Detroit Noir

Over the Belle Isle boundary by Lolita Hernandez

East Grand Boulevard

It was a hot sun and breezeless day. Solar rays pressed relentlessly against the fourth-floor nursing home window facing East Grand Boulevard. The home really had no recourse from the sun in its treeless section of what was called convalescent row only a spit north of Belle Isle. The rays penetrated the panes, boldly thrusting themselves far down the hall, some almost to the utility room. Some reached just to the nursing station, located midway on the floor, weaving over and under papers and medications on the countertop. Others lingered on the edge of the bare ceiling-almost-to-floor window where all of them had entered. Some settled by the exit door just by the window. But one wide and gentle ray curled around the corner of the first resident room, where it crept up on the bed of a sleeping fawn-colored old man and flopped across waiting for him to rouse.

As it waited, strands of it began wrapping around the old man’s toes and his fingers and caressing his lightly whiskered face. He whispered, Ooooh aahhh, and rubbed eyes crusty where the sands of sleep lodged; he hadn’t been bathed yet. He passed his hands up and down his cheeks and for no reason at all called out softly to his wife, the woman he called Mummy in life and in death, and she called him shuga-plum. She had been wife and mother to him and was good to their only child, a son who had become a world traveler; Lord in heaven knows where he is now. Mummy, you see how I come? Dog betta dan me.

But if Mummy were alive, not even she could have understood his stroke-slurred speech, further hampered by a tongue lightly purpled and slightly swollen from lack of use. The stroke took him quick and left him slumped and drooling in a pool of his own urine in the stairwell of the building he migrated to after his wife died. Tang God for the man who came by and found him.

Mummy would have said, Tang God, but that’s not what he thought through stroke-laced brain waves as the ambulance personnel arrived to carry him off. Oh Mummy, how could you leave me like this?

Then, as they strapped him on the stretcher, Oh Lorse, take me now, he silently pleaded with the heavens.

I comin, Mummy, as the ambulance rolled toward Henry Ford Hospital. I comin by you.

But he didn’t meet Mummy then. The medical staff kept him from her, tidied him up and released him to the nursing home, where he hasn’t spoken one single intelligible word to one living soul since, except for silent prayers to his Mummy, beseeching her to come for him. He spoke not an intelligible word to the rotating crew that fed him the nursing home pap through his feeding tube and changed his dydee after feeding, not to the head nurse who often came in to pinch his big toe for a sign of life. In response he would grunt words she couldn’t understand, What de ass you want in here now? To the Catholic priest who came weekly to pray with him, he moaned. But he communicated fluently to the motes that swirled around in his room on sunny days as he mumbled messages for them to carry to Mummy.

More awake now, he blinked; the sun was so bright. Wait, nuh, where am I? Is as if, wait, nuh; where de hell am I? he asked a cluster of dust that settled on the back of the wide sunray; then he slipped into a dream of pelau on a Sunday beach and the crab he would catch between platefuls of the rice dish. He was seeing himself in this dream, nice and slim and handsome, catching the eye of a young Mummy rushing out to meet the waves at Mácuri Beach, between his legs getting hot as he chased after her, and just then a crab came from nowhere and bit his toe.

— What are you smiling at old man? It was the nurse pinching his toe. He cheups. Why de ass she can’t leave me alone?

She scanned the room as he eyed her through slits. Ah, chut, what she want now? Then he drifted off again to rejoin Mummy on the beach; she was dishing out the pelau and he was holding a bottle of peppa sauce waiting to dash it on the rice. It was he and Mummy for so long. She giving the peppa; he getting the sauce. And now he was on this bed in this shit-ass nursing home waiting to rejoin Mummy.

All of a sudden the dream shifted to the dusty yard of his boyhood home in Oronuevo Village. His brother Toli comes along with a flat stick whittled from the coconut tree in the front of their house, and running up to him is their friend Alfonso, bowling a ball he had fashioned from a rock and some twine. Toli hits the ball but Winston, another friend from down the road, picks it up, pivots magnificently, and breaks the wicket. Well played, bhai! Alfonso yells out to Winston. Well played. Yuh finally break a wicket, bhai. The three of them, all early teenagers, smile big at the sexual innuendo and wave at the old man. Then Toli says, You’re up, brother, and the old man, who appears in his youth, is now batting. He is younger than Toli and taller; Toli is fairer; both are slim. Alfonso turns his back to the old man in the bed and begins running toward the young man, chest thrust forward, head high, ball in his right hand, left touching it, and almost leaps into the air to begin the hand-over-hand movements that add thrust to the bowl. Perfect, perfect. Yes, buddy, I can well remember those days as if dey were yesterday.

The Young Terrors of Oronuevo consisted of eleven regulars and a few alternates. Both he and Toli batted, they were usually in partnership. Toli was a better batsman. In truth, Toli was better than him all around in cricket. Winston Ramkeeson and Alfonso Luces from the other side of the junction practiced cricket with them in the front yard morning, noon, and night when school was out. They played at school during recess and after school. Alfonso was their star bowler, but they all switched up batting and bowling and playing the field. Winston was another all around player. At any one point, one of them might brag after a good play, Worrell ent have nuteeng on us, yuh know. Yes, cricket is a sunshine game and a hot sun day like today always reminded the old man of airborne bowlers, broken wickets, and dramatic overs.

Yes buddy, is a nice game, nuh, a nice game. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see dose boys again, Toli, Alfonso, and Winston. It was eleven of dem in all. Dey made deir own pitch right dere to practice in de yard and made the wicket from dat same coconut tree. Well, in de first place, since cricket is played with two persons at de same time against all eleven of de other team, Toli and me were de lead batsmen. So whoever was de bowler would bowl to us first. You hit de ball and according to de distance you hit de ball you can make one run or two runs, or three runs or four if it roll on de ground and hit one of de boundary. When Toli hit dat ball and it go over de boundary, dat’s a six. It’s a game you really have to understand but it is a real nice game.

He tried many times to explain the game to Detroit people, but they never understood.

Yes, buddy, three men, six wickets; three wickets on dis end and three on de other end no, two wickets and six stumps. Yes, dat’s it. And when de bowler hits de wicket dat man is out and he hits de ball and it goes up in de air and it didn’t go far enough and one of the fielders pitching dat man is out, and if he hit de ball and don’t, ah, if he hit de ball … What de hell am I talking about?

Just then his eyes flew open, fully connecting him with buzzing activity in the hallway just outside of his room. While the sun played with the old man and he followed the shadows dancing across his memory, the nursing staff bustled up and down the hall, stepping over rays, walking right through them, completely oblivious as they cleaned every corner and reorganized this and that in anticipation of a surprise walk-through visit from the State Certification Board. Mainly, they wanted the joint to smell good, so bouquets of silk flowers sprayed with a potpourri scent appeared everywhere to brighten things up and help camouflage the urine odor that had sunk into the walls, under the paint, and behind the baseboards. Every staff member practiced sporting a wide smile while changing the loaded dydees of old and forgotten souls, vacant faces with drooling mouths. Staff cooed lovingly to them as if they were newborn darlings, deftly cleaned bottoms, switched stained or heavy dydees for fresh ones, and then made airplane noises to the darlings as encouragement to eat the colorless pap that would soon refill the dydees.

Not one hint of urine smell would escape from this home on this Sunday morning, certainly not on the fourth floor where staff prided itself on being the most efficient and most attentive team in the entire building. Staff squirted extra deodorizer in corners along the bed edges, in utility closets, and wherever used dydees congregated.

A young woman staffer, starched and pleasant with hair slicked into a neat little bun, entered the old man’s room, brushing past the section of the sunray that hugged the door frame. She quickly arrived at his side at the point the ray began its ascent to the bed. Whistling an elevator tune through bright red lips she stepped directly on it, startling the old man. He squinted up at her. She smiled cheerily at him.

— Good morning, sweetie.

It was the last day of her first week of employment there, and her first solo dydee change. But with eight brothers and sisters under her, she had performed enough diaper changes to feel absolutely confident that she could handle this resident. In addition, she had received a day’s worth of training on the art of changing adults.

