Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
“You don’t neither. The peoples of Newark owns it, and I’m one of them, so let me pass.”
“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”
“Maybe you better.”
“Or you gonna do what, skinny-ass bitch? Call a cop?”
“I might, for real. Not one of your friend cops. One of the new cops.”
“New cops? Lady, what’s wrong with you? You believe all what you hear from that carpetbag mayor?”
Miss Crawford snorted. “You got enough schooling to know what
carpetbag
means, child?”
Bigmouth laughed. “It means he ain’t really black. He don’t give a shit about these blocks and he sure ain’t about to run on over here and help you out.”
“Now you listen here, you drug-dealing no-account. You move aside right now, or you go ahead and knock down a lady.” Miss Crawford waited a second, then she took a step and plowed her cart right on. Bigmouth sneered but he stepped away like she knew he would. His boys might love to see him swagger, but it wouldn’t help his gangsta reputation none for them to watch him throw an eighty-eight-year-old woman on her rear end.
Miss Crawford went on home and unpacked her groceries. She stacked them neatly in their cabinets and she scratched behind the cat’s ears when he jumped up on the table. Facing down Bigmouth didn’t amount to nothing and she would’ve forgotten all about it, except that across the street, three doors down from Bigmouth’s crew, someone else was hanging out too, and watching. And it was Leteesha Monroe’s oldest boy.
Bigmouth was wrong about the new mayor. He surely was black, for one thing, and for the other, he did care about these blocks. Especially these blocks. But he was new, and he had lots of problems, and what was it Miss Crawford herself had been saying to Robbie just now as he bagged up her groceries?
It’s a new day in Newark,
she told him,
and what’s wrong can be righted if we step up and right it ourselves.
Two days later the sun was out and the breeze was warm and come afternoon Miss Crawford felt like a walk. She wasn’t in need of groceries but she went that way nonetheless, along the side of the street where Bigmouth’s crew hung out. She passed them with her head high and without a word, and then stopped three doors down. Like the other day, there was Leteesha Monroe’s oldest boy.
“What you doing here, child?” Miss Crawford demanded. “You got no homework waiting for you?”
“Done it.” The boy fidgeted uncomfortably.
“And your momma got no chores?”
“Done ’em.”
Miss Crawford looked him up and down. “Well,
I
got chores. You come help me with my cabinets where I can’t reach, and I’ll pay you. That suit you?”
He shrugged, still a good enough boy to know his duty. “I guess.”
She nodded. “Later today, right before suppertime. And boy? No point in your hanging around here day and night. Those punks, they don’t need you and they don’t want you. And you too good for them, you surely are.”
He didn’t meet her eye. Miss Crawford marched on to the grocery and passed the time with Robbie. She bought three cans of cat food, because sooner or later the animal was going to eat her out of what she already had, wasn’t he? Then she headed back along the other side of the street, and blessed if Bigmouth wasn’t standing on the exact same piece of broken sidewalk as always.
“Rashawn, move yourself aside.”
Bigmouth stared with that mean grin. “
Rashawn?
Old lady, who you talking to?”
“Oh, get out my way. I need to get home. Every time I come by here, you get all up in my face.”
“Listen, old bitch, I got a question for you. You in such a damn hurry to get home, how come you even come by here? You live over there, be much faster the other way.
You
just like getting all up in
my
face?”
“Don’t like nothing about your face, boy. But that other boy, can’t deny I like him less.”
“Who?” Bigmouth scowled. “C-4?”
She snorted. “C-4. Pure foolishness is all that is. You, at least I know the name your momma give you. Far as him, he’s just one evil child. Don’t like the way you strut around these blocks like a rooster, Rashawn, but I be sorrier if he turn out to be right.”
“Right? What you mean, who’s right?”
“That boy. When he say he’s gonna take these blocks from you.”
Bigmouth frowned down at her. “He say that?”
She squinted at him. “You ain’t pretending to me you never heard that? I’m just a old lady, live with a cat. If I heard it, I know everybody did. You planning on hiding your head in the sand? Go right ahead, boy, but just remember when you do that, what sticks out.” She looked at him again, then walked on home.
