Identity- Lost Page 7
“You retired ’cause you was just too damn old!” the raspyvoiced old Southerner cackled. “In Kentucky, white folks put a horse out to pasture when he can’t run the race no more. Das what they did to you, all right. Put you out to pasture. Jus’ thank God they didn’t shoot you.”
“I’m not out to pasture, Walter. Not me. Got a lot of years left in these old bones, my friend.”
Walter struggled to lift a case of bananas from a wooden pallet in the aisle. “Well, the good Lord dun give you a strong body. Not like ol’ Walter here. This roomatiz I got just ‘bout killin’ me today.”
As James remembered the conversation of the two old men, a group of four boys entered the store through the front door. A tall, muscular fifteen-year-old James knew from his Bronzeville neighborhood led the gang. The leader’s street name was “Ice Pick” although most just knew him as “Pick.” Always carrying a very thin, six-inch switchblade knife tucked in the front of his pants, James had often heard the story of how Pick had gotten the nick-name because once, during a gang fight, he had stuck his knife in another kid so many times it looked as if he were chopping a block of ice. Everyone James knew feared Pick and his gang.
James wasn’t sure if Manny saw them come in since he was chattering away with Walter once again back in the produce section on the opposite side of the store. James watched from a distance as the young thugs went down the candy and snacks aisle. James followed behind them, staying out of sight. The gang grabbed chewing gum from the shelves, along with bags of chips and pretzels, stuffing them in their pockets and under their shirts.
At the end of the aisle, Pick stopped by the meat cooler. He grabbed a steak and tucked it inside his pants. Then he turned suddenly and his eyes met James’s. James froze as Pick’s cold glare gripped the delivery boy in fear. James thought of running, but his feet didn’t seem to want to respond, like the way he felt during a bad dream when you wanted to run but your legs just didn’t move. Not sure what to do, he turned to leave the aisle.
Manny Fleischman stood behind him, startling him. “What is it, son? You feel okay?”
Stuttering, James answered. “Yup … I’m o … kay.”
“Well, you sure don’t look too good. Maybe it’s something you ate. You want—”
Manny stopped midsentence and looked past James’s shoulder. James turned to see what Manny saw. One of the boys who had come in with Pick, wearing a patch over his eye, grabbed a steak, stuffed it in his pants, and began to walk away. James turned back to see what Manny’s reaction would be. The old man’s brow furrowed then he sprang past James, running down the aisle, shouting at the one-eyed boy. “Hey, put that back!”
As James stood there, Pick appeared at the opposite end of the aisle. He raised his right index finger and pressed it to his lips. Then he took that same finger, placed it under his left ear, and dragged it left-to-right along his throat, never taking his gaze off James, standing motionless.
Pick’s clear threat sent a shuddering wave of fear through James as the gangbanger ran out of the store.
THE NEXT MORNING
10:00 A.M.
“I’m going to go out now, Momma,” James shouted as he left their basement-level apartment.
“If you go travlin’, you be careful. Watch out for them older boys in the park. You hear?”
His mother’s caution warning made him remember Pick’s threatening gesture from yesterday. There wasn’t a day James went to the park or work that he didn’t look over his shoulder. That was the normal way of life in his neighborhood. Today would be different, though, he told himself. You see Pick, you run.
James’s methodical travlin’ routine consisted of the same exact steps every trip. He left through the only entrance to their home: a heavy, wooden door equipped with three locks. The window on the top one-third of the door was laced with a protective layer of twisted, wrought iron metal. This doorway led to an enclosed area under the building’s back porch. Once there he’d grab his Ted Williams, which he meticulously secured each night by locking it with padlock and chain to the six inch by six inch wooden beams that supported the porch. Depending upon the day’s weather or upon the whim of his mood, he took his bike and rode to Burnham; or, he left it, and went by foot. Today, he decided to walk.