Still, she wondered if the coming weeks would find her searching for another job. The nursing home, where her mother had worked for years, was hopefully a temporary stop for her on the way to community college and later maybe university. She wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, someone successful, anyone but an aide in a nursing home where she was beginning to realize old people steal whatever years they can from young people. Look, in only one week, some of her had aged. She certainly felt it. How could she enjoy her youth looking at those old faces every day?

— Come on, sweetie, it’s time to clean you up. She patted him on his arm, while surveying the room to see what she would need for his sponge bath.

By this time, the old man’s reverie took him down East Grand Boulevard to Belle Isle. That’s where he and his wife spent many summer Sundays observing cricket matches with others from the small West Indian community in Detroit. Mummy would carefully wrap a cast iron pot full of pelau in an old dish towel, lovingly securing the four corners of the towel with a large safety pin. She would nest a couple of avocados in the corner of the picnic basket, along with peppa sauce, sweet cakes, and utensils. Others would bring fruits, rum and sugary drinks, ice, cookies, chips, and so on. One time someone brought a manual ice cream maker and everyone took turns churning. But always his loving wife would bring the pelau, her specialty, long-recognized as the best in the Detroit island community.

Ah, those were the days, when the cricket teams would come in from all over — Windsor, for sure, and as far as Chicago. Toledo and all had a team back then. All those brown bodies clad in white flannel and white shoes on the green field. They bowled and batted, broke wickets and often sent balls way over the boundary of the cricket field by the casino to shouts of, Well played, bhai, well played!

When the cricketers took a break for liquids and food, the fans gathered at the picnic tables clustered across a small path east of the field. The men dribbled peppa sauce on platefuls of pelau, drank the rum straight with lime, and rehashed the innings just played.

When fielders returned to the field, and batsmen and bowlers returned to the pitch, the fans retook their positions on the bleachers by the river side to cheer all of the players on without real team allegiance; after all, they were now all citizens of this island in this city. So, they shouted out appropriately to whichever team: Good running, or, Cool down, bhai, cool down. It’s a bowler’s game.

Well, maybe luck’s allowed, maybe, maybe. I’ll be able to go to Belle Isle one of dese days to see another game. Yeah, buddy. Yeah. Yuh run with de bat when one guy hit de ball, he’s going to run to try and score as many runs as he can. It depends on how hard yuh hit de ball; if yuh hit it real hard, it go over de boundary, dat’s a six. If yuh don’t reach to de end, dey run yuh out; dey call it runout. Some of dem bhais can’t make it. Dey try to make one run and sometimes dey don’t; dey don’t make it. Den dey want to make two runs and so on. And when one guy hit de ball and he don’t hit it hard enough and he hit it in front of one of de fielders and he have to run with de bat in he hand and he run, run, and what de hell, yes, buddy, run, run.

And he began groaning. — Whan go, whan go, whan go.

— What, sweetie?

Louder and louder. — Whan go, whan go, whan go.

Was he speaking some foreign language, fragments of a tribal vocabulary that had been suppressed over the years? And then the stroke problem? She turned to find the head nurse. She wanted to know where this man was from. Maybe she could figure out a way to understand him if she knew the language he was speaking.

She found her by the central station. — Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse, she called out. Ms. Nurse was preparing meds for distribution.

— That man doesn’t talk. I ain’t got time now to fool with his grunting; gotta pass out meds. Let me see, does he get anything now? Nope.

And Ms. Nurse shuffled to the room at the other end of the hallway to begin distributing medications.

— Whan go, whan go, whan go.

— I can’t understand you, sweetie. What do you want?

Back and forth they went, the old man and the young woman. A janitor on the way to take the exit stairs passed by the two. He listened to their exchange for a couple of minutes then interjected, — You’ll never understand what he’s saying. Then he opened the exit door and disappeared.

The young woman and the old man continued their frantic exchange. Realizing something was really bothering him and that he was trying to say something important, the young woman leaned over and addressed him face to face, almost exchanging breaths with him.

— I’m trying to understand. What do you want, sweetie? She put her hand on his shoulder.

He turned his face away from her and stared at the opposite wall. He was trying to call up a vision of him sick and then him doing much better. Him playing cricket in Oronuevo and him eating pelau at Belle Isle. For a moment he was perplexed. What was happening to him? He slipped into a deep stillness to ponder yet again the smell of freshly turned funeral soil, so far from where his navel string was buried.

Finally, she remembered that he was wheeled to the window every day after lunch. Who knows how that ritual began, but he sat in that same spot almost daily, beginning with the first winter he arrived and then spring and summer and fall and winter and again and again, once more, until he had marked a little over three years by the window. Through frost and snow and spring rains he watched out of it while he finished digesting his food. He followed the pedestrians heading to the liquor stores and other notable neighborhood destinations and absently glanced at cars crossing the Kercheval intersection on the way to perhaps Belle Isle? He contemplated navel strings and final resting places.

Maybe that’s what he wanted now? she thought.

— Do you want to go to the window, sweetie?

Gratefully, the old man looked up at her and nodded. Finally, she understood and smiled back at him.

Now how to get him there, since she couldn’t lift him by herself to put him in the wheelchair and everyone else was so busy. Conveniently, the one-ton white crane used to lift residents was already in a corner of the old man’s room, likely in readiness for his afternoon window appointment. Luckily, she had been trained to use it yesterday. So confidently she marched over to get it. With its boom pointed toward the floor she maneuvered the lift near the old man’s bed and removed the halter left dangling on the hook. He was almost smiling as she leaned over him to place his arms through the halter, pull a strap between his legs, fasten it in the back, and check the placement of the loops for the hook.

Then she stood back to look at him.

— You’re a mess, sweetie. At least let me wash your face. He nodded, a crooked little smile developing.

After she washed his face and combed his few strands of hair, she wheeled the chair by the bed and locked it into what she thought would be the perfect spot to receive the old man when she was ready to lower him.

She was almost ready with everything and then …

— Oh my God, sweetie. I bet your diaper needs changing. She rolled the wheelchair aside and unfastened the halter. His crooked little smile turned into a look of alarm.

— Don’t worry, sweetie, I know what I’m doing, and she began to change and wash him with the adroitness of an old pro.

He closed his eyes at the feel of the young hand covered by a warm washcloth wiping Mummy’s territory. There’s nothing there anymore, Mummy. It’s all gone.

With the halter and wheelchair back in place, she moved the crane into position parallel to the bed. All of this activity occurred over and around the sunray, now angled slightly off the bed. The young woman darted in and out of its range as she prepared the crane without paying any attention to the motes traveling up and down the ray and the intermittent sunshine that caused her to squint. At last she felt the sun’s warmth.

— Hey, sweetie, you’re going to have a warm day at the window. You may not even be able to stand it.

She placed a pillow on the wheelchair seat for comfort and rolled him on his side. Now she was ready. She turned the directional knob on the lever to move the boom up and pumped the lever until it reached a good level for hooking the halter. Then she slid the base of the crane under the bed and pumped again, gently lifting his once-hefty body, guiding it all the way. He was now almost facedown and moving his heavily wrinkled arms and thin legs as if he was winding up in the yard to bowl to Toli.

— Hold on, sweetie. Don’t move so much. I’m going to roll you over to the chair. We don’t have far to go; hang in. Oh, you know what I mean.

He nodded, his smile having returned.

As she positioned the old man over the wheelchair, she pulled his legs down and around to make sure his bottom hit first. She reached to change the directional knob so that she could now lower the boom when she pumped the lever. It was jammed. It wouldn’t move at all, not to pump up, not to pump down.

— Oh my God, what am I going to do? She looked up at the man, who was moving his arms left over right and right over left, his legs in running formation and said firmly, — Be still until I figure this thing out.

She was able to reach the emergency cord by his bed and pulled and pulled and pulled. But no one came to the room. The room had no phone because no one ever called the old man. She began yelling.

— Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse! Someone! Help!

No one came. All she heard were responses from other residents. — We’re here, they yelled out. One lady down the hall began screaming. The young staffer yelled back.

— Everything is fine; don’t worry.

So she patted the old man on his shoulder and said, — Okay, sweetie, don’t let them upset you. You’re going for a ride now. And she rolled the entire contraption, Sweetie and all, over to the doorway and looked up and down the hall. No one, not a soul was in sight. She yelled again, — Ms. Nurse, Ms. Nurse, someone!

No one.

