Midnight (2 page)

They worked, ate, watched television, and, on special occasions, went out for a lobster dinner on the pier at Redondo Beach.

“What them young niggers doin' now?”

Uncle David wedged himself in front of Bop to stare at the helicopters whirling over the sections of Los Angeles that were being set on fire.

Aunt Lu headed straight for their bedroom to change into her house clothes, a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt labeled “Eat Succotash.” Bop puzzled over the message every time he saw her with the T-shirt on.

She had another favorite that he felt he understood—“It must be jam 'cause jelly don't shake like this.”

She headed from the bedroom to the kitchen to “bang some pots together,” as Uncle David passed her in the hallway, on his way to put
his
house clothes on, a pair of flip flops, a pair of cutoff jeans, and a sweatshirt.

“We heard about that stuff on the radio, coming in. What's happening now?”

Aunt Lu was in the kitchen bangin' pots together, which meant on this particular evening steaks, baked potatoes, string beans with ham hocks, boiled corn with “plenny butter,” huge steins of Pepsi, and apple cobbler for dessert, with or without ice cream.

Bop smiled, sipped his beer, listening to the familiar kitchen sounds.

“Well, looks like L.A. is about to get a real hotfoot.”

Uncle David tripped through the kitchen for a quick ham sandwich to tide him over till dinner and slumped into his study TV chair for his nightly commentary on the news.

“Now they knew that was gon' to happen. I almost think it was planned.”

Bop stared at his uncle across the room for a minute. The brother could be somewhat contradictory at times. There were times when he sounded anti-African-American (he still said “niggers” a lot), but his actions blew holes in his words. He gave money to African-American educational funds, supported a number of black-oriented charity agencies, and was generally open to any legitimate black grievance, but his fund of “niggerizations” was vast and deep.

“What makes you think it was planned, Unc?”

“Hell, just look at the pattern; them ain't no random fires being set. We're lookin' at pros at work. See how the fire is being sucked into that building?”

Bop stared at the huge department store on Vermont and Manchester burning.

“See the way that fire burning? If you just had a bunch o' silly niggers flingin' bottles fulla cleanin' fluid in there you'd have a spotty fire. Them is real fires with fire storms set off from the center.”

Bop couldn't really figure out exactly what his uncle was talking about, but he could see the effect. “Yeahhh, I see what you mean.”

Thirty-five minutes later.… “C'mon eat, honey. Bop, I know you don't want none of this meat food, do you?”

“I ate awready, Aunt Lu. I walked down to the Thai place and had some noodles.”

Uncle David rolled his eyes to the ceiling on his way to the kitchen table. He didn't have a lot of regard for a man who would turn down a fair-sized porterhouse steak.

Aunt Lu echoed her husband's thought with her secret chuckle. “Keep on eatin' them noodles 'n your eyes gonna get slanted.”

They shared the usual laugh about their nephew's eating habits. The laughter was their way of telling him, “We're for you, even if you eat noodles.”

He felt half an urge to talk to them once again about the benefits of proper diet, something he had picked up from one of the hippest and wisest dudes he'd ever met. They pulled up on each other in the Chino minimum security facility iron yard.

“Now just look at these idiots, Bop; they're pumping iron like it's going outta style. Look at BoBo over there, got muscles between his thumbs and forefingers, but he'll probably drop dead from a heart attack, eating all the grease he eats. I've seen the fool smear lard on white bread.”

“Chester, what's this big thing you got with food, man? A hamburger is a fuckin' hamburger!”

“That's what you think, young blood. Pull some of that ghetto snot out of your ears 'n listen up. I got a little-brother-place in my heart for you 'cause I don't really think you're dumb as the rest of these funky chumps.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means that I don't think you want to spend most of your life in jail.”

“Like you?”

“Yeahhh, be cruel, if you want to, yeahhh, like me.”

“Sorry, man, I didn't mean.…”

“Aint no thang.”

Daily, with practically nothing to do but talk and pump a little iron, Chester rapped and Bop began to listen.

