Authors: Mark Wisniewski
DEESH
JAMES GOES ON ABOUT HOW
he hates being poor, hates the
endlessness
of it—it’s like we were all born into these rubber bags we can’t punch our way out
of. There’s no
light
in his life, he says. Not even in summer. Never was. He never should have hung with
us, even in high school. He should have listened to his mother when, after we won
state, she said we were bad influences, God rest her soul.
But that’s as close as he gets to talking about the death in the drum, and his carefulness
about that promises me there was death in there hands down, even though I’ve been
waiting for him to zip it so I could say that, for all we know, we just dumped off
a crammed bunch of laundry that got moldy after the creek rose and flooded the woman’s
house. There’s a million things other than a person that could be in a drum was what
I convinced myself while James
went off like that, but now that he’s done, that million feels like a million too
many.
Then a single word won’t leave my mind—
fingerprints
. Bark turns on the radio and presses
SCAN
, but it keeps coming back to this station that plays lite songs for white folks.
He lets it play, though, and the news comes on, and I listen, expecting the dude to
report a dead body found in a drum even though I know that’s impossible this soon.
After the news ends, Bark snaps off the radio, and I imagine he’s thinking the same
thing I am. For the rest of our lives, we won’t-but-will want to hear any news on
any radio or watch it on TV.
And I don’t need to ask him if this thought is on his mind a mile or so later, because
a glance from him, as we roll toward the city, tells me. He’s remembering how, just
a week ago, as he and I walked side by side to a hauling job in Brooklyn, we came
upon that Madalynn from our past, willowy Madalynn—she looking even finer than she
had when I was the lucky brother to spend nights with her. How she was now walking
toward Bark and me without yet realizing he and I were who we were, she side by side
with an all but grown-up kid who, from the looks of things, must have been her son,
Jasir. How after we all four came upon one another, Bark stopped her by simply standing
right in front of her, forcing her, with his closeness and stillness, to look up at
him. How that left me smack in front of Jasir. How Jasir was obviously as sinewy as
I’d been at his age. But, see, that’s not what got me as the four of us stood there.
What got me was how Jasir folded his arms over his chest a moment before I did. How,
right then, as he and I stood there on that sidewalk, he was holding himself in the
exact same way I always had and still do, palms flat against ribs, no telltale fists,
just a wiry young man maybe protecting or
hugging himself or both. And as Bark and Madalynn went on with their small talk, Jasir
and I stood like that—arms folded to make each of us look far too much like the other—though
we both played this off as if we cared only to listen to Bark and Madalynn. But, hell,
if I heard anything right then, it was only Jasir’s thoughts, and what he was thinking
was:
This serious dude is your daddy no doubt.
Looks too much like you not to be.
Did it with your mama and good.
And in Bark, too, on that sidewalk in Brooklyn, there was no doubt. One glance between
me and Bark then made me sure that, when it came to being Jasir’s father, he felt
free and clear, and a quicker glance now confirms it. I mean, that’s how things have
been between Bark and me since our second championship season. All he and I needed
back then was eye contact to know if I should lob the ball down to him or fake away
and come back with a bounce pass or pull up with a jumper he was set to rebound. We’d
never say a word, never even nod. We were tight like that, and now we’re still tight,
but I don’t like where our tightness has taken us.
James never had that unspoken vibe with us; in fact, he was always yakking at us and
everyone on the court, refs included, even at the families in the stands. I used to
think this was because he had the least talent of our starting five, but anyway since
then he’s used talk as a weapon, keeping the threat of it to himself at times, letting
the world have it when he’s backed into a corner. In a way it was good he talked so
much when we played ball—it hid that eye contact Bark and I used—but now he just sits.
And what makes me worry even more is that it’s Bark who finally speaks up, and, worse,
what Bark says is: “I vote we go to Mississippi.”
“Mississippi,” I say.
“It’s far and we’d blend in.”
James says, “Bark, we don’t know a damned soul in Mississippi.”
“Exactly,” Bark says. “So we ditch the truck in Virginia or something, take a bus
the rest of the way, start all over down there.”
“Hang on, man,” I say. “For one thing, if we don’t know anyone, where would we . . .
live?”
“We’ll rent. Like we do now.”
“With a thousand dollars?”