The nursing station was midway in the hall. She thought to roll the crane to the station and use the phone to call for help, but the machine’s pivot wheel suddenly locked tight. She pushed her foot on the wheel lock, then lifted up on it, then kicked it. She kneeled down to jiggle it, but it wouldn’t loosen. So now the crane wouldn’t move out of the room or back into it.

— We’re stuck, sweetie. She smiled. He smiled too, and nodded, but thought to himself, Man must live.

She realized she had to chance it at this point. He wasn’t so high up in the air; things looked relatively stable if she could get him to keep absolutely still.

— Sweetie, I have to call for help. You have to be real good and be still. Don’t move your hands or feet. What are you doing anyway? You look like you’re pitching in a baseball game. Be still; I’m going to call for help.

He hung there, his brown body against the white crane, and watched the young staffer rush down the hall.

Well, maybe luck’s allowed today, maybe, maybe. I’ll be able to go to Belle Isle to see another game. Yeah, buddy, yeah. Yuh run with de bat when one guy hit de ball, he’s going to run to try and score as many runs as he can. It depends on how hard yuh hit de ball. If yuh hit it real hard, it go over de boundary, dat’s a six. Yuh score big, den. If yuh don’t reach to de end, dey run yuh out, dey call it runout; some of dem bhais can’t make it; dey try to make one run and sometimes dey don’t; dey don’t make it den dey want to make two runs and so on, and when one guy hit de ball and he don’t hit it hard enough and he hit it in front of one of de fielders and he have to run with de bat in he hand and he run, run, and what the hell. Yes buddy, run, run.

She ran to the telephone, and in the instant she turned her head to grab the receiver, knocking over a silk floral arrangement in the process, and hit the button for security, she heard a loud snapping noise. — Oh my God, and she whipped her head around, expecting to see the old man on the floor.

But the crane was completely upright in the doorway and the boom in the same position she had left it. Only he was gone, halter and all. She froze, not able to respond when security finally answered the phone.

She dashed over to the crane and passed her hand under where the old man should have been hanging. He really wasn’t there. — Sweetie, sweetie, where are you? She squeezed past it to enter his room and looked under the covers, under the bed, in the closet, in the restroom. She ran from room to room, like a mad woman; residents called out to her, each with his or her own need for food, water, diaper, conversation.

— Not now! she hollered back to them. Not now!

She pushed open the exit door. She ran down the stairs yelling, — Old man, old man! She ran from floor to floor, past the staff, looking into each bedroom and each utility closet. When she returned to the fourth floor, Ms. Nurse, the head of security and most of the floor’s staff were calmly standing by the lift, looking at her quizzically.

— The old man is gone, Ms. Nurse. He left.

— What are you talking about?

— He’s just gone.

The huddle of fourth-floor staff and a few from the other floors, along with the head of security, began prowling the halls, peering behind the nursing counter and into the other rooms searching for the old man. The head of security, a rather large beefy man, tried to push the lift into the room, and when it wouldn’t roll, he picked it up and moved it aside. Another staff went to the wheelchair and shook it. This unnerved Ms. Nurse who yelled out, — He ain’t there, fool!

Bewildered, the young woman stood in the middle of the hallway in front of the old man’s room. She began sobbing, long tears descending like a waterfall. Snot fell freely from her nose. She stared at the lift and at the wheelchair and at the bed and at the window in his room. It was then she remembered that the room had been sunny before; now it was gray. She looked up and down the hall and the whole place was gray. Didn’t she tell the old man as she was preparing him for the crane that he would have a real sunny day at the window?

She walked slowly to the hall window, put her knee on the ledge and peered up and down the boulevard.

— What the hell you looking for, girl? He damn sure ain’t out there.

To the astonishment of Ms. Nurse, the young woman, said, — Hush, and squeezed her eyes enough to be able to peer through the bright sun. She looked up and down trying to spot the old man. The sun was coming from the south, bright like a new beginning. Traffic was riding into it. But she saw nothing. No old man. She pushed her wet face against the window and stared openly into the sun.

— Old man, how could you do this to me in my first week? I didn’t want to stay here forever, but I need this job now. What have you done? They’ll fire me for sure. How did I lose you? Why did you do this to me? I was trying to help you.

But if she had heard the commotion south of the nursing home, just inside the island on the north side of the casino. If she had known the jubilation all of them there were experiencing as the last batsman hit the last ball in the last innings, over, over, over the boundary so far it couldn’t be recovered. All of the players stood with arms outstretched and knees slightly buckled, wonderment and joy on their faces; women and men fans clutched their hearts, clutched each other, and clutched their children as they watched the ball’s trajectory over the road, past the sun, over the river heading west and out of view. And then this tremendous release of clapping and crying and rummy shouts coming from the entire casino area, pitch and oval, picnic benches, across the road over to the riverside. Had she heard the chorus, loud as one voice:

— Well played, old bhai, well played, well played!

If she had heard all of that, she would have well understood.

