Part 43 (2/2)

Two stopped playing and looked across at Darryl. ”Pharmaceuticals.”

”All right. I'm Darryl Pharmaceuticals Young.”

”Poetic,” said Two.

”Just a black thing . . . Touchdown! D'you see that play?”

”Aw, man,” Two said, ”I wasn't even watching!”

”Well, quit squawking and play then . . .”

”You cheating Pharmaceuticals chump . . .”

”Go on, man,” Darryl said, ”it's your ball.”

In no time they'd whittled their ten-dollar bills down to a dollar fifty (one seventy-five for Two), and they continued toward the Flats. As they walked along sidewalks like hot plates, the soles of their sneakers squoos.h.i.+ng like sponges with each step, Darryl rehashed the morning in his head: they got to the post office on time, worked like beasts in that dusty heat, but still got fired. For laughing. They didn't do anything bad; if you can laugh while you work it makes the work go by better, that's all. Jack Mitch.e.l.l would understand that. Of course, Darryl would leave out the part about the swear word.

”Two, man,” he said, ”we got fired for laughing.”

”My daddy says white man don't like to see black folks laughing. Thinks they're laughing at him.”

”Jack Mitch.e.l.l'll understand that.”

”Maybe so,” said Two, ”but you better start figuring how to make him understand your magic trick that made a ten-dollar bill turn into a buck seventy-five in change.”

”Yeah.” Darryl hadn't even considered that. And he only had one fifty left.

They walked on, searching silently for a solution. A Fightin' Pioneers poster taped in a shop window brought them to a halt. It announced the upcoming high-school football season, and on it was a picture of the quarterback, Hoodie Duncan, his arm c.o.c.ked to throw a pa.s.s.

”Hoodie's my man,” Darryl said, ”Hoodie's my main man,” said Two. ”Look it the arms on him.” Two sat down suddenly on the curb and scrambled in his pockets. ”Hang on a minute.” He pulled out a fistful of rubber bands.

”What you got rubber bands for?” Darryl asked.

”I been wearing them,” said Two. ”Make me look strong.”

”Huh?”

Two handed a wad of them to Darryl. ”That's how folks can tell you're strong,” he said, double-wrapping two around each wrist, then pumping his hands to inflate his forearms.

Darryl looked and mimicked Two's actions. ”How's that?” he said.

”The veins be sticking out your forearms,” Two said, inspecting his, then pumping his hands again. ”That's how they know.”

”Really?”

”Yeah. You look at Hoodie, or any of them tough brothers. They veins be winding like snakes all down they arms.”

”That's true.” Darryl remembered seeing Hoodie at the 7-Eleven once. Hoodie joked with the black attendant, signifying with his hands and holding his green and gold letter jacket in his first, and the veins of his arms seemed to jump off his skin. Darryl had been with his mom, who didn't see Hoodie or the attendant or even Darryl, it seemed; their playfulness stopped, though, when Darryl and his mom entered, and their eyes followed her around the store as she busily searched one aisle then the next for the saltines she'd forgotten to buy at the A&P.

Darryl and Two resumed their walk, hands periodically pumping the air. Two said, ”My daddy was a boxer and . . .”

”Really?”

”Yeah. In the army. A welterweight,” Two explained. ”So he could whoop upside some white boys' heads. He told me he used to beat on white boys' a.s.s like there wasn't no tomorrow. Said it was the only way you could get at 'em in them days, with gloves on, in the ring. Otherwise, have the law and all kinds of white folks all after you.”

”Yeah, they say it was like that.” That Two's father, now just a mechanic for the town of Fitzgerald, had once been a recognized athlete put him in very high esteem in Darryl's eyes. He wished Jack Mitch.e.l.l had been one. But Darryl couldn't imagine primping, bulbous Jack Mitch.e.l.l in a letter jacket.

Jack Mitch.e.l.l was the town's first and only black councilman. That meant something. When he married Darryl's mom and moved the family to Fitzgerald, they made up the town's first interracial couple, ever, and the only one still. Theirs was the only black family to live in Oakbrook Heights. But still, it wasn't the same thing.

Two said, ”My daddy, when he was boxing, he said he'd walk around squeezing tennis b.a.l.l.s. It helped his punch. He's still got all kinds of veins sticking out his arms.”

”He's strong, huh?”

Two stopped and, face askew, stared Darryl down until Darryl stopped walking, too. ”Let that n.i.g.g.ah get a switch after your a.s.s and ask me that again.” Then he sauntered forward.

They cut through the Texaco onto Third Street. Walking between the pumps, Two stepped deliberately onto the slim rubber hose that ran out from the station. A bell clanged, but n.o.body stirred, so they continued walking.

Darryl said, ”Your dad was a boxer.”

”Yeah,” said Two. ”He was good.”

When they arrived at the vacant lot that separated the back of Eastgate Mall from the Flats, Two inspected his forearms, then backpedaled away from Darryl into the s.h.i.+mmering, sun-scorched reeds, his arm c.o.c.ked to throw a pa.s.s. ”I'm Hoodie Duncan,” he called, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet as if in the pocket. ”You see him in that game against Dumas?”

”I saw the game with you, Two.”

”Man, I ain't never seen nothing like that.” Two scrambled left. ”Hoodie rolled left, and when the dude grabbed his right arm, he shook him”-which Two did, mostly just jiggling his shoulder-”put the ball in his left hand, and fired it downfield.” Two mimed the motion. ”Left-handed!”

”Hoodie's tough.”

”h.e.l.l yeah, he's tough! You know he's tough. Just six n.i.g.g.ahs on the whole d.a.m.n team? s.h.i.+t, you know they ain't about to let n'an one of 'em play quarterback unless he's two times as tough as every white boy on the field.” Two caught up to Darryl. ”And Hoodie is. Being ambidextrous and all.”

”Ambi-what?”

”Ambidextrous,” said Two. ”Hoodie's ambidextrous. My daddy's ambidextrous, too. It means you can use your left hand just as good as your right. Do whatever you want with either one.”

Macadam turned to dirt in the Flats. Darryl and Two walked down the dusty road toward the Three Jacks' Bar, where Jack Mitch.e.l.l (the third Jack) would be waiting. Darryl figured that Jack Mitch.e.l.l had probably already talked to Wiley Edwards, so he was in no rush to get there. Dragging along, Darryl mimed a throwing motion with his left hand. It was awkward, had no force.

Two, watching Darryl, cast his own left arm forward. ”I'm ambidextrous, too,” he said.

”Sure you are.”

”You know I am.”

”Right.”

”What you boys know?” they heard, and turned toward the porch from where the sound was emitted.

<script>