Only the Strong (12 page)

“Fuck the bag. I want that nice little box right there,” the second one said.

Lorenzo looked up and took in his surroundings. There were only the ducks and a group of serious-looking men across the street, standing around a pair of expensive cars.

“Why you looking around?” the first thug asked. “You looking for help?”

For the first time, Lorenzo looked directly at his antagonist. “I'm looking to see who you got backing you up.”

“What?”

“Forget it,” Lorenzo replied.

The brief exchange provided Thug No. 2 an opportunity to go for the box. Lorenzo turned and slapped at him. The box slipped from the thug's hand, hit the ground, and overturned. Cufflinks scattered in the gravel and rolled into the grass.

Across the street, one of Goode's men flicked his Zippo and leaned in to light his boss's cigar. But Goode stayed his hand. The man followed Goode's line of vision. “Damn,” he said.

In the park, Thug No. 2 knelt on the ground, bawling. His arm was bent crazily and he was spitting blood. Thug No. 1 was sprawled on his back, pinned to the ground by a large boot, not yet
a size 14 EEE, planted on his chest. Satisfied that his tormentors could no longer bother him, Lorenzo turned his back on them and began to collect his cufflinks, dust them off, and place them back in the box.

“Damn is right,” Goode said. “Bring that young man to me.”

Minutes later, Lorenzo found himself being interviewed by a very important-looking man. He had on a tailor-made pinstriped suit and leather boots spit-shined to a dazzling gleam. A half-chewed cigar dangled from his mouth.

“Where you from, young'un?”

“Right here.”

“That so? I had you pegged for a Southern boy.”

“Nope.”

“Where you live?”

Lorenzo shrugged. No use giving him too much information.

“You box?”

Lorenzo shook his head.

“Wrestle?”

“Nope.”

“That was an impressive demonstration you put on over there. Where'd you learn to do that?”

“Don't know,” Lorenzo said. “Never had to do it before.”

“You need a job?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“What I'd have to do and how much it pays.”

Goode smiled and gestured to his man. The man leaned in and lit Goode's cigar.

“What's your name?”

“Lorenzo.”

“We could use someone like you, Lorenzo. You've got guts.”

Nineteen years later, Pearl sat under the dryer at Ardell's Beauty Parlor. Her head stinging from chemicals and her heart heavy with loneliness, she flipped through a
Jet
magazine.

There were seven other women in the shop, four customers and three hairdressers. A transistor radio sat on a shelf, playing Jerry Butler just a little too loud.

The cover headline on the magazine read, “Black Man Battles to Become Mayor of Newark,” but Pearl could hardly pay attention. She was so caught up in her troubles with Guts that she imagined she heard his name underneath the music and through the ambient whir of the dryer.

An ad for the Ebony Book Club offered three hot titles:
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
by Sam Greenlee,
Revolutionary Notes
by Julius Lester, and
Die Nigger Die!
by H. Rap Brown—all for $14.85. Pearl turned a few more pages and paused, thinking she'd heard it again.

“Thought she could tame that big man. I could have told her that wasn't gonna happen. You can't tame a killer no more than you can put a bow tie on a gorilla.”

Pearl's ears felt warm, and now she knew it wasn't because of the dryer.

Jet
's “National Report” predicted unemployment among black men would soon reach 40 percent in many of the nation's large cities, a prospect that the Nixon administration considered “worrisome.” Pearl sat the magazine on her lap and waited.

“She thinks she's better than us because she gets to wait on white folks all day. Hell, my mama does that and she's a maid.”

Pearl was on her feet before she knew it. She turned to the busybody, a tall, stout woman with a head full of curlers.

“Get in my face and say that.”

The woman exchanged glances with a couple of the other women. One giggled. Curlers played deaf. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Pearl challenged. “Stand your hefty ass up.”

In the background Jerry Butler continued on, oblivious.

              
Only the strong survive

              
Only the strong survive

Curlers got up, amused. “Why you little sawed-off bitch,” she said. “I'll beat—”

A lifetime of exercise and dance lessons had blessed Pearl with exceptional calves. She leaped in the air, throwing herself at her talkative adversary. The momentum crashed the stunned woman backward to the floor. Pearl straddled her chest, grabbed her head, and slammed it against the linoleum tiles. Eerily calm, she placed a thumb over each of the woman's eyes, which were clenched shut in fear.

“I will blind you,” Pearl hissed. “Hear me? I will leave your ass in darkness forever.”

Curlers sobbed quietly. Pearl rose slowly, looking around at her frightened audience.

“Anybody else got something to say? No? Good.”

She stomped out of Ardell's, marched straight to the nearest barbershop, and slammed the door. An hour later, she came out with a spanking new natural: short, perfectly round, and gleaming with Afro Sheen. She was still mad, though, and muttering to herself. “That heifer made me curse,” she said.

Back at the cabstand, Rip Crenshaw was holding his audience spellbound with the story of how he busted up Hoyt Wilhelm's no-hitter. “With a knuckleballer,” he explained, “you just close your eyes and swing. But I went one better. I pretended I was taking a whack at George Wallace.”

Even Oliver, who had been slow to warm to the ballplayer, laughed heartily. Guts joined the group, his conversation with Playfair still lingering in his thoughts. Playfair and his parakeets had already left, but more than a few feathers had been left behind.

“Don't tell me,” Guts said. “You were in the neighborhood and decided to drop by.”

Crenshaw grinned. “How'd you guess? I had a few hours to kill and I hadn't heard from you. Thought maybe you had some news.”

Guts led Crenshaw into his office and closed the door. “The chains? You'll never see them again.”

“Figured as much. Don't care.”

