inside, and one of them is an Asian) to spot Jude a couple hours later in the coffee shop. He’s the one crammed in a corner booth. I call his name and he looks up and ekes out. Right off you can’t help but notice he’s as bulky as I am thin (wonder if he feels about his girth how I feel about my slight), with dark hair silvered above his ears, saggy jowls, and a snout that’s a normal nose squared; scratch that, with a nose that’s two human noses cubed! What I mean to say is the tiny voice I heard over the phone must be stuck inside the wrong dude.

Nice to meet you, he says. He asks if I want coffee or water and unbuttons a loose sport coat. Judging by his smile (too toothy for a grown-ass man) homie’s cool tank is running on fumes — if you ask me another positive sign. He excuses himself and bops to the counter, hella-tons on his tippy-toes, and returns with bottled waters. I twist off the top and swig. He rifles through a folder embossed with his name and slogan. Bud, I always like to start with two things I believe about business, he says. You’ve got to be able to give people what they need, sometimes even before they know they need it. The second is forget what they say about mixing business and personal. That’s a load of crapola. I do my business with people, and to me that’s always personal.

Jude’s voice is, at best, an infinitesimal bit off the sissified, an octave or so below what mines was in high school, those years my teammates used to bust my balls about my pitch, the years I would tense something treacherous at the prospect of answering a phone and being mistook for a chick.

You ever met a stranger who confides their life story (low-lights, highlights, dashed dreams, five-year plan) a second past an intro? Have you ever? Jude tells me he was born in Lubbock but lived a little bit of everywhere, says his old man was a die-hard lush who could never hold a job and every year disappeared for a season. Jude confides that he’s childless, with an ex-wife who wants to fleece him to pennies, and at present is doing a helluva helluva job. He claims he was a D-1 philosophy-minoring middle linebacker headed for the pros till he tore an ACL and took up binge-eating and pill-popping. The confessions go on. The man admits that ever since he wrecked his knee, even though he kicked the pills, he hasn’t been able to shed the weight. So I ended up here, Jude says. Cause every smart real estate man knows this city is the new frontier.

But enough about me, he says. What about you, bud? What’s your story?

Show me a nigger with that much trust and courage, who’s that open from jump. Forsure, forsure, I can show you a nigger who ain’t. What I don’t tell Jude is what I shouldn’t tell Jude. And we all by now should know what that is.

Jude says his old man preached that a man’s business is a man’s business, so he can understand keeping some things to myself, but when I’m ready, if I’m ever ready, that I could breach the code.

I tell him about the house, the backstory of my sacrosanct great-grands, and how long it was ours; about the new owners and my tour and the fact it isn’t for sale; about what I think I can hustle if, no, make that when we convince them to sell. Meantime, Jude jots notes in the pad he pulled from a folder, turning animate tufts of dark knuckle hair.

He sets his pen aside and gulps his drink. Bud, I’ve never been one to mislead. This sounds tough, but I promise to do the best I can. He slides out of the booth and flashes those seismic teeth. What am I saying? he says. If it can be done, we’ll do it. Rest assured you’ve found the right guy.

Outside, Jude throws on his thin standard-issue (two ovals stretched out to points, the same style for every white male on earth!) white-boy shades. He asks how far we are from the house, and when I tell him, he says that we should go have a look-see, and offers to drive. His ride is a white rental with shampooed cloth seats and logo-stamped rubber mats. He keeps his hands at ten and two the whole way there and hazards not a single mile per hour over any posted speed. Better safe, he says.

When we get to Sixth, he cruises by the house and keeps going around the block, to get, he says, a feel for the neighborhood. The next time around he parks a distance back and gets out and tippy-toes up to the house. He gallivants (if he’s worried about the owners thinking he’s a snoop specialist I sure can’t tell; got to love that white man’s audacity!) around the front, the back, the side facing Mason. Meantime, I’m leaned in my seat invisible-man style on straight tenterhooks that the husband or the wife will spy Jude or me or us both, believe me shady, and ground this whole expectant business before it ever grows wings. I peek over the dash and see upgrades from the last time I drove by, new paint on the porch and what looks like a good power-washing for the rest of the place — signs I can’t or won’t decode. Jude makes another trip around the house and tippy-toes back to the car.

Wow! Now, that’s what you call a home, he says. You know, there’s nothing like owning your own piece of terra firma, Jude says. If this was the Middle Ages, when land was your one and only piece of wealth, you might have to fight for it. In those days, possession ruled, he says. If you had it, you owned it; if you found it, you kept it; if you wanted it, you had to fight. And that’s pretty much how it stayed till William the Conqueror came along, defeated King Harold, and declared ownership of every square inch of England. It was the new king that gave land rights to his officers and made them tenants-in-chief of huge plots of land. Wasn’t long before those chiefs were getting rich subletting their land, then passing their riches and rights to their kids. They called it the feudal system, Jude says. But some people call it the birth of the aristocrats. He takes off his standard-issue shades and wipes his nose. And Shawn, let me tell you, after all this time, a home’s still the best way to leap from one class to the next, to get a foothold in the world.

He leaves the car off and we sit. I watch an old man hobble up the steps of what’s maybe still Miss Mary’s house. Watch a boy skip his scooter along the sidewalk. Mist gathers and Jude lowers his window and sticks his head into it. He reels himself in, straps on his seat belt, grabs the wheel on the numbers, and turns to me. Bud, whether they will or won’t, we hope for the best. And I’ll do all I can. All I can and more. But I can tell you one thing sure, he says. This won’t be cheap.

I’m tired, tired, but early for the shift after the shift I missed. In the ladies’ room I soap stains — when was I supposed to have made it to a washhouse? — and splash my face alive. I step out of the restroom a tiny bit staggered and see Pam leaning against the wall with a clipboard tucked. She cuts her eyes at me and inspects nails this week she’s painted in triple fluorescents.

Missed you, she says. That’s how you do? No call, no nothin?

Oh, I say. Was I on the schedule?

Nice try, but don’t try it, she says.

Try what? I say.

Enough! she says. I told you from day one, I need workers I can trust.

It won’t happen again, I say. You have my word. Next time I’ll double-check.

If there’s a next time, it’s your last time, she says.

Got it, got it, I say.

Great, glad you do, cause I meant it, she says. Now tell me what’s wrong. Why you don’t seem yourself.

Just tired is all, I say, though as soon as I say it, I hate her for the fact she won’t seek the truth. Hate myself for needing to be pushed to it.