When James went travlin’ during the summer, he frequently stopped and knocked on the door of his best friend, Clayton Thomas. Clayton lived just a block from Robinson Academy on the first floor of the fourteen-story Olander projects, a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise engulfing an entire block. Clayton hadn’t been answering James’s knocks at his apartment door for nearly three days. James always presumed Clayton to be there because he knew Clayton’s momma, to protect him from gangs, usually only allowed her son out of their apartment for school. Now that they were on summer break, it meant Clayton should be home.
Getting no answer at Clayton’s house once again, James decided to go alone to the lakefront. His route took him north from Clayton’s apartment through an alley where he headed east until the passageway dead-ended at the Illinois Central railroad tracks. There, he followed a narrow footpath along the west bank of the tracks, heading south until he reached the long, pedestrian overpass that extended over Lake Shore Drive at 43rd Street. At that point a very short distance separated him from the lakefront.
James jogged across the hundred foot or so steel and concrete aerial expanse, then down the sturdy metal steps on the other side of the footbridge and into the park. He had his baseball bat with him today, the one given to him by his hero, former White Sox star Dick Allen. As a second job, James’s father, Earl, worked as a part-time clubhouse security man for Chicago’s South Side major league baseball team. He had promised his youngest boy that if he finished the seventh grade with no C’s on his report card, he would take him to meet the team’s famous slugger. When he did, Allen surprised him with the enormous memento.
As soon as James entered the park, he saw Pick and his gang running toward him. Run now. Run as fast as you can. But it was too late to flee. The gang was at his feet as soon as he put his first foot on the ground, coming off the steps. James stopped dead in his tracks.
“Little nigger, gimme some money for comin’ in my park,” Pick demanded.
“Ain’t got no money,” stammered James.
“You’re nothin’ but a little nigger squealer. Aren’t you?” Pick accused James as he poked him in the chest with a bony index finger. “You snitched on us to that nosy old man you work with at that store. Didn’t you?”
James didn’t speak, knowing Pick wouldn’t believe anything he had to say.
“So you ain’t got no money. Maybe I’ll just take that bat of yours then.”
James had carried the Dick Allen Louisville slugger with him hoping he’d see his friend Clayton in the park and that, if he did, they might be able to hit fly balls to each other there. Clayton had the glove and ball, James the bat.
Pick snatched the bat from him and tossed it to an even taller boy. “Hang on to my new bat for me, Tyrone.”
“That’s my Dick Allen Louisville,” James pleaded.
“Dat thang too big for your little Pygmy black ass anyhow,” Tyrone laughed, hopping into an impromptu batting stance and swinging away a few times.
Pick shoved James to the ground. As he laid there, a member of Pick’s gang, the one with the patch over his eye, came over and kicked James in his ribs, and said, “We’re gonna throw your sorry little nigger ass in the fuckin’ lake.”
Before he could get up off the ground, another member of Pick’s notorious crew grabbed one of the park’s wire mesh trashcans. With one swift motion, he turned it upside-down, emptying its contents over the fallen James.
“That’s it, Bobby D!” Pick shouted. “Perfect!”
“Now we got your little black ass!” Bobby D yelled to James through the can’s metal screen. “That’ll teach you to squeal on us.”
Caught like a caged animal in the steel container, James could not s
tand since the basket only stood about four feet high. He crouched like a catcher behind home plate, fingers laced through the basket’s mesh. Discarded trash lay strewn over and around him. The boys outside circled the can and ridiculed their terrified captive. James tried to push the basket off of him, almost succeeding, but another boy jumped on the top of the basket.
“That’s it, Jumbo. Hold him down tight. Don’t let that little nigger squealer get out,” Pick cried.
Wham!
Tyrone smashed the side of basket with a powerful swing of James’s bat, just missing his fingers.
Tyrone passed the bat to the boy with the patch.
Wham!
James pulled his hands from the desperate grip he held on the basket and placed them over his ears to protect them from the piercing sound the bat made as it smashed against the surrounding metal. His captors laughed and hollered as James cringed inside his steel-walled jail.
