The Dying Ground (4 page)

F
elicia Bennett, affectionately called Flea by all who knew her, was a close friend and the love of my short life. She arrived at Cal my sophomore year, and I hadn’t been the same since. The first time I saw her I was gathered with a group of friends from the baseball team. Despite my sporadic appearances in the dugout, I had made good friends among the players.

A few of us were perched on the steps in front of Sproul Hall checking out the incoming freshmen and hoping to see her. News of Felicia’s arrival from Los Angeles had spread through the male community like wildfire. I had been told about her so many times I knew every detail of her physical appearance before we even met. Despite that, I was not prepared for the flesh and blood.

I had my head down reading the sports page when a hush fell over our group. I looked up just as she passed and that was
all I needed. Before the others could gauge the here and there of Felicia Bennett, I knew her. I knew her ’cause I’d been waiting on her since my first hour of puberty.

When I glanced up she looked my way, winked one time, and kept striding. I looked behind me, so did my boys, and just that quick she slipped past us all. We broke out laughing, each and every one of us. The laugh was spontaneous; it felt good, and it let us all know—she spoke directly to our egos—that despite the package she was alright. She didn’t take herself too seriously. Once we knew that, she broke about seven hearts all at once.

She was in my first class, African-American Literature, filled to the gills with a racially mixed bag of students. She came in late, after the seats were chosen, and ten men cursed themselves for not having one to offer. I was not one of them. She slid into a chair beside me and placed a stick of gum on my open book. She popped hers in big loud ghetto smacks and pulled a notebook from her bag. I unwrapped the gum and slid it into my mouth just as the professor entered the room.

Harry Livingston, a burly Black man and former pro-baller with a penchant for the written word, was a larger-than-life campus figure. His sound bites peppered the local news like weather reports, while his
Oakland Tribune
and
Daily Cal
editorials covered everything from tuition to the exploitation of Black athletes. His devotion to his students, his community, and his race were legendary.

As Livingston made his introductions I watched Felicia from the corner of my eye. There was no getting around her beauty. At five feet ten inches she stood about five inches taller than me, with shoulder-length jet-black hair, parted in the middle and cut to precision. She was deep brown more than she was dark, and her eyebrows turned down toward her nose,
which gave her a sexy, devilish appearance. She had small features, almost pointy, but that didn’t do justice to how delicate she looked. She had a faint mustache that in all the time I knew her she never bothered to destroy.

She was wearing navy plaid shorts, a white sleeveless sweater, and navy boat shoes with white laces. She stretched her long legs out in front of her, kicking off her shoes in the middle of Livingston’s lecture. Her toenails were painted a bright red, and on both feet her second toe rested on the big one. It looked like her toes were poised to snap to a beat, and I liked her casual acceptance of what others might have viewed as a flaw.

She wore a gold bracelet on her ankle and an upside-down question mark tattooed just below it. I couldn’t think of a single thing to add, and neither could God.

Once the lecture was over, I followed her out of the classroom. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

She stretched before answering, emphasizing the height difference even further.

“Felicia.” There was a California desert twang to her voice, unique to Los Angeles Blacks. She popped her gum. “You can call me Flea.”

“Wassup, Flea?” I smiled but it wasn’t derogatory. Her name fit.

“My brother Reggie couldn’t pronounce Felicia when I was a baby. It came out Flea, and that’s what it’s been ever since.”

“I’m Maceo Redfield.”

“Dang!” She let a giggle escape. The name disarmed her, just as it disarmed most people. Like I said before, it’s bigger than me. She sized me up, and I knew, since I’d seen my aunties do it, that she was trying to figure out if I was “home” or not. If I made that category I was destined to get the familiar “dang”s
and “ain’t”s and all the other “ing” words with the
g
dropped. I smiled, hoping she would drop the
g
’s for the rest of my life. She did for a while. But even when the easy friendship moved into something deeper I never expected to keep her.

Felicia Bennett was too close to everything I wanted.

B
illy: dead. Felicia: missing.

None of the words made sense together, but the doom I’d expected announced itself. I felt iron in my mouth, like I’d gargled with pennies, a taste like blood, a bitter taste that always followed bad news. I grabbed another one of Cutty’s towels and covered my eyes to keep myself from reeling.

“What, is this fool about to cry?” Smokey sneered.

In a quick flick of my pitching arm I responded to Smokey’s disrespectful mouth by snapping the towel. The whip reflex sizzled in the air and stopped dangerously close to his left eye. The gesture was quick, thoughtless, and fueled by anger mixed with grief. Smokey’s grinning theatrics had broken through my usual calm.

All hell broke loose.

Behind me I could hear the scrape of chairs and a scattering of feet as customers broke for the back room. A few even braved a sprint for the door.

In a swiftness that belied his size, Smokey charged forward with every intention of snapping my neck.