“Most of the brothers and the Mexicans in here is half crazy from the shit they've been loading their systems up with for years. I don't feel qualified to talk too much about our Latino friends, but I
know
what we been eatin' since 1619 is fucked up.”

Chester L. Simmons, ex-con man, ex-pimp, ex-ex-ex, managed to convince Clyde Johnson, aka “Bop Daddy,” that there was a racist plot behind the pushing of sugar, grease, drugs, and assorted chemicals into the African-American communities across the United States.

“What's this shit with ‘fast foods' in our communities?! It's like we don't have time to sit down 'n eat. Most of us ain't got nothin' but time; we ain't got no jobs to rush to.

“Isn't that interesting? The white boy is dead on the go, phone in the car, ready to go, but you don't see him grabbing those killer burgers and loading up on junk food. We spend the same money he spends, buying synthetic shit that don't do nothing but make you have a cravin'.

“Check it out, youngblood. Put enough sugar in your tank and it won't run. You'll think it's runnin' but it's just an illusion. Everything they push in our communities is sweet, I think it's a clever way to get us to swallow some bitter shit. I had a couple junkie chumps give me some sweet gin one time. You believe that?”

Bop tried to argue the point a few times but gave up; Chester's logic was tight.

“I ain't got nothing against eating meat; it's what you're eating in the meat that fucks me up. It's got to be some powerful chemicals they're using to blow a damn cow up to adult size in four months. Or is it three?

“And I'm not one of these funky chumps who believes that vegetables don't scream 'n cry when we cut and kill them too. It's just a matter of biology; I'd rather kill a tomato, which doesn't have a heart like mine or a liver, or a dick, than kill a cow.”

Chester ate seafood when it was available (either legally or illegally) and vegetables (undercooked by demand) and only smoked marijuana for his holidays.

“That firewater ain't nothing but some chemicals them bastards done stirred up in a vat. Herb is from Mother Earth.”

Chester L. Simmons was the man who made him understand that white bread wasn't really wonderful and that he ought to pay the Motherland a visit.

Bop sprawled in front of the television, finishing off the last Beck's and smoking a joint, marijuana sheen in his eyes, fascinated by the Watts Riot of '92. Uncle David and Aunt Lu had watched an hour of it after dinner and decided to watch the TV in their bedroom.

“Ain't no doubt in my mind how this shit is gon' come out. Niggers gon' lose again.”

Bop opened the sliding glass door and stepped out into the yard. He felt the veins in his forehead throbbing. The brothers were firing it up. He could hear distant sirens and imagined that he could smell smoke.

That's for Rodney King, Benny Powell, Clarence Chance, Latasha Hawlins, the racist pre-New Year's sweeps through the project to arrest the brothers the police
thought
would fire their pistols on New Year's, for flooding South Central L.A. with crack, for making men lie on the ground, their initiation into humiliation, for no jobs, for hopelessness, for the secret promotion of gang warfare by the Los Angeles Police Department, for sheer racism.

Bop felt a level of agreement with his uncle concerning the Korean merchant burnout.

“I don't see why they burnin' up their stores.”

“'Cause they're nasty, disrespectful, and rude.”

“Then why shop in their stores? Shit, if you didn't shop in their damn stores for a week, they'd become very respectful and courteous. Or else they'd go somewhere else quick!”

He took a final hit on the joint and popped the roach into his mouth, gulped it down with a swallow of beer.

Bone had called back twice.

“Bop, you should be down in the 'hood now; home, these motherfuckers is loadin' up on shit!”

Skateboard tried to lure him down into it with promises.… “I promise you this, man; if you tripped through here right now, you could pick up VCRs, booze, anything you want. I promise you mo' shit than you ever had.…”

He was tempted but didn't feel compelled.
This is a fucking setup. Once the fire dies down, niggers is gon' pay for this and I'm gon' be in Ghana, West Africa
.

He stutter-stepped back into the living room. The analysts were analyzing the analysts; the pundits were punditing; the sociologists were sociologizing; the urbanologists were making money; people were being interviewed.

A young black man with his Raiders cap on sideways summed it up. “If you have to ask me why this happened 'cause you really don't know, then my daddy was right, white folks is a bunch o' dumb motherfuckers!”