The dead man’s boat by Peter Markus

Delray

Us brothers, we took us our mud and our fish-fishing poles baited with worms and rust and mud and we hopped up into the dead man’s boat, that boat that we found washed up on our dirty river’s dirty shores, and we headed ourselves upriver, up past the shipwrecked mill where our father used to go inside to work, it sitting dark and silenced and fireless there on the river’s muddy bank, up around the bend in the river, past the other string of mills farther north along the river, mills with fires still burning there inside them, up toward where the beaded lights of that big steel bridge stretching from our side of the river all the way over to the river’s other side, it was all lit up in the night like a constellation of sunken-ship stars, each star shining out in the nighttime’s dark like the shiny heads of nails hammered into some backyard telephone pole. We were chugging along, us brothers, with Brother sitting up in the bow, holding up a lantern’s light for us to better see the river by, and the brother that I am was kneeling in the back of the boat, what’s called the stern, with one hand on the outboard’s tiller, the other hand hanging itself over the edge of the boat, the fingers of that hand dragging themselves across the muddy skin of the river. We were on our way upriver, up to where the dirty river that runs through our dirty river town begins, it runs all the way up through the city, us brothers heading up there to see if we might catch us some of the big city’s big dirty river fish, when out of nowhere in the night and in the river’s muddy dark we heard, then saw, a boat, much bigger than ours, it was cutting across and down the river, it was heading right for us brothers. There’s a boat coming right for us, Brother turned his head and said, as he held up the lantern light with that fire glowing inside it so that his face flashed full like the moon. I looked up at Brother then. There was a look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. Do I look like a brother born blind? was what I said to Brother then, and I cut the tiller hard and to the right. But that boat, that other boat much bigger than ours, that boat with us brothers not sitting down inside it, it kept on coming toward us brothers, as if it didn’t see us brothers, as if us brothers weren’t even there. But it saw us, this boat, the people sitting there inside it: this, us brothers, we knew. When we moved it, our boat, it moved closer toward where it was we moved. And before we knew what to do next, because we knew we couldn’t outrun it, this boat, it was soon coming across our bow, it was doing what it could do to hit us, this boat, even though we didn’t, we couldn’t, know why. What did we, us brothers, do, to a boat like this boat? Us brothers, all we ever really did out on the river was fish. We didn’t know what we should do, other than what we ended up doing. Us brothers, the both of us brothers, we both jumped, headfirst, out of our boat, the dead man’s boat, the dead man who fell into the river pissing into the river for luck, we headed down into the river, and we swam ourselves down to get us away from this coming-after-us boat. When we stuck our boy heads up out of the river, to see if we were both of us still alive, to see where our boat was, to see where that other boat was, all us brothers could see was our boat drifting its way back and down the river, back to from where us brothers, ourselves, had just come from. That other boat, it seemed, had all but disappeared, and not even the sound of it could be heard by our ears. Our boat, the dead man’s boat, away from us brothers, it had drifted too far away from us brothers for us to be able to swim back to it for us to get back in it. So, us brothers, we swam ourselves toward the river’s muddy shore, we swam ourselves out of us brothers’ breath, and plopped ourselves down in the mud at the edge of the river. Yes, like a couple of out-of-water fish, us brothers, there in the mud, we sucked in at the air until the sky above us, it helped us brothers to begin breathing again. We stood up, in the mud, out of the mud, but we did not wipe the mud off us. Us brothers, we liked mud and the fishy river smells that always smelled of river and mud and fish. With mud in our eyes, us brothers, we turned to look one last time back downriver, to where our boat, the dead man’s boat, it had floated downriver and down around a bend in the river and almost out of sight, this boat with our fishing poles inside it, our buckets empty of fish. Us brothers, we didn’t know what we were going to do, or how we were going to get back home, now that we didn’t have us brothers a boat to take us back home in. So what us brothers did was, we figured it, in our boy heads, that it was too early in the night for us to head ourselves back home. We’d gone out, that night, out onto the river, out on the river in the dead man’s boat, to spend the dark night fishing. It was what us brothers did, at night, and in the morning, and sometimes, too, in the day: we fished. Our mother and our father both believed that we were brothers sound asleep in our beds when we stepped outside through our bedroom’s window and slipped, as we always did, down to the river. We had until the sun’s rise for us brothers to get us back home before our father would call out to us to wake us with the word, Son. When our father called out to us brothers, Son, we both knew, we were crossing that dirty river together. But us brothers, we didn’t want to go back home, to bed, in a room in a house with our mother and father asleep in it. Our house, with our mother and father in it, it was not the kind of a house that us brothers liked to go back to. The river, out fishing on the river, that was where us brothers liked to be. But now, us brothers, we didn’t have a boat to be out on the river in, we didn’t have us our fish-fishing poles for us to fish for our fish with, we didn’t have us our buckets of mud and rust and worms for us brothers to bait our hooks with. It was just us brothers now standing on the upriver banks of a river and a city that was not ours. Our mother and our father had often told us brothers that the city was not a place for us boys to be. Don’t ever go, was what our mother told us. But us brothers, we didn’t much like to listen to what our mother liked to tell us. Our mother, she was the kind of a mother who told us brothers not to walk through mud, a mother who told us to wash our hands before we ate, our hands that always smelled of fish, our hands with mud dried hard in our palms. We liked mud and we liked it the way the fish’s silver scales stuck to our hands. These were fish that we fished out of the dirty river that runs its way through this dirty river town, fish that we took back home with us and we gutted the guts out of those fish, we cut off the heads of those fish, and then we hammered them, those fish, those fish heads, into the backyard telephone pole out back in the back of our yard. In the end, there was exactly a hundred and fifty fish heads, hammered and nailed into that pole’s creosoted wood. Each fish, each fish head, us brothers, we gave each one a name. Not one was called Jimmy or John. Jimmy and John was mine and my brother’s name. We called each other Brother. Brother, Brother said to me then. What do you want to do? Brother was the brother of us brothers who always liked to ask these kinds of questions. To Brother, I did not know what then to say. Us brothers, we stood there like that on the dirty river’s dirty banks, and we looked around this place that us brothers, we’d been told, this was not the kind of a place for us brothers to be. But this place, this city with this dirty river running through it, it didn’t look much different than the town that was ours with its dirty river running through it and with its dirty river mill built up along its dirty river banks, its smokestacks that stained the sky the color of rust and mud. We liked a sky that was stained the color of rust and mud. Our mother once let it be known to us brothers that there was a sky, there was a sky, our mother told us, bigger than the sky above the river that was ours. Us brothers, we couldn’t picture this, a sky bigger than the sky that was our backyard. We couldn’t picture a town without a dirty river running through it where us brothers could run down to it to fish. This is our river, was what we said to our mother then, and this was what I said to Brother too. This is our river, I said, then. There’s no place else for us to be. We stood there, like this, for a while, like this, just standing there along the edge of the river. The moon in the sky had not yet begun to rise. The sky, it was mostly dark. Behind us, away from the river, most of the houses sitting side by side in the dark, these houses did not have lights lighting them up from inside them. We stood there, on the edge of this river, but us brothers, we couldn’t fish. We reached down into the mud and found us some stones and we threw them out and into the river. Sometimes the stones skipped. Sometimes, in the dark, the stones made a sound like a fish leaping up out of the water. Us brothers, we knew more about fish than most people know about fish. Us brothers know that when a fish jumps up out of the water, what that means is that that fish, it isn’t a fish for us brothers to fish for and catch: not with our fishing hooks baited thick with mud and sunk down to the river’s bottom. Us brothers, we didn’t know how to fish for fish that were fish that jumped up as if to bite the sky. It’s true, sometimes us brothers, we could walk out into the river and reach with our hands down into the river and fish us up some fish with our bare boy hands. It’s true, too, that we could sometimes dunk our buckets into the river and like this we’d fill them up with a mix of fish and mud. But it was not one of those kinds of nights for us brothers. We didn’t have us our buckets or our poles or a boat for us to fish from. And our hands hanging down by our legs, they were all four of them balled up into fists. Let’s go for a walk, was what I said to Brother then, and we both of us turned and started walking in from the river, up past houses that did not look like anyone was living inside them. There were no lights lit up and burning on the insides of these houses, there were no streetlights lighting up the streets outside. But us brothers, we had us eyes like the marbly eyes of fish, eyes that, like moons, could see in the river at night. And so, us brothers, into this dark, we walked. We walked and we walked, it didn’t matter where, until the mud on our boots had all of the way been walked off. That’s how us brothers liked to wash the mud from off the bottoms of our boots. We didn’t like it when our mother made us wash the mud off with a brush held in our hands. So we walked, and we walked, but we didn’t see a face that looked like the faces that were ours. It was as if we had walked into a dead town, or maybe it was just a town that was early-to-bed asleep. Even the stars in the sky above this dead town seemed not to be shining. But still, us brothers, we walked. We did not talk. We just listened to the voice that was us brothers inside the each of our boy heads. In this town, even the cars that we saw, here on our walk, all of them seemed to be made out of rust. What us brothers needed was a couple of fishing poles for us to do some fishing with. Even though the fish were jumping, this night, maybe us brothers could get those fish to go back down to the river’s muddy bottom. So we went looking around town for two poles for us to fish with. There was a store with a sign above the door that said on it, Delray’s Live Bait, but the door, when we pulled on it to get it to open, it did not open up. There were other buildings with the same two words on it, Delray, Delray, some of them, these words, spray-painted on pieces of wood nailed into brick, DEL RAY, DEL RAY, but these doors, too, to these other buildings, they wouldn’t open up for us either. So what us brothers did then was, we turned back around and we decided in our heads to head ourselves back downriver. If we started walking along the road that runs its way along the banks of the river, we’d get home before the night began its turning into day. We were walking back this way, back downriver, back toward where we lived in a house with a mother and father inside it, when Brother turned and said that he was tired of all this walking. Would you rather swim back home? was what I said to Brother. Brother said what we both knew, it was too cold for us to be all the way back home in the river swimming. What we need, Brother said, is another boat. I looked at Brother. I nodded with my head at what Brother said. Brother was right. Us brothers, we did need us a boat. It didn’t have to be a fancy boat. The dead man’s boat, it wasn’t a fancy boat. It was a boat that floats is all that it was, a boat that we found washed up on the river’s dirty river banks one day when the man that it once belonged to had fallen and drowned when he pissed into the river for luck. What other kind of a boat did brothers like us need? So we started looking with our eyes into the backyards of these unlit houses to see if we could find us a boat to get back on the river. But in the backyards of these houses, houses not far from the banks of the river that runs itself down and through our dirty river town, there were cars rusting in the backyards of these houses — cars with no wheels and cars with the windows in them busted out and cars with weeds as tall as us brothers growing up on all sides so that the cars were hard for us brothers to see. But boats: there were no boats to be seen in these backyards for us brothers to see, no boats for us brothers to get back out on the river, to take us brothers back home. Us brothers, we were standing out on the corner of Jefferson, that road that runs along the river, all the way from the big dirty city back to our dirty river town, when out of the dark, us brothers, we could see the shadow of a man coming on toward us. This man, this shadow, who here in the near river dark did not seem to have a face that us brothers could see, he walked right up to us brothers, as if he knew us, and asked us what were we looking for. Who says we’re looking for something, was what Brother’s mouth opened itself up to say. When Brother said this to this shadow of a man, this man without a face, I shot Brother this look. There was this look that us brothers sometimes liked to look at each other with. It was the kind of a look that actually hurt the eyes of the brother who was doing the looking. Imagine that look. When this man didn’t say anything to this, I stepped in front of Brother and said that it’s true, we were looking for something. A boat, was what I said into this man’s shadowy face. This man, when I said this to his face, the look on his face seemed to lighten. It was like a light winked on when I said the word boat. Then he turned his face away from us brothers and he started walking down along the river. Come, this man said. Stay close. Us brothers, we did what we’d been told. It’s true that, us brothers, we’d been told, by our mother and father, like most boys have been told: Don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk with your mouth full, don’t walk into the house with mud on the bottoms of your boots. But us brothers, we weren’t the kind of boys who liked to listen to this sort of talk. When we heard our mother say the word don’t, us brothers, what we did was, we did. And so, us brothers, we walked in the shadows of this shadowy man, this man whose face was more shadow than it was flesh or even fish. We walked down along the river, past bars with steel bars rusted on the boarded-up windows, past more buildings with the words DEL RAY written on their sides. After a while, we found ourselves standing outside the fenced-in yard of a hardware store, its backyard filled with boats. It was a boatyard of boats, this backyard was, and it was, to our eyes, like finding a river in the desert for us to make mud with. Us brothers, with our eyes, we looked and we looked at all of those boats. There were boats made out of steel and boats made of aluminum and boats that were made out of wood. Us brothers, we liked boats made out of wood best because it was hard for us to figure out how a thing made out of steel could float. What, we wondered, kept it from down to the river’s bottom sinking? This was something that us brothers, we hadn’t yet learned the reason why this was so. So, the man turned and turned his shadow face to ours, which boat would you boys like? There was a wood boat there that looked like it had been painted with mud. Us brothers, we both looked at each other and knew that this boat was made for us. We pointed with our hands toward this mud-colored boat. The man who was more shadow than flesh or fish, he pointed with his hand, he pushed at this fence, and the gate of it swung away from its rusted lock. You boys sure you want that boat? the man asked. You could have any boat here. He waved at them all with his hand as if to say that they were us brothers’ boats for us to take. It doesn’t have a motor on its back, the man pointed this out. We’re sure, we said, and nodded our boy heads. We don’t need us a motor for us to get back home, we said. The river will take us where we need to go, we said. Then it’s yours, the man said. I’ll even help you walk it down to the river. And this, we did. Us brothers, we lifted this boat made out of wood, this boat the color of mud, this boat that almost looked like it might be made out of mud, we held up its back, and the man who was a shadow to us brothers, he lifted this boat up by its front. And then we walked it, like this, this boat, down to the river, down to where the river’s edge was a mix of mud and stones and broken slabs of concrete. We set the boat down, there at the river’s muddy-watered edge, and got in it. The man with the dark face dug his heels into the mud and pushed us brothers off and out into the river’s dark. We paddled with our hands out into the river’s swirling current. It was a good current. It wouldn’t be long before we drifted ourselves back and to our town. Us brothers, we raised our hands above our boy heads to say to this man goodbye. Thank you, we said with our mouths, but only the river heard this. This man, at us brothers floating away, he raised up his hand at us too. He was a good man, us brothers, we knew. This man, like us brothers did too, he knew a good boat when he saw it. The moon in the sky was now rising up out of the river. This moon, it threw down its rope of moony light but still that man’s face was a face that us brothers could not see. We could not see any eyes on that man’s shadowy face. We could not see a mouth. His mouth was just a hole in his face that sounds sometimes came out of. Somewhere in there there must have been a tongue, us brothers figured. Unless this man was the father of Boy, that boy who was a brother to nobody, born with a full head of hair but with no tongue on the inside of his mouth. We’re going home, was what I said to Brother then, and I turned to look at him in his face. Brother’s face, it was a face like mine, a face with a nose and two eyes and a mouth and a chin that sometimes had mud dried on it. It won’t be long now, Brother nodded and said. Tomorrow, I said, will be a new day for us, Brother, with a new boat for us brothers to fish from. For this, we had that man, whose face we could not see, whose name we did not ask for or know, to thank. Us brothers, we turned one last time back upriver to wave at this man our thanks. In the moon’s rivery light, we could see him walking, this man, out into the river, out onto the river, and the river, it was holding him, this man, up. He did not see us, this man, as he walked and kept on walking on, he did not turn to look our way, until he had walked himself all the way across the river to the river’s other side, walking and walking and walking on until there was nothing left on the river for us brothers to see, there was nothing left for us brothers to hear, only the sound that the river sometimes makes when a stone is skipped across it.

