Ready And Abel
J
ulius Caesar Lewis was getting ready to close up for the night when she walked in, carrying a thirty-eight special that looked like it had been dredged up from the bottom of the Olentangy River. Despite the heat she was wearing a knit ski mask with pink and turquoise snowflakes in neat rows from top to bottom. Shit. Julius had been having a pretty good day by his standards, about two hundred in the till, all cash. No checks or credit cards ever at his Palmetto Market and Carryout. He scrounged a living off the various addictions of some of the poorest folks in all of Columbus. Booze, caffeine, and nicotine were his stock and trade. The poorest blacks, the poorest whites, the poorest Mexicans; they all came to Mr. Julius for their over the counter fix. An integrated neighborhood whose citizens for the most part hated each other with equal opportunity. She leveled the gun at Julius, or rather she leveled her arm. The pistol was pointed at a spot roughly halfway between her feet and Julius. Her hand was shaking so badly that Julius feared she's pull the trigger accidentally.
"Give me the money, Mr. Julius."
"Raquel, what the fuck do you think your doing?" He didn’t like to use such salty language, but sometimes today’s kids needed to be brought up short. A well-placed fuck was as good as an exclamation point.
"I ain't Raquel."
"The hell you say. I gave you that hat for Christmas last year. You think I don't know my own niece?"
"I ain't Raquel. Now give me the money, Uncle Julius." Her hand was really quivering and her breath was coming in gulps.
"What you on, girl? Crack? Heroin? What?"
"Please give me the money," she sobbed, her whole body was shaking now and he recognized the signs of withdrawal. The pistol fell to the floor, as did she when she tried to reach down and pick it up. Julius rushed over to her and gently pulled off the mask. Her once beautiful brown cheeks were pallored an unhealthy yellow and she was sweating profusely. She'd wet herself and there was a distinct chemical smell emanating from her.
"Who done this to you, girl?" She didn't answer, just lie there shaking in his arms.
Julius picked her up in his tree-trunk arms and carried her across the street to the garage behind his house, depositing her in the back seat. He ran back to the market and flipped the light switch and dead-bolted the door. The gangsters in the area were not the type to acknowledge a family emergency. He got behind the wheel and headed for Doctor's West. Julius' car was a solid '78 Ford LTD that he'd bought new back in the days when he still had dreams. He liked to brag that the car was "Ohio born and bred," and proved it by showing off the pristine 351 Cleveland engine. The car had never been wrecked and sported a three-year old glossy black paint job that shined like the Batmobile. The Ford was his baby. His wife left him back in '92, so she was the only baby he was likely to have. He rarely took her out on the road these days, preferring to keep her locked in the garage so that the neighbors wouldn't get ideas that he had money. He pulled her into the drop-off for the emergency room, got out and lifted his niece as gently as possible out of the car. He carried her inside, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"I need a doctor! My niece needs a doctor now." It wasn't doctors but an off duty Columbus cop working security who was first on the scene. He took one look at Raquel and waved for the nurses. A stretcher appeared and Julius placed her on it. As they wheeled her away he used a huge finger to sweep the stray kinky curls out of her eyes.
"You've got to calm down, Mister...?"
"Lewis."
"That's right, Julius Lewis. I responded to your carryout one time when there was some trouble." Officer Scott was careful not to say that Julius had been robbed, because eight years ago the man had beaten a robber with a 1973 Willie Mays baseball bat and sat on him until the police could get there.
"That's right, Officer Scott. I have your card right here." Julius pulled out his wallet and leafed through a collection of business cards until he pulled out the right one. Scott smiled when he saw the cards of at least ten other of his colleagues. Palmetto Street was definitely not a Lane Avenue in terms of socio-economic strata, even though the two streets were separated by a few miles of real estate.
"Are you the next of kin? There is some paperwork that needs to be filled out."
"No, I'll have to call my sister."
"If you don't have a cell phone, there's a pay phone right over there." Julius equated the decline of 20th Century civilization to the invention of the cell phone. He walked across the room to call his sister.
J
ulius and his sister Cleo were sitting in the waiting room a couple of hours later when the doctor came out. Cleo jumped off the couch and ran over to the doctor, her large body undulating like a bag of bowling balls made out of gelatin. Julius hung back, judging the doctor's glum expression expertly. He didn't hear the actual words, but could tell by his sister's reaction that Raquel was dead.
