The Way Home

EIGHTEEN

Chris came down into Rock Creek Park on the winding Sherrill Drive, took Beach for a piece, and came up out of the park on Bingham, the east-west cut-through his father had showed him as a child. He drove the van up the long hill of Nebraska Avenue and headed west on McKinley. Katherine was beside him in the shotgun bucket, and Ben was on the collapsible second-row bench. As he tended to do when he reentered his old neighborhood, Chris grew quiet.

They stopped at the red light at McKinley and Connecticut Avenue. To their right were the fenced-in courts of the Chevy Chase Rec Center, where Chris had played under the lights and stars in various summer leagues. Across the avenue, to the north, was the Avalon, the theater where he had smoked weed in the men’s room with his friends before movies, now an independent operation showing art films.

“See those blocks of concrete?” said Ben, pointing a long finger between Chris and Katherine at the planters on the sidewalk past the bus shelter, lined along the sloping drive-way entrance to the drugstore at the southwest corner of Connecticut.

“Yes?” said Katherine, suspecting what was coming, having heard the story of Chris’s night of crime.

“Those are, like, monuments to Chris,” said Ben. “They put ’em up there after he drove his truck ’cross the sidewalk.”

“That wasn’t me. That was some other dude.”

Chris accelerated through the intersection on the green and glanced at the concrete barriers as he drove past.

“My legacy,” said Chris, and Katherine reached over and squeezed his hand.

Driving west on McKinley, Chris pulled to the right as far as he could to allow a late-model Audi to pass. The coupe came alongside him, and Chris looked to the driver for the courtesy nod. Their eyes met. The driver, a good-looking man around Chris’s age with a salon haircut and a clean open-necked white shirt, smiled nervously in recognition.

“Hey,” said the driver, with a finger wave.

“How’s it goin, man?” said Chris, returning the smile.

Neither of them stopped. Chris’s heavy foot gave the van a bit too much gas.

“Who was that?” said Katherine.

“A kid I ran with from the neighborhood,” said Chris.

“Looks like he prosperin, whoever he is,” said Ben.

“He got out of law school last year,” said Chris. “My father says he’s with a downtown firm now.”

“You never mentioned him to me,” said Katherine.

“Yes, I did,” said Chris.

“I guess I don’t remember.”

“No big deal,” said Chris. “He’s just a guy I used to know.”

The cookout was in the backyard of the Flynns’ clapboard colonial on Livingston. Depending on the level of business, Thomas Flynn employed six to eight men, but they came to this annual event with children, wives, girlfriends, and one or two uninvited friends. The yard was not large to begin with, and it was full.

Amanda Flynn had laid out a food spread on a table set on their screened-in porch, which led to an uncovered deck, where Flynn was busy barbecuing burgers, chorizo sausages, half-smokes, and chicken breasts on his commercial-grade gas grill. Amanda and Isaac’s wife, Maria, were moving back and forth from the kitchen to the porch, putting out sides, paper plates, napkins, and utensils, catching up with conversation as they worked. Flynn had a spatula in one hand and a bottle of Bud in the other. Within reach, on the rail of the deck, was a party ball of Jim Beam and shot glasses for anyone who cared to join him. Nearby were two iced-down coolers, one stocked with beer and white wine, the other holding sodas and water.

Music was coming from outdoor speakers mounted on the ceiling of the screened-in porch. It was a mix of Spanish-language pop with dramatic vocals, which everyone enjoyed to some degree but would become a bone of contention and discussion as the night wore on. Ben had brought his Rare Essence and Backyard Band tapes, Maze’s greatest hits, and the new Wale to drop in later, when folks got loose. One of Amanda’s jobs was to keep her husband away from the stereo, especially after he’d had a few drinks. This was not the crowd for Thin Lizzy or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and no one here, with the exception of Thomas Flynn, was into Bruce.

Renee, Ben’s girlfriend, had joined them late, after she came off work at the nail salon. In her evening clothes and heels, she was overdressed for a cookout, but she looked good. Katherine, in a sundress, her hair down, was in conversation with Renee, as Ben was spending much of his time playing with Django, the Flynns’ dog.