Hey love by Roger K. Johnson

New Center

The guy in the wheelchair looked like he had long since stopped measuring his life in years. He looked like he was a candidate for counting his remaining time on earth in days — more than likely he was down to hours or minutes. His right leg rested its foot on the chair’s footpad, its knee bent at a right angle. The other leg stretched indifferently out with the foot on the floor, as if letting the world know, I’ve been through enough, and I’m not sitting up straight any longer. His upper body diverged as well. While the right side of his body seemed at least to make an attempt at sitting up, the left was twisted and out of whack. His liver-spotted left hand twisted backward — palm up — as if waiting for some unseen jazz musician to slide past and give him five. An over-stretched elastic cord wrapped around his head and held a clear rubber oxygen mask that rested on his beak of a nose. His labored breathing had fogged it. A clear tube connected his mask to a canister of oxygen that hung from the handle of his wheelchair. Every now and again a cough would rattle around from somewhere in his chest, scrape its way up his throat, and explode out of his mouth, sending wet flecks of spittle spraying into the mask. As the cough subsided, he would bend over as if he were about to take his last breath on earth. He’d take a couple of deep swallows of air and lean back in his chair again, slumping to one side, waiting for the next cough to knock a few more moments off of his life.

He looked old, but he was probably younger. Illnesses have that annoying way of adding years to you. His hair looked to be the only thing that hadn’t aged. His goatee, eyebrows, and full head of hair were blond, not dirty-blond or white Scandinavian blond, just regular old Hollywood blond.

A light-skinned black woman pushed his chair. She could have been — probably was — mixed. I wondered if she was his granddaughter or another relative. I thought this more because of her looks — she looked mixed — not so much that she looked like him. She didn’t have his nose — I’m sure she was grateful for that.

I stood in the Motown Music Museum — Hitsville, U.S.A. — observing this. The house that was converted into a studio, which was eventually converted into a museum commemorating the Motown Sound and Experience. I was trying my best to keep my kids from staring at the guy, but wasn’t doing a good job of it. I found myself getting lost in wondering if he was going to actually check out, right there in front of us. My “kids” is a misnomer; I should have said my students. I’m an English teacher.

The public school system — in its finite wisdom — having given up on the theory that students might actually be motivated to learn something outside the confines of asbestos-laden school buildings, had developed a pretty laisse-faire attitude toward field trips. It was driven not by academics, but by insurance. As long as we were able to secure parental permission (a.k.a., insurance liability waivers), we could take the students on the Bataan Death March if we were so inclined.

The situation can lead to some fairly interesting and creative field trips if the teacher really cares — which I do. This was a trip for some of my students who showed more than passing interest or ability in poetry. Having tired of hearing why Puff Daddy should fear Suge Night, in between our discussions about how well Tupac, Biggie, and whoever was the hip-hop flav du jour could rhyme and flow, I decided to introduce my students to some musical and poetic roots.

That’s why I was standing in the Motown Music Museum looking at a dying man.

I say dying because you don’t look like this guy did on your way up the mountain of life. But he looked happy; you could see it so clearly in his eyes. Everything else about this guy said — was shouting — I’ve seen better days! His eyes, however, were right there; they were clear and wide. Both he and the young woman pushing him looked around the museum with an air of utter fascination and enjoyment.

I found myself taking a much longer look at the surroundings in the building. What were they seeing that I wasn’t? Was there some hidden magic that these faded album covers possessed? Was there a mystical power in the autographed black-and-white pictures of Smokey, Marvin, Michael, and Diana? These two people moved with an air of giddy reverence that intrigued me. The girl caught me staring at them as she wheeled him on the other side of a glass case that separated us. Caught and embarrassed, the only form of explanation I mustered was a smile.

She smiled back, not the least bit aggravated, a genuine Don’t you love this place? smile.

“Hi,” I said, trying to return a smile that I hoped was at least as bright.

“Oi yaself,” she said in a light British accent, still smiling.