"Oh, my baby. My Baby!" Cleo wailed and thrashed out at the doctor, who backpedaled to get away from her. Julius grabbed his sister a reeled her in against his billboard -sized chest. She clawed at his shirt with talons that would make an eagle proud, and drew blood was the result. They stood immobile for several minutes and he directed her back to their seats.
"Cleopatra, we need to talk."
"I know."
"How long she been on that shit?"
"Not long. She be actin' up, not going to school this year. Been hanging out with some skinny little white boy by the name a Eddie."
"White boy. We didn't raise her to be going with no white boy."
"She that age, Jules. She going ta do what she going ta do. I knew it was gonna be trouble, her hanging out in the village. 'Sides, the boy was kinda comical, always wearing Fubu clothes and talking crazy whack. Don't these white boys know what Fubu mean?"
"Exactly why they wear it. And all that shit is bullshit. You call me and I set that girl straight. What you mean, hanging out in the village?"
"The Wedgewood Village. Them apartments off of Briggs. Lotta shit going down in there." She looked dejected. The fact that Raquel was dead starting to sink in. "I know I should a called you, but I just wanted my little girl to be happy."
"Yeah, who's happy now?" Cleo started bawling again and Julius handed her his hanky. She bent over in the chair and a half-yard of garish satin panty came riding up out of her slacks. Any other time it would have been comical. Julius reached over and pulled his sister's blouse down to cover the impropriety. He was already thinking about how to go about finding this Eddie character. Who's happy now?
T
he day of the funeral the bulk of the kids at Columbus West High School turned out. Cleo Lewis was a drunken mess and Julius didn't dare leave her side as hundreds of grieving teenagers came up to pay their respects. Conspicuously absent was one white boy named Eddie. Julius put Cleo to bed early and babysat her house while the well-meaning freeloaders of the neighborhood ate all of her food and drank all her booze.
Julius sat brooding at the market for the next week; unsure of his emotions and afraid of what he might do and whom he might do it to. He casually interrogated the teens that frequented his store, getting the 411 on the drug dealers in the area, never mentioning Eddie by name. Most of the kids that came in were too young to provide any good info, the older ones too savvy to give up information to old folks.
Friday night, Julius locked up the carryout at eight, just like always. He walked over to his house and changed into a black tee shirt and jeans. He put on a black leather baseball hat with no logo on the front. In spite of the heat, he put on a pair of black leather driving gloves. Then he reached up in the top of his closet and pulled out a shoebox. He took the box and placed it on his kitchen table. With two fingers he pulled out a handgun, a Glock 32 that some idiot had left in the carryout during a failed robbery attempt. With quivering hands he took out the clip and ejected the round from the chamber. He turned the pistol around in his hands, trying to figure out how to dismantle and clean it. A dirty gun could mean a jam or a misfire. He heard that somewhere. If he had to use it, he needed to make sure it would work properly. After fifteen minutes of trying to figure it out, he put the clip back in. He stuck it in the front of jeans, but it didn't feel right. He tried the back of his jeans, ditto. He engulfed it in his ham hock of a hand and walked outside to his garage.
The Julesmobile sat gleaming under the florescent light. Julius got into the Ford and set the Glock on the seat next to him. He turned the key over and listened to the throb of the big motor. He gunned it a few times and then let it idle, listening for ticks or misfires. The engine sounded perfect. He walked to the overhead door, hefting it up, and then slowly backed the car out. No newfangled garage door openers for Julius Caesar Lewis. He rolled slowly down the alley, and then out onto Palmetto. Seconds later, he pulled into the Marathon station on Broad Street that he always used. Marathon Oil, Ohio founded, owned by Americans. After filling her up and washing the windows, Julius cruised the Ford west on Broad into the dying sun.
The night was still a little too young for Julius' liking, so he pulled into Polly's Tavern and went in for a drink. The blue-collar happy hour was in full swing and the revelers were loud and raucous. It was a payday Friday and most of these people in the bar were determined to be broke come morning. Julius spotted a seat at the bar and squeezed himself in between a white truck driver and a Mexican construction worker. A skeletal bleach-blonde bartender sidled over to take his order.
"Double bourbon, up."
"Ten High is the well, that okay?" He nodded. "You want a chaser?"
He looked at the mirror behind the bar and parroted its ad copy. "Pabst Blue Ribbon."