Also in attendance was Lonnie Wilson. Though he had not worked for Flynn’s Floors for several years, and his employment had been short-lived, Lonnie liked a party and could not pass up free food and drink. He had brought along his wife, Yolanda, and their two children. Pussy-crazy Lonnie, who had talked incessantly about all the women he was going to slay when he left Pine Ridge, had married Yolanda, the first girl he got with when he came out. Despite the fact that Lonnie had been unable to hold a job and their money problems were deep, Lonnie and his family were a tight unit.

Darkness had settled on the yard. Chris, Ali, Ben, and Lonnie stood around an outdoor fire pit, drinking beer from bottles, talking, and looking into the fire that Chris had lit using wood stacked beside the alley garage. Thomas Flynn had built the pit years ago. Flynn had leveled the dirt, constructed the base and walls with cinder block and mortar, covered it with decorative stone veneer, grouted it, and capped it with concrete he cut and mitered himself.

Chris could not have constructed such a fine piece of work. He was not a natural handyman like his father. He was not even a particularly good carpet man, though he had learned enough to do satisfactory installations. Truth was, he wasn’t suited to his current job, but it had been made available to him and was what he had.

“Look at this dog, man,” said a gleeful Ben, holding a rubber toy by its U-shaped handle, the other end death-clenched in Django’s powerful jaws, the dog pulling furiously, his rear legs dug in, his eyes rolled back in his square head. “You see pit when he’s got somethin in his mouth.”

“The ID card at the shelter said ‘Labrador mix,’ ” said Chris. “They put that tag on all the dogs, even the beagles. People want to adopt Labs.”

Ben let go of the toy. Django dropped it at Ben’s feet, sat, looked up at him, and smiled.

“He wants to play more,” said Ali.

“If I had a dog like this, I’d play with him all the time,” said Ben. “But it wouldn’t be right for me to keep him in my apartment all day while I was at work.”

“Dog’s all ass,” said Lonnie.

“That’s the pit in him,” said Ben.

“All that power in his ass, I bet he can fuck like a machine, too,” said Lonnie.

“Not anymore,” said Chris. “My parents had him fixed.”

“See, man, why they have to do that?” said Lonnie.

“Someone should do it to you,” said Ali.

“I’m not done, though,” said Lonnie. “I’m gonna have a big family. I’m into kids, see, and I got the means to make ’em. Also, Yolanda is fertile as mess. I’m like one of them sperm banks you read about, and Yolanda’s the vault. Couple times a day, I got to make a deposit.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” said Ali.

Chris looked up to the deck, where Isaac was talking intently with his father. Chris felt a slight pang of jealousy. Isaac was a better worker than Chris, more skilled, more diligent, and more conscientious. Isaac deserved to get a shot at running Flynn’s Floors someday, more so than Chris. What hurt Chris was the realization that his father had to know this, too, and would be torn by his loyalty to his son and this exemplary employee.

“Hey,” said Hector. “I was wondering where all the women was.”

Hector, the young, curly-haired worker from Isaac’s crew, stepped into the circle, playfully elbowing Ben to move him aside. Hector tapped Chris’s beer bottle with his own.

“If it ain’t Hector the Dick Inspector,” said Ben.

“You inspect the vergas, ” said Hector pleasantly. “I will work. And faster than you, my friend.” In the light of the fire, with his glassy eyes and wide grin, he looked a bit drunk.

“Ali, Lonnie,” said Chris, “this is Hector.”

Hector nodded, then gave them a small bow. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” said Ali.

“Hector works on one of our crews,” said Chris.

“The best crew,” said Hector. He was a competitive type and could back up his boasts.

“I thought your name was Mary,” said Ben.

“My name is not Mary,” said Hector.

“Sure it is,” said Ben. “Mary Cone.”

Hector’s face contorted as he figured it out. Then he smiled with delight and pointed his finger at Ben. “ You are maricone! ”

They laughed and drank more beer. Katherine and Renee joined them, and the circle enlarged. Everyone took a step back from the fire. They were all sweating, and the alcohol was not cooling them down. Kids ran through the yard, and one of Isaac’s crew was dancing with a young woman in the light of a torch to a Tejano ballad playing on the stereo.

