photo by Alex Lear
CRY, CRY, CRY
PART TWO: A MAN AIN’T SUPPOSE TO CRY
For only the second time in his adult life, thirty-four year old Tyronne Cornelius Johnston cried. Damaged by heretofore unimaginable hurts, Tyronne surrendered and let the tears flow, not because he wanted to but because he no longer had the strength to hold back the crying. So he wept. Silently, quietly, and openly, he wept.
A portion of the weeds surrounding the twisted lump on the ground was stained a dull scarlet. A sharp foulness stung Tyronne’s nostrils. Overhead several sparrows dirtied the air with ugly, high pitched, chirping sounds.
Tyronne’s blue, two-door Toyota Tercel stood forlorn; its right front and rear wheels hiked up on the curb, the driver’s door hanging open, the engine off but the lights on. The car looked like it was in pain.
Tyronne stared up into the underside of the sky. The sun was stealing away quickly, fleeing in shame after witnessing the deed. Tyronne faced but did not see the bloated gray clouds, lingering like pus filled sacs on an infected wound.
Face upturned, Tyronne waited to see if God was looking. “Sonnabitch,” Tyronne wanted to scream. He felt an urge to spit up at whatever God there was who would allow this murder to occur. But then Tyronne asked himself why was he angry with God for what people were doing to each other.
God gave life. It was not God’s fault if the gift was squandered or even if one gift decided to snuff out another gift.
Tyronne stood up and surveyed the scene. Death neither frightened nor repulsed him. He had seen a lot of death.
Fully regaining his composure, Tyronne went through the motions of lighting a cigarette. He reached into his left jacket pocket. Moved his keys aside. Pulled out the Marlboro box. Flipped it open. Took a cigarette out. Using his right hand, he firmly knocked the filter tip against the face of the box he held securely in his left palm. Tap, tap, tap, three times. Replaced the box into his left pocket. Put the cigarette between the fingers of his left hand. Pushed the cigarette between his lips. Dug into his right trouser pocket for his yellow plastic, disposable, generic brand lighter with the red tab that he pressed once. Then twice. The gas flame leapt out. Half way up toward the cigarette’s tip, Tyronne released the tab. The lighter’s flame died out quickly.
“Shit.”
He put the lighter back into his pocket.
He knelt slowly beside the wretched form now wrapped in the softness of dusk’s last light. Not since Nam had he confronted the fossilized agony of violently murdered flesh. Is life grotesquely mimicking history, are we still at war with ourselves, Tyronne wondered as he reluctantly admitted that America had left Nam but Nam had not left America. The sight of bleeding children was becoming as commonplace here as it had been back there.
The unlit cigarette dangled useless from his lips.
Tyronne looked away from the dirtied ground. He looked around.
Even though Tyronne looked at each of his friends standing there: Pauline, Justin, Shorty, and Diane, Tyronne really didn’t see any of them. All he saw was an ambushed future left dead and dirt moist with life’s blood oozing into it.
Tyronne didn’t hear anyone either, not Pauline who was wailing loudly, nor Justin who kept saying over and over, “man, this fucked up, this fucked up, fucked up,” nor Shorty, who was holding Diane’s shoulder, and who repeatedly sucked up mucus, rubbed his now reddish eyes with his shirt sleeve, harked and spat on the ground.
Diane was the only one silent. The evening insects displayed a rare sympathy and joined Diane in respectful silence. There was an airplane in the distance, some cars passing occasionally, and even a far off police siren, but as keen as Tyronne’s hearing was, he heard none of this.
What Tyronne heard he could not believe. He knew that sound could not be real, so even though he heard it, he rejected what he heard. Look like he could clearly hear Sammy-Sam laughing, laughing like Sammy-Sam used to laugh when the food was good, or a comic book was funny, or some dance he did was well done.
Tyronne knew the laughter he heard was just an illusion. He remembered how when his buddies were shot in Nam and would lie dying in his arms, right after those young men expired, the first sound Tyronne would consciously register inside his head would be the voices of the dead saying a phrase or two characteristic of them, and usually the voices were laughing their unique laugh. Death certainly was not funny but somehow Tyronne always associated violent death with a welcomed release. Maybe the dead were happy to escape the horrors of living in this world as man had made it.
Tyronne looked back at the quiet, unmoving hump.