The bartender sat the drinks in front of him and Julius took a big swallow of the bourbon. He instantly felt the gorge building in the back of his throat and almost upchucked on the bar. A swig of the Pabst cooled the burn. Julius wasn't much of a drinker, never had been, but if the night went down as he feared, he was going to need a little liquid courage. He finished the drinks, plus another shot, paid the bartender, and went back out into the night.
Two blocks later, Julius pulled onto Wedgewood Drive, and cruised slowly past the cellblock-like buildings sprinkled around the sparse lawns. Wannabe gangsters and delinquent teenagers crowded on every street corner like brazen cockroaches in a dirty kitchen. He followed Wedgewood out of the project and all the way down to where it dead-ended into Clime Road. He went around the block and then went down Briggs, cutting through the center of the project and checking out the access and escape points. Finally, after he'd criss-crossed the area several times, he pulled up next to a group of three teenagers.
"Eddie around?"
"Nice ride, man. Ain't no Eddie 'round here, old man. What you need?"
"I got business with Eddie. You know, skinny little white boy?"
"Oh, that Eddie. What you want with his shit? I gots all the same shit that he gots, only better." The speaker was a Snoop wannabe, a tall stringbean with a rattail braid running halfway down his back. His smile revealed a gold grill with the initials F.U. appliquéd on his front teeth.
"Like I said, I got business with Eddie."
"Okay, your loss old man. He over in 863 building. You can park back in that parking lot over there."
Julius pulled the Ford into the lot and parked. To the left of him he saw 871, so he got out, tucked the Glock in the back of his pants, and walked over to the next building, which said 859. It looked like each building had several entrances, so Julius walked around the side of the building and saw 861. He continued around and came back to 859. Perplexed, he smiled, figuring the boys had pulled a prank on him. As he walked back out to the dark parking lot, he heard footsteps rushing up behind him. He turned to see the boy he'd talked to a few minutes before.
"Oh, it's you. Where can I find Eddie?"
"I done told you there ain’t no Eddie 'round here."
"Why you playin’ with me, son?"
"Son? You ain't my daddy. I ain't gots no daddy." His grin turned to a sneer of bad intent.
"Come on now. Where's Eddie?" Julius heard more footsteps coming from behind him. More boys bracketing him.
"The real question, old man, is where's your money."
"You going to rob me?"
He pulled a gleaming nine millimeter out of his belt, gesturing with it to emphasize his words. “Yes. I. Am."
Julius reached behind him and took out the Glock, pointing it at the stickup boy. The boy just smiled.
"You gonna shoot me, old man? You might get me, but my boys gonna cut you down like a dog." Julius yanked the trigger, not knowing that he had to pull the slide back to put a round in the chamber. “Shit, you was gonna shoot me.”
The stickup boy took a step forward and shot Julius in the head. Julius collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes dropped from a second story window. The boys rifled through his pockets. As he sprawled there on the lawn, more dirt than grass, returning to the earth, Julius heard the sound of his Ford being fired up. Oh no, not the Julesmobile.
J
ulius squinted against the light, searing pain lancing his brain unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He recalled hearing about near death experiences, and he wondered if this was “the light” that they always mentioned. He was contemplating this thought when he heard a throat being cleared very close to him. He fought the light and turned painfully towards the sound. It took a few moments for his vision to clear enough to see who was in the chair next to the bed.
“You?”
The man in the chair shifted uncomfortably. He was large, with the weathered, burnt-red skin of a man who worked outside his entire life. An unruly shock of light brown hair capped his wide brow, brutally cut in straight lines that diverged from each other, and a permanent line from his baseball hat flipping his hair up on the ends that were long enough to do so. He wore his cleft lip with a sneer of pride, and the massive arms that bulged in his shirtsleeves just begged you to do something about it. He let out a long even breath that engulfed the room in the funk of stale tobacco and halitosis. He was the last person that the man in the bed expected to see.
“Yep, it’s me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I can leave, you want me too.”
“Where am I?”
Abel Musgrave smiled the smile of a perfect jack o'lantern, his face jagged with blackened, broken and missing teeth. He chuckled softly and said, “Boy, you done got your head near blown off. You’re in Doctor’s Hospital.”
Normally words like these would provoke a fight, but Julius Lewis didn’t think that he could muster much of one. “Why am I here?”
“Some punk ass kids in the Wedgewood done shot your eye out. Here, I brung you a book.” Abel passed a battered paperback over to Julius, Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. “I heared that you like to read. I hope you still can.”
