Free burning, p.1
Free Burning, page 1
Also by Bayo Ojikutu
47th Street Black
For Katherine Anne Grider, 1921-2004
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Carolyn, Ma, Dad, Bisi, Sherri. You are the source of everything that is right in me. I love you all. Lasting gratitude to Jeffery Renard Allen, Katherine Boyle, Caroline Carney, Achy Obejas, Ted Anton, and Anne Calcagno. On behalf of 47th Street Black, I thank the Chicago Reader, New City, the Hyde Park Herald, 57th Street Books, the 47th Street Marketplace, WBEZ-91.5-FM, WVON-1450AM, USA Today, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Book Fair, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Lakefront Outlook, the Hyde Park Herald, and the online literary journal, Otium (www.otium.uchicago.edu). Do know that your support will never be forgotten.
I offer respect to this city Chicago, for everything it has been and it will be. This place is not only my home, but it is a tremendous storyboard for fiction. I hope to one day do it some justice.
1
1
COUSIN REMI LIVES on the corner, right before the lake floats away from the city. He rents this narrow crib with three stories stacked to the sky and cracked siding chipped from its frame after all these years fighting wind blown off South Shore Drive.
The place isn’t the last on the corner anymore, hasn’t been for a year now. I forget the red-and-beige flat built on top of the empty hangout lot where east-west numbers met north-south names. This new tower with the spiked black iron gates protecting its owners from the street crossing, and full Christmas-tree-green grass growing inside the iron. Its lawn is so long and thick seen up against my cousin’s half-dead stubble colored like hay and old money. A brick terrace juts out of the third-story front with one to match on the backside, more iron gating both, and a satellite dish spins from the roof to beam in Jesus Christ and J.Lo and young Julio Iglesias, and all such kinds of holy noise, to these red-brick curbside folk.
Now there’s another tower built just like the first on the south side of Remi’s place, on top of what was once a boarded two-story. Back when Cousin’s place was still the last on this side of the block, I could see the shacks coming from east or west on 78th, standing up narrow and haunted and higher than everything else along these rows. These funky new towers cast shadows over the Four Corners today.
These young Mexicans bought the curbside tower to the north. No Latin would even think of crossing north of 79th Street on foot near the lake when we were boys, much less living on these corners. That’s not even speaking of the Naperville whites living one tower further south now. We don’t see either of them much—we watched as they landed with their big green Mayflower and white Ryder trucks—but they don’t bother with the block these days. Just ride in from places far off come evening time, shut their doors and wait for the sun to rise and for us to disappear. Then, come morning time, they start their journey all over again.
I’m almost at Phillips Avenue when I blink and slide the Escort in reverse, wheel into the spot between Remi’s place and the south tower. The city fixed handicap signs to mark this space six months back—but I don’t care. There’s been a blind brown-and-gray woman living right across this street, long as my cousin’s been here at least, old lady with two orphan grand-kids as gimp-eyed as her. But nobody ever thought about posting caution signs until these people came and raised towers and moved in folks who claim a child with autism just so they can hold a spot out front for the Lexi. When I stop by Remi’s these days, I park between the city signs and curse them—“Fucking boo-jie jokesters,” I say, “fuck um,” out loud. Repeat it every time, just so I remember.
“How LONG YOU been here? Ain’t hear you knock.” We’re blood on my mother’s side, as Remi’s the one child Auntie Denise had before the IC train took her on home. Only male family I’ve ever known who didn’t come from a gangway or the sidewalk corner, or an assembly line; and if he did come from those places, at least he’s the only one who stayed. His computer screen flickers gray and white light against tree bark skin. “Shit, close the door.”
“Let myself in,” I say and shake the key ring in my right fist. “You mind, huh? Busy or something?”
Remi hasn’t spun his chair from the monitor. He speaks to the light juking across his screen instead. “Busy for you, cuz? For some other trifling somebody, yeah, I’m busy. But for your trifling ass? Never. Close the door all the way.”
He clicks the mouse. “Ain’t nobody else here, Rem. Don’t sound like it, no ways.”
“Your reflection’s all on my screen,” he says, “and they’ll be back.”