Without realizing it, during the whole time he had been trying to light a cigarette, then kneeling, then looking at the others standing there, then looking at the space where the laughter sprung out of the ground watered by life fluids draining out of a once warm body, during all of that, without realizing it, Tyronne had been crying.
Glistening trails of tear tracks were etched on Tyronne’s sad profile like the flimsy pieces of silver tinsel Tyronne had meticulously hung across the Christmas tree what seemed like only a couple of months ago.
The liquid tinsel trickling from Tyronne’s eyes shone on his brown cheeks like silver veins running across the rock surface of a big brown mountain. Suddenly Tyronne hungered for another taste of the liquor he had drunk earlier, hungered for the burning that engulfed the back of his mouth and all down his throat, the burning that helped cool his raging insides.
***
Earlier that day, much earlier, Tyronne Johnston (“Tyronne with two N’s and Johns-TON not John-son”) had stood in the food commodities line waiting to get a box of handouts to feed his family.
Tyronne Cornelius Johnston. High school basketball captain. Three times decorated, four times wounded Vietnam vet. Thirteen year veteran security guard recently laid-off.
Never asked nobody for nothing in his life. Not even Grandma Mary for that second piece of chocolate cake he desperately wanted when he was eight years-old, nor Lisa Andrews for them drawers he also desperately wanted when he was fifteen and one half years old, which drawers he probably would have gotten, if he had begged for them or had bogarted, but he never needed no pussy that badly, no matter how badly he might have wanted it.
That Tyronne Johnston. The same. He never begged. Never. Not even cried to God for mercy the time he was all shot up in Nam, laying in the bush all night, firing his piece until he was out of bullets and then laying for dead inside a trench, hunched up next to two fellows who were dead. That long, long night. Too shot up to move or even holler for help—who could have heard him with all the foulness of ritualized murder blanketing the area—that long night, hours and hours in that hole, with only two corpses to keep him and his thoughts company. He had not begged then.
Never.
Not even for the security guard job that seemed to be his last option after applying in person to fifty-eight different places.
Naw. Tyronne Johnston never asked nobody to give him anything.
So why was he standing on this line, sweating in the cold sunshine on this chilly hot April day?
Why had he gone down to the community center and sat for six hours to register so somebody could give him dry milk (“Baby, this is some bullshit. I ain’t never knowed no such thing like dry milk in a box.”) and powdered eggs which you added water to (“This shit ain’t food, we had better chow than this in the Nam,” he had thought to himself fighting back the urge to spit the shit out as he almost gagged on his first commodities meal.”)?
That girl in the registration office what told him he had spelt Benefit Street wrong (“It’s E-N-E-FIT not E-N-I-FIT.”) could not have been more than 22.
“Yeah. I guess I’m a lil nervous.”
“Ain’t nuthin’ to be nervous about long as you telling the truth.”
“Why you think I’m here going through this shit if’n I wasn’t in need for my family?”
The girl had looked at Tyronne without answering his question.
Tyronne searched his left jacket pocket for his cigarettes, waiting for the line to move, thinking about how that girl had looked at him like he was so pitiful or something.
He had started to walk out.
She didn’t know him like that.
Tyronne hadn’t ever done anything shameful in his life. Always dressed clean. Never took anything that wasn’t his. Never cheated on Rita. Once he was married, he was married.
When he waited tables at the hotel he wouldn’t even steal any food or a bottle of liquor. When he was a security guard he wouldn’t take anything and wouldn’t allow any one else to take anything on his shift.
“Man, you trying to be too good. For what?”
“Ain’t no wrong in being right.”
Damn, this line sho moves some slow, Tyronne thought to himself as his mind snapped back to the sidewalk where he stood, embarrassed and angry with himself because he had to be there. The Marlboro box in his left hand was empty. He crumpled it in his fist and put the crushed box back in his left jacket pocket. He would throw the trash away later.
Throwing trash in a trash can and not on the ground was a habit with him now, so much so, he didn’t even recall how it had been drilled into him by his mother who had worked a second job for many years cleaning up office buildings after hours.
“Tyronne don’t you know somebody got to pick it up if you throw it on the ground. Honey don’t do that. Put it in the trash. And if you can’t understand it no other way then think about me having to pick it up, cause that’s what I do, I pick up trash behind grown people who too lazy and triflin’ to put trash where it belong.”
