The two other guys, Candan one of them, stood in Candan’s yard but came closer to disapprove of me from fewer feet away. Through the tindersticks of this bare winter hedge I watched them shake their heads.
Candan said, — Now that’s too much, Anthony. Next time you don’t have to cut a lot.
Who knows. Maybe the guy spoke to me that way because he truly meant to be kind, but it was the tone one takes with a guy who separates clear and colored glass for a living.
— You took the top two feet off that thing, Pinch said. The President’s not going to be to happy about it.
— He’s no one’s boss, Candan said quickly.
Even I was surprised to hear him sound so ferocious.
Then the President came round the corner in his Lincoln Town Car.
His Town Car was a big mess; not even old; a ’94 model, but damn that front end was battered. The headlights were held by gray duct tape. One of the rear-door windows was veiny from having half-shattered.
Pinch smiled. — Candan, you tell the President what you just told us.
The guy next to Candan was as fat as me. Out in Queens this wasn’t as rare as the Surgeon General would wish. It was like, say, semi-rural Pennsylvania. I am the unattractive America.
The President didn’t make it easy on his car, weaving like he did. He bumped against curbs a couple of times.
Going twenty-five miles an hour and without once tapping a brake the President spun that black car to the right just as he reached home. As the car entered the driveway it bumped one of the poles of their fence, making it shake rattlesnake-loud.
The President was not a drunk. It wasn’t alcohol making him weave. — Youngbloods! The President yelled happily. He rolled down the electric passenger-side window, but still sat in the Town Car. Candan and the fat guy were on one side of the hedge, Pinch with me on the other.
Candan spat.
The car was turned off.
Out stepped the President in a turquoise track suit.
It was his eyes that were wrecked. I had never seen them this close before. They went in two directions and neither was straight ahead. His driver’s license had gone out of style three years ago, but try telling him to renew it. Men never believe their powers will fail.
— Youngbloods, he said again.
Pinch smiled first. — How you, Mr. Jerome?
He shrugged. The President was that kind of man who meant to be weary, no matter. If he was in bed he’d say his back hurt from being prone then when on his feet he’d swear the most he wanted was to spread out on a board to sleep. The President said, — They got me on the run, Chester. They got me out of breath.
Candan walked toward the car without greeting his father.
— I got the damn car keys! C.D. Come back over here. Where you been hiding? the President asked me.
— Took my family away for the weekend.
— How far? he asked.
— Viriginia. Seven hours’ drive. We got back at four this morning.
— Are you all here? Candan asked.
— Where else would we be?
— Four of you came in this morning? Candan asked. One, two, three, four?
— Damn Candan, the President said. I think the man can still count!
I looked at his son, at Candan, wondering how people had spoken about me in the weeks since I’d returned.
The President joked around instead of letting his son press. He pointed at me and the other Jell-O-fellow beside Candan. — You two look like the bookends at a cookie factory.
Guys giggled, even the other big boy, but the joke didn’t make sense to me.
— Why would a cookie factory have bookends? I asked.
But too late for that because the President noticed my work. He walked the length of the hedge while still in his yard then scratched his gray mustache. He wore a black leather baseball cap with an adjustable strap on the back. — You sure made a mess of this, he said.
I wondered why he had to accuse me, but remembered the big orange clipper in my hand.
The others waited for angrier words, but the nice thing about the President was that he was never going to get his gun from in the house. Most he’d do is crack an egg on your forehead.
— If I ever need a haircut I won’t call you, the President said.
Before there could be any more jokes Candan’s red dog came from their backyard and crouched at the President’s feet. A lithe Doberman, missing one of its ears. I thought it was playing with the older man, but it snarled at the President until Candan walked over, slapped its side and yelled, — Shut up!
— Get back! Candan yelled.
The President bowed his head, but I didn’t know if the gesture was in deference to his son or his son’s emissary, the Doberman.
After Candan commanded it the mutt popped up, trotted off, thin body bouncing so high above the ground it seemed about to float off like some long, useless balloon. It barked a few times, which caused a few other nearby dogs to rev up so then there were pockets of howling in the neighborhood for close to thirty minutes.
One day; so far; no mother; not bad.
When the President went inside their house Candan paced casually to the Lincoln then removed keys the President had forgotten in the driver’s side door. He shook them in front of us like Candan needed people to see that he was right to assume his father doddered, but we looked away, ashamed for him to show it.
22
When I walked back inside with bits of hedge drit still on my hair Grandma was in the living room with Nabisase. The younger was talking while combing the old woman’s hair into braids, but they stopped when I came in.
Fatigue twists the tongue until it turns blue. — I think you’re overreacting, I told them. Mom’s the one who cut out on you, not me.
For the first time in years I felt like a child. A horrible time compared with adulthood.
— Did you hear what I said?
Nabisase and Grandma continued to play Easter Island; in the living room I stood three feet from a civilization unwilling to answer me.
Stupidly, I went and tried Mom’s door. It was locked when we left so why would it be any different now. I got down on my knees and pressed my nose to the space at the bottom. Then my ear. I was waiting for a sign that she was back in there.
She wasn’t.
I went to get the mail and that’s when I realized I never sent Ahmed Abdel his note. It was in my jacket pocket, forgotten when I chased my sister and grandmother to Uncle Arms’s charade.
As I got the letter, walked to the door, my sister finally said something.
— Are you going to see about Ledric?
— How’d you know about that?
— I played the answering machine.
— I was only going to mail a letter.
Grandma didn’t look at me, but she said. — He sounds terrible and sick.
— You two have Ledric Mayo on the brain.
I tapped the letter to Ahmed Abdel against the door. They waited.
— I don’t have the energy, I complained. This is the only thing you all can talk to me about?
Nabisase stood up. — I called him already and got the address. I said we were going over.
— Why’d you do that?
— Because we’re going to.
I didn’t want to bring Nabisase with me to Jamaica and luckily it was four o’clock so my sister’s church was having its second Monday prayer meeting. She was willing to miss school, but not devotions. Christ had really impressed my sister with his Bible that you’ve heard so much about. The first morning back from Lumpkin she read Scripture while eating cereal.
But you know, I’m not even going to say Christ when I refer to Nabisase’s faith because I still didn’t believe she meant it. I’ll say Selwyn because Nabisase wouldn’t know the difference.