“Thanks, Mr. Musgrave, is it?” He tried to move his hand up to his face, but he found that every movement of muscle brought a different kind of ache.
“Yep. Call me Abel. We’s neighbors, so we might as well call each other by our names.” He smiled again. “What in the hell were you doin’ in the Wedgewood, anyways?”
“My niece overdosed.”
“Rack-ell. I done heared about that. Purdy little thing. My boy knowed her some from school. That still don’t answer what you were doing in the Wedgewood?”
“I went to find the boy got her hooked on dope. I found some stickup boys first, rather they found me.” Julius looked stricken as he remembered the incident. “Shit, they got my car.”
Abel shook his head slowly. Julius looked into his eyes. He didn’t like what he saw there. “I got your car. It’s back in your gay-rage.”
“How?”
“You don’t want to know that. But them boys is all alive. I figgered you’d want to be in on the fun.”
“Why you doing this for me, Mr. Musgrave?”
“This is our neighborhood, Mr. Lewis. It’s about time we stood up and stopped these two-bit punks from coming in and turning our kids into gangsters. We also been looking out for your store, making sure nobody messes with it.”
Julius mustered up a smile that made his whole face hurt. He held out a hand that could easily palm a basketball and found it engulfed by the other man’s hand. Abel rose from the chair to his full six-four. He looked like a linebacker from a bygone era, lean and solid, muscles stacked with bad intent.
Julius and Abel had lived on the same block for twenty years, yet their two paths had certainly never crossed. In many ways, the men were as alike as they were different. Abel came from a long line of sturdy Appalachian stock. He had four boys, ages sixteen to thirty. They were white trash and damn proud of it. There would be no muddying of the waters in their family. The Musgrave boys wouldn’t dare bring a black girl home, or it might be the last time they were allowed to leave the house. But Abel taught them to respect others, especially their elders, regardless of what they looked like. Abel and his boys were known to do things for people on occasion.
Julius, on the other hand, had lived in this same square mile for his entire life. He was a star quarterback at West High School, but he’d blown his chance when the Mid-American schools came calling. He worked after school instead of studying, and his grades showed it. So he’d stayed home, worked some more, and eventually bought his little store. Being the quarterback had had its certain advantages, girls being one of them. They’d all come calling and Jules had experimented plenty. He decided early in life that blacks and whites, especially the ones in his economic strata, should stay away from each other. The results were never happy when they mixed. He became more hardened in this belief as he grew older.
They’d lived on the same block for twenty years, and they’d never stopped to say howdy do. They might as well have an ocean between them, instead of just six houses. Abel went to the UDF and the Marathon to get his smokes, his white bread, and his adult beverages. Julius had never had the occasion to need something done, and But they shared one common bond. They were neighbors. Always had been. Always would be.
Julius had been home for a few days before he decided to open up the store again. The Julesmobile had been backed into his garage, the only sign of its theft a small scrape on the passenger fender. He fitted a black patch over his eye until he was healed enough for a glass one. The police had been by several times to get his statement. He told them he couldn’t remember anything. In truth, he remembered every detail, but he wanted to see what Musgrave had in mind. As he unlocked the door, he suddenly felt very old. Scraping out a living hadn’t seemed so bad before, because this was his place. Now he wondered why he bothered.
Julius was puttering around his aisles when he heard the wooden steps outside groan with the wait of his first customer of the day. The door swung out and the entire room suddenly seemed to dim. The man in barely fit through the doorway. Julius was over six feet tall, but the man dwarfed him. He was an eyelash under seven feet tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. With his bald head, he looked like the sacrificial grappler at Wrestlemania. Julius had seen him around the neighborhood. He was hard to miss. When he was a few feet away, Julius realized that his size belied his age. His baby face belonged to a teenager.
“Hello, Mr. Lewis. My name’s Enoch Musgrave.” He smiled and Julius was happy to see he had all of his teeth.
“Hello, son. What can I do for you?”
“My daddy said you should come down to the house.”
“Why?”
“He said he’s got somethin’ there you’ll want to see.”
“I close at eight.”
“Daddy said anytime is fine, sir.”
“Okay. Son, how old are you?”
“Sixteen, sir.” The boy turned to walk out the door. Julius thought, damn, I wonder what they feedin’ that boy.