“Where’s your shadow tonight?” said Chris to Lonnie. “He usually comes to this thing.”

“Luther?” said Lonnie. He shook his head. “I don’t get up with Luther too much anymore. Luther lost, man.”

“He druggin?” said Ali

“Luther’s doin everything wrong,” said Lonnie. “Just runnin with the wrong people, basically. One of ’em he met at the Ridge originally. Remember DeMarco Hines?”

“From Twelve,” said Ali, naming the unit housing the most violent boys.

“Last time I seen Luther, I told him, it’s time to get away from those kinds of people and stop all that nonsense. You too old to be in that game. But he wouldn’t listen. Thing is, Luther isn’t bad, not like DeMarco.”

“Luther had no business being in Pine Ridge to begin with,” said Ali. “You put someone in with boys who got sickness for real, he’s gonna catch a virus.”

“Luther got arrested as a runner one too many times,” said Lonnie. “Police would jump out their cars and grab him, and then he kept violating his parole. That’s all it was.”

“Imagine the law, on foot, catchin a young kid like that,” said Ben.

“We used to look back and laugh at the police while we was runnin from ’em,” said Lonnie. “But that boy was just too slow.”

“Bad luck,” said Hector, trying to contribute to the conversation.

“There’s the other kind of luck, too,” said Chris. “I saw an old friend of mine, earlier tonight. Eight, nine years ago, he was your basic fuckup, just like me. Now Jason’s a lawyer, looks like fresh money. And I’m…”

“Chris,” said Katherine.

“All because he stayed in the SUV,” said Chris, “and I got out.”

“Who you talkin about, man?” said Lonnie.

“My boy Country.” Chris raised his bottle in weak salute. “The one who didn’t get out of the Trooper.”

No one commented. Chris tipped his head back and killed his beer. Katherine looped her arm though his and touched her thigh to his.

“I’m gonna get something to eat,” said Ali, pouring the rest of his beer out onto the grass. “I already broke a promise to my mother. I gotta put some food in my stomach before I drive home.”

He walked across the lawn and up the steps to the deck. Thomas Flynn stood before the grill, flipping the last of the burgers. Ali went to him and put a hand on his shoulder, and Flynn took a couple of steps back in mock retreat.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Flynn. I don’t want anything.”

“Not tonight.”

“I’m not working tonight. But you know I’m gonna have to come back to you.”

“That’s what you do.”

“I can’t accomplish anything without folks like you,” said Ali. “Anyway, want you to know, I appreciate your patience.”

They looked at each other with respect, and Ali reached out and shook Flynn’s hand.

“Do a shot with me,” said Flynn.

“Nah, I don’t mess with that stuff. But thanks.”

Flynn pointed his chin out into the yard. “I see Lonnie and his brood made it.”

“Lonnie went forth and multiplied.”

“What was his friend’s name? The one who could never show up for work on time.”

“Luther. He’s not doing so good.”

“They can’t all be success stories.”

“I know it.”

“Last time I saw Luther, I spotted him ten dollars until payday.”

“You never want to see Luther again, just give him ten dollars.”

Flynn waved his spatula toward the screened-in porch. “Go on, get something to eat.”

“Thank you.”

Ali headed for the food table, and Flynn poured a shot of Beam. He sipped it, watching his son, his friend Ben, and their girlfriends standing by the fire pit out in the yard. Chris and Ben looked older than their years. He had seen them wearing the shirts they had on tonight many times before. Chris had missed the experience of high school sports, the senior prom, cap-and-gown day, and so much more, and now he was a man too weathered to enjoy his own time. Flynn lowered his head in regret.

“What are you brooding about, Tommy?”

Amanda had appeared at his side.

“Nothin, Amanda.”

“I had a nice talk with Katherine earlier.”

“Pretty girl.”

“Smart, too,” said Amanda. “It’s obvious she and Chris are in love.”

“I’m happy for him.”

