Tuff (38 page)

“Sir, we’re closed.”

“That’s okay, I’m Winston Foshay, that’s my picture on the flyer.”

Seeing that the burly local in front of them was indeed the politician on the flyer, the men calmed down appreciably. Winston shook each man’s hand. “I came to … uh … check on my medical staff.… We’re … uh … giving out free checkups around the corner, and they were supposed to get some money because we ran out of … uh … uh … those wooden things they stick in your mouth.”

“Tongue depressors.”

“Yeah, tongue depressors. What happened?”

“This woman,” the bank manager said, pointing to Ms. O’Koren who was just starting to come around, “one of our most valued customers,
came into the bank, when all of a sudden there was blue smoke coming from the vent and the smell of ammonia. She passed out. We called an ambulance, then, thank goodness, these two doctors came in a few seconds later, but the handicapped one had some sort of attack. He knocked the blue drinks out the other one’s hands and staggered into the smoke, saying to stay away from him, he was a doctor, and he’d be okay.”

Winston punched his palm in pretend disappointment. “Those drinks was for the kids.”

Charles stood up and helped his mother to her feet. “Is this citizen okay, Dr.… Dr. Whitey, I mean Dr. White?” Winston asked Charles, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “I say, I believe she’s starting to show some life. It was nothing more than a dizzy spell brought on by the smoke and fumes and all that rot. Some proper rest, a spot of tea, and she’ll be fine,” Charles answered, barely hiding his own grin and enunciating like an Oxford graduate. “Bit of a fright, though.”

Winston jogged over to Fariq, who, groggy from the medication, was working his crutches like chopsticks, trying to pick up a loose bundle of hundred-dollar bills that was just out of reach. “Come on, kid, let’s go,” Winston whispered, as he lifted his limp friend by the knees and armpits.

“Yo, Tuffy, we came in ready to get this money, yo. Ms. O’Koren fakin’ a seizure, and my ass get a real one.” Fariq raised a crutch toward the vault. “Look at all that money, son. What you doin’, nigger? Go back! Go back!”

“Chill, man. You ’posed to be a doctor.”

Tuffy hustled Fariq past the bewildered employees. “Dr. Allah seems a bit woozy.” Stopping at the doorway, he thanked everyone for their help and reminded them to vote for him. When they got to the car Winston placed the gelatin-jointed Fariq in the backseat, folding each loose limb into the cramped space like a puppeteer putting his favorite marionette back in the box. Everyone thanked him for his efforts, Charley O’s gratitude laced with his usual aspersion. “Yeah boy, your shit was on time like German railroad, but you did come in kinda pussy. All ‘Howdy, y’all. Glad to meet you,’ and shit. You supposed to come to the rescue toolie out, blasting shots U.S. cavalry style.” Armello put a fist to his lips and blew into his air bugle. “Dit doot dit doot ditooo. Charge!”

Charley O’ nodded his head, “Yeah, Tuffy, if you not going to use the gun, give that shit to me.”

Winston backed out of the window, his hands still gripping the car
door. He looked at his boys, Armello at the wheel, Fariq and Charley O’ smashed shoulder to shoulder in the backseat, crowded with a baby chair and Ms. O’Koren. They reminded him of the doomed gun-boat crew in
Apocalypse Now
headed upriver to Cambodia, the Bronx, to who knows where. He could hear Robert Duvall yelling in his ear over the shelling:

Winston wanted to surf like never before. He pressed down the car door’s lock. “We out, y’all.”

“You got your pager, nukka?” Fariq asked. Tuffy nodded. “Then I’ll beep you in an hour or so. We’ll go to Old Timers’. Smoke some isms. Get some drink.”

“We probably goin’ to be at the movies, so …”

Fariq tapped Armello on the shoulder and the car pulled away.

On the way to the elementary school Winston held Yolanda’s hand so tight they could feel one another’s pulses.

“You kicked that guy on purpose, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t no accident.”

“You know what I mean. You meant to knock him out.” Tuffy raised a foot in the air. “Timberland makes a hell of a shoe. These shits is waterproof. No-skid soles. Reinforced heels.”