“Lemme have a whack at it, Pokie!” Pick shouted, pulling the bat from the one-eyed boy.
WHAM!
The crushing sound sent tears flowing from James’s eyes. He contorted into a fetal position and whimpered as the boys passed the bat to each other, taking turns pummeling the basket with James underneath. Then they started spitting on him through the wire mesh, landing globs of slimy mucus on his head and back. He cried for them to stop but with each plea, they laughed louder, whooping and hollering, continuing their relentless barrage.
“I got something you’ll really like!” Pick said. With those words, he backed his ass to the wire and farted as close as he could toward James’s face. The other boys squealed with laughter at their leader’s crude action. Another pushed his own ass against the wire. Then they all took turns, passing gas into James’s face as he cried louder and louder for them to stop.
“I’m gonna piss on him!” Bobby D shouted as he began to unzip his jeans.
James looked up and begged them to stop. When he did, he noticed Clayton Thomas, standing about ten feet behind the others. Shocked to see his best friend, James’s heart leapt with hope of rescue.
“Clayton!” James shouted. “Clayton! Get me outta here. Make ’em stop.”
But his friend did not reply. “Can’t he hear me?” James wondered aloud as Pick’s gang continued to taunt him.
Pick knelt down next to the basket and pushed his face inches from the wire mesh. “Clayton no help to you any more, Pygmy. He’s a Ranger now!”
James didn’t believe Pick’s words. Clayton would never join Pick’s gang. Never. Yet James watched in disbelief as Clayton made no effort to help him or attempt to stop the gangbangers from continuing to beat on the basket with the bat.
“Leave him alone! Leave him alone!” a voice called out.
Peeking between his fingers as his hands covered his face, James’s heart leapt when he recognized Manny Fleischman’s red Huffy bicycle racing toward the group.
“I’m calling the police! Leave him alone I say!” Manny yelled.
Startled, the gang looked up at the old man, who flailed away with a small brown club in his hand raised high above his head, riding swiftly toward them. The man’s wild and reckless approach caused them to scatter in every direction, like startled rabbits. Manny stopped and jumped off his bike as it crashed to the ground. The old man ran to the upside down basket and began to lift it.
Still terrified that Pick and his boys might still be out there, James closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his head. “No! Stop! No more. Please stop!”
“James. It’s me. It’s Manny, son.” Manny picked up the basket and tossed it aside, kneeling next to the frightened boy. “It’s okay. It’s all right now. They’re gone. They ran away.”
James pulled his head up slowly, afraid to look. Manny stretched out one arm and James fell against the old man’s chest. Shivering, he clung to Manny, wiping his tears on the old man’s jumpsuit sleeve.
“Those are the same boys who came into the store yesterday, aren’t they?”
James didn’t answer.
“Now I wish I had caught them.” He pulled a crisp handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to James. “I’m calling the police.”
James tugged at Manny’s sleeve. “No! Please don’t, Mister Fleischman. Please don’t. It’ll be worse if you do.” He stood up and brushed himself off, straightening his disheveled clothes. “I’m okay. Honest.” He handed Manny’s kerchief back to him.
“But, James, we can’t let this happen—”
“Mister Fleischman. Please. You can’t tell anyone what happened. Please!” James held back the tears, refusing to cry anymore. “All that matters right now is that they’re gone.”
But James wasn’t telling Manny the truth. What really mattered most to James was figuring out why his best friend, Clayton Thomas, didn’t help him. Was it true what Pick said? Was Clayton now running with Pick’s gang, the Oakwood Rangers?
“Thank you for saving me.”
The old man placed a firm hand on James’s shoulder. “That’s all right, James. I know you’d do the same for me.”
