The tone and timber of the man’s voice reminded Achilles of Bud and Father Levreau, and the blaxploitation movies he had recently discovered and enjoyed but Ines detested: Dolomite, Shaft, Black Belt Jones, Truck Turner. Pimps, pushers, prostitutes. “It’s vaudeville,” declared Ines, “blacks in blackface.” But Achilles saw black men leading a revolution, cleaning up their neighborhoods, meeting the government on their own terms. The fabled Spook Who Sat by the Door, of which he had only heard, Gordon’s War, Coffy (Grier had serious high-beams): where were they now? Afros and picks with fists, fly suits, and high fives; the seventies were a golden age of brotherhood. The men in the shelters often talked about it, a time when everyone was a brother or sister, a time when there were young bloods because they were all of the same blood. He felt a heightened sense of fraternity as he answered, “I’m fine, old-timer. How are you?”
“Good, brother, but I sure could use a quarter, a dime, anything to help a brother get something to eat.” His eyes were red, but his hair was thick and wooly. He was plum-cheeked and thick-ribbed, his body round, not chiseled and angular like those on the crunch diet. He could work. Achilles handed him some change, a bargain for such a precious lesson, or a refresher course. You couldn’t talk to some people without being asked for money.
What would Ines say? Achilles asked himself as he entered an abandoned house and found himself staring down at two squatters immune to the flashlight shining in their eyes, splayed out as if they had fallen from a great height onto the soiled bedspring, a raft in a sea of food wrappers and glossy jack mags. Brother, do you think you can hide from your true nature? Brother, why are you killing yourself? Achilles told himself, Self, they’re not weak, they’re just hurt. He couldn’t conjure her compassion.
These men before him were self-destructive, meaning weak. Through the ratty aluminum foil covering the window, a few dusty blades of light stabbed the darkness. At the foot of the bed were bits of fur mixed with balls of puffy mattress stuffing. Beside it, a tub turned toilet, attended by flies. On the floor in the corner, a third man, curled into a ball, with a bundle of newspaper for a pillow, hugged a Krazy Kreme donut box to his chest, a column of ants trekking back and forth across his arm and circling the sugar ring around his mouth. Feeling like a vampire hunter, Achilles ripped a large strip of foil off the window. The man on the floor beat at the ants.
“Hands up! Heads down!” Achilles yelled in Arabic and Pashto, as a joke. But as he said it, his right hand reached for his sling and his heart started racing.
Two of the guys retreated to the corner, hiding their faces like bad dogs. One man in a black POW-MIA T-shirt rolled off the bedspring and onto the floor, turning clumsily, the exposed steel toes of his unlaced boots knocking the floorboards until he reached the shadows. Achilles hefted the flashlight like a baton, ready to strike. Unarmed is disarmed! It’s like sticking your ass up and yelling “chowtime” in San Fran!
The man in the POW-MIA shirt sat up, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the light. His voice hopeful, he asked, “Lionel?”
Achilles, who had nearly begun hyperventilating when he realized he was unarmed, shook his head.
When the man asked again, Achilles said, “No!”
“You seen him?”
“I don’t know anyone named Lionel,” barked Achilles.
“If you see him, let him know I’m still here.”
“Yeah, sure.” As he searched the other rooms, he moved with caution, his adrenaline high, his fingers twitching. He was surprised to find it otherwise deserted. Why did they all congregate on the same mattress? He passed that room on the way out. The man in the POW-MIA T-shirt was trying to stick the foil back up, muttering. He pressed it against the glass, but it flopped down. He tried smoothing it out with his hands, and it tore. He spat on the window, and tried again, but it fell. When Achilles heard a sob, he cast the flashlight toward the window. When the beam crossed his face, the man flinched and slapped at his cheek as if an insect had landed. “Lionel?”
“I’m not Lionel.”
“You seen him?”
“No,” said Achilles.
“Tell him I’m still here. Tell him Norm is here.”
Achilles turned away.
“Sure, I will. I’ll tell him.”
Once outside, using one hand to steady the other, he made an X on the map, having checked the last house on the block. He had recorded the creases in overgrown lots, the runs that cut through otherwise impassable alleys, the winding trails that wound across vacant plots and between houses. Ultimately, every path led back to one place. Every street that ended without warning — Medgar Evers Avenue, MLK Boulevard, and Malcolm X Way — dead-ended at Banneker Homes, suddenly colliding with that brick wall as if it had been planned this way, as if the housing project had fallen from the sky whole, like a box trap. When Achilles finished correcting the map, the Bricks stood in the center like a bitter black heart.
CHAPTER 14
WAGES AND TROY SOFTLY HUMMED “MAMMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” Merri muttered the Psalms. Wexler said, “It looks like someone ripped a pillow open.” From where Achilles lay, he couldn’t see Wexler’s face, but knew that Wexler was referring to the puffs of clouds scattered across the horizon, white wisps sweeping westward, occasionally revealing the low, full moon. The squad’s position in a shallow cave offered a prime view of the piedmont below, dotted with brush and squat red dunes with low vegetation rounding their bases, like receding hairlines. The mountains on either side of the plateau vanished at the horizon long before meeting, forming a huge channel leading to the end of the earth. Gradually, the clouds retreated to the edge of that channel, bunching up like a blanket, revealing the moon high above, one perfect circle. Three goats crested a dune and stopped, as if they too admired the view.
And it was breathtaking, this valley laid out before them like a tapestry, the gently undulating land, the high ridges on either side, and in the middle of it, one small village of only five buildings illuminated by flickering oil lamps, the only sign of human life, and above it the biggest sky he had ever seen, a dark sheet with that perfect sphere of light in the center like a watchful eye. The next morning a thin layer of mist hugged the hills. Watching the rising sun burn it off, he recalled the dawn vistas from the highway behind his home, the trees wavering behind a veil of fog like the shadows of people who weren’t there, the three rocks in the lake lined up like the back of a mythical beast preparing to surface, and it was all so stunning that as he fell asleep in that cave beside his brother, as he had those first few days before Troy’s bed arrived, it was hard to believe someone out there was trying to kill them.
How had it started? Everyone blamed someone else. They were walking along, then a landslide, and next thing they knew, someone was firing at them. Then, as Merri later described it, it was quiet as the night before Christmas in the mofo. They tried to move a few times, but every time they did, the firing started again. Wages called it in and they waited for the money shot, watching that sunrise, all of them, side by side, tuned in like it was the best movie they ever saw. And Achilles forgot for a few moments that he was on Mission ZF1983—his birth year — and that he was trapped by bad decisions or fate or intel no more accurate than the maps on a child’s place mat.