The Moth (12 page)

And Roy blurted out, “Man, that’s an awesome story!”

And I said, “You know, I believe in an awesome God.”

After a brief period of silence, Eric seemed to be the leader, and he got up, and he said, “Let’s go get the Shark some gas.” I had a new name, “the Shark”! And I had a bunch of new guys as my friends. We went outside, and they siphoned some gas from someplace. I don’t know where, and I didn’t ask. They put it in a can.

Eric said, “Hey, sit on the back with me.” And so I got on the motorcycle with him, and this was another first. I’d never been on a motorcycle before! So we traveled three miles down the dusty road. I got off, poured the gas in the car, gave the can back to Eric, and they took off without saying a word. I was sorry to see my new friends go.

Well, I finally got home about twelve-thirty, and my wife was frantic, because she didn’t know what had happened to me. You see, that was BC—before cell phones.

She said, “Why don’t you come to bed?”

And I said, “I can’t come to bed. I had a great experience tonight. I got stranded. I made friends. I played pool. I told the story of Easter to new people. I have got to rewrite my sermon, because the intellectual sermon that I have prepared for my people tomorrow is not their story.”

And so she went up to bed, and I hurriedly wrote down the new message that had come to me as I was driving back on that awesome travel from the roadhouse. I went to bed. I felt great, and spent, and excited. This was going to be a chance to tell the story of the faith that had meant so much to me and had called me into ministry.

I woke up the next morning. I headed off to the first three churches on the circuit, and after each church I felt more confident, and more expectant, and I realized that if at all possible, I would never preach sermons the old way again.

I got to Tioga at one o’clock, and I walked in, and there the people were—eighty wonderful people, dressed in their Easter finery. As we were beginning to sing the first hymn, what did I hear outside but a roar of motorcycles coming up.

And in walked seven guys, dressed in their black leather jackets and their black leather pants—their uniform that they’d had on last night. And the usher looked at me and wondered what he was supposed to say, and on his own he said, “Could I help you?”

And Eric, in his great basso voice, said, “Hey, we’re here to hear the Shark tell the story of Easter… again!”

Reverend Wayne Reece
has been a United Methodist pastor for more than five de cades. He has served congregations in Texas, Indiana, and Michigan, and has written three books in the
Becoming People of God
series as well as numerous religious articles and biblical lessons. Rev. Reece developed Project HOMES, which renovated low-income houses; spent two years as the president of a housing commission; and was a delegate to the World Methodist Conference. He did missionary work in Sierra Leone and Ganta Mission, Liberia, and is the recipient of the Amy Crotts Award for Humanitarian Service by
The Tennessean
newspaper. Rev. Reece spent fifteen years writing the Bible column for the
Michigan Christian Advocate
. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, and has four daughters, fourteen grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

RICHARD PRICE

T
hree of my favorite sayings are “God is a first-rate novelist, God is a second-rate novelist, and the fact that something really happened is the defense of the mediocre novelist.”

In the last novel I wrote I spent a lot of time on the Lower East Side. And as is my wont, I wound up in the back of police cars a lot. The Lower East Side is a very low-crime area right now. It used to be the worst, but Giuliani and real estate pressure took care of that. Now the police basically have nothing to do down there in terms of crime. So what they do is they sit in fake taxis, you know—four beefy white guys in a fake taxi by the side of the Williamsburg Bridge—and they eyeball what’s coming over from Brooklyn. If the car looks like a $200 shit-box or somebody’s got an afro or a ponytail, they pull in behind the car, and they wait to see if the guy’s going to go all polite in his driving, like put on lane-change signals, and then they know he’s dirty.

It’s fishing, really. It’s a big fishing hole, Delancey Street. And I’d spent all night in this bogus taxi with about 850 pounds
of white beef. And, at this point, it’s the end of the night, and they made their collars, and there are two cops up front, and I’m sitting in the back.

When I ride with these guys, I don’t really comment on what they do; I don’t engage them in any kind of debate. I’m there to bear witness, and then see what I can do with it in my work.

They’re riding up Essex Street, it’s kind of Miller time, and as they’re going uptown they pass a black guy on a bicycle. He’s about thirty years old with dreads. And on the crossbars, he’s got a white kid about nine, ten years old. The black guy and the white kid, they’re kind of chatting, the kid’s looking up at the guy. They look like they’re familiar with each other.

