Bang! (18 page)

MY DAD DOESN’T care if I stay in the back room all day, but he wants me to have dinner with him. I don’t know how he did it, but he got the electricity working. Now we have lights and heat and a small refrigerator.

Tonight’s supper is hot dogs and beans again, which I am tired of. But I don’t complain. I sit down and eat. That’s when I notice Jason’s little men sticking out of my father’s pocket. I call him on it. He stuffs them back inside. I ask him why he carries them; if he’s the one that’s been leaving them all over our house. He finishes his supper. Then he walks away without answering me.

I head for the back room. Then I stop. “I thought it was Mom.”

He pulls out a soldier. “He got his first soldier when he was . . .”

“Two,” I say.

He looks at me. “Yeah. From the start, he liked them. Carried them everywhere.”

He did, I say, “even to bed.”

He empties his pockets. There’s Jason’s toy soldiers. Jason’s Elmo keychain, and Jason’s picture cracked right down the middle. “I kept finding them all over the house. I asked your mom if she was leaving them. She said no. Then I figured . . .”

He scratched his head like he felt stupid about what he was gonna say. “I figured, maybe he was trying to send me a message. To say something, you know.”

I know. I would find the toy soldiers too and think, Jason’s home. I knew it was stupid. I knew he was dead, but when I saw ’em, I thought, well, I was hoping . . .

I tell my dad what I’m thinking.

He looks at me. He whispers, while he’s sitting, falling down into a chair. “I carry . . . I carry the soldiers, just in case . . .”

He ain’t gotta finish. I know what he’s thinking. He carries the soldiers just in case Jason comes back. It would sound stupid to somebody else, to someone who ain’t lost nobody. But if your brother died, or your mother went to heaven, then it don’t sound so dumb.

My father shoves Jason’s stuff into his pocket and tells me to wipe the table clean. He’s putting on his jacket. Opening the door, letting cold wind blow papers around the room. “I’m gonna bed the horses for the night.” He looks back at me. “Wanna come?”

“No.” I don’t wanna go. I wanna paint. But I don’t tell him that.

He walks to the door. Right before he walks out, he tells me that he called my mother a few weeks ago. He told her we’d be back soon.

“You’ll be back soon,” I say.

He shakes his head. “I told her I would go to the police. Talk to the judge. Do my part.”

I whisper it. “Be a man.”

His head goes up and down. “Yeah. Be a man.”

When he walks out the door, I head to the back room. When I open the door, they all stare at me.

Goose bumps pop up. Kee-lee would laugh if I told him that. “Only girls get them,” he said one time.

It’s just a sketch. I gotta paint the whole thing and move some things around. But they’re all here: Jason, Moo Moo, and Kee-lee. Kelvin too. Jackie, our cousin, is handing Mr. Mac a basket of bread; and Melvin, a guy who got shot on our block for walking too close to a dude, is pouring grape juice. The table is set real nice. There’s strawberries and apples, piles of bananas, peaches rolling onto the floor, and pears in one guy’s hand. My dad is sitting in the middle with Jason in his lap. It’s the Last Supper for everybody, including us three: Dad, me, and Cousin.

The sketch takes up one whole wall. Ma Dear, Keisha, my mother, and some other girls are angels watching out. The table is drawn outdoors, under an apple tree right in front of our house. There are people walking toward it, lots of ’em. Boys and men—each wearing his number on his chest— dropping knives and guns, bullets and baseball bats, smiling, ’cause they know killing ain’t the only way.

It’s three in the morning when I quit drawing and get on the couch. It’s too hot in here to sleep. But I do, for a little while. But, like, an hour later, I wake up again. That’s when I notice my father’s gone. He did it again, I think. But when I open the door, he’s out on the steps, by a campfire he made.

He hands me hot chocolate and tells me the whole story about the African boys. I don’t want to listen, but I do. “When the boys turn a certain age, say your age, the men in their tribes take them into the forest for weeks, maybe months, and teach them everything they need to be men; to survive.”

I look at him when he says that. I don’t have to ask why he let me and Kee-lee go it alone, when African boys have men to show them the way. He explains, “I held your hand all your life. Taught you how to be a good boy; a responsible man. You didn’t need no more of that kind of teaching. I needed to know you could make it if they killed me, or came for you one day.”

My father finishes talking about Africans. “When the boys come back home,” he says, “people in the village give them a ceremony. They paint them up in tribal colors and they dance all night long. They probably even give them special knives and spears, ’cause they’re men now.”

I’m thinking about those boys. Wondering what they do in that forest. Thinking about the city kids in Africa, too. How do people know when
they
are men? I don’t ask that question, though. “Do they bring anything back with them from the forest? A lion’s paw? A leopard’s skin? Something to show they ain’t boys no more?”

He leans back, and for a long time he’s eyeing the sky. It’s black and full of stars. “I don’t know. But you brought yourself back,” he says. “That’s good enough for me.”

Kee-lee didn’t make it back, I remind him of that. “We was like brothers. And he got killed . . . ’cause you was stupid.”

My father’s eyes turn yellow from the fire. “Watch your mouth, boy!” He’s quiet, then talking again. “This ain’t Africa and we don’t live in no jungle, Mann.” He goes inside and comes out with three cans of paint. “But I sent you hunting anyhow.” He pops the tops off the cans with a knife. “And the lions found you and the tigers just about ate you alive.” He clears his throat. “But you came back to us, to me. Alive. And I am so glad . . . that I still have a son.”