“You know, you have a great smile. Thank you for sharing it.”

“Anytime,” she said.

“Are both of you from across the pond?”

“Yeah, mate,” the guy in the wheelchair croaked.

“Well then, welcome to Day-trois,” I said, affecting what I hoped passed for a French accent and trying to sound as much like an ambassador of goodwill as a Detroiter can.

“Thank you,” they both said, looking past me as some of my students eased up behind me. My students were happy that someone had broken the ice with them. This allowed them to ask the questions that had been on their minds since we walked into the museum, albeit through me.

Who’s this, Mr. Blake? You know them? What’s they name? Why he in that wheelchair? What’re they doin’?

The pair continued to smile, and affected a posture that let me know they were well-acquainted with these questions.

“Being a teacher has somehow liberated me from the name my parents gave me. Now I’m just Mr. Blake, instead of Terrance Blake.” After introducing myself, I introduced my students and explained why we were there.

“’ ello there, glad to meet you all. My name’s Elliot Taylor and this ’ ere’s my daughter, Diana. My wife and I named ’ er after Diana Ross,” the man in the wheelchair rasped out through his face mask proudly. His accent was a lot heavier than hers, yet not the cockney or cartoonish accent that we sometimes hear actors and actresses affect. He straightened up some in his wheelchair and extended his right hand. I took it gently and gave it a shake.

“So where in England are you two from?” I asked, relaxing.

“Spent my ’ole life in London …” He was about to say more but then one of those coughs cut him off.

His daughter rubbed him on his shoulder.

“My father is dying,” she said matter-of-factly, and I did my best not to let my mouth fall open. She said it the same way someone would have said: My father’s name is Elliot, or, I don’t like bananas. I wasn’t surprised. Helen Keller could see that her father was dying. Saying it out loud, however, was like spilling a deep, dark secret that no one wanted to talk about. Psst, hey, I know he’s dying and you know he’s dying, but let’s not talk about it. I wanted to say to her, I know that! You didn’t have to tell me! It seemed that by her saying what we all knew anyway, she somehow betrayed a closeness that we had developed in the short time that we had known each other. I was taken aback, but how does one continue that conversation?

Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.

Really? Well my father’s still alive and healthy as a bull.

OhmyGod! Whatever he’s dying from isn’t contagious, is it?

I just sat there not saying anything. I looked into both of their faces trying to ascertain whether or not they wanted to continue talking, or was this her way of killing conversation. Her smile was certainly gone. If this was her way of killing a conversation, it sure worked, her pronouncement being right up there behind, I’m sorry to inform you, Mr. Blake, but it’s malignant, on the list of Great Conversation Killers of the twentieth century.

Elliot broke the uncomfortable silence.

“’S okay, mate, I’m living out the rest of my days the way I want to,” he said, producing a genuine half-smile on his face. I looked at him closely, trying to see any sign of a man who was patronizing and didn’t.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” I said, not really knowing what I was saying.

“My father grew up listening to Motown music,” Diana began, thankfully moving the subject in another direction. “I guess I did as well,” she said, lifting the pall out of the air with her smile. “The words, the beats, the singers, and the way they danced, they were all so … so magnificent. I remember ’aving always ’ eard this music when I was young.” Diana looked around lovingly. “’ e and my mum were always singing and dancing to this music.” At this she threw her left hand on her hip and stuck her right arm out with her hand up like a crossing guard. She began shaking her hips to an unheard beat. “Stop! In the name of love, bee-fore you break mah heart,” she sang. She didn’t sound like Diana Ross. She sounded like a British teenager trying to sound like Diana Ross.

Behind me a couple of my students finished the song off for her, doing a pretty fair job of sounding like TLC trying to sound like the Supremes.

“Think it oh-oh-ver. ”

Elliot tilted his head and began nodding to the beat, his eyes glazed in dreamy memories. Looking at his face, I saw in it his love for the music. Elliot looked a lot less sick than he had when I first laid eyes on him. What was he seeing in his mind’s eye — Diana Ross singing on The Ed Sullivan Show? Or was he possibly reminiscing about himself and his wife during a younger, happier time? What was it like to experience the Motown Sound over in merry old England? I wondered. Whatever he was thinking about, it made a difference on his face immediately, and I was thankful for that.

“This was a place my dad always wanted to visit. ’ e always talked about coming ’ ere one day with my mum. When ’ e took ill, our family decided that ’ e’d get to see some a the places ’ e always wanted to,” Diana said proudly as she massaged her father’s shoulders. “We got the money together and flew ’im over. My mum couldn’t make the trip. She’s at ’ome with my sister and brother. I took some time off from school ’cause ’ e needs someone to be with ’im. We decided that this was one of the things that dad would see …” Diana said, trailing off.

My students all sighed.

“That is sooo cool,” I heard a couple of them say.

“This place ’as meant a lot to me. Being ’ ere, in this city, in this ’ouse … I feel like I’m standing in some sacred or ’oly place. Ya know, when I was a young child, I used to look at pictures of this building in old magazines that my parents used to keep back ’ome,” Diana said with a voice that reverberated with real awe.

I was in awe as well, but for different reasons. I was trying to work out in my mind why anyone would want to come to Detroit. I was someone who couldn’t wait to leave and generally dreaded coming back. My mind kept flipping to the question: If I only had a couple of moments left on this earth, where would I go? Detroit was right up there, sandwiched between Bosnia and Haiti on my list of gotta-see destinations! What about the Grand Canyon, Africa, the Alps, or taking a swim in the Caribbean, where the water is turquoise and the temperature of bath water? My God, I could think of so many other things to do and certainly other places to see.

“Hitsville?” I said.

“Ummm-huh, ’itsville, Motown, Dee-troit, Michigan. I know Detroit, Michigan doesn’t show up on a lot of travel brochures, but ya should see ’ow many people travel to Liverpool all the time!” Diana said plainly, as she was obviously picking up on my amazement. “I mean, I know a lot of people who travel from England to Memphis every year, just to visit Graceland!” Now it was her turn to be incredulous.

“Yeah, and that’s just the place where Elvis died,” Elliot said.

“Different stuff means different things to people, don’t it, Mr. Blake?” one of my kids said.

“Some people used to say: Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks,” Elliot added, grinning knowingly at me.

“Ya know, for people who cared, for people who loved the artists and the music, there’s bunches to see and do ’ ere. My dad wants to see the places where they grew up — to walk where they walked, eat where they ate. ’ e wants to see and feel what made the music,” she said happily.

What made the music.

What made the music?

That statement clung to my thoughts suddenly. Yes, what about this city got the people to sing and harmonize the way they did? You know, like certain places out west in this country inspired beach music, yet nothing else sounded like Motown. Berry Gordy, a Young African American Male (this group of adjectives tends to send people scurrying to their statistic sheets on drugs, crime, and death) who worked in a factory and lived in the city where I was born, decided that the music that he would create would have a certain sound. He did whatever it took to get it done. In creating that Motown sound he affected a city, a generation, and countless lives. In the process of making music, he not only affected the lives of the people he knew but the lives of people he would never meet — people from half a world away.

I was stunned at the significance of that revelation.

I remembered looking at the 45s that my parents owned. The shiny black disc, larger, more pliable, and much less foreboding and antiseptic than the metallic-looking CDs that we listen to today. The funny-shaped little yellow thingy that you popped into its center to play it on the stereo, that was surrounded by the blue label with a little map of Detroit with the red star, showing the entire world where both I and the Motown Sound were born. People who otherwise may have never given Detroit a second thought discovered the city that way, through hearing the music. Young American soldiers found respite as they listened to it while they lived and some died in murky rice paddies and jungles far away from the streets and the house parties of their youth.

There are many times that I look around this city and see nothing other than burned-out and dilapidated old neighborhoods. Neighborhoods filled with homes and buildings whose usefulness has become nothing more than insidious schemes. Lately, whenever I drive around the city where both of my parents as well as all of their children were born and raised, I no longer see the city of my youth, the one that once vibrated — literally — with sounds. The coffee-and-cream voices of Marvin and Tammy crooning, Ain’t no mountain high enough, that wafted up from the convertible Deuce-and-a-Quarters and finned Caddies that rolled up the streets. They are now replaced with hoopties that pump out Jay-Z as he tells me about Big Pimpin’, while his sampled soundtrack, that measures 8.5 on the Richter scale, rattles the windows of the homes that are left standing. I see a city that I once loved creeping along in its fifth renaissance, a town trying to find an identity without the virtue of direction. A town that reflects its citizens, or did its citizens reflect the town? Am I black, African American, or a person of color? Am I angry, upwardly mobile, or just a sellout? A playa, a hoe, or a man? A sinner or saint? Who or what was my town right now? Did my perspective allow me the blessing to care?