And the cops drive by, and they’re dead silent, and after about a block, one guy says to the other, “Hey, big guy. Does that look fishy to you? It’s fucking midnight, what’s going on here?”

And the other one says, “Well, what do you want to do, big guy?”

He says, “Well, I’ll tell you, big guy. Make the light, pull over. Let’s see what’s what.”

So they pull over, bike’s coming up Essex, one of the cops steps in the road, puts his hand out, and says, “Hey, how you doing? Get off the bike, please?”

The black guy gets off the bike, and he goes, “Hey, officers!” You know, like it’s an unexpected treat.

And the cop says, “Did you ever hear of helmets?”

“Oh! Yeah, gee. I’m really sorry.”

At which point the other cop says to the little white kid, “Hey, big guy, what’s your name?”

The kid goes, “Um, Noah Rosenberg?” You know, like he’s not sure.

And one cop says, “Hey Noah, come here, buddy. Come on over here.” And he separates the two, and I’m sort of hopping in between the two conversations at this point.

The black guy tries to follow the white kid, and the other cop puts his hand on his chest and says, “No, you stay over here. Let me see some ID.”

The guy says, “What?”

“Some ID. Don’t look at him, look at me.”

“I was just picking him up from a playdate.”

The cop says, “Did I ask you that?”

“No, no. You don’t understand, I-I work the bar at Schillers—”

“Again, did I ask you that?!”

“Well, no.”

“Why you trying to divert me?!”

“I’m not.”

“Go down the same road as me.”

“OK, OK.”

And he gives the cop the ID, at which point the guy sort of waves to the kid, and the cop says, “What did I just say to you?”

“No, no. I’m really sorry. It’s just Noah, he’s kind of wound a little tight.”

“Oh really? Have a seat.” And he points to the curb, and he makes the guy sit on the curb with his feet in the gutter, and he says, “So where are you going? It’s kind of late to be driving around with a kid on a bike, isn’t it?”

“Well, I had the late shift.”

At which point I leave those two, and I go over to Noah and the other cop, and that cop says, “So, your name’s Noah, huh?”

And the kid says, “Yes, and for the millionth time, I don’t have an ark!”

“You must get that a lot.”

“Oh my God, you have no idea.”

And the cop says, “So Noah, how old are you?”

“Well, next week I’ll be one decade old.”

“Well, that’s great. And where do you live?”

“333 Avenue B.”

“And you go to school around here?”

“Yes, I go to the Earth School.”

“Oh cool, and who do you live with?”

“I live with my mom.”

“Who’s that over there?”

Noah says, “Well, I don’t know who your friend is, but my friend is Cleve.”

And the cop says, “OK, do you know what Cleve’s last name is?”

“Yeah, Carter. Cleve Carter. Sometimes I call him Coca-Cola, sometimes I call him Carbon Copy.”

“OK… Have you known him for long?”

“Well, yeah, like one and a quarter years? He’s kind of like my godfather since my other godfather died.”

“OK. And what do you guys do?”

“Well, he was taking me home from a playdate to my mom’s.”

“So he knows your mom?”

“Well, yeah, he and my mom are kind of like friends.”

And the cop says, “Kind of like?”

Noah says, “Well they have, like, sleepover dates.”

“So your mom knows that you’re with him now?”

“Well, my mom sent him to pick me up because my dad lives in Woodstock.” At which point, I’m going,
OK, let’s see what’s happening over with Cleve.

I walk over there, and Cleve’s sitting on the curb, and he’s
got his feet out there, and he’s trying to make it look like it’s natural. So he’s deep massaging his thigh muscles, like he’s limbering up for the marathon or something, you know. It’s just humiliating as shit, and he’s kind of smiling because he can’t win, you got to play it through.

And he’s sitting there, and the other cop is hitting his driver’s license with a Maglite, one of those big, powerful flashlights, and he goes, “So, Cleveland, I see you’re from Ohio.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Cleveland from Cleveland, huh?”

“Well, actually, Oxford.”

And the cop goes, “Oh! Miami College!”