Holly met his speed. He moved in front and smashed Smokey in the throat, doubling him over as he gasped for air. Before Smokey could reach around to grab the gun in his waistband, Holly snatched the towel from my hand and removed it. I could feel the heat and energy radiating from his body. There was no mistaking the gleam in his eye at the prospect of violence, at the idea of silencing Smokey once and for all.

Holly unleashed a devilish smile, moving like a prizefighter. Smokey rose up and managed enough saliva to spit at Holly’s feet. He would take a bullet before being punked into submission.

Holly leveled the towel-covered gun at Smokey. Anger. Chaos. Fear. Holly still thought fast enough to eliminate the possibility of fingerprints.

He waved the gun close to Smokey’s right eye. “I’ma keep this.”

“One shot’s all you get, nigga,” Smokey answered.

“All I need.”

The cock of another gun silenced them both.

Cutty stood within kissing distance of Smokey, the barrel of his gun resting calmly at Smokey’s temple. The jovial old man was nowhere in sight. He had been replaced by the cutthroat who had survived numerous gangsta regimes.

“Back on up and outta here.” Cutty hit a floor alarm, wired right to a security team, with the toe of his shoe. “Back up and don’t ever bring ya’ silly ass back in my shop.”

Smokey held his hands in the air. “It’s cool, old man, it’s cool.”

His eyes said anything but. They were plastered to Holly’s face, marking time until one of us paid. I’d set in motion what Holly was willing to play to the end.

Smokey turned to me. “I always thought you was a punk; maybe some first-class pussy made you a man. Or maybe it got you hiding on street corners droppin’ bullets in your old ace.”

I ventured a response. “Or maybe you making all this noise ’cause you got something to hide. Your hands stand up to a powder test?”

He turned to Holly. “Tell your monkey to make sure he wants to play in this game.”

“Cutty asked you to step,” Holly responded.

Cutty hit the floor buzzer a second time. “And when the police come I’ma tell them exactly what happened, my way, show ’em the shop videotape if I have to, just in case you thinkin’ about doing something stupid.”

Smokey looked to Holly. “Now ain’t the time … but it’s coming.”

“You know where to find me.”

“Territory up for grabs. Winner take all.” Smokey’s words were a challenge, and everyone in earshot knew it. “Could that be the reason?” His mouth, as usual, placed us on the far side of danger. In the open air he added me and Holly to a suspect list that would travel from mouth to mouth.

I could hear the accusations swirling around me as people formed opinions and chose sides.

“Naw, Maceo,” they would say. “You serious? Patna too square for that, but, you know, the man had it bad for Billy’s girl.

“Shit, and Holly, Holly been a gangsta from way back and Billy made it hard for brothers to make a move without his permission.” A disgusted shake of the head would follow. “Money and women always get in the way of big business.”

I knew Holly heard the same rumblings in his own head. He spit at Smokey’s feet. “Get at me, nigga.”

“If you don’t get got first.”

S
mokey backed out, looking everyone carefully in the eye. I watched silently and noted who among the gathered men met Smokey’s gaze. Holly waited until Smokey climbed into his white tricked-out Jaguar convertible before dropping the gun and towel into a paper bag shoved behind a mirror. Patrons eased around us, making their way out, already forming their own versions of our encounter.

Cutty sighed heavily. “Y’all need to clear on out of here.”

Holly left without uttering a word. I hesitated before Cutty. I didn’t know what to say, but he said it all. “I’m too old to move my business again.” He dropped into a chair and looked around his vacant shop. Behind him in a faded photograph, the three of us—me, Holly, and Billy, dressed to conquer Little League—smiled into our futures.

“Smokey, that stupid motherfucker. He kicked this shit off sooner than necessary. There’s enough folks out there willing to believe I did my boy.” Holly looked out at the smoldering pavement.

I remained silent, my foot pressed to the floor as I gunned down San Pablo to Ashby Avenue in the city of Berkeley. I barely saw red, yellow, or green lights as I tried to pull down images of Billy or Felicia. None came. My mind wouldn’t run the old movies through my wall of pain.

I was also troubled that I’d stepped over the line in a moment of anger. Despite my friendship with Holly and my insider’s knowledge of the business, I’d managed for twenty-three years to stay free and clear behind the guise of baseball and family.

“Slow down, man,” Holly warned.

Holly rode at my side as I raced my Dan Gurney special Cougar through a yellow stoplight. The car was my pride and joy, complete with a steering wheel that tilted to the side when I opened the driver door and original plates. It was black cherry, with gold Zenith wire rims and Vogue tires. The car cost $15,000, my entire four-year college tuition. I’d spent it in one shot, thinking in the back of my mind that my grandfather would cough up the money I needed for school after a long-winded lecture.

I was wrong.

He simply looked at the car, told me to hand-wash it with soft rags and get a job. My mouth dropped open in shock, but even then I respected the old man for being so hard-core.

That little break in enrollment came right on time. It was the same semester I learned about Stuart Tagami, a Japanese-American recruit from southern California’s Mater Dei High School. At the sound of his name, the wind told me he had the power to unseat me. I eliminated the possibility before it happened. I quit.