Nor did he think about the time he and his mother had gone on Canal Street and she had bought him a candy bar. He wanted to get at that candy so bad he just tore the wrapper off and let it drop to the floor. She had slapped him. Hard. In front of everybody. “Boy, pick that trash up.” That was the day he learned candy wetted with tears didn’t taste too good. He cried, but he remembered, and since that day, though he never thought about it much, just like he wasn’t thinking about it now, since that day he didn’t litter.
Tyronne needed something to do with his hands. He wished he had brought the morning paper with him so he could read it while waiting like some of the others on the line were doing. Some people obviously were regulars and knew each other because they chatted and talked family talk, but because Tyronne didn’t want to talk to anybody, he simply folded his hands one on top of the other in front of him, took an “at ease” stance and waited.
Standing in a slow moving line like this commodities line gave Tyronne a lot of time to think even though he didn’t want to think about anything. He just wanted to get food for his family and be gone. Nevertheless, welcomed or not, the thoughts poured over him in waves, like the drenching, wind driven rain of a thunderstorm in hurricane season.
Tyronne thought about the day he had been laid off, he and about four other men. How the company told them they had two weeks pay, and annual leave coming, and how they could go apply for unemployment, and all of them would get good recommendations for other jobs. Or at least that’s what the letter, which was in their last pay envelope, said.
Tyronne’s supervisor had given him a number to call on Monday and he promised somebody would help Tyronne and answer any questions. When Tyronne called the number he got a recording that basically told him to file for unemployment and gave him another telephone number prospective employers could call for references.
Tyronne did as he was instructed to do, but he really didn’t like getting unemployment because it reminded him he wasn’t working. Ever since Tyronne wore long pants he had worked. He had always worked. This not working was driving him crazy.
Though he was deeply disturbed and sometimes discouraged, Tyronne never stopped looking. He knew he would be back on his feet again soon. People were always looking for a good, trustworthy security guard, especially with the way niggers was stealing shit nowadays; was just a matter of finding the right people who were looking for a good, trustworthy, experienced security guard. Tyronne believed that. He just had to keep looking.
Two weeks before his unemployment ran out Rita was sure she was pregnant.
Tyronne remembered how he couldn’t believe that shit. Seem like it was some kind of television shit. Old man loses his job. Old lady gets pregnant.
Tyronne looked down. The line inched ahead a few feet.
“Baby, this the wrong time to be having a baby.”
“Tee, don’t you think I know that?”
“You sho? I mean. Yaknow. I mean you sho you knocked up?”
“No. I ain’t sho, but I’m pretty sho.”
“I guess ain’t never gon be no good times for us to…”
“Tee, it’s gon work out.”
“I ain’t working. You pregnant. Told you not to quit no pill.”
“My body tolt me to quit.”
“What yo body tellin’ you nah?”
“Tellin’ me we should’a been mo careful.”
“Rita, how careful a man gotta be with his woman?”
“Tee, I ain’t blaming you.”
“It was me what did it.”
“We did it. Me and you. Wasn’t no just you.”
“I know that but if I had a been using a rubber, it would’a been cool.”
“Tee, it’s cool nah.”
“Naw, shit no. Ain’t nothin’ cool ’bout me not workin’ and you pregnant.”
Tyronne hadn’t known Sammy-Sam was sitting on the back steps playing like he was reading a comic book but was really listening to every word Tyronne was saying to his mama.
Sammy-Sam knew he had to do something now. Tyronne wasn’t working. His mama was pregnant. And his lil sister Gloria was only a year-and-something old. Besides Tyronne wasn’t his real daddy so if they had to get rid of somebody it might be Sammy-Sam.
Sammy-Sam stayed on the same page for seven minutes. When Shorty had moved in with Diane, Shorty had made Eddie run away until Eddie ended up in Youth Study Center cause he kept getting picked up for shoplifting.
Course Tyronne didn’t beat Sammy-Sam like Shorty used to beat Eddie. But, shit, now that Tyronne didn’t have a job, if somebody had to suffer Sammy-Sam knew it was going to be himself.
Sammy-Sam knew Tyronne liked Gloria cause he was her father. And Tyronne liked Rita, his mama, cause they was sleeping together. But Tyronne didn’t have no reason to like Sammy-Sam all that much.