“Deesh, it’s not like anything’s keeping us in New York,” he says. “None of us has
a woman. None of us has a job other than to haul junk. Maybe this never crossed your
mind, but you can haul junk for cash just about anywhere.”
None of us has a
woman
? I think, and again I remember Madalynn, then realize that, when you count up all
the years that passed before we saw her and Jasir last week, Bark’s right.
“But we’ll go through the thousand like that,” James says with a snap of his fingers.
“We got gas to buy, bus tickets, food—and you don’t just walk into a new town and
start
living
, in an apartment and all, without a good pile of cash.”
“True,” Bark says.
Maybe ten miles pass while the three of us sit like strangers on an A train. Then,
just by Bark’s suddenly stiff posture, I know what he’s got in mind. He’s not just
heading to the city; he’s heading to his favorite place to hang out, Belmont Park,
to try to bet our thousand into more.
“Bark, tell me we’re not going to Belmont,” I say.
“Why not?” he says, and I expect James to start lecturing, but he doesn’t.
“Well,
I’m
not going,” I say.
“Where you gonna go?” Bark says. “Back to your nasty apartment to wait for the cops?”
“They ain’t gonna find me.”
“Well, they ain’t gonna find
me
,” Bark says. “I’ll be in Mississippi. With a helluva lot more cash than I have now.”
“You saying I don’t get my share unless you win?” I ask.
“No,” Bark says. “You’ll get yours.”
But it hits me he’s already planning to take a chunk from my third for gas and wear
and tear on his truck, which he does now and then—and which is fair, even though it
seems unfair because he does it only when he wants cash to bet on horses. So now I’m
looking at $300, maybe even only $275, and as many groceries as $275 might buy me,
it feels like it’s already nothing no matter whose pocket it winds up in, or where.
Plus if Bark does leave for Mississippi and I don’t go along, I’ll need to find a
new job.
And what if he wins? I think. Bark usually doesn’t win, but, almost always, he comes
close. His problem isn’t that he doesn’t know horses; fact is, in just about every
race I’ve seen when I’ve gone to the track with him, he pretty much knows which horse
will finish first. His problem is he lives for the big payoff, so he bets trifectas—which
means he has to pick first, second and third in the exact order—and it’s usually third
place, or sometimes only the exactness, that gets him.
“I’ll take you home, Deesh,” he says now. “But on the way there, just hear out my
plan.”
He turns on the radio, turns it off.
“We don’t bet every race,” he says. “We bet one. And before we do, we study all the
races to see which one’s best.”
I flick drying mud off the inside of one of my sneakers. “For the thousand,” I say.
“Right,” he says.
“We put it
all
on one race?” James says.
Bark nods. “You guys are the ones saying we need more cash to move.
You
got any ideas about how we can make a pile in a hurry? I mean, legally?”
Here’s where I most wish James would go off on another yakking streak—about all sorts
of moneymaking ideas that never entered my mind. But again he keeps still. And all
I can think about when it comes to big, fast money is what would have happened if
I hadn’t messed up my knee in the semifinals the first year we won state. Yeah, we
won state anyhow. Yeah, everyone on the team propped me over their heads as we left
the court. And, yeah, the ligament healed in time for us to win state again our senior
year. But everyone who scouted us that year saw my ugly-ass knee brace, saw how I’d
lost half a second off my first step to the hoop, and even though I’d compensated
by improving my jumper and passing game, everyone knew my burst of speed was why I’d
gotten those thirty-four letters of interest from pro and college scouts. Knew that,
for all the points and assists I’d racked up, my best bursts of speed were behind
me.
So we sit like that, all three of us, I imagine, remembering those days, as Bark takes
us farther down toward the city, then pulls left onto the Sprain Brook, then exits
onto the Cross County Parkway. The green of the trees and bushes and fields around
us is too soon replaced by faster traffic and concrete, reminding us we live in the
Bronx. And it’s not Mississippi or the death in the drum or the hope of winning a
pile of cash that changes my mind about whether I’ll go along with Bark’s plan. It’s
this appearance of the Bronx that does it. That feeling of being squeezed in. That
feeling of knowing you are one of thousands, if not millions, of brothers caged into
a future in which you will finally do something no-holds-barred stupid. There’s that
stretch of moments, after we pay the toll for
the Throgs Neck Bridge and stay just under the limit while we rise, when you see the
blue water and yachts and think the good life could happen to at least a few brothers.
