Mitchell Jackson: The Residue Years

What I wouldn’t give for a rebirth of those blithe days.

What’s the deal with spring league? I say. You ballin?

Nothing, he says. He pours salt on the table and finger-swirls a design.

Tryouts is soon, right? I say. You got action at JV if you play tough D.

The high schoolers climb into the fire truck and howl as if it’s the funniest moment on earth.

Don’t know if I’m playin, he says.

Why? I say. Thought you was a hooper. Is it grades? Please tell me you ain’t not fuckin up in school too, I say. You fuck up now and you’ve fucked up. You ain’t no little kid.

I know I ain’t, he says. You the one who thinks I am.

Yo, don’t get clocked, patna, I say. You wanna get slugged?

He turns away. I touch my face and rub circles under my cheeks.

Is it grades?

No, he says.

Well, how are they? I say.

All right, he says.

Just all right, I say.

Yeah, he says.

Here we go with this one-word-answer melancholy shit, I say. I’m trying to have a dialogue.

My pager buzzes but I don’t bother to check who it is. Yeah, I need what I need, but there must be a time that’s off-limits.

What about the broads? I say. You got a girl?

Yes, Champ. I got a girl, he says.

Those years when me and my mom were still an inseparable tag team tandem, the years before my brother was even born, Big Ken pimped for our bread and meat, and though by the time KJ came along Big Ken was ebbing into retirement (maybe the smartest move he ever made), that nurture might of turned my bro into a super-bathetic anti-pimp.

Only one girl? I say.

Yes, one, he says.

Damn, well, have she gave you some womb? I say.

I don’t have to tell you, he says.

You don’t, I say. But check it, you’re already a year older than I was when I hit my first, so if you ain’t knocked one down, you best get crackin.

He squeezes his lips and glares. We’ve got the same dark brown eyes, the same long wild lashes. Champ, he says. Who says I want to be you? I don’t want to be like you.

They call our number over the speakers — a motherfucking boon — and I grab the marker and push away.

Right, I say. Right. If only you knew.

My bros when we leave slug out in tandem slow and rebel-like. Steps through the lot, KJ falls back and when I look to see where, I don’t know what to make of his face. I stand beside the car and track him over the roof. He stops to look at what I can’t see, stalls until I walk out to meet him. What’s the holdup? I say and catch him by the arm. He yanks away, jerks so tough he sends a small package tumbling. He breaks to pick it up.

What they’d told me for most my life is life has options.

But whose life, and when?

What’s that? I say.

Nothing, he says. It’s nothing. He looks shook and keeps the bit balled in his fist. Meantime, Canaan climbs out and gawks.

Let me see, I say. As if I need to see.

No! he says. He backs away, but trips in a pothole, and lands on his ass. I pounce on him, pry open his fist, and find the bit wrapped and clipped just like mine.

What in the fuck is this! I say. What in the fuck are you doing?

Mr brother stands on his own and brushes gravel from his ass and elbows. He tugs his shoulders, and as if by some sort of supernatural gift, he’s heads taller — has never looked this big, nor this sure, nor this doomed.

Answer me! I say.

He twists to look at Canaan and swings to look at me. His eyes and my eyes dueling.

What I’m doing what you do, he says.

Right now, now, it takes nothing to see me beating him half to death. Though when I wind up to swing, I can’t swing. My kith as my witness, I drop the bit, and stomp and stomp and stomp until I’ve crushed it all to dust.

A Kinky-Head boy runs up beside me while I’m in the store searching for snacks. He asks if I can buy him a pack of Capri Suns. His dimple is in the same cheek as Champ’s. There’s only one other person in the aisle, a pitiful-looking something, somebody’s baby herself, her arms tattooed to murals, who I suppose is the boy’s mama, but hope she isn’t, since she hasn’t noticed how far the boy has roamed. I take a knee and explain I’d love to, but we’d have to ask his mother. He leads me to her, and as soon as he’s within reach, she slaps him as though he’s grown. What I tell your mannish ass bout runnin off?

This is the time to turn and scoot off before I say something I shouldn’t. Rather, something I should.

The checkout line could trick you. Ahead of me kids fidget with handfuls of bagged candy and ahead of them a frosty-haired woman a few weeks by the looks — God knows I don’t say it to be facetious — from needing a wheelchair or walker. The woman slumps over the counter and so slow, so so slow, trawls her purse for change with a stack of coupons slabbed on the counter for signing checks. There’s a thin girl right beside her — an aide or something, I guess, since they don’t resemble — bagging the lady’s trickle of buys. The woman finds a second, thicker stack of coupons and starts to sort. Patience, patience, I say to myself. Though I can say for true: It won’t be me worrying a cashier or a manager over the small print of the weekend special. Will never be me but how could I ever know?

The woman moves snoozy against the life of the store. Carts squeak, tills open, a glass jar breaks in an aisle close by; a man calls a special that’s off special by the end of the day. I sift through my snacks, picking a choice for my one night off this week. The boy, my friend, wanders up, with his pitiful mama groping after him.

You buy Capri Sun? he says.

It hurts too much anymore — which is I why I can’t, won’t let Kenny win — to be a boy’s disappointment, overmuch. I ask his mama if she minds and she curses him and twists his arm and tells him to say sorry for asking. He apologizes. His face a face that makes me wish he was mine. I tell her it’s no trouble. That I’d love to do it, that I’ve got boys, and know how it is. Then, shit, I guess, she says, which is all the consent I need.

It’s misty when I leave the store, but we can’t let that stop us. I toss my bag in the backseat and climb in. The car clicks cold the first turn of the key — I’ve got to get this checked — but catches the next try. I drive blocks down to a roadside flower stand owned by a man who used to work at one of my old jobs. He crushed on me for years, used to offer lunches and buy flowers for no reason at all. Then one late night he saw me at the end of a binge. Since then, the few times we’ve seen one another, he talks to me soft and makes it a point to ask how I’ve been. Sometimes you have the strength to face them; sometimes you don’t. I get out and pick a bouquet. He gives it to me for discount and says he hopes I’m doing well, that it looks to him as if I am.

The ride to the cemetery takes you by the zoo. The zoo should be the next outing for the boys and I.

It’s been too long, much too long, since my last time here. There’s a new sign at the entrance, or else an old sign I’m first seeing. The first time I came, I came alone and got lost, and all these years since it’s easy to get turned around, to lose the route that leads easiest to his marker. The surest, fastest way is to find it on foot. I hike past the mausoleum — muddied patches suck at my heels — push over slopes, wend through cypress trees and mini-gardens of blooming yellow tulips. I tread the maze of markers, stepping around and between but never over a stone. The grounds crew has set up a tent, dug a new plot, laid straps across it. The man stacking chairs under the tent calls a twangish Howdy, and waves for me to stop. He wipes his hands on overalls stamped with islands of dirt, tips a checkerboard conductor’s cap, and dabs his face with a stained cloth. He asks if I need help finding a stone and I tell him I’m fine, that who I came to see should be just over the next hill.