Double Deuce

CHAPTER 15

Hawk parked the Jag parallel to Hobart Street in the middle of the project. It was a great April day and we got out of the car and leaned on the side of it away from the street. Jackie and her magic tape recorder were there, listening to the silence of the project.

“How come in books and movies the ghetto is always teeming with life: dogs barking, children crying, women shouting, radios playing, that sort of thing? And I come to a real ghetto, with two actual black people, and I can hear my hair growing?”

“Things are not always what they seem,” Hawk said. He was as relaxed as he always was, arms folded on the roof of the car. But I knew he saw everything. He always did.

“Oh,” I said.

“This is the first ghetto I’ve ever been to,” Jackie said. “I grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. My father is an architect. I thought it would be like that too.”

“Mostly in a place like this,” Hawk said, “people can’t afford dogs and radios. You can afford those, you can afford to get out. Here it’s just people got no money and no power, and what kids they got they keep inside to protect them. People here don’t want to attract attention. Somebody know you got a radio, they steal it. People want to be invisible. This place belongs to the Hobart Street Gang. They the only ones with radios. The only ones noisy.”

“And we’ve quieted them down,” I said.

“For the moment,” Hawk said.

Jackie was standing between Hawk and me. She was leaning her shoulder slightly against Hawk’s.

“Did you grow up in a place like this, Hawk?”

Hawk smiled.

A faded powder blue Chevy van pulled around the corner of Hobart Street and cruised slowly past us. Its sides were covered with graffiti. Hawk watched it silently as it drove past. It didn’t slow and no one paid us any attention. It turned right at McCrory Street and disappeared.

“You think that was a gang car?” Jackie said.

“Some gang,” Hawk said.

“Hobart?” Hawk shrugged.

“So how do you know it’s a gang van?” Jackie said.

“Nobody else would have one,” Hawk said.

“Because they couldn’t afford it?”

Hawk nodded. He was looking at the courtyard.

“Gang would probably take it away from anyone who wasn’t a member,” I said.

Jackie looked at Hawk. “Is that right?” she said. Hawk nodded.

“You can usually trust what he say,” Hawk said. “He’s not as dumb as most white folks.”

“Does this mean we’re going steady?” I said to Hawk.

He grinned, his eyes still watching the silent empty place. Cars passed occasionally on Hobart Street, but not very many. The sun was strong for this early in spring, and there were some pleasant white clouds here and there making the sky look bluer than it probably was. To the north I could see the big insurance towers in the Back Bay. The glass Hancock tower gleamed like the promise of Easter; the sun and sky reflecting.

“Well, did you?” Jackie said.

“Don’t matter,” Hawk said.

Jackie looked at me.

“I grew up in Laramie, Wyoming,” I said.

“And do you know where he grew up?” Jackie said.

“No.”

Jackie took in a long slow breath and let it out. She shook her head slightly.

“God,” she said. “Men.”

“Can’t live with them,” I said. “Can’t live without them.”

Across the empty blacktop courtyard, out from between two buildings, Major Johnson sauntered as if he were walking into a room full of mirrors. He was in the full Adidas today, hightops, and a black warm-up suit, jacket half zipped over his flat bare chest. He wore his Raiders hat carefully askew, with the bill pointing off toward about 4 A.M. He was alone.

Hawk began to whistle through his teeth, softly to himself, the theme from High Noon. Between us, I could feel Jackie stiffen.

“How you all doing today?” Major said when he reached the car. He stood on the opposite side and rested his forearms on the roof as Hawk was doing. He was shorter than Hawk, and the position looked less comfortable.

Hawk had no reaction. He didn’t speak. He didn’t look at Major. He didn’t look away. It was as if there were no Major. Major shifted his gaze to me. He was the first person who’d looked at me since I’d come to Double Deuce.

“How you doing, Irish?”

“How’s he know I’m Irish?” I said to Hawk.

“You white,” Hawk said.

“You call all white people Irish?” Jackie said. She had placed her tape recorder on the car roof.

“We gon be on TV?” Major said, looking at the tape recorder.

“Maybe,” Jackie said. “Right now I’m just doing research.”

“Goddamn,” Major said. “I sure pretty enough to be on TV.”

He turned his head in profile.

“You want to know ‘bout my sad life?” he said.

“Anything you’d care to tell me,” Jackie said.

“I don’t care to tell you nothing, sly,” Major said.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Jackie said.

“I don’t know no better, you understand. I is an underprivileged ghet-to youth.”

“Mostly you are an asshole,” Hawk said. He was looking at Major now. His voice had no emotion in it, just the usual pleasant inflection.

“Not a good idea to dis me, Fro,” Major said. “You in my crib now.”

“Not anymore,” Hawk,said. “Belongs to me.”

“The whole Double Deuce, Fro? You been smoking too much grain. You head is juiced.”

Hawk smiled serenely.

“Why you think you and the flap can shut the Deuce down? Five-oh can’t do it. Why you think you can?”

“We got nothing else to do,” Hawk said.

Major grinned suddenly and patted the roof of the Jaguar.

“Like your ride,” he said.

Jackie wasn’t a quitter. “Can you tell me anything about being a gang member?” she said.

“Like what you want to know?”

“Well,” Jackie said, “you are a member of a gang.”

“I down with the Hobarts,” he said.

“Why?”

Major looked at Jackie as if she had just questioned him about gravity.

“We all down,” he said.

“Who’s we?”

Again the look of incredulity. He glanced at Hawk.

“All the Homeboys,” he said.

“What does membership in the gang mean?”

Major looked at Hawk again and shook his head.

“I’ll see you all again,” he said and turned and sauntered off into one of the alleys between the monolithic brick project buildings and disappeared. Hawk watched him until he was out of sight.

“I’m not sure it was fatherly to call him an asshole,” I said.

“Honest, though,” Hawk said.

“What was that all about?” Jackie said. “You guys are like his mortal enemy. Why would he come talk to you?”

“Ever read about Plains Indians?” Hawk said. “They had something called a coup stick and it was a mark of the greatest bravery to touch an enemy with it. Counting coup they called it. Not killing him, counting coup on him. That’s what they’d brag about.”

“Was that what Major was doing? Was he counting coup on you?”

Hawk nodded.

“More than that,” I said. “To a kid like Major, Hawk is the ultimate guy. The one who’s made it. Drives a Jag. Dresses top dollar-I think he looks pretty silly, but Major would be impressed-got a top-of-the-line girlfriend.”

“Me? How would he know I was Hawk’s girlfriend?”

“All you could be,” Hawk said. His eyes were still resting on the alley where Major had disappeared. “In his world there aren’t any women who are television producers. There’s mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and girlfriends.”

“For crissake-that defines women only in reference to men,” Jackie said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Hawk said.