And Cleveland goes, “Yeah, yeah, that’s where I went.”

“Oh! Wally Szczerbiak!” who’s this big basketball player.

“Well, yeah, Wally was a little before my time.”

“Oh, did you play ball for them too?”

“Well, not basketball, I played soccer.”

The cop goes, “Oh, that’s amazing, because I coach soccer out on the Island, the kids’ league. And I keep waiting for that sport to blow up.”

And Cleveland’s going, “Yeah, yeah. That’s amazing.” He’s sitting, you know, just wiping the street crap off his pants.

At which point a Mustang comes by with two black guys in it, and the guy in the shotgun seat looks out the window, and he sees Cleveland sitting on a curb, and he starts yelling out, “Homeboy to base! Homeboy to base! We got a black man down! I repeat, a black man down!” And he’s laughing his ass off, and the Mustang floors it. Cleveland’s squinting, and he’s looking the other way. He’s just mortified.

And then I’m hopping back to the other cop with the kid. “So Noah, does Cleveland live with you?”

“No. Cleveland lives at 444 Avenue D. We live at 333 Avenue B.”

“Well, you ever been over to his house?”

“Only about a million times.”

“Mostly with your mom, I guess, huh?”

He says, “
And
by myself.”

“Oh, really? What do you do there?”

He says, “Well, you know, sometimes we walk his dog. It’s a Rhodesian ridgeback named Mars. And one time he tried to teach me how to make scrambled eggs, but I don’t really like his oven because you light the pilot match, and it goes
pshhhhht
, you know, and it scares me. One time, my mom had to go to court in Woodstock, and I stayed with Cleveland for three days.”

The cop says, “Court, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Three days?”

“Yeah,” he says, “but mostly, I’d say eighty-two and a half percent of the time, we watched television.”

“You and Cleveland.”

“Yeah, me and Cleve.”

And the cop says to him, “Do you ever do anything else with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you do anything else with him?”

And all of a sudden, the kid’s eyes get really big and wet like steel. And the kid starts breathing heavy, starts shaking a little bit.

And the cop says to him, “Hey, Noah, look at this,” and he pulls his jacket back, and he shows him his detective shield, and he says, “You know what that is?”

“It’s a police badge.”

“You know what this means?”

“What.”

“That means that you can tell me anything you want, and you’ll be perfectly safe. Do you understand that?”

And the kid looks at him, “Oh my God! Are you going to arrest him?”

And the cop, his heart’s pumping in Kool-Aid, and he starts moving over, and he says, “Why?”

And the kid says, “If you
fucking
assholes arrest him again one more time just because he’s black and I’m not, I’m going to kill myself! You came into my apartment and dragged him out because the crazy lady next door said he was a rapist, you put him in handcuffs when he came to pick me up at school, you pulled him away from me at the street fair and made me wait for my mom! I swear to God, I’m going to lose my
mind
!”

And the cops go, “Whoa! Easy, easy, easy!” At which point they’re looking at each other like,
What’s going on?

And all of a sudden Cleveland sees the kid’s losing it, and he goes, “Hey, Noah, buddy.”

And the cop says, “What did I just say to you?! Stop talking to the kid!”

At which point Cleveland says, “Officer, you want to put this to rest? I tell you what, I’m going to reach for my cell phone in here. Why don’t you call the kid’s mom and just see what’s going on?”

The cop says, “
I’ll
call the kid’s mom. What’s her name?”

“Dana.”

And he calls across to the other cop, “Get the kid’s mother’s name.”

And the kid through sobs is going, “Dana,” and Cleveland gives the cop the mother’s number.

The cop calls, and he says, “Hey, how you doing? This is Sergeant Kelley from the eighth precinct. Who am I speaking to?”

“Oh my God, Dana Rosenberg. What happened?”

He goes, “Nothing happened. I just need to know, do you know where your son is right now?”

At which point she freaks: “Where is he? What happened? He’s supposed to be with Cleveland, he’s supposed to be taking him home from a playdate. What happened? What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?”

“Well, no, no, no, he’s fine, OK?”

At which point the kid says to the one cop, “My mom says that if I get any more nervous I’m going to have to live with my father in Woodstock, you
fuck
!”