Tyronne was cool and all but if there was too many mouths and not enough food, Tyronne might make Sammy-Sam go away. That’s just the way it was. Sammy-Sam knew how it was.
Sammy-Sam jumped up, leaped off the steps, hopped on his purple bike Tyronne had bought him when Tyronne had a job. That was it. Sammy-Sam had to get a job. He rode off and went looking for Snowflake.
Snowflake liked Sammy-Sam. Maybe Snowflake would help him.
Sammy-Sam decided he would work for Snowflake but he wouldn’t take none of that shit cause that shit made you act stupid like the time Myrtle was walking down the courtyard buck naked singing “You Are My Sunshine” at the top of her lungs and wouldn’t stop for nothing, not even when Justin had run out there and tried to wrap her in a blanket and carry her inside. It finally took Shorty, Justin and Tyronne to get her back inside.
Sammy-Sam was thinking so hard he didn’t even wave at his boy Brian who was standing on the corner, leaning on the mailbox, savoring the last seconds of a marijuana buzz.
Brian saw the plastic streamer threaded wheels on Sammy-Sam’s purple bike blurring into a multicolored circle. Brian saw Sammy-Sam’s red Michael Jackson T-shirt. But Brian didn’t see Sammy-Sam.
Sammy-Sam was standing up, pumping hard and remembering hearing Tyronne say how he ought to kick Snowflake ass behind selling Myrtle that shit but Justin had said if anybody ass ought’a be kicked then it should’a ought’a been Myrtle’s black ass for taking that crazy shit.
When he was standing there watching the shit go down, Sammy-Sam agreed with Justin on account of Snowflake ain’t made Myrtle take that shit. In fact Myrtle had asked Snowflake for the shit and was fucking Snowflake behind getting a steady supply. Course, Sammy-Sam didn’t find out ’bout Myrtle fucking Snowflake til after he started working for Snowflake, but anyway, Sammy-Sam knew Justin was right. If a person voluntary smoked some shit that made them act stupid, it was they own fault.
By the time Sammy-Sam pulled into the courtyard on Snowflake’s turf, he had vowed seven times he wouldn’t never take no shit that made him act stupid.
Tyronne had not been aware of Sammy-Sam’s resolution. Entwined in his own troubles, Tyronne had begun to virtually ignore Sammy-Sam.
“I know how you feel, brer.”
It took a few moments for Tyronne to realize the guy behind him in line was talking to him.
The guy needed a shave.
“Here, take a swig.” The guy held up a partially used half pint of Old Granddad.
Tyronne had said he wasn’t gon let nothing drive him to drink or to drugs. Tyronne might drink a beer or two, but not no serious drinking. And smoking a joint every now and then to cool out wasn’t really doing no drugs. God, it was like ten something in the morning. Tyronne didn’t want no drink. But he needed a drink.
“Man, the first time I come down here I near ’bout died. But what you gon do? It’s either this, or stick somebody up or sell some dope. Me I’m too scary to heist nobody and if I was to get my hands on a whole bag a dope I would do it all up myself ‘fo I could make some profit.”
Then the guy laughed.
“My name is Joseph. Joseph LaCabe. And you?”
“Tyronne Johnston.”
“They calls me Jojo. What they call you?”
“Tee.”
“Well Tee, welcome to the ‘grind a nigger’s ass down’ line-up to show you you ain’t shit.” Jojo took a nip. “I used to be a plasterer. Now I’m a professional line waitin’, form fillin’ out, hand-out takin’ fool. You ever made a Bloody Mary with that tomato paste crap that they hand out here?”
Jojo didn’t wait for Tyronne’s answer.
“Take it from me, don’t.” Jojo chuckled, coughed hard (Tyronne could hear fluid moving about inside Jojo’s chest), chuckled again. Took another nip. “Look here home, if you don’t catch a nip soon, ain’t gon be nuth’n left. You don’t holla, you don’t swallar. I don’t offer but once and the offer stand as long as the liquor lasts, which I don’t think gon be all that long.”
The line moved.
“Tee, I got four crumb crushers and a walking mouth they call a wife. Jojo do this. Jojo do that. Jojo go get the commodities. Jojo take the kids for a hair cut. Jojo clean the hallway. Jojo mop the flo. Jojo clean the toilet. Sometimes I feel like you might as well put a dress on Jojo ass. How many kids you got?”
