Christopher Paul Curtis (16 page)

Chester X took one of his twisted-up fingers and banged it against his temple three times.

“Wisdom. That's where wisdom comes in. Wisdom is knowledge plus experience, and I've seen how smart you are, Luther, but other than running this joint, you definitely lack any kind of experience. And that makes you a tad light in the wisdom department.

“This isn't anywhere or anyway to be raising a bright
young boy, and even though you do a good job hiding it I can see that's what you are. That's why I'm hoping that you're smart enough and wise enough to listen to someone who can point out what's going to happen to you unless you get on up out of here.”

“And what's that? Nothing's gonna happen to me.” I couldn't help it, I had to ask, “Why? Did you hear Darnell Dixon say something?”

“I didn't hear that cretin say anything, but what's going to happen is that one day you're going to take over all this, you're going to be the one running all these houses and schemes your mother's got going.”

“So? Do you know how much she's worth? You say it like there's something wrong with that. One day I'm gonna have a genuine Jacob Lawrence painting hanging on my walls.”

He said, “Don't play stupid with me, young man, I've heard you talking on the phone. I've heard the way you moan and groan to Spunky about—”

“It's Sparky.”

“All right, I've heard you crying the blues to Sparky about what she's doing to you. You can see she's got your whole future laid out for you like a map, no mystery, no wondering, no nothing. All of this
is
going to be yours one day, and you'll hate it even more then than you do now.”

This was the kind of talk that had gotten Sparky knocked out in front of Taco Bell.

“Your mother is one determined young sister, son, no doubt about it, she's going to get anything and everything
she wants. Far as I can tell two of the things she wants the most are you running this operation she's got going and me pushing up daisies somewhere at the same time I'm providing her her financing for her retirement. I'm here to tell you that the only way those two things aren't going to happen is if we aren't around.

“Now I'm going to be honest with you, and I want you to listen carefully and try to understand what I'm saying. I was saving those pills because I'd rather go out all at once than have your mother ease me into a coma and leave me vegetating around here for God knows how long. If anybody's going to have a say as to when my clock gets punched out I'd rather make that call myself than have some lost-soul vampire like your momma doing it for me.”

Lost-soul vampire? That had to be the best description of the Sarge I'd ever heard. I smiled. Chester X Stockard was cool, but he still hadn't answered my question.

“You still didn't say how she's going to kill me.”

Chester X gave me a disappointed look, sort of like that didn't even need to be asked. “Well,” he finally said, “there's different degrees and there's different ways of dying.”

I could see where he was going with this: my death was going to be caused by a million small blows spread out over many unhappy years, bla, bla, bla.

I felt relieved. I know it's pretty stupid and paranoid to waste time worrying if your own mother might have plans to kill you, but you never know with the Sarge. She
did
used to say all the time, “I'm the one who brought you into this world and I'd be more than willing to hasten your journey
back out.” True, she hadn't said it in a couple of years, but knowing the Sarge that could've just been a way to get me to let my guard down, probably so's I wouldn't have any idea when the end was right around the corner.

“Yeah,” I told Chester X, “all that's fine, but I'm not going to let you kill yourself with a med overdose while I'm supposed to be watching you.”

“Then that means we're going to Port Saint Lucie?”

“To where?”

“It's a beautiful little town on the east coast of Florida, it's where I'm from. It's where my wife and daughters are.”

“You've got kin in Florida? The chart says you don't have anybody.”

“It's where all my people are buried.”

“Oh.” I never know how to react when someone says something like that. You feel like you have to say something. I guess I could say “I'm sorry” but that always sounds so insincere, even though I am sorry for their sorrow, if that makes any sense.

So instead I said, “And another thing, how come you're planning on committing suicide? I've seen the charts on you and your finances. If you're so unhappy here I'll help you go to the bank and take some of your cash and get you a ticket down to Florida and you can set yourself up. We can get you out of here so smooth she won't have a clue as to where you went. Man, with three quarters of a million dollars and all those stocks you could get a bad little crib and hire yourself a bad little private nurse. Unless … aww, she did it, didn't she? She already got the cash signed over to her.”

Chester X laughed. “Looks like I outfoxed myself on this one, doesn't it?”

“She did. She's already got your cash.”

“No, son, there never was any money.”

“What? I've seen it, she's got your stock certificates and insurance policies and bank accounts.”

“Nothing but paper. That's one of the things I love about the Internet, you can buy just about anything. Apparently your mother never bothered to check my stock, if she would've she'd've seen they were all from companies that had gone defunct decades ago. I bought them just before I was about to be sent to the nursing home I was in before this one, place run by white folks.”

“What? You really lost me, Mr. X.”

“I wanted the white people to believe I had money. They treat you a whole lot better if they think you're well off. I don't know how I ended up in your mother's hands, all I know is I woke up one day and you were standing over me with a razor. And it didn't take long for me to figure out it's no good for me if she thinks I'm loaded. I know she already pulled some sort of hanky-panky to get her hands on some of my government checks.”

“So you really don't have a ton of cash?”

“Weight-wise, probably closer to an ounce.”

“No seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

“Maybe seven thousand in cash and five or six thousand in stocks.”

“Well then, how're your bills getting paid here? This place ain't cheap.”

“Social security, my pension and an old-age policy I bought back in the forties.”

“Oh, man! The Sarge is going to die! This is great!” I just about slipped and said, “I can't wait for you to kick the bucket so I can see the expression on her face when she finds out you're broke!” But he might have misinterpreted that remark so I caught myself in time.