Silver-framed pictures line Remi’s office. The cracked plaster just behind the desktop is covered by Johnnie Coleman preaching about sins dancing down in hell and clouds testifying up in heaven, Billie Holliday singing tears full of blue heron and blood, and Madame CJ Walker burning the naps out of Harlem heads. Near the window, Mahalia Jackson casts alleluia spells and Lena Home looks all creamy in some flick from the old days and the Joyner girl (not the one with the nails and hair, the other) runs away from herself because she’s all that’s left to leave. Behind us, Cassius Clay drops Liston in honor of Elijah and Muhammad, letting the world know it’d be best to go on and call him “Ali” proper. Then my man Rich Pryor spills his illness from the stage until all pain and joy leave him numbed by laughter. Just before the wall’s end, Mayor Harold breaks the wheels off the city machine—not the real, blue worldwide machine, just this little pissant Chicago version—and Malcolm spouts city rage from up high at the old mosque.
Right before these walls meet to finish the room in cob-webbed corners, Dizzy blows his horn across the way to Josephine half-naked dancing the juke jive. In this computer monitor’s flicker, I catch Dizzy’s notes floating about, switching her straw-covered hips left and right and bouncing bebop back over our heads.
“Where they at?” I ask and Remi looks over his shoulder at me finally, still without turning his chair.
“Don’t know,” he says through teeth clenching against bottom lip. “Out on the blocks, I guess. You know how high them niggas be when they come back from hustling.”
My cousin’s computer screen and these pictures framed cheap to hang from the wall, a dim bulb lamp, the swivel rocker at his desk, two folding chairs, and a phone wire stretching from the back of the desk are all that decorate the room.
“Been at the Soft Steppin?” I see his question in gray and white slipping its way through Dizzy’s notes and Josephine’s jungle love.
“Where else?”
Remi taps the mouse to the horn blower’s time. “Ain’t your lady home waiting on you?”
“Not ready to go home yet. Hell, you know what time it is—past one o’clock. Ta’s been at work all day. Knocked out by now, been so. She ain’t thinking nothing bout my ass.”
“Mmh.” I hear that sound forced through his throat, and I know the reason behind his questions. Remi wouldn’t care about a damn thing but the dungeons, dragons, and white knights flashing across his screen right now if my wife hadn’t called over here to track me down. Been with her six years now, and known him all my life—figuring the workings of their riddles is my second nature by now. Tarsha calls Remi to scream when she hurts to be heard, because my cousin was born with these ears, big, soft, and kind. She carries on until her yells turn into weary whimpering words forced through quivering lips and punctuated by a row of sniffles:
“You’re the only one who can talk sense to him, Rem,” all juiced up and begging, she cries. What was left for my cousin to do but promise to come to the rescue of a poor, thick Oglesby Avenue honey, like a good white knight should? She’s my wife, mother of my baby girl, and he’s my boy, my cousin and my boy, but tears and thighs still talk to the blue and black soul, blood or no blood.
“Got any bites yet?”
“Shit, market’s dry now, Rem, you know it. Look at the news. Read it.” This’s the same script I offer Tarsha on her Sundays off. “Shit’s hard in the square hustle. Only those fucking kings on their hill got it easy now.”
“Ain’t gotta prove it to me.” Remi’s medieval conqueror dies on-screen and the flicker stops. He turns from the monitor and pulls the lamp chain until these walls fill with stinging light. I can’t see Dizzy and Josephine doing their thing now. “When hypes quit spending loot for the herb cause they’re paying it all out for rocks and blows over in Englewood and the stash is so short I gotta use off-brand chicken seasoning to pack my last dime, I know times is hard.”
“Thought there was no recessions in the game?”
“Muthafuckin kings, you said it.” Remi lights a Newport from his T-shirt pocket. “Went and dicked up the Taliban, so that Afghanistan poppy blows down from those hills to sell cheap off Sixty-third Street. Pure as I don’t know what. Kings all getting their cut.”
“What time Tarsha call?” I take a smoke from the carton Remi offers, and my laugh floats through dust.