“Two.” Tyronne started to say “Two and a used to be.” Tyronne remembered how the deal went down.
Rita decided and they drove out there. In silence. About a block or so away, before they pulled into the parking lot, before they saw the three men and two women standing outside handing out leaflets talking about why people shouldn’t be getting abortions, Tyronne forced himself to speak.
“Rita we ain’t got to.”
“If you was pregnant and didn’t want to be, and if I was out of work and you decided to get a abortion, would you let me talk you outta it?”
“If is a mighty big word that can change a bunch of things. Right nah I’m talking about what is, not what if.”
“Well, the baby in my stomach, and I’m saying no. And that ain’t no what if, that’s a what is.”
Rita got out the car. Earlier they had had the money argument.
“Rita, we can’t afford to spend no two hundred dollars right nah.”
“Yes we can, ’cause spending two hundred nah for a abortion is way less than what we would have to spend to have it, much less raise it.”
They had had the moral argument.
“You think a abortion is the right thing to do?”
“Tee, don’t be no fool. This ain’t bout no right or wrong. This bout whether its better for the four of us to make it or the five of us to fail. We ain’t in no position to deal with no baby. I don’t want it. You don’t really want it. It’s better to stop it now then to have it and not want it and treat it like it ain’t wanted. I ain’t bout to fool myself. I know I don’t want no mo children. I done gave you Gloria. So, what you saying? Do you really want another baby?”
“No, not really but I mean, yaknow, abortion…”
“Bullshit, Tee. This just somethin’ you thinkin’ bout in yo head. For me this somethin’ I’m gon have to live with. I ain’t bout to have no mo babies. Period.”
There really wasn’t nothing more to be said.
When they got out the car in front the clinic, one of the white guys who was wearing brown shoes, white socks, black pants, a plain white polo pullover, and a “Try Jesus” button, came over toward him while the two women approached Rita.
Tyronne heard the shorter woman, the one with the freckled face and her brown hair pulled back tight off her head, lecture Rita, “Don’t deny a child a chance to enjoy the life the Lord gave him through you. Don’t just think about how you feel now. Think about the baby’s feelings. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I can see you two are some intelligent people. I’m just asking you to think about what you’re doing. Pray on it. Instead of going in there today, why don’t you think about it, talk to your minister, talk to God. Wait a few days before you do something that nobody can undo.”
Tyronne had started to say something non-offensive, but Rita spoke before he did.
“If you so worried bout giving the living a chance why don’t you go feed the hungry or shelter the homeless instead standin’ here tryin’ to tell me how to run my life. You want to be like Jesus, do some Christian work. Tryin’ to make people feel shame bout what they doin’ ain’t Christian. That’s cheeky. Now get out my fuckin’ way.”
That night Tyronne and Rita had smoked a joint together and Tyronne had slept with his arms around Rita. He had felt worse than she did.
The line was moving again.
“Two kids huh. You lucky. Wish I would’a had sense enough to stop when I had two.”
The line moved again. Jojo kept talking.
“It’s hard to feel like a man when you can’t put enough food on the table to feed yo family.”
Tyronne thought about the money on the table. Six hundred and fifty dollars sitting on the table. When Sammy-Sam told some off the wall story about working for it, Rita had gently questioned him.
“Samuel, …” Rita always called Sammy-Sam “Samuel” when she was serious about something, “… working for who?”
Tyronne remembered how he had stood on the periphery of the discussion, transfixed by the stack of money. They needed that money. Bad. But Tyronne knew where the money was coming from. Rita knew too. Rita wasn’t no dummy.
“Samuel, I want you to stop. This ain’t no good…”
“Mama, what I’m suppose to do, stand around while we starve.”
“Ain’t nobody starving.”
At that moment Sammy-Sam had wanted to cry, Rita successfully fought off the temptation to get sentimentally teary-eyed, and Tyronne had wanted not to cry.
Tyronne had not been able to think of anything to say. Everybody had been trying not to say “drugs.”
“Mama, I ain’t stupid. I know what you thinking. You thinkin’ I’m dealin’ But I ain’t dealin’. I ain’t usin’. All I do to make my money is ride around the block on my bike when I see the cops comin’. S…” Sammy-Sam stopped abruptly, catching himself before he revealed his employer’s identity. “I gets $25 dollars a day just to ride my bike when I see the cops coming. Mama, I ain’t doin’ no drugs. I ain’t dealin’ no drugs. I ain’t stupid.”