He’s gotta be kidding, I think.

He sits the paints down. “You are a man. You left my house a boy, but you’re a man now.” He dips the brush in the paint and puts yellow lines across my left cheek.

I push him away. “How come I’m a man
now
?” I am so mad I could—I could kill somebody. “I’m a man ’cause I lived in the streets? ’Cause I stole? Why I’m a man now, Dad? Huh?” I swing and just miss his chin. I swing again and my fist rolls off his forehead. “I ain’t no man . . . don’t wanna be no man . . . not that kind.”

He dips the brush in blue paint and I feel lines go across my forehead. He sits the brush and the can down. Rips open my T-shirt and makes fat green lines and thick red circles on my chest. His voice is low and calm, like he don’t want the dead to hear.

“You ain’t a man because you did all those things.” He turns me around and uses his finger to draw on my back. “You’re a man in spite of all them things.” He tells me that I’ve been through more than he has in his whole life. He says that I started out a boy who hated guns, and I ended up a man who hated guns. I started out loving to draw, and I ended up drawing people I love. He goes inside and comes out with bowls of raisins and nuts. “I tried to beat you down, to make you tough, to make you be like them. And you took care of horses, fixed fences, and built stools with your hands.” He goes in and comes out with bottled water. “You worked for money and built a life for yourself. And I think if I left you here forever, you would do just fine.” He clears his throat. “A man takes trouble and makes it into something better. You done that . . . all by yourself.”

My dad holds his hand out to me. There’s a paper in it. I turn away from him. It’s my birthday note. Why is he giving it to me now?

“I wanted to remind you that I
was
a good father once.” He walks up behind me. “I taught you guys to do the right thing. I made time for you and loved you the best I could.”

I feel his tears falling on my shoulders.

I ask him what I been wanting to ask him this whole time. “Why? Why did you do this to me?”

He’s ashamed to say, I can tell. He answers anyhow. “To make you stronger; to keep them from killing you.”

My note is four years old. I gotta be careful opening it ’cause it’s falling apart. I read it again, like it’s my first time.
What we have is forever.
I fold it back up. Walk over to the fire and drop it, then catch it with my other hand. Jason couldn’t wait till he got his note. That’s why I don’t let it burn.

My dad tells me he can’t undo what he’s done. But if I will just give him another chance, let him show me the right way to manhood, he promises not to mess it up. Kee-lee would say not to trust him. He’d tell me to kick him to the curb and fend for myself. But I like my father. Even though he did all this stuff to me, I still like that he’s my dad: that I’m his son. That him and me and Jason got something that nobody can separate, or take away.

My dad sits on the steps. He stirs the paint like he’s stirring beans in a pot. “A man’s job is to protect his family. To make sure they’re safe. Jason was my son. Mine. And I shoulda protected him—protected you too.” He pulls off his shirt. “I went to work. I taught you right from wrong. I saw boys in trouble, hanging on corners and breaking the law, and I kept my mouth shut. I figured what they did or didn’t do was their mommas’ problems ’cause I was sure doing right by mine.” He stands up and looks to the sky. “
You
take care of yours, I thought.
You
feed ’em.
You
teach ’em how to be men, ’cause that’s what I’m doing with mine.” He stares at me. “I shoulda stepped up to the plate and helped them. That way I woulda been helping myself and my boys too.”

He looks at me, and for the first time, he apologizes for what happened to Kee-lee.

“I’m sorry. He’s dead because of me.” He shakes his head. “He was like my son and I put a loaded pistol in his hand.” He stares at the stars. “Two sons gone now.” I stare at my feet.

He takes my hand and pulls it toward his face. I draw yellow swirls on his cheeks and a blue paw on his forehead. Then I put the can down, hold his arm steady for longer than I should, and I draw a soldier.

He smiles. “You are a good artist. A good son.”

We don’t know what we’re doing. But we dance around the fire, yell up to the sky anyhow. We are both sweating and laughing, throwing nuts in the fire and ducking when they pop. My father walks over to some trees and comes back with two walking sticks. He dips the ends in red paint. He hands one to me and keeps the other for himself. We walk around the fire, not talking. We take nine steps, tap the stick on the ground thirteen times, change directions, and start all over again. I am following him. Doing everything he does. “A man should always know when to turn around and head in the right direction,” he says. Then he breaks his stick in two. I do the same. He hands me the end dipped in paint. I give him mine too. “Nothing can separate us. Not even death,” he says.

I am filled up inside. Too happy to talk; too excited to stay put. I jump up. “I wanna show you something,” I say, taking him inside.

He walks around the room, touching the walls like they’re covered in gold. He’s staring at Jason. Smiling at Kee-lee. Pointing to faces he ain’t seen in a while: Earl, Marty, and George—three boys from our way who was gunned down by cops when their car broke down on the wrong side of town.

It’s too much for him. He turns away, shaking his head. “So many gone . . . so many . . .”

I leave him alone for a minute. I gotta take a leak. I gotta go too ’cause I’m thinking ’bout Kee-lee and Moo Moo. How they up there smiling, thinking they gonna be famous now, ’cause I got ’em looking so good.

Mann.

It’s Jason. I’m in the bathroom trying to do my business and he’s bothering me, just like he did when we was at home. “Yeah, Jason?”

I miss you,
he whispers.

“I miss you too. We all do,” I say, running back to be with our dad.