“Thanks, Boo.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

A block away the band of addicts and derelicts hired by Inez stormed a municipal bus like Entebbe commandos. After handing out flyers to the passengers, they poured into Second Avenue, halting traffic, slipping the handbills under the wipers of stopped cars, tossing them through open windows. The chaos caused an onslaught of blaring car horns. Winston squeezed Yolanda’s hand even tighter. Her knuckles cracked. She was the only thing in his life that was real. Even Jordy plodding in front of them, nose to the ground like an anteater scouting bug lairs, seemed imaginary.
Little light-skin motherfucker don’t even look like me
. The pressure from Yolanda’s return squeeze quieted his fears.

When they got to the school the flag over the entrance was flying at
half-mast because the pulleys had rusted shut. A cracked-out man stood outside the door exchanging goo-goo eyes with a preteen. “What you doing, Marvin? I thought Ms. Nomura hired you to hand out flyers today.”

“I’m talking to my girl.”

“My flyers better not be in the Dumpster, nigger.” Winston spat. “You vote?”

Marvin shook his head and tried to gauge Winston’s mood. Tuffy looked calm, but he took a step back just in case. “Didn’t I register you at Papo’s spot?”

“Uh-huh, you stepped on my jumbo too.”

“That was an accident.”

Marvin pursed his lips and shifted them from side to side.

“It was, nigger.” Downcast about the memory of his lost crack rock and allowing Winston to punk him in front of his girlfriend, Marvin stared at the ground. “Listen, you go vote, I’ll give you your twenty dollars back.”

Marvin hurried through the entrance, the school’s thick metal doors closing slowly behind him. Winston turned to the girl. “That nigger not for you, hear me?” The girl remained standoffish, her hands on a set of bony hips cocked at an angle.

“She waiting for her tip,” Yolanda said.

“I should’ve never told Marvin I was giving him twenty dollars. I should’ve just threatened to beat his ass.” Tuffy handed the girl twenty dollars. She walked away, switching her nonexistent behind like an anorexic flapper full of whiskey.

“They growing up fast.”

“How much of that money you got left?”

“Enough for the movies.”

Marvin poked his head out from between the doors. “Tuff?”

“What you doin’ out here, man? You supposed to be voting!”

“I don’t know your real name.”

Winston chuckled. “This shit’s insane.” Climbing the stairs, he held the door open and said, “Foshay. Winston Foshay.”

The voting booths were downstairs in the cafeteria. Bendito, on election day duty, leaned against a soda machine, looking bored. He spotted Winston first. “Truce.”

“Truce.”

Inez stood behind the volunteers, looking over their shoulders like an exam proctor. Yolanda checked in and headed to an empty booth, leaving Jordy with his father.

“Lighten up on them, Ms. Nomura, dag.”

“Winston, you have no idea what the city will do to rig the election. I just came from the polls at P.S. 57 and they’ve got six cops standing out in front of the place. Now people in this neighborhood, especially the people who’d vote for you, wouldn’t walk through six policemen to get free beer, much less vote.”

“Come on, now, Ms. Nomura, it can’t be that serious.”

“Oh, it can’t be that serious? Before that I was at Carver projects next door to the old folks’ home. Do you know where the voting booths in Carver projects are located?”

“No.”

“They’re in the rec room on the eighth floor.”

“But the elevator in Carver ain’t never worked.”

“Exactly. You think those old people who were so proud of you at the debate are going to walk up eight flights of stairs to vote?”

So the volunteers wouldn’t hear, Winston mouthed, “How many votes I got?”

Inez flashed her fingers in sets of ten. It was either sixty-four or seventy-four, Winston having lost count.

With a sharp pinch Yolanda let him know the booth was ready. Winston, Jordy in his arms, entered the booth and closed the curtain behind him. He primed the ballot by moving the red lever to the right.

“Tuffy, that you?” It was Marvin whispering from the booth next to Winston’s.

“What up?”

“How you spell your name?”

“W-I-N-S-T-O—nigger can’t you read?” Exasperated, Winston began directing Marvin in a voice loud enough to lift the heads of the volunteers from their rosters. Following his own directions, he showed Marvin how to vote. “Put your finger on the top box in the first row of boxes.”

“Okay.”

“Go down to the third box.”

“All right.”

“See the little metal lever next to the box?”