“Baby, I don’t think you stupid. I just don’t think it’s safe for you. I want to see you grow up to be a grown man. I want you to live a long time. I don’t want you in no jail. I don’t want you dead ‘fo yo time.”
The object of the discussion, the six hundred fifty dollars had sat mutely on the table while mother and son tried to resolve their differences.
Finally, Sammy-Sam had blurted out, “Mama, the money fo’ you” and had rushed out the house. His body had been visibly shaking from the super heavy effort he was making to fight back the tears. He had had to blink real fast a couple of times, but he hadn’t cried.
“Thank you, Samuel,” was all Rita had had time to get out as her son had hurried away from the painful scrutiny of her gaze. She had softly said “thank you” because she could see Sammy-Sam had wanted her love and admiration. She had seen it in his eyes. But when she had looked back down to the money, she really wasn’t thankful. She was sad.
Less than a hour later, Tyronne and Rita was arguing about that money.
“I say we should make him stop.”
“Why cause he making money and you ain’t?”
That was the end of the argument.
At that point Tyronne had briskly walked out the bedroom.
Rita immediately had followed him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“You said it, you ain’t got to take it back.”
“Tee.”
“Rita, I don’t know what to do. That’s yo boy. He come in this house and put mo money on that table than I done put on that table in two months. All I know is we need the money and if he get caught up in that dope shit he gon die. But if I say he gotta stop you gon think it’s cause I’m thinkin’ Sammy mo man than me. I want the boy to live. I wanted the baby to live. You aborted the baby. Nah you letting Sammy kill hisself. Or something. I don’t know. What I know? I’m just a security guard with nothing to guard.”
Rita had then walked back into the bedroom and shortly returned with the six hundred fifty dollars. Tyronne was sitting stiffly in his easy chair. With the solemnity of a true believer making a difficult sacrifice, Rita had placed the money in Tyronne’s lap.
“You decide what to do with the money. Whatever you decide, I’ll go ‘long with that. You decide what to tell Sammy. Whatever you decide, I’ll go ‘long. I can’t deal with this shit no mo. My head hurt. I dealt with the abortion. You deal with this. What difference do it make. We all gon die anyway.”
Looking into Rita’s clear brown eyes, which were without even a hint of tears, Tyronne had both wanted to cry and not cry. Although a faintly perceptible tremble remained in her voice, Rita’s hand was steady as a rock.
Just like when he had been pinned down by the corpses of his two fellow squad members, Tyronne had sat there weighted down by the money in his lap, silently accepting the burden he was forced to bear.
After Tyronne forced his eyes to focus on the money, and after he looked up at Rita retreating into the bedroom, and after Tyronne just stared blankly into space for a few minutes, he gingerly touched the money. Then he gripped the stack of bills decisively and actually picked up the money and held it in his hands. When he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he counted it. Tyronne would never forget the feel of that money, the crumpled texture of those two fifties and a bunch of twenties and one ten. Six hundred and fifty dollars.
Tyronne had never thought he would be in a situation where he would have six hundred fifty dollars in his hand and not know what to do with it.
The line moved again.
“Hey, brer ain’t much left, you look like you need a shot.”
Jojo could have told Tyronne he was crying but Jojo felt a man ain’t suppose to cry so you don’t be telling a man he crying, you just give him a drink and help him deal with it.
When the tears had started, Tyronne had been thinking about when he was trying to talk to Sammy-Sam. He didn’t hardly know the boy. The boy was going on fourteen and he had only knowed him three years.
It was funny, Tyronne remembered thinking, he had known Rita and Sammy the same number of years but he knew Rita and he didn’t know Sammy. He could talk to Rita, he couldn’t say anything, not one word, to Sammy.
“Sammy…” Tyronne started to say “I want you to stop working for Snowflake,” but where did Tyronne get off telling Sammy what to do? Besides, Rita had already said that, and what good would it do to repeat it. If Sammy won’t listen to Rita, why should he listen to me, Tyronne had concluded as that phrase repeated itself, over and over inside Tyronne’s head: “Why should he listen to me?”
Why should a young kid like Sammy-Sam listen to a middle aged, unemployed, public high school educated, Black man whose only real expertise was in using a gun and protecting property?