The Monroe boy came over right before suppertime. He put the cat food and soup and all the flour and sugar in the cabinets where she wanted them. The flour and sugar, she had out because she’d been baking raisin cookies, and along with five dollars, which was fair, she gave him some of the cookies and a glass of milk. She had some herself too, and while they ate them she asked him about school and basketball. She told him how good the church choir sounded and she said she could hear him especially, which she wasn’t sure was true but it made him smile. Besides that smile, all she got was one-word answers, nods, and shrugs, because that was how boys acted at that age, but she heard enough to be satisfied he was still going all those places they talked about and that’s why she was asking.
“All right,” she finally said, packing more cookies in a sack and handing them to him, “you take these for your brothers and your sister. Tell your momma Miss Crawford sends my best.”
The next afternoon was sunny again. Miss Crawford went out. She took a breath in the bright sunshine and walked around the block the other direction.
The boy standing in her way on this side wasn’t C-4 himself. Miss Crawford supposed that meant he was off somewhere doing his drug-dealer business, which was the only time Bigmouth cleared off his square of sidewalk too. This boy here, she didn’t know what his momma called him but on these blocks his name was Late Nite. He stepped aside after the tiniest little look at her, like she wasn’t worth his worry. But she stopped in front of him and tilted her head up—he was a tall one—and she said, “Yo, son. You work for that ugly boy, call himself all letters and numbers?”
Late Nite drew his eyebrows together. “Say what?”
“C-4,” she said impatiently. “Came over here to talk to him.”
“He’s busy.” Late Nite looked like something was funny.
“Don’t you mock me, boy. He hiding out already?”
The snicker stopped. “What?”
“I say, is he hiding out? ’Cause that ain’t gonna help him Friday.”
“Friday? What’s that?”
“It’s the day at the end of the week. The day Bigmouth and his crew from over there—” she jerked her chin “—say he gonna come over and clean his clock.”
“What clock? What you talking about,
clock
?”
Miss Crawford regarded the young man. “I don’t like that Bigmouth none,” she finally said, “but Lord Almighty, at least his crew ain’t stupid. Maybe I was wrong. Never you mind.” She turned to leave.
“Wait, old lady. Just wait. What the hell you saying?” He stepped around in front of her.
“Watch your tongue, boy. Don’t no one curse at me.”
Late Nite rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yo, sorry. But lady, what you saying?”
“Not sure I should tell you now. Like I say, maybe I was wrong.”
He made a fist, though he didn’t raise it to her. “If you got something you think C-4 oughta know …”
Miss Crawford took a quick step back, eyeing the clenched hand. She didn’t take her eyes from it as she swallowed and said, “Why I’m here, I was studying on it, and I decided, if one boy gonna be running both blocks, might better be C-4 than Bigmouth.”
“Running both blocks? Who say?”
“Bigmouth. Starting Friday. High noon, he be here, like this was some stupid movie. That’s what started me thinking. C-4, he mean and ugly, but he run a business. He don’t be playing no games over here. If we gotta choose between a clown and a hard case, maybe best we have a hard case. I imagine, C-4 make a deal, probably he stick to it.”
“That’s for sure.” The young man waved it aside. “You telling me Bigmouth and his crew coming here Friday, to get up in C-4’s grille?”
“How many times I gotta say it before it sink through your thick skull? Bigmouth, he’s thinking this the time to do it, because of the amnesty.”
“Amnesty? What the—what do that mean?”
She gave a sigh. “The police amnesty, you natural fool. All them cops C-4 be paying to watch his backside, they getting amnesty this week if they sign a paper says they ain’t gonna protect you all anymore. The mayor, he wanted them to have to tell all about you too, but that got negotiated. You know that word?”
“Course I know that word,” Late Nite snapped. “You mean—”
“Yes, young man, I mean you on your own now. You tell C-4, he see any of ’em coming for their payoff, he better run, because from now on they gonna be ratting on anybody tries to offer them money. That was part of the negotiation.” She looked to see was he following her, then added, “Of course, Bigmouth, he on his own too.”
He stared at her. “Old lady, how come you telling me this?”
“’Cause you say C-4 too busy to talk to me.”