I said, “Since we're airing out the closet, Mr. X, was it the Black Panthers or the Black Muslims you used to be in?”

He thought for a second, then said, “You know as you age you tend to forget things, but I'm willing to bet I'd've remembered that.”

“Then what about your name? How come the chart says you're known as Chester
X
?”

“You put a lot of faith in those charts, don't you, son?”

“Hey. As far as I'm concerned what's on those charts is more real than reality.” It's happening again, I'm using Sarge-Speak and I didn't even mean to.

Chester X said, “The only thing I can figure is that it must have something to do with me having no middle name. I guess writing ‘X’ was easier than writing ‘N.M.N.’”

“So you weren't ever a militant, you didn't fight in the black liberation movement?”

He laughed. “I think being a militant is sort of like being a philosopher—they both sound good, but the pay is lousy. I worked on the railroad.”

I let his comment slide. What did he know? I can't see America not taking good care of its best-known and best-loved philosopher. “The railroad, huh?”

“That's right, put all those decades in, then they forced me out. I'm getting the last laugh, though, they cut me loose and gave me a gold-plated watch, sort of so's I could count the hours until I died, but I outlasted it, cheap thing gave out four years ago.” Chester X thought this was very funny.

“So you never met Rap or Stokely or Angela or Huey?” Mr. Kamari's black history class was paying off.

He thought for a second. “ 'Fraid not. Had a cousin once by the name of Huey, and wooed a gal called herself Angela, though. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“And here I've been giving you extra-good care 'cause I thought you were one of the O.G.'s of the revolution.”

“I'm a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say we were revolutionaries in our time. Seems to me that that should be enough for me to keep on getting this extra-good care you've been doling out.” He brought one of his twisted-up hands to his jaw and rubbed. “I've got to admit, you do give one great shave!

“Look,” he said, “I've done a lot of thinking on this, we can —”

I knew where this was headed. I butted in. “Mr. Stockard, I'm not going to any Florida, and neither are you. I'll tell you what I will do, though, I'll keep these pills and that mattress you vandalized to myself, the Sarge won't know anything about them. But you're still going to have to keep the zombie act up when she's around, otherwise she
will
put you on the needle.”

Chester X started looking desperate, and it was a very
funny feeling for me. It's really hard to see someone you thought was out of it having so many emotions.

“But, son,” he said, “your life would be so much happier in Florida, happier and healthier. Why, all that fruit and sunshine can work wonders on someone's skin.”

No he didn't!

He kept going. “Think about it, I've seen how you work like a dog on that science fair project, I've seen how much you study, I've seen your grades, you'd be able to finish school, then get into a good college and do the things you want to do. That's not going to happen here. She can't afford to let you go off to college for four years, who'd run these places for her? Do you realize how much she'd have to pay someone to do everything that you do?”

“Don't worry, I'm getting paid. It's all going into my education fund. I might not have any cash flow now, but I keep track of my hours and she deposits my money for me. I'll have way over a hundred thousand for school by the time I'm eighteen. And so what? If push comes to shove I can stay here and go to the U of M—Flint.”

He said, “But, Luther—”

I told him, “Mr. Stockard, you'd best forget about us going to Florida, it ain't in the stars.”

“Aww, Luther,” he said, “you really ought to think about it, and besides, have you ever met any Florida women?”

Oh. I knew what was next, I'm supposed to be such a loser with the women up here that I'd have better luck in Florida.

“They're different down home,” he said. “Warm-weather
women are a lot friendlier, a lot easier to get along with. You'd meet some fine young woman in no time at all. Seems from my experience Southern women are a lot more loving. A lot more comforting, if you get my gist.”

I got his gist, whatever that is, and all it did was make me wonder what the people of Florida would say if they knew their state was being promoted as Ho-ville, U.S.A.?

I said, “That's cool, Mr. X, but you'd best forget me and you going to Florida, the closest I'm getting to anything Floridian is in the fruit bowl upstairs.”

Chester X didn't appreciate the beautiful irony of that remark. His eyes got hard and drilled into my head. Then he let me have it with both barrels.

He said, “I can't understand it, especially from a young man like you, someone who obviously likes to take matters into his own hands, so to speak. Don't be such a jerk, Luther.”

Aw, no. This can't be happening!

This is what I call one of those “branded” moments. They got these shows on the Western Network where the cowboys run a steer down and tie its feet together before they take a red-hot branding iron and poke it into the cow's behind. You can bet that if that cow lives to be a thousand years old he'll still have that mark, both on his hide and on his soul.

Chester X might as well have snatched a glowing orange poker right out of the campfire and mashed that baby right onto my brain, because I knew I'd be carrying the embarrassment and humiliation of the words “jerk” and “like to take matters in your own hands” around with me for the
rest of my life. And if reincarnation is real I'll probably be taking them into my next seven or eight lives, too.

I'm pretty sure I was maintaining my usual cool on the outside, but just like when those cowboys brand that steer and it doesn't seem to give much more than a sad “Mooo,” on the inside my heart and mind were filled with smoke and wild, rolling eyes and the nasty smell of singed, melting hair.

Chester X was out for blood! If he'd stoop this low who knows where he'd stop? What if he had pictures!

Thank God I didn't have to find out—the phone rang upstairs. I said, “Uh, I've got to get that. We'll talk about this a little later.” I tore away from my room to answer the phone.

I hope Chester X didn't take me too seriously about carrying this heart-to-heart talk on later. If he held his breath waiting for that to happen he wouldn't have to worry about saving up any pills!