“Ain’t talked to her since last week.” He lights my cigarette and the flame blocks me from catching the lie in his eyes. Not that I would’ve seen it anyways—Remi’s so smooth, his tales spin circles around his own knowing. The valleys of his cheeks squeeze tight at his mouth to stop the truth from squeezing through, leaving the reaching point of his nose the only limb that gives up the tale. Just that nose and the dark skin crawling on bone around his eyes.
“We’re holding up tight though. Her gig is solid downtown, for now. She’s making enough to pay rent and keep heads floating. For now.”
“You let me know.” Remi blows smoke at the knight s bones.
I swallow and cough. “Still got the state check coming in, too, you know. Three more months riding on that for me still. It helps.”
“Don’t get me wrong. There’s still money in this hustle,” Remi explains to this hardwood dust. “I complain, and hypes do run to the hard dope these days. Desperate clowns. Enough to make a nigga think about putting cash in a ki, make some real paper. But that’s a bloody way, messing with rocks and blow. Still cream to be made right here with the herb. Clean cream, cleaner than some at least. Ain’t much blood to this hustle, and enough cash to keep the head on straight. You holler when you need help getting down, Tommie.”
“I will,” I tell Remi, “appreciations.”
I hear Westside Jackie Lowe now, him and their latest housemate, whose name I never keep straight (James-Peter, Peter James, some such biblical founding father concoction). James-Peter is kin to Remi and Jackie somehow—but I don’t claim him as my own true family, no more than I do Westside, no matter that I call them both “cousins.” We’ve all got the same blood running in us somewhere, so even when we don’t tag New Testament founders from the West Side as true blood, they’re still our kin. Calling it out loud like that is the easy way to stop ourselves from getting confused about names and history and such.
Westside is Remi’s younger brother by a few years. Same father, different mother. Some ho strolling honey from Madison Street and Independence Boulevard gave him birth. The fool was pushed from a Westside womb, though he’s lived here in the Four Corners all his years. He and Remi are barely blood brothers themselves.
“Put that shit down,” Jackie Lowe yells over the stomp of boots and gym shoes from their living room. “That’s my shit. Yo punk ass ain’t do shit for it. My … shit—how you gon come up in my house and take my shit after I did the work to get it? Who the fuck you think are you?”
“Fuck you,” James-Peter answers. “Yo crib? Bitch-ass mark, so what I took your shit. You took the shit from somebody else. So what? Possession’s ninety-nine percent, muthafucka.”
“How much you want?” Jackie mumbles. “I want my bike back.”
“Your bike? Dumb ass,” James-Peter yells.
“How much?” Jackie pushes the office door and stabs his head into the private space. He is ruby red-skinned, the melting genes of slaves and Latin kings and Italians and house masters hopping and popping about above his eyebrows and under his cheeks.
He leans on the wall, so close to Dizzy that the jazz man’s frame bends crooked against plaster. Westside puffs sweet, cheap leaves stuffed in blunt wrapping. “Oh, my main cuz, Tommie Simms? Didn’t see your car out front.”
“Handicapped spot.”
“A dub,” their housemate hustles on the other side of Mahalia’s wall. “Give me a dub, you want your bike back, Jack. Now what?”
“A dub? I climbed on the back of that gate and up the porch to get the gawdamn thing in the first place. How you sound?” Jackie turns from his roommate’s offer and points the blunt at me, and he giggles. “Told you bout parking there, Tommie. Told you they got a gimp living next door. Get your shit towed fast, boy. Them folk don’t care nothing bout no bullshit, raggedy-ass Ford. Got a deal with the city on that spot.”
“You’re Richie’s meter maid now?”
“Hell yeah. Just don’t be parking your bullshit in fronta my crib, is all.” Jackie laughs louder in his stinking clouds. “Hurts property value.” I’m gone.
“All right then, Tommie. You ain’t gotta go nowhere. Don’t be so sensitive.” He points at the back of Remi’s head. “Chief, we got some skeezes from Seventy-ninth bout to come through, trying to get loose with the fellahs.”
“Not from the motel?” Remi asks without looking at West-side. He clicks the mouse to protect this conqueror’s new life.