“Yup.”

“Pull it down.”

“Done.”

“It’s a little black X in the box?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Pull the red handle to the left.” Without pulling his lever, Winston listened for the loud kerchunk of Marvin casting his vote. “There you go, son. You just voted.”

“That was easy. I should vote more often. When you running again?”

“Hopefully, never.”

“Winston.” Marvin’s voice had returned to its original hush. “About that twenty?”

“I’ll get you tomorrow. Come by the crib.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, nigger.”

“Don’t be like the rest of them politicians, making promises you can’t keep.”

Winston didn’t worry about breaking any political promises. He figured there was no way for him to win.

Tuffy puzzled over the rest of the ballot. He examined the judge-ships, then voted for the surnames he thought sounded Jewish. He let Jordy flip the rest of the poll’s switches. In a local election with a pitifully low voter turnout, the baby’s whims would go a long way in determining the outcome of the assorted city offices, propositions, and referendums, the particulars of which Winston understood as much as Jordy. When he stepped out of the booth Yolanda looked so proud that for a moment he thought he had a chance to win.

Man, if I won, I wouldn’t even know where to show up for work
.

T
he Foshays were sitting in the back row of a small art-house theater, sipping herbal teas and watching an Ozu film. The film,
There Was a Father
, was an early work and so absent of dialogue it might as well have been silent. From Yolanda’s perspective the slow-moving tale with its static camera work might as well have been a still photograph. “Winston, this movie’s awful. Ain’t shit happened since the kid drowned in the lake, and that was just a glimpse of an overturned boat in two feet of water.”

“Lots of things is happening. You just don’t how to look for them.”

“What, the old man getting even older? His son talking even less then he did when he was a boy? Long shots of stone statues? If nothing’s happening, then there’s nothing to miss.”

A brave viewer shushed the couple. Winston ignored the reprimand and explained the movie’s subtext to Yolanda. “You supposed to be a psychologist. Can’t you see the father going through some heavy shit? Nigger in crisis. He’s lonely. His wife been dead for who knows how long. His student died, he feels responsible, now he afraid to raise his son. The kid feels abandoned, but still got mad love for his pops. When you watch these shits it’s not about what’s happening, but what ain’t happening.” Onscreen, the father and son were fishing in a shallow stream, casting their lines, their poles moving in perfect sync, like windshield wipers. Without
turning to face the boy, the father said, “I’m sending you away to school.” The boy stopped fishing while his father kept snapping his line into the water. “That’s deep as fuck,” Tuffy said in a loud voice. The audience launched a chorus of “Shhh”s and “Be quiet”s in his direction. But Winston was unshushable, and the chiding only encouraged him. “What you all crying about? None of y’all can’t understand Japanese no way.” His
benshi
-like exegesis continued unabated. “If you think about it, Landa, all I have to do is kill you and this movie be just like me and Jordy’s life. Father and son against the world.” Yolanda playfully slapped him across the jowls. A couple of patrons stormed out to alert the theater manager.

Winston looked at his beeper. Nothing from Fariq. He imagined Fariq and the others joyriding in the stolen Dodge, convinced the traffic helicopters flying overhead were the police radioing their whereabouts to the ground forces. They had rehearsed the plan of escape many times on the stoop: Drive by the airport, where the helicopters aren’t allowed to violate the airspace. If they weren’t near an airport, drive to the nearest college campus, park the car, and pile out. From five hundred feet up they’d look just like students.

Winston turned his attention to the film. The father was on his deathbed, the now full-grown son at his side, fighting back tears for a man he never really knew. As the father passed away quietly, the son left the room and began crying uncontrollably.

Winston’s eyes were moistening when Yolanda whispered in his ear: “Smush and them all right?”

He shrugged.

“You crying?”

“Naw.”

The son and his new bride were on a train to their new lives. The son suggested to his wife that she invite her father and her brother to move in with them. The woman sobbed into her hands at her man’s kindhearted resoluteness. Yolanda shook her head in disgust. “This movie is a trip. Japanese people must cry at the drop of a hat. They could never live in the ghetto. They’d be a fucking wreck.”

“Ms. Nomura live on the block, and she do all right.”

“Well, when the next movie start, let’s move up to the front a little bit?”