Elliot saw none of these things. For Elliot, this wasn’t Detroit, 1999. It was Motown, circa 1960s. Elliot and Diana saw the specters of a lost time that brought joyful memories to their minds and warmed their hearts. Elliot saw the town that spoke to his teen and young-adult years, producing the perfect aphrodisiac to woo the love of his life and eventual mother of his children. He saw Detroit — pre-riot — when downtown radiated with life; when groups with names like The Temptations, The Marvelettes, and The Miracles danced — in the Motown style — in suits and shimmering dresses; when every Friday night the Fox Theatre presented the Motown Review, the proving ground where young men and women perfected the love songs that they performed on street corners and school talent shows. Motown, the city that nurtured the hope that they would be the next Smokey or Marvin, or that their words would join “The Tracks of My Tears” or “Love Child” on the airwaves that floated even across an ocean to waiting ears. A glow rested on Elliot’s face, replacing the shroud of death that had earlier hung on him like a ten-dollar suit. I thought of something from the Bible: Rejoice young man in thy youth. That was what Elliot was right then, this scripture transformed into flesh.

I thought of the times that I had asked — that’s too soft of a word, implored! — my students to “watch what happens when you change your perspective.” At what point had I lost mine? Feeling a bit like the Pharisees, I looked around the house — the house that Berry, Diana, and Smokey built — once again trying to see it through Elliot or Diana’s eyes.

“Ya never realized ya lived in such an interesting city, did ya?” Diana looked me straight in the eyes triumphantly. She seemed to be gloating just slightly, as if she were letting me know that she saw things that I didn’t.

“Thanks for the reality check,” I said sincerely.

“Anytime.”

“You like this music, do you?” Elliot asked.

“Yeah, I grew up just like your daughter did, listening to the music of my parents. They neglected to name any of their children after any of the artists, however. Man, I wish my name was Tito.” We all laughed.

Elliot coughed and cleared his throat. Doing this caused him some pain. He shut his eyes tightly. He sat there motionless for just a few seconds. A lone tear emerged slowly from beneath his eyelid, then slid down his leathery right cheek as if it was in fear of being discovered. The grim, pained expression on his face melted into the calm that he had shown only moments ago when his daughter and my kids sang their rendition of “Stop! In the Name of Love.” His eyes were clear and his face showed no sign of death at that moment, then he spoke. It wasn’t rough and scratchy like it had been previously, a voice that was being infected by the same sickness that had bent his body. He spoke in his voice, clearly yet softly. He sounded distinguished and learned as only the British can.

“Back in ’68, I took my wife — well, she was just a girl I liked at the time — out to a pub one night. We ’ad been dancing to a lot of music, you know, the Jerk, the Twist — my favorite dance was the Camel Walk … Then they put on some Stevie Wonder. She and I socialed together to it.”

Elliot took off his face mask, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back, taking in a deep breath, as if he smelled the fragrance of his girl — his love — right there, his memories having become incarnate.

“Aaah, I can still ’ ear that song,” he said, his eyes still closed in dreamy retrospection. His right hand began to snap his fingers to a melody that played inside his mind, a slow-dance for him and his love.

Then Elliot did something that I was totally unprepared for, he began singing. Not a croaking, raspy-voiced whisper, but actually a pretty good imitation of Stevie Wonder.

“La-la-laa-la-laa-laaaa, La-la-laa-la-laa-laaaa. My cherie ahh-mour, lovely as a summer’s day …” He went on and sang more of Stevie’s love song. As the last of the lyrics eased from his mouth — “Mah cherie amour, pretty little one that I ah-dore. You’re the only one mah haarrt beats for, how I wish that you were mine” — I began to finish the song off for him, and in the middle of the La-la-laa’s, Diana joined me and we finished together.

For a moment Elliot had left his sickness, his twisted body, and his leathery skin. He had become Elliot Taylor — Motown Sound Casanova — singing love songs softly into the ear of his girl as he slow danced with her. A brief respite from reality as he went back to a point in his life when face masks, bottled oxygen, and a wheelchair were as far away as the moon. Elliot’s memory freed him from the confines of the wheelchair, something that doctors, their orders, modern medicine, and technology had failed to do.

“That was the night I fell in love with your mum,” he said to Diana, taking her hand and rubbing it against his cheek tenderly. She smiled the smile of a well-loved child and replaced her father’s face mask, just in time for another coughing fit that knocked a few more moments off his life.

Some people walked into the museum. Their eyes were instantly drawn to our group. They made a point to look at all of us, making sure not to stare too long at Elliot, clearly something difficult to do. Invariably their eyes lingered on the wheelchair, the oxygen bottle, the mask, and then on Elliot. The faces of the people spoke loudly: My God, look at that poor man. He looks like he’s dying. Isn’t that so sad?

I smiled as my eyes went from Elliot to them and back to Elliot again. I smiled because I knew better.

The lost Tiki palaces of Detroit by Michael Zadoorian

Woodward Avenue

I was on the bus, heading down Woodward Avenue. We had just stopped at West Grand Boulevard and I craned my neck to check out the former site of the Mauna Loa. I probably do this once a week on the bus on my way to work. I try to imagine how the place must have looked there in the New Center: a massive Polynesian temple, its thatched A-frame entryway flanked by flaming torches and swaying winter-proof palm trees on a gently rippling man-made lagoon — nestled amongst the cathedrals of twentieth-century V-8 Hydromatic Commerce, just across the street from where they decided the pitiful fate of the Corvair.

I have an extensive collection of Tiki mugs. My rarest are from the Mauna Loa. I own the Polynesian Pigeon, a section of ceramic bamboo with an exotic bird for a handle. Also the Baha Lana, an ebony Tiki head sticking his tongue out at the drinker. Both say Design by Mauna Loa Detroit on the bottom.

There were high hopes for the place. It was to be the largest South Seas supper club of its kind in the Midwest. (Second only to the majestic Kahiki of Columbus, Ohio, now fallen to the wrecking ball since greedy owners sold to Walgreen’s.) Over two million dollars were spent on this paradisiacal bastion of splendor, a lot of money in the late ’60s.

There were five different dining rooms at the Mauna Loa (Tonga, Papeete, Bombay, Lanai, and one other that I forget), as well as the lavish Monkey Bar, which featured a Lucite bar-top with 1,25 °Chinese coins embedded in it and tables made from brass hatch covers from trading schooners. A waterfall scurried down a mountainette of volcanic lava into a grotto lush with palm trees and flaming Tikis. The waiters wore Mandarin jackets and turbans as they served you.

The Mauna Loa opened in August of 1967. Barely a month after the worst race riot in Detroit’s history. It lasted not quite two years.

“I’m invisible!”

That’s what the homeless man on the bus kept saying. He boarded at West Grand Boulevard and none of us dared look at him. But then you never look anyone in the eye on the bus. All gazes are cast peripherally, on the down-low. With the homeless man, we simply examined the air around him. Even the bus driver, a large man, blue-black and stoic, who never says more than a word or two to anyone as they board, looked away as the guy paid his fare. We all knew someone got on, but we weren’t sure who it was. He could be smelled but not seen. The homeless man must have walked down the aisle defiantly, as if daring anyone to say something to him.

“That’s right! I’m invisible!”

What could we say? We had all looked away. We had made him invisible.

I was pretty sure that he was sitting three aisles up from me on the other side. The bus wasn’t nearly as full as it usually was on a Monday — President’s Day or some such nonsense. I kept my eyes on my newspaper, but they kept straying out the window searching for landmarks, lost ones as well as those still standing. I gazed upon a beautiful old abandoned factory from the ’20s, with a sign that read: AMERICAN BEAUTY ELECTRIC IRONS.