It came as close to being live television as it would ever be. Profane statements skipped past the censors, and the media's desperate need to be first with the latest tragedy gave a party atmosphere to the news.

“Tom, what's that burning over there?”

“Well, Jerry, that's the warehouse that we pointed out to you earlier. The fire department hasn't been able to get to it yet.”

He remoted the television off, after having learned that most of the television newscasters were racist-thinking (“They're savages. Who would do this to a city?”) and that the city was likely to be placed under a curfew and that the National Guard might be sent in.

Bop staggered up the hall to his bedroom, flopped across the bed for a few minutes.
Damn! I hope this don't fuck with my shit!

He slid off the bed and fumbled through the top drawer of his bedside night table. He pulled the miniature briefcase from underneath a pile of socks and shorts, stared at the briefcase for a moment, and finally opened it.

My yellow-fever card, my passport, my plane ticket, my trip to Africa, with a thousand ol' nasty drug-saved dollars to spend
.

He opened the yellow-fever card and studied the entry—
this is the one that made me feel like I had the flu for a week
.

“Now, I have to explain, Mr. Johnson; about seven to ten days from now, you'll begin to experience yellow fever symptoms. Don't be alarmed. That is what this shot is all about.”

He flipped the passport open and studied his picture.
What the fuck would you call a motherfucker who looked like this?

He stumbled over to the dresser, to stare at himself.
Well, I ain't ugly. But I ain't pretty neither
. He pulled his T-shirt off and studied his top half. Pumping iron had put a physique on his five-foot-eight-inch frame. He had stopped pumping iron after his first year in Chino, upon the advice of Brother Simmons.

“Ain't no need to try to look like a gorilla, Bop, unless you intend to spend the rest of your life guarding your asshole in jail. Look around you; look at the dudes with the lats 'n pecs. Most of 'em are so musclebound they can't even turn their heads unless they turn their shoulders. If that ain't bad enough, there are two other downsides; number one, all that excess mass is gonna turn to flab unless you pump for the rest of your life. Number two, the police are gonna harass your ass all over South Central “EL-A” and beyond 'cause they can tell, just from looking at you all buffed up, that you just got outta jail.”

Bop's attention was drawn to the large, neatly rounded keloid in his left side. “The bullet could've caused a lot of damage, a lot of damage. You could've suffered a spinal cord injury. You're lucky, young man, don't push it.”

Twenty-one years old, been seriously shot once, been beaten and left for dead once, skull fractured, right ankle fractured by a baseball bat, in and out of some kind of penal institution for the past eleven years. Ex-drug-addict/pusher, ex-war-lord counselor of the Bricks, one of the biggest, best organized, and most brutal of the “EL-A” gangs.

Bop threw the gang sign at himself in the minor—a Brick!
How many could say that they had “retired” from the Bricks?

He closed the passport and flopped back on the bed to stare up at the light in the ceiling. Retired. Going to Africa. It didn't seem real.

How can I be a “retired” Brick? What the hell am I going to Africa for?

The two people closest to him, Uncle David and Aunt Lulu, couldn't really figure it out either, the part about him going to Africa. They put it in the same category as noodle-and-wheat-germ eating.

Uncle David: “Well, Bop, I tell you the way I feel about it. It's your life and you can do what you want with it. But, for my money, I wouldn't be going nowhere as fucked up as Africa is.”

“Unc, Ghana is just one country in Africa, you can't condemn the whole continent.”

“Tell me something, Bop …?”

“Yeah?”

“How many of those countries over there—'sides South Africa, and we know how fucked that was, and still is to a certain extent—how many of those countries are completely self supporting?”

“Unc, that ain't really the point.”

“Well, what's the point?”

“Now, Dave, don't be so hard on the boy. Bop, you want to go to Africa. What're you gon' do over there?”

What're you gonna do over there? What're you gonna do over there? What're you gonna do over there? What …? OK, Chester, answer that one for me. You told me why I should go and what I would find but
you
supply the answer to that one. What're you gonna do over there?