or maybe lay back and take a check?”
“Government could mail me a check, they wanted to. But I’d want someone to go out to the mailbox and bring it to me. Maybe getting my dick sucked wouldn’t be so bad either, especially someone wanted to pay me for it.”
“Bullshit. I know you. You got pride.”
“Not everyone has had the chance to have pride, Captain Know-It-All. You don’t come with it built in. Like new cars, there are some options got to be installed.”
“Yeah, but there’s them that go out and get the options, use their own tools to put them in. Like your dad and my uncle. From what you’ve told me, your dad didn’t have it so easy.”
He hadn’t. His mother had died when he was eight, and his father had put him to work in the cottonfields, and when Dad didn’t pick the same cotton as a grown man, his father had put the horsewhip to him. I remember as a child seeing my father without his shirt, lying on the floor in front of the TV after a hard day’s work at his garage, and there were thin white lines across his back, scars from the whip. My father could neither read nor write. He never missed a day’s work. He never complained. He died with mechanic’s grease on his face and hands. I’m glad I never met my grandfather. I’m glad he was dead before I was born.
“I had advantages still, Leonard. I’m white. Even the worst of the whites, the white trash, have had it better than minorities.”
“Minorities are one thing. Choice is another. Check and see how many Orientals are on the welfare rolls. You ain’t gonna find many.”
“Check and see how many of those Orientals have ancestors were owned by white folks and sold on slave blocks. Frankly, Leonard, I think a Bible quotation is in order here. ‘Judge not least ye be judged.’ That’s close, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I got one too. ‘Decide to be a fuckup, you’re gonna be a fuckup.’”
“What bible’s that in?”
“Leonard’s Bible.”
I shut my mouth and brooded. There was some truth in what Leonard said, but ultimately, in my mind, there’s no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.
Leonard told me to take a right and I did and we rolled off the ravaged blacktop and onto a smooth cement street with beautiful sweet gum trees and broad-limbed pecans skirting it on either side. The sunlight made bruise-blue shadows out of the trees and laid them on the street and behind the trees on either side were nice, inexpensive houses with clean side-walks leading up to them.
Leonard looked at the house and said, “See, ain’t everybody down here got to live in the garbage and walk the streets.”
“They got jobs, Leonard.”
“My point exactly.”
“Remind me to kill you in your sleep,” I said.
Soon the street gave up its trees, and there was just the blistering sunlight and on the right a couple acres of land and on it a parking lot and a whitewash church with a plain black-and-white sign out front that read FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH . REVEREND HAMIL FITZGERALD OFFICIATING .
Behind the church was a simple blue frame house with a well-tended lawn with a sprinkler spitting on it and onto a number of circular, brick-enclosed flower beds. In the driveway was a recently washed last year’s blue Chevy and parked nearby was a small blue-and-white bus with FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH painted on the side. The bus looked fairly old, and a few of the back windows had been replaced with plyboard. I figured if you scratched the blue-and-white paint deep enough, you’d find a yellow school bus underneath—one of those they used to call the short bus, the one the retarded kids rode to school.
I pulled up in the lot and parked.
Leonard said, “I see a church and I get to thinking how black folks are mostly taught how to accept their misery through God. It pisses me off.”
I didn’t say anything. We got out of the truck and Leonard looked at the church sign, said,
“Government could mail me a check, they wanted to. But I’d want someone to go out to the mailbox and bring it to me. Maybe getting my dick sucked wouldn’t be so bad either, especially someone wanted to pay me for it.”
“Bullshit. I know you. You got pride.”
“Not everyone has had the chance to have pride, Captain Know-It-All. You don’t come with it built in. Like new cars, there are some options got to be installed.”
“Yeah, but there’s them that go out and get the options, use their own tools to put them in. Like your dad and my uncle. From what you’ve told me, your dad didn’t have it so easy.”
He hadn’t. His mother had died when he was eight, and his father had put him to work in the cottonfields, and when Dad didn’t pick the same cotton as a grown man, his father had put the horsewhip to him. I remember as a child seeing my father without his shirt, lying on the floor in front of the TV after a hard day’s work at his garage, and there were thin white lines across his back, scars from the whip. My father could neither read nor write. He never missed a day’s work. He never complained. He died with mechanic’s grease on his face and hands. I’m glad I never met my grandfather. I’m glad he was dead before I was born.
“I had advantages still, Leonard. I’m white. Even the worst of the whites, the white trash, have had it better than minorities.”
“Minorities are one thing. Choice is another. Check and see how many Orientals are on the welfare rolls. You ain’t gonna find many.”
“Check and see how many of those Orientals have ancestors were owned by white folks and sold on slave blocks. Frankly, Leonard, I think a Bible quotation is in order here. ‘Judge not least ye be judged.’ That’s close, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I got one too. ‘Decide to be a fuckup, you’re gonna be a fuckup.’”
“What bible’s that in?”
“Leonard’s Bible.”
I shut my mouth and brooded. There was some truth in what Leonard said, but ultimately, in my mind, there’s no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.
Leonard told me to take a right and I did and we rolled off the ravaged blacktop and onto a smooth cement street with beautiful sweet gum trees and broad-limbed pecans skirting it on either side. The sunlight made bruise-blue shadows out of the trees and laid them on the street and behind the trees on either side were nice, inexpensive houses with clean side-walks leading up to them.
Leonard looked at the house and said, “See, ain’t everybody down here got to live in the garbage and walk the streets.”
“They got jobs, Leonard.”
“My point exactly.”
“Remind me to kill you in your sleep,” I said.
Soon the street gave up its trees, and there was just the blistering sunlight and on the right a couple acres of land and on it a parking lot and a whitewash church with a plain black-and-white sign out front that read FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH . REVEREND HAMIL FITZGERALD OFFICIATING .
Behind the church was a simple blue frame house with a well-tended lawn with a sprinkler spitting on it and onto a number of circular, brick-enclosed flower beds. In the driveway was a recently washed last year’s blue Chevy and parked nearby was a small blue-and-white bus with FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH painted on the side. The bus looked fairly old, and a few of the back windows had been replaced with plyboard. I figured if you scratched the blue-and-white paint deep enough, you’d find a yellow school bus underneath—one of those they used to call the short bus, the one the retarded kids rode to school.
I pulled up in the lot and parked.
Leonard said, “I see a church and I get to thinking how black folks are mostly taught how to accept their misery through God. It pisses me off.”
I didn’t say anything. We got out of the truck and Leonard looked at the church sign, said,
Similar Books