I kept my ears open. I felt the homeless man’s eyes on me. I wanted to look, but didn’t want him to catch me looking because I wasn’t sure what he would say. When I felt his eyes leave me, I glanced forward into the bus, at the spaces around him.

A little boy, about two years old, sitting in the seat in front of him, was the only one who truly acknowledged the homeless man’s existence. The little boy looked over the back of the seat at the homeless man, and started playing peek-a-boo with him. The man cracked a bitter half-smile at the child.

Then he said it again: “I’m invisible!”

I was frankly kind of impressed that the guy would say something like this. I don’t expect a homeless guy on the bus to say such things, strange and existential — an awl to the heart. It made me think, He understands his condition. I thought about Ralph Ellison.

The homeless guy looked around and repeated it yet again, as he peered around at the rest of us on the bus.

The bus driver turned, scowled, but said nothing.

I glanced away just before the homeless man saw me looking. He knew I had looked. Luckily, the child distracted him again. When I turned back, I saw him smile again at the child, wider this time, a grisly green and yellow smile, the school colors of the university we were now passing.

Then the child’s mother, reading her own paper, realized what was going on. She sat the little boy straight down in his seat, flashing a harsh glance behind her.

This set the man off. His gestures suddenly grew more animated. It was if he had decided he would show us what an invisible homeless man on a city bus could do. He pointed out the window at a young woman in a short skirt and yelled to everyone in the bus: “Look at the titties on her! Lookit those titties! Let me off!”

The bus didn’t stop. Everybody stayed quiet. An older man across the aisle from me sighed and looked out the window. A cane was leaned against the empty seat next to him.

As we continued down Woodward, we approached the Fox Theatre. A block or two behind it, down Montcalm, I could catch a glimpse of the old Chin Tiki. By all rights, I should not have been able to see three blocks behind a major building to spot another, but behind the Fox, save for a fire station and an abandoned party store, there are mostly empty fields, now used for parking for the new stadiums, baseball and football, on the east side of Woodward. For that moment, I could see the Chin Tiki’s Polynesian façade, its doorway arched and pointed, the shape of hands praying. To whom? Some great invisible Tiki God? Perhaps Chango: God of fire, lightning, force, war, and virility.

That would be a good guess. For Marvin Chin actually opened his Tiki bar when the riots were going on, around the same time as the Mauna Loa. Fires were everywhere in the city then, but not at the Chin Tiki. It would survive to become quite the popular place. Our parents ate there (when they dared venture downtown), as well as the stars: Streisand, DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali.

It held on until 1980, when it too closed up. But unlike the Mauna Loa, which suffered an ignoble end as a lowly seafood restaurant that eventually burned to the ground, the Chin Tiki was simply shuttered, all its Tiki treasures packed up and mothballed inside. To this day, it is still sealed up, a Tiki tomb of Tutankhamen, still owned by the Chin family, who are supposedly waiting it out, waiting for the inevitable gentrification. It will happen. Or it will become another parking lot. In the meantime, the place had a brief resurrection when Eminem used it to film a scene for 8 Mile.

Chango works in mysterious ways.

“Hey, white man!”

Without thinking, I turn and look at the homeless man. Apparently, I’m not so invisible to him.

“What you doing here?”

Everyone on the bus is obliquely looking at me now. I have to say something.

“I’m going to work,” I reply coolly.

“What you on our bus for?”

“I’m just going to work,” I repeat, then turn away and look out the window at the old Tele-Arts. It was a newsreel theater in my mother’s time, but now it’s been turned into some sort of swanky nightclub.

“Motherfucker on our bus.”

“Shut your mouth,” says the woman with the child in front of him. She’s not sticking up for me, I know. She means that language in front of her child.

“Motherfucker.”

Slowly she turns back to him, eyes like smoldering carbon. “You want to be invisible? I’ll make you invisible.”

She says it in that way that many black women have, that way that makes most anybody shut up if they know what’s good for them. It certainly works on me, not that I invite that sort of thing. I mind my own business. It’s the only way to be when you’re the only white person on the bus, the cue-ball effect, as a friend of mine calls it.

The homeless man quiets down for the moment. We’re further down Woodward now. I look out the window at the storefronts, façades ripped off, gaping wide open into the street. They are being gutted for new lofts, many of them right across from the old J.L. Hudson’s site, where the behemoth department store was imploded. It is now replaced by a giant new skyscraper built by a software billionaire.

When things like this happen, the world starts to pay attention. Detroit is a city again! Back from the dead! Rising from the ashes! They can see us again. We were always there, but transparent, the way you can see right through the exoskeleton of the Michigan Central Train Station.

To the rest of the world, Detroit was just a place where Japanese film crews showed up every year to photograph the house fires on Halloween Eve, a.k.a., Devil’s Night. Other than that, they hardly saw us. We don’t even show up on the city temperature listings on the Weather Channel.

Further up, through one of the construction sites, I catch a glimpse of the old Statler Hilton Hotel, once proud home of Trader Vic’s. The building has been ignored for so many years, the windows are no longer even boarded up. The Michigan weather is not kind to a man-made tropical oasis. Inside, columns of bamboo once seemed to shore up rattan-wrapped walls. Glowing blowfish and a native kayak hung from the ceiling, along with colored globes encased in fishnets. At the front door, where a stoic Moai once stood sentry, there is rubble. Long pieces of terra-cotta tile still surround the front door, ragged with metal mesh, depicting the faces of Tiki gods, mouths contorted, faces squinched into impossible, pained grimaces.

A Tyree Guyton lavender polka dot has now been painted on the door. He of the Heidelberg Project, a block-long art project composed completely of discarded objects: a gutted polka dot Rosa Parks bus, a backyard of vacuum cleaners, a tree of shoes. These dots appear on abandoned buildings all over the city. Cheery carbuncles that make sudden art of blight. What else can you do?

The story for Trader Vic’s is much the same as the Chin Tiki and the Mauna Loa. When the white folks disappeared from downtown Detroit at the end of the workday in the ’70s, the clubs and restaurants foundered. The building is now slated for demolition, but it’s been a ghost for decades. “Demolished by neglect,” as the preservationists like to say around here. They say it a lot.

I am chagrined to relate that I have been part of that demolition as well. One night, in a drunken Tiki frenzy, some friends and I brought crowbars to this very site and ripped terra-cotta tiles from the façade of the building. No one was using them anymore, right? That’s what we told ourselves. It was wrong, and I knew it. I think of my offense to the Tiki gods when I look at my filched tile, which now resides in my backyard. Shame on me, I say. Shame. Yet these agonies of all our pasts will soon be ground into dust in the middle of the night, the preferred time to start the demolition of historic buildings here in Detroit.

Down one street, there is a sign on the side of a car wash: HAND WASH TO THE GLORY OF GOD.

“Motherfucker on our bus,” I hear the homeless man mutter. I really wish he would stop saying that.

We pass by more construction sites. Things are changing here. New buildings push out the grand old ones, like bullies in a big rush. When you go downtown at night there are people there now, suburban people, city people, doing things, spending money.

“Hey, white man! Why don’t you go back to Livonia?” says the homeless man.

I ignore him. Nothing bad is going to happen — for some reason I know this. Yet it alarms me when I hear a startled inhalation, a collective Huh! roll through the bus. I turn to look at the invisible man and I see that he has now dropped filthy trou and is displaying his penis to me and everyone else.

Frankly, I’m kind of relieved. An act of aggression, but a harmless one.

“I ain’t too invisible now, am I, motherfuckers?” he yells, waving his spotted peter at everyone on board. To be on the safe side, I clutch my thermos, figuring it will work well as a cudgel if I need to use it that way. Taunt me, yes. Piss on me? I don’t think so.

Still, it’s a relief when the driver pulls the bus over right next to a construction site, stomps down the aisle, and tells the now-very-visible homeless man to walk his raggedy ass off his bus. Right now.

With great dignity, the homeless man pulls up his pants, turns, and exits. When the pneumatic doors close behind him, there is only the smell of him left. The woman with the child looks sternly at me. She is holding her child closely, protecting him, her lips squeezed tight.

For a moment, I try not to laugh about what just happened, but just can’t help myself. She looks at me, puts a hand over her mouth, but soon her head is shaking and she can no longer hold it in. Everyone on the bus starts laughing. Up in the rearview mirror, I can even see the driver smiling.