“And somewhere between Summer, Spring, Autumn, and the fence who boosted the chains, the ring disappeared.”

“Son of a bitch. Can't you torture them gals and find out exactly what happened?”

“Naw, I can't do that. Besides, I haven't found them yet. They went out of town looking for bigger parties.”

“You mean bigger fools.”

“I didn't say that. Isn't this a little early for you to be going exploring? The clubs won't open for a long while. You want to pick up women off the street?”

“Never thought I'd say this,” Crenshaw confided, “but I may have had enough of females for a minute. Them gals took advantage of my innocence. When you're as rich and pretty as I am, people don't always have your best interests in mind.”

Guts nearly gagged on his peppermint. His coughing so disturbed Crenshaw that the slugger reached out and tapped him carefully on the back until it subsided. “I know,” he said in as comforting a tone as he could muster. “It's got me choked up too.”

“Let's take a ride,” Guts suggested.

“To go look for the ring?”

“No, I told you I'm on that. If it's meant to turn up, it will.”

“So what are we riding for?”

“I just want you to see that there's more to the North Side than hoes who steal jewelry. There's a lot of history here. Let me call my friend. He'll be the perfect tour guide.”

Crenshaw did a double take. “You have a friend?”

They took off in Guts's Plymouth. When they arrived at the house on Finney, Guts rang the bell.

“It takes him a bit to hear it.” He pressed the bell again. “His eyesight's not great either. But he's like family to me. He and his wife took me in when I had no place else to go.”

“Your folks kicked you out?”

“My folks died.”

The door creaked open and Mr. Logan peeked out.

“Rip Crenshaw, meet Mr. Logan. Without him, I would most certainly be dead.”

“For real?” Crenshaw asked. “Well, we 'preciate you keeping him among the living.”

“Lorenzo exaggerates,” Mr. Logan said, “and please, call me Cephus. Lorenzo's been stuck on ‘Mister' for more than 20 years.”

Now Mr. Logan was exaggerating. Guts had hardly crossed his path for 15 years and might not ever have reconnected if it weren't for Nifty Poindexter. Nifty would pick a busy street corner, lay down a square of cardboard, and sit on it. He'd tangle his triple-jointed limbs so improbably that he looked completely unable to loosen them, let alone rise up and walk. Rush hours and lunchtime were particularly lucrative for Nifty. Compassionate passersby seldom hesitated to unburden their wallets and purses and stuff his cup to bursting. Nights found Nifty miraculously cured and the life of the party. He'd cut the rug until the wee, wee hours, then be back on his cardboard before the early birds began their commute. He “worked” on Sundays too, the better to take advantage of holy-minded citizens with salvation on their minds.

One Sunday in 1966, Mrs. Logan had just heard Rev. Washington's sermon on the Good Samaritan when she crossed a street to put money in Nifty's cup. She, of course, had no idea he was a fraud. She was equally unaware of the bus careening toward her. Guts showed up for her funeral, regretful over never saying goodbye to her so many years before. Mr. Logan, grief-stricken though he was, made Guts promise not to kill Nifty, so Guts came up with making him run in place instead. The idea was to make Nifty's fitness so well known that no one would ever fall for his fake cripple act again.

After Mr. Logan said a blessing, Guts and Crenshaw sat down to a lunch of roasted sweet potatoes. “I know you're not used to this,” Logan said to Crenshaw. “But I don't apologize. We ate a sweet potato every day in the fields. I grew up in Arkansas, working in the hot sun like a mule. Sweet potatoes kept us going.”

Crenshaw licked his spoon. “Actually, this is exactly what I'm used to,” he said. “I'm from a little place called Wigwam, West Virginia. We swear by sweet potatoes.”

“Well,” Mr. Logan said. “I see no reason at all why you and I won't get along just fine.”

Mr. Logan showed Crenshaw the city's first black high school (the first of its kind west of the Mississippi), its oldest black
church, the street where the slave pens used to be located, and the neighborhood where the pioneers of ragtime first tickled the ivories. The last stop on Mr. Logan's history tour was downtown, near the river. He pointed to a great domed building with his cane. “See the Old Courthouse there? It's just spitting distance from where you play first base. That's where one of the earliest court decisions was handed down in slavery days. The judge ruled that people like us weren't people at all. Just property, like pack animals or a chair. Turn right and there's the main post office. Used to be a big tree there before there was a building. A black man was burned to death on the spot.”

Crenshaw leaned over and whispered in Guts's ear. “Man, is he like this all the time?”

Guts ignored him. “Mr. Logan, can we go down by the docks now?”

“I'll get close as I can, but I can't go as far as you two. Those cobblestones are too much for my old knees.”

Guts and Crenshaw stood on the stones and watched the muddy river slap the bank. Nearby, a pair of barges loaded with cargo inched their way into port. “W.C. Handy slept here,” Guts said.

“Who? Slept where?”

“The Father of the Blues. He slept right here on these stones when he landed in town. He was a young man and didn't know nobody.”

“You know, that would be interesting to me if we were talking about James Brown or somebody. I'm all for this black history thing but a little of it goes a long way. Y'all got me thinking about a nap.”

“One last stop,” Mr. Logan said when they climbed the cobblestones and once again stood beside him. “But first we need to pick up somebody who can speak on the place with authority.”

They drove to a modest little home on Glasgow Avenue. A man in his late sixties opened the door. “Hey, Cephus, long time,” he said with enthusiasm. “Come on in.”

“You looking good,” Mr. Logan said. “Still in tip-top shape, I see. I brought some young people with me. This is Rip Crenshaw and Lorenzo Tolliver. This here's Stanley J. He's well known in these parts.”