The sun was down and there was a damn thing going on at the Palmetto, so Julius went ahead and closed up shop. He started to walk across the street to his house, stopped in the middle, and then went back the other way towards the Musgrave house. Walking up the sidewalk in front of the house, he saw Abel and another man sitting on the porch in front. He gave a small wave and opened the chainlink gate into a front yard straight out of Sanford and Son. Derelict furniture and appliances dotted the lawn like yard art in the suburbs. A bluenose bull terrier rose from his haunches, growled and bared his teeth. The younger man sprang from his chair and ran a soothing hand down the dog’s side and shushed it. He was tall and thick and had a cleft lip and a bad haircut just like his father. He extended his hand. “Hello, Mister Lewis. I’m Noah Musgrave.”
“Julius Lewis.” The two men shook hands. “You wanted me to see something.”
“That we did. Daddy?”
“Come on in the house.” He held up a dented can of Blue Ribbon. “Somethin’ to drink, neighbor?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
“Catherine, get out neighbor a beer.”
“Okey.” A chubby woman came out of the kitchen with a can of Pabst. She was resplendent in a pink fleece sweatsuit. Her hair was frizzy, permed and dyed roughly the color of a Cleve;and Browns jersey. She handed it to Julius and turned to go back into the kitchen. Her butt was the size of a washing machine.
“Thanks, Missus Musgrave.” She blushed and left without a word.
“Don’t mind her, Julius. She ain’t never spoke to a black person before. Come on, I got something to show you out in the gay-rage.”
The three men walked through a door and out into the garage. Two men sat on chairs facing each other in the middle of the space. Another Musgrave looked up and waved. He stood up and walked over to Julius.
“Howdy, Mister Lewis. I’m Jonah Musgrave.” Jonah was both shorter and less stout than his brother. He had a nice smile despite the missing front tooth. The leather glove that he peeled off was damp and glistening.
“Pleasure to meet you Jonah.” Julius looked at the other man in the room. He was duct-taped to the chair. His head was hanging low on his chest. Abel stepped over to him and grabbed his hair where the rattail met the scalp. He roughly pulled the head back and turned it towards Julius.
“Recognize this boy, Julius?”
“Oh, yeah. How you doin’, Snoop?”
With a great deal of effort, the stickup boy opened his eyes. They grew wide when he saw Julius. “You? I done kilt you.” The mouth that he spoke with was gaping and filled with blood.
“Nice try, Snoop, but I ain’t dead. What happened to his teeth?”
Jonah Musgrave reached into his shirt pocket with a sneer. “I saved em for ya.” He passed the gold grill over to Julius. He walked over and wiped them on the stickup boy’s shirt.
“Nice. But not as good as an eye.”
“You can have both of ‘em, you want ‘em.”
“Maybe. You ain’t so tough now, Snoop. Where your boys at?”
“They find me. They gone kill you. What you doin’ with these white boys? You got no shame, old man?”
“Just getting my eye for an eye, son. Oh, that’s right, I ain’t your daddy. Where your daddy at now, boy?”
“Fuck you.”
Julius stood directly in front of the boy. He reached out and gently grabbed the boy’s chin, lifted it to look into the boy’s yellow eyes. He stared into them for two minutes without saying a word. The boy’s eyes flitted around the room frantically. In his heart of hearts he knew that there was no escape, but his bravado got the best of him.
“Whatchew looking at, old man. You look like you wanna give me a kiss.”
Julius, increased the pressure on the boy’s chin. The boy’s eyes fixed on his. “Where’s Eddie?”
“Who?”
“Eddie. White boy Eddie.”
“I done tolt you, Eddie don’t run with my crew. We got nothing to do with no white boys. Unlike yoself.”
“You may not hang with him, but you know where he is.”
“He hang in the Wedgewood. Drive some piece a shit Toyota. Muthafucka love him some Bengals. Always wearin’ a Chad jersey and a orange doo rag.”
“What color’s his car?”
“Green Camry. Good some bullet holes in da rear fender.”
Julius took one last look at the boy and stood straight up. He faced each Musgrave man in turn and gave each a nod. Abel held the door open for him and he walked back through the kitchen and into the front of the house. Enoch Musgrave sat in a loveseat that could barely contain him, a two liter of Pepsi and a bag of Orville Reddenbacher’s propped against each hip. He broke into a grin and talked against a mouth full of popcorn. “Good night, Mister Lewis.”
“Good night, son.” Julius walked through the yard under the watchful eye of the pit. He waited until he was out of sight of the house and ducked behind a bush to vomit. He had no illusions that the stickup boy would ever see another sunrise.