“Naw, Rem-Dog. Ran cross these two at the bus stop off Cottage. Rolled up on um in your Rover. Fresh babes got to slobbering at the lip talking bout where ‘y’all going to, who car’s this, can we ride with y’all,’ testifying on how down they wanna be. Course, I told them it was my boy’s ride, and we couldn’t get down with them unless they brung the get-down to him, right. They went to get another friend, then they’ll be through the spot. Hehe—that’s how smooth I am, Tommie. You wish you was playa-smooth like this here, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I wish.” I peek from Mahalia’s shadows and the conqueror soon to be burned to ashes by this digital dragon. “Like you. Sure do.”
“You told them it was my truck?” Remi’s says.
“Of course I did, Rem-Dog. You my dog. Like how Snoop say it—”
“Right.” Remi drops his square on the hardwood, squashes it with his shoe sole until ash simmers.
“Fresh babes,” Jackie repeats as he steps out of that living room light. “Like eighteen, nineteen years old, no older than that. Just right. Even got a plump one coming for you, Tommie, if you wanna stay. Just like you like um. Had you in mind, Cuz, just in case. Better claim this one before James gets his greedies on her.”
“Thick, that’s what I like.” My eyes swell from the blunt’s burn. “Not plump—I like thick women.”
“Well go home to your wife then, ungrateful, fatty freak muthafucka. Beggars can’t be—punk bitch. We don’t love these hos.” Jackie sits under Lena, and his clouds turn her even creamier. “Where’d you put the video camera, Rem-Dog? The handheld with the digital view screen and the wrist strap.”
“It’s like that?” The dragon picks through the conqueror’s remains.
“Told you. Straight skeeze-oids. You know how we do.”
Remi rolls his office chair my way. “All right, Tommie, get home to your ladies. Holler at me tomorrow.”
I laugh, then see in his brown-and-black eyes that my cousin is free from Tarsha’s righteous begging now—fresh dreams of burning at the dragon’s flames reflect across his face.
“Don’t be parking in our gimp space no more,” Jackie yells again as I stand and rub the sore hard metal leaves at the end of my back. I pound Remi’s fist with the smoking hand and turn away from his computer screen.
“Need be, let me know if you wanna get with me on that thing like we talked about,” he repeats, “when you’re ready.”
JAMES-PETER SITS on the dining room’s scuffed hardwood, still wearing his gray-and-brown package-delivery uniform, as I near the exit. This housemate works for one of the big parcels with the globe icons blinking in the corner of its babble box commercials. At least twice a week, I see his truck— gray and brown to match the uniform—blocking these city streets as the apostle makes his neighborhood rounds. He’s been with the company long enough to get Westside a part-time job there; Jackie doesn’t have his own truck as a part-timer, so he’s convinced James-Peter to run misplaced electronic goods straight out the company warehouse.
James-Peter presses Xbox pads to direct and follow blinking TV static. I don’t say a word, and he pays me no mind, as the thick air outside Remi’s office has him hypnotized already.
Cleopatra Jones watches over us from a faded movie poster taped to Remi’s living room wall. Floating before a cityscape background with psychedelic light streams at her back, an apparition cast by a city window, this afro’ed-out mamma totes her .38 piece and juicy hips clothed in leopard’s fur. Aiming at the world to convince us to stop running. Submit, before she lays us down for good with either hips or gat. She aims and clings to this peeling wallpaper at once, fading but fighting to keep watch on my cousins, and she follows my steps. So I pay my due respects, nodding at the queen in her get-down getup before leaving the Phillips Avenue shack.
“IS THAT YOUR Range Rover down the block?”
This little round girl stands on my cousin’s porch, bracing to knock as I open the front door. She is shaped like an apple, reverse tapered so her weight rests in her chest and head and in this smile at the core. Her teeth are big and just a bit yellow from corner store hard candy and bubble gum. Clouds of raspberry juice powder blow into my nose as she drops her knocking fist. She’s fourteen at best, twelve or thirteen maybe—between rat-tat-tat blinks, her eyes sparkle with the brightness of believing all things whispered her way. Her left hand straightens the barrette at the base of her skull, holding burned-straight, slicked-back hair together so that the forehead juts further than it should on top of her head. Her lids slow and she fixes these pupils on me as she asks her question.