But then the water is behind us and a Mercedes cuts us off as we exit the bridge,
and then there’s the construction and the slowdowns. And you sit, itching to move
forward, knowing that Belmont is, after all, a park with burgers and picnic tables
and tents that sell beer.
Quit worrying, you think. We’re almost there.
JAN
I FIRST SAW TUG CORCORAN
as he dove off the far end of the pier to swim to where the lake grew all shimmery.
He’d taken that dive, I figured, to avoid having to meet me, but then I told myself
that he and I were long past having excuses not to act like adults: Coincidence, I
was sure, was why he was swimming right then. Tom Corcoran had gone straight to my
mother and kissed her hello flush on the lips, Colleen showing no sign of jealousy,
though already I could tell, by just watching her uninvested glance away from that
kiss, that she and Tom weren’t getting along. There was this kind of coldness centered
between them, and she hugged me then only because he did, it seemed, and he went off
talking, in a hushed way that brought my mother in close, about how we should go easy
on Tug because his horse farm wasn’t about to earn praise in the
Daily Racing Form
anytime soon. I took this as my cue to walk down to
the lake, which had its own way of drawing me to it; on that day, in soft sunlight,
the kind that makes you feel like you’re a child again, all that water out there reflected
azure so peacefully you never would have thought it could’ve hurt a soul, let alone
your own daddy if he were a champion jock.
And Tug, as I stepped onto the pier, was backstroking toward me. By the time I passed
the second or third piling, he’d stopped to stand between the pier and a tangle of
this year’s weeds, ripples around him fading, a minnow nipping at the taut skin just
above his navel. He had the kind of shoulders you wanted to drape your arms over while
you made out and talked, and I stopped walking only to tilt my head slightly, my insides
gone to pieces about how the tan I’d gotten in Arkansas without trying might overwhelm
any upstate New York man with skin as pale as his. And I’ll admit that, already, there
was this tightness in my chest, though back then I wasn’t sure this was a sign of
love—as I saw things then, he’d just made me go shy.
But it turned out to be me who said hello first, even as I’d now have sworn our eyes
were putting a charge in us both. Then there we were, this other jock’s only child
and I, carrying on like good sports, with me telling him about my life’s dream to
ride racehorses professionally, about how I was sure I’d never win as many races as
my father had but believed I’d still try. And my mention of my father had Tug’s eyes
darting everywhere except those sun-bleached weeds, and I wondered if, instead of
desire, he was destined to merely feel sorry for me.
“But right now?” I said. “I’m looking for work that’ll pay up front.”
“Wish you could help on my farm,” he said. “But business is slow.”
I shrugged.
“Anyway,” he said. “Sounds like you need per-hour work.”
“Already have some,” I said. “Fishin’ for pay for some old guy.”
“Here?” he said. “I mean—on the lake?”
I nodded.
“Anyone I know?”
“I think your father said . . . Jasper?”
Jasper, as it would turn out, was Tug’s family’s oldest friend from the Finger Lakes
racetrack. Back when Tug had been the kid who’d press his face against the chain-link
alongside the homestretch, Jasper had been the soul entrusted to place bets for Tom
if Tom found himself on an entry that seemed doped or otherwise geared up to win.
Jasper would stand in the crowd near that same chain-link and—if Tom petted his mount
three times quickly—walk away from the crowd, then run. Jasper would always have at
least a few hundred dollars of Tom’s in his back pocket, but no bet made on behalf
of the Corcorans was supposed to exceed fifty, because, back then, both of Tug’s parents
believed that greed led to losing—not to mention they didn’t want to reduce a given
wager’s payoff by driving down the odds.
Jasper’s payment for placing the Corcoran family bets was the information about the
live horse itself, but Jasper always pushed his luck: He was wise enough to bet a
juiced horse straight up to win, but then, throughout the rest of the day, he’d consider
any rumor, from anyone, a stone-cold tip, and he’d lose.
So it made sense that fish for Jasper’s meals came from the lake. What confused me
back then—and would confound me for weeks—was how Jasper could afford to pay me to
catch them.
And why had Jasper chosen me, a woman who’d never even cast a line, to be the person
in charge of reeling his meals in?