“We always go to the movies and the movies are always westerns.”
“Tell you what,” said Strange. “You like that guy Coburn, right?”
“You mean Flint?”
“Him.”
“That’s a sexy man right there.”
“He’s in this new movie, playin’ at the Atlas, thought we’d check it out later this week.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, looked at Strange with skepticism. “What’s the name of it?”
“Waterhole #3.”
Darla, who was a dark, cute, Northeast girl, slapped Strange on the arm and laughed. “You are pushin’ it now.”
“C’mere,” said Strange, patting the bench seat. Darla slid over so that her thigh, exposed from her short skirt, was touching his. It was a nice thigh, tight and compact like the rest of her. Strange put his hand on the inside of it and gave it a little rub.
They had been together for a few months. Strange didn’t love her, but they were compatible and fit together in bed. He had never pledged fidelity to her, and she hadn’t asked him to. If she had, he would have run. Strange often had other women on his mind; there was one in particular who’d been haunting his thoughts for a long time. Anyway, he and Darla got along fine. She didn’t make him want to pick flowers for her or write a song in her name or anything like that. What they had was just all right.
“My mother’s out with her man,” said Darla.
“She gonna be out all night?”
“I expect.”
“I’ll drop you, then come back over later, if that’s all right.”
“You got plans right now?”
“You know I always have Sunday supper with my parents.”
“Okay.” She kissed him behind his ear. “You get some food in you, then come on by.”
“Go ahead and find something on the box,” said Strange, putting his right arm around Darla’s shoulder, settling into his seat.
She turned on the dash radio. At WWDC, she came upon a symphonic instrumental and recognized the theme.
“That’s from the movie.”
“The bullshit version,” said Strange.
Darla got off of 1260. At all-news WAVA the announcer said that President Johnson would address the nation that night. She spun the dial, went right by a rock-and-roll tune, then stopped for a moment on WOOK. Strange caught a couple lines of an Otis Redding, which he recognized as “Chained and Bound,” before Darla went past it. She found WOL at 1450, took her fingers off the dial, and sat back.
“Girl, you got a quick hand.”
“Tired of listening to that ’Bama.”
“He was from Georgia.”
“Same thing to me. Anyway, you play him all the time at your crib.” Darla smiled as “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone” came up through the shelf speaker. “This is more like it right here.”
Just another thing gonna drive me away from her eventually, thought Strange. Woman runs by Otis to get to the Supremes.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” said Darla, looking at the frown on Strange’s face.
“Motown,” said Strange dismissively.
“So?”
“Ain’t nothin’ but soul music for white people, you ask me.”
ALVIN JONES, KENNETH Willis, and Dennis Strange sat in the green Monterey across from a corner store, parked under a street lamp. Dusk had come and gone. The children of the neighborhood and most of its adults had gone indoors. The men had been there, and had been in strong discussion, for some time.
“Go on in, boy,” said Jones to Dennis.
“Told you I don’t need nothin’.”
“Go on.”
“And do what?”
“You the detail man. Use your eyes. Come on back and tell us what you see.”
“Why would I?”
“’Cause me and Kenneth here are fixin’ to rob this motherfucker,” said Jones. “What you think?”
They were on a single-digit street off Rhode Island Avenue, in LeDroit Park. The market was just like many others serving the residential areas of the city. It catered to the needs of the immediate neighborhood in the absence of a large grocery store. A green-and-gold sign hung over the door. The door was tied open with a piece of rope. The lights were on inside.
“Go on in your own self, then,” said Dennis.
“Can’t do that,” said Jones. “It would ruin the surprise we got planned for later on.”
“Well, you gonna have to find someone else to do it,” said Dennis Strange. “’Cause this kind of thing, it ain’t me.”
“You could use the money, right?” Jones, on the passenger side, looked in the rearview at Dennis, alone in the backseat, his book in his hand. Jones’s eyes smiled. “You damn sure look like you could.”
Dennis ignored the cut. He flashed on his father and mother, his brother in his uniform. He said, “It ain’t me.”
Jones adjusted himself in his seat, looked at Willis behind the wheel, looked back in the mirror at Dennis. “So you all talk, then.”
“What’d you say?”
“All the time I been knowin’ you, been hearin’ you talk. How the white man be exploitatin’ the black man, all that. How these crackers come into where we live and open their businesses. Suck all the money out of our people and never put anything back into the community.”
“You got a point?”
“I bet you walk in there, you gonna see some Jew motherfucker behind that counter, doin’ just what you claim. All I’m tellin’ you is, me and Kenneth, we just gonna go and take back what motherfuckers like that been takin’ from all of us all our lives. But you go on ahead and keep talkin’ about it. Meanwhile, me and Kenneth here? We gonna do somethin’.”
“Yeah,” said Dennis, shaking his head, “y’all are a couple of real revolutionaries.”
“More than you.”
“And what you gonna do with all those pennies you get, huh? Put ’em toward the cause?”
“Gonna be a whole lot more than pennies,” said Jones.
“I heard that,” said Willis.
“Let me ask you somethin’, man,” said Jones, still eyeing Dennis. “What’s the date today?”