“That ain’t what I mean. I—”
“Oh, I know what you mean, boy. I come over here because next week or the week after, new cops is gonna be asking to be paid off by you punks. Things don’t never change. But like I say, C-4 a better bet than Bigmouth for the peoples round here.” The young man said nothing to that. Miss Crawford waited and then she said, “If C-4 got some smart boys, you ain’t one of ’em, so I’m gonna help you out. Was I C-4, not that I’d ever want to be such a devil, but was I, I’d be heading over Bigmouth’s way early Friday morning, while all his boys be getting ready for the showdown and his pet police be keeping their hands off. That’s called a ambush, maybe C-4 knows that word. But go on, you do as you please. Whatever happen, folks around here be better off, one of ’em goes down.” Miss Crawford stared Late Nite in the eyes again, and then she walked away, thinking, was that amnesty real, it might just be a good idea.
That day before supper Miss Crawford had the Monroe boy come over again. He rearranged the pictures on the wall in her bedroom and carried the broken kitchen chair down to the trash. She gave him a slice of apple pie and asked him what he’d heard about the trouble on the block.
“Trouble?” The boy looked up sharply. “Don’t know about no trouble.”
“Well, you know more than I do, so that’s a relief. Maybe it won’t come to be.”
“Whatever, Bigmouth got it covered.” The child was straight-up bragging.
“Hope you’re right, boy. I don’t like Rashawn none, but the devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t.”
“What devil’s that?”
So she told the child about C-4, over around the other side of the block. “He say he coming over here Friday at noon to take these blocks from Bigmouth.”
The Monroe boy stared, then finished his pie in two big bites, and gulped his milk. Miss Crawford packed up the rest of the pie for him to take to his momma, and watched him from her kitchen window as he hurried down the street. She hoped he’d hold that pie careful until he finally got it home.
Miss Crawford heard Officer Aleksandra Joyce come home after her shift the next afternoon, and she popped her head out the door and asked her in. Miss Crawford had coffee ready and a plate of cinnamon cookies just out from the oven.
“You look tired, child,” she observed as Officer Joyce took off her big belt, with the gun and the flashlight and who knew what all, and laid it on the chair beside her. “Hard work bringing law and order to Newark, I suppose.”
“That it is,” Officer Joyce agreed. “Worth it if it gives folks like you peace enough to make cookies like these, though.”
“Why, thank you,” Miss Crawford said. “Have another, please do. Those police, they still giving you a hard time?”
Officer Joyce shrugged. “I’m still new.”
“Plus,” said Miss Crawford, “I expect some of them got other ideas about policing than the ideas you got.”
The young woman sighed. “They sure do, Miss Crawford. The mayor, I know he’s working on it. Like you told me, things take time.” She smiled wearily.
“Well,” Miss Crawford took herself another cookie, “maybe if more police like you was in the middle of things, it would all get better. So the question is, how we going to get you in the middle of things?”
“That’s one of the reasons I moved to the neighborhood. So I could know what’s going on. Know more and more people.”
“And what about things? What about if you know things?”
“Like what things?”
“Like, supposing you was to know about a thing that was going to happen. A bad thing, and you was in time to put a stop to it so no one got hurt.”
“Miss Crawford?” Officer Joyce put down her mug. “You know a thing like that?”
“If I tell you something,” Miss Crawford asked the young woman direct, “do you know people in the police you could tell, who ain’t in the pocket of no drug dealers nor no gangbangers?”
“I do,” Officer Joyce said promptly. “My captain was brought in by the chief that was brought in by the mayor.”
“You saying you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very good.” Miss Crawford nodded, satisfied. “Yes, I believe that’s very good.”
Though she wasn’t one for excitement, come Friday morning Miss Crawford was just a little bit wistful that she wasn’t a fly on the wall in that basement hole Bigmouth called his headquarters. She wasn’t positive what the NPD had planned, but it involved special officers, not the usual ones on these blocks, who were still deep in the pockets of the drug dealers and everybody knew it but no one could prove it. Miss Crawford did go out and sit on the stoop across the street early in the morning, so she saw C-4 and his boys coming around the corner. She was interested to see that the officers who swept them up were in plainclothes, so C-4 and his boys wouldn’t scatter nor throw their guns away, while the ones who pounded on the headquarters door just after so they could grab Bigmouth and his crew getting set to head over to C-4’s territory, they were in uniforms. One of them in uniform was Officer Joyce, which gratified Miss Crawford. She was also gratified that the whole operation was so cleverly planned that no shots were fired at all. Though still, it was a good thing it had happened in the morning, while the children were at school. No use having them in danger, hanging out on the stoops and all. There was no need for them to see it, they’d hear all about it by suppertime, C-4 and Bigmouth and all their boys in jail.