Unlike a lot of men his age whom he knew, Tyronne’s burden was that he had no illusions about himself, he knew he wasn’t shit. That’s just the way it was. He didn’t amount to nothin’. Well really the other men like him knew it too, deep down they all knew it, they just didn’t think about it, wouldn’t allow themselves to think about being nothing.
But how could you not think about your own smallness when a child who was ready to be a man stood in front of you waiting for you to show him how to be a man?
Tyronne had never really talked to Sammy-Sam about anything important, had never given him advice, had never even known how to approach Sammy-Sam. He couldn’t call him “son.” Well, he wanted to but he just couldn’t get it out.
Not only didn’t Tyronne feel like Sammy was his son, worse yet Tyronne didn’t feel like he really could ever be a father. Caught in the vertiginous swirl of his own deepest feelings of impotence, Tyronne had felt ashamed of himself.
Tyronne felt so little at that moment. He hadn’t wanted to feel little, but he had been unable to think of anything to make himself bigger.
Tyronne had started to say “son,” and it would have been sincerely said if he had been able to utter it. That simple word, spoken by Tyronne and received by Sammy-Sam, would have enabled Tyronne to carry the weight of all his own developing years long ago when Tyronne had been a mother’s child but never a father’s son.
Tyronne had not been afraid to say “son,” rather he had been afraid to say it and not be able to live up to being Sammy-Sam’s father, and if the full truth be known, Tyronne was afraid he could not be the kind of father for Sammy-Sam he had always wanted for himself.
Sammy-Sam, a man to be, sensing the weight of the moment, had waited with a palpable anxiousness as Tyronne struggled to be a father. Oh that had been such a lonely moment for Tyronne when he realized not only was he lost in the wilderness, but, indeed he could not reach out and help this boy who was just beginning his own journey through this America which was, for men like Tyronne and millions of others, literally “no man’s” land.
“God,” Tyronne had though to himself, “this is not fair. Life is not fair.”
Looking the future full in the face, Tyronne had no idea what to say, where to go, what to do. Nobody had ever shown him.
After a minute had passed, the opportunity was gone. What had been but a thin wisp of anxiousness keeping them apart now calcified into a heavy veil of male inadequacy that separated them beyond not only reach, but also beyond hope. The veil was so weighty, that even though both Tyronne and Sammy wanted to lift it, neither separately nor together, could they find the handle to lift the veil.
Tyronne’s mouth opened but no words came out. Sammy-Sam listened intently, he was alert to Tyronne’s body language, to the thick emotions shimmering in a blue aura around Tyronne’s chest, Sammy-Sam had actually seen a faint blue color all around Tyronne’s body. But there were no words.
Tyronne had not been able to say anything. His eyes pleaded for understanding. Sammy-Sam saw that and waited. But no words had come forth. The more nothing Tyronne said, the worse Tyronne had felt.
Tyronne cursed himself. Tyronne was a man, he should have been able to say something. He had wanted to say something even if it wasn’t “son” like he wanted to be able to say. There should have been something, but there had been nothing he could say. Nothing. He couldn’t.
As premature as it was, at that moment, by default, another young manchild had become a man without ever being a father’s son.
The moment of manhood came when Sammy-Sam closed the door behind him, forever stepping out of the shelter of being anyone’s son to be reared.
The moment was almost imperceptible. Sammy-Sam leaned back slightly, lifted his head slightly, squinted his eyes slightly, and without the barest flicker of regret, slightly raised his shoulders. From that point on, Sammy-Sam was sure he no longer needed anyone to tell him what to do with his life.
If Rita or any other female had been looking, they might have missed the meaning of the moment. The two men had been facing each other for only 132 seconds, a little over two minutes, but when they had started staring at each other it had been a man and a boy, now as their eyes unlocked, deformed as it was, Sammy-Sam’s passage was complete, and Tyronne and Sammy-Sam separated one man from another, no longer man and boy, and never ever father and son.
Tyronne had thought to himself, “I can’t tell him what to do.”
Sammy-Sam had thought to himself, “he can’t say a thing to me.”
After their thoughts had been completed, they shared one final look at each other across the abyss.
Finally, as Sammy-Sam slipped further and further away from him, the only sharing Tyronne could think to do was to reveal his nakedness to Sammy-Sam.