CHAPTER 9
ONE WEEK LATER
At precisely 9:45 a.m., regimented by a finely tuned Swiss watch given to him as a memento for his retirement almost a dozen years before, Manny Fleischman started out on his daily bicycle ride. From his apartment on Martin Luther King Drive, he headed east toward the 31st Street entrance of Chicago’s Burnham Park about four blocks away. Once there, Fleischman wheeled his Huffy down the park’s almost half-century-old asphalt paths that paralleled the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Dressed in his blue jumpsuit and a post-World War I-era baseball cap, Fleischman’s one-hundred-and-forty pound, eighty-five-year-old, still-toned body reflected a long-lived, healthy lifestyle. Undaunted by the lakefront’s stifling midsummer air, he rode south with one purpose. His mind drifted as he passed the location where he had rescued James from the attack last week. The attack traumatized the boy so much that it was several days before he had begun speaking again at work.
“What’s wit James?” Walter had asked Manny the day after the attack. “He ain’t actin’ hisself.”
Manny had shrugged off the produce clerk’s questions, pretending he didn’t know what James’s problem might be, though he knew James was still suffering from the pain and embarrassment of the vicious attack. By the third day after the incident, Manny had decided that getting James to talk about what happened was better than keeping it inside, festering in the boy’s mind.
“James,” Manny called to the boy as he walked back into the store after delivering some groceries to a customer, “you want to go on break with me?”
James shrugged and then nodded. The two headed into the small employee canteen behind the store’s deli.
“Would you like an orange pop?” Manny asked James. “I happen to have an extra one.”
James nodded again, still not speaking.
Manny passed the lukewarm can to him, then sat down and began eating an apple with some peanut butter. He held out the apple to James. “Would you like some?”
James shook his head as he sat down across the table.
“James, it wasn’t your fault what happened in the park. You know that, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Those boys are going to end up in some pretty serious trouble someday. They’re going to hurt someone real bad and then they’ll get their just punishment. Cream like you, James, good boys, well, they float to the top. Crap like them sinks. You remember that.” Manny paused a moment, taking a swig of his drink. “I know you saw those boys stealing from the store last week. And I know you were afraid to turn them in. I understand. But you’ll come to see someday that it’s always better to tell the truth than to live a lie. I know this, son, because one time, long, long ago, I was in the very same situation, a very serious situation. I knew something wrong was going to happen and it did happen, and I didn’t say a word to anyone. I never spoke about it. And, you know what,
I’ve regretted that decision every day of my life for the last fifty some years.”
James looked as though he didn’t comprehend what Manny was trying to tell him. So the old man went on to share with him the secret he had held for over fifty years, never having told it to anyone, not even his wife or daughter. When he was done, James stared at him, still looking bewildered. Manny wondered if he had gotten through to the boy, hoping that by clearing his conscience after five decades of silence he had made an impression on his young mind. Then James finally spoke.
“My best friend Clayton, he was there when Pick and those other boys jumped me. He’s in their gang now.” He paused a beat. “Mister Fleischman, I talked to Clayton. He told me them boys are plannin’ on getting’ you back for helping me.”
As Manny rode his bike to work through Burnham Park, he ran over and over in his mind that conversation with James a few days ago in the store canteen. Manny had chosen not to focus on James’s warning but rather on helping the boy deal with not only the pain and humiliation of the beating, but having his best friend desert him when he needed him most.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, two boys jumped in front of Manny’s bicycle, surprising him, grabbing his handlebars and abruptly stopping his progress. At the same time, leaping at him from behind, two more boys pounced upon him and took hold of the rear of his cherry red Huffy. One of these four boys wore a patch over his eye; Manny recognized him as the kid who stole the package of meat from the store. Then, a very tall, gangly boy leapt out from behind a row of bushes. He held an enormous baseball bat perched on his scrawny shoulder. A last boy then sauntered out from behind the bushes. Tall, too, but not as tall as the first, this boy’s pronounced swagger sent a clear signal to Manny he was the ragtag bunch’s leader.
This has got to be them—Pick and his Oakwood Rangers! While the four surrounded him, the giant pair approached the surprised prey, the boys’ backs to the glaring sun. Manny remained cautiously still, all six boys eerily silent.