“Sammy, man, I don’t know what to say. Me and yo mama we scared for you. We know you smart and all, but I don’t know, I just kind’a want to tell you to be careful. Be real careful. You messin’ with people what don’t care bout people. What don’t act like people. You messin with killers.”
“I know. I know. I know what I’m doing. I ain’t stupid.”
The “I ain’t stupid” reply hurled back across the divide was like a condemnation. Sammy-Sam had always known he was dealing with killers, hence he had been unable to understand why Tyronne had even so much as thought Sammy didn’t know that, why Tyronne had even felt it necessary to say that.
The echo of Sammy-Sam’s last three words sealed any further conversation. It had hurt Tyronne not to be able to say anything else, but what could he have done? His good intentions lay shattered at his feet. Finally, as a last resort, Tyronne physically reached out his hand to Sammy, like to shake or something. Tyronne sort of felt like hugging Sammy-Sam but that was too much, so Tyronne had just reached out his hand.
Sammy-Sam briefly shook Tyronne’s hand.
It had been an awkward moment when their hands had touched. Although it had been brief, the moment of touching ached with embarrassment.
As their hands dropped apart from each other, Sammy-Sam looked quickly away.
“I’ma be all right.” Then Sammy-Sam walked out the house.
Tyronne stood for three solid minutes and when he did turn around he saw Rita standing in the bedroom doorway looking at him. He had started to go to her. But he did not. He had simply walked out the house without saying a word.
Tyronne had stood on the porch.
Tyronne had walked off the porch.
Tyronne had stood on the sidewalk.
Sammy-Sam had gone out the back door.
Tyronne had gone out the front door.
Rita had stayed inside with Gloria.
Tyronne was remembering all of that and was not aware of the tears that flowed as he stood on the sidewalk in the commodities line transfixed by the awful pain he had felt when he had stood on the sidewalk after confronting Sammy-Sam.
At first vaguely, and then with growing clarity, Tyronne recognized the bottle, with the brownish liquid at the bottom of it, that was being held a few inches in front of his nose. Tyronne now knew the reason he could not see clearly was because he was crying, without saying a single word, Tyronne received the bottle and drank the liquor in two quick gulps.
The second gulp of Jojo’s liquor was longer than the first.
A dude Tyronne used to know drove pass the commodities line while Tyronne was drinking. The man didn’t know Jojo. Didn’t know it was Jojo’s bottle. Didn’t know Tyronne was crying. All he knew was it was so sad to see his old high school buddy, T. C. Johnston, standing in the handout line drinking liquor before twelve in the daytime.
Tyronne’s friend witnessed Tyronne’s falling but he didn’t know Tyronne’s wrestling.
That was the first time Tyronne had cried.
***
Death stinks.
Tyronne stood up over the body of Sammy-Sam. Tyronne heard the siren growing closer. He pulled the unused cigarette from his lips and pushed it deep into his right jacket pocket. A slight nausea fouled his mouth; he wasn’t going to throw up, he could handle this, but this death was not like the death of somebody he hardly knew.
As he stood looking down, Tyronne realized, although it was true he hardly knew Sammy-Sam, the difference between this death and even many of his Nam buddies was Tyronne had really wanted to know Sammy-Sam, was supposed to know Sammy-Sam, indeed, actually needed to know Sammy-Sam because knowing Sammy-Sam and really being a father to Sammy-Sam would have salvaged a core element of Tyronne’s manhood.
In a moment of blinding and helpless honesty, Tyronne realized he was not crying just for Sammy-Sam, he was also crying for himself. All his life he had vowed he was going to be the father to his son, the father he himself had never had, and now, with Sammy-Sam’s death, the deadly circle had run its full course.
Tyronne cried because he knew not only was he never going to be any man’s son, he cried because he also realized his own opportunity to be a young man’s father lay dead at his feet.
Suddenly a painful revelation flashed through to Tyronne, suddenly Tyronne knew the full extent of how slavery had destroyed Black men.
“If we cannot be fathers and sons…,” Tyronne let the whispered thought trail off.
It was dark now. Except for the path carved out by his car’s front lights, there was not much Tyronne could see on the ground before him. The back of Sammy-Sam’s T-shirt, his tennis shoes, some blood on the grass. It was dark.
This time, unlike much earlier this ugly day while standing in the commodities hand-out line, this time no one saw this man’s tears.
—kalamu ya salaam