“You don’t look too happy to me.”

Flynn drained his shot and placed the glass on the railing. “I was having a quiet moment, is all. Until you interrupted.”

“Stop focusing on what Chris isn’t and be thankful for the good in him. He’s doing fine, Tommy.”

“Okay. I’m okay, you’re okay.”

“And ease up on that bourbon. You still have to make your little speech, remember?”

Flynn picked up the oversize bottle of Beam, still capped, and pretended to swig from it. Then he stumbled broadly across the deck.

“Quit screwin around, Tommy.”

“I love you guys,” said Flynn, his eyes comically unfocused. “I really fuckin… love you guys, man.”

“Stop it.”

“You mean that speech?”

“Just stop.” Amanda stepped forward and shouted out to the adults and children in the yard. “C’mon, everybody! Come eat before it gets cold!”

Flynn reached out and touched her ass. She swatted his hand away deftly, turned, and quick-stepped toward the screened-in porch.

“When you start a company,” said Flynn, “you’re thinking about yourself. Your wife and kids, maybe, if you’re lucky enough to have them. But my point is, you open a business to make money. That’s your goal.”

Flynn was on the deck, a shot of bourbon in hand. He was no longer acting, but in fact was now half drunk. Amanda stood beside him, concerned, loving, patient, and somewhat proud. He had built the business and earned the floor. For his troubles, he could be sentimental and smashed for one night.

Below them on the grass stood the employees and their companions, looking up at Flynn. Whatever they were feeling, and it ranged from loyalty to indifference, they were paying attention and respect. Some were finishing up their plates of food, some were still drinking, and others were completely sober. Isaac had Maria and his kids close by. The other children were running and playing in the yard.

“What you don’t expect, when you get yourself into this, is the feeling of responsibility and affection you get for the people you employ and have the privilege of working with every day. Now, I’ve had many employees over the years. For most of them, they and their wives and children have been better off and had better lives after coming to work for me. That’s quite an accomplishment. It’s the one I’m most proud of, you want the truth.

“I’m also very fortunate to be able to work with my family. You know my lovely and extremely capable wife, Amanda.” Flynn reached to his side and squeezed Amanda’s arm. “And my son, Chris, is an integral part of our installation team. But they’re not the only ones I’ve come to think of as family. I’m thinking of Isaac, of course, who has been with me for a long time. Isaac, you know this company doesn’t work without you.”

“Thank you, boss,” said Isaac, his posture erect.

“But it’s all of you, really,” said Flynn. “Friends and family are what we’re about. Together, we are gonna prosper. When we do a job and do it right…”

“It’s money for all of us,” said Chris under his breath, a rush of affection for his old man washing over his chest.

“It’s money for all of us,” said Flynn. “I know we’ve had a little downturn in business this summer. Hell, everybody’s taking gas in this economy. That’s nothing but a blip on the radar screen. So we didn’t make much money this month. But I promise you…” Flynn paused dramatically “… we will tomorrow.”

“Yes!” said Hector, too emphatically.

“Easy, Mary,” said Ben.

“ You Mary,” said Hector, with a lopsided smile.

“That’s it,” said Flynn. “See you at work on Monday.”

There was some mild applause as Amanda turned to him, put her hand around his waist, and kissed him on the mouth.

“Damn, I’m good,” said Flynn, a lock of black hair falling across his forehead. “Henry at Agincourt had nothin on me.”

“Save some of that bravado for the bedroom.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

Chris said, “We’re taking off.” He was standing at the foot of the stairs, watching his parents, waiting for them to finish.

“You’re not driving, are you?” said Amanda.

“Katherine is,” said Chris. “Don’t worry, she barely drank.”

“That’s one lovely young woman,” said Flynn.

Chris nodded. They watched him join his group, saying good-bye to Ali, who was still talking to Lonnie.

“He’s the effusive type,” said Flynn.

“Come on,” said Amanda. “Help me clean up.”

Chris, Ben, and their girlfriends walked out of the backyard.

Two men, one large and one small, sat in a black Marquis, parked down Livingston, a good distance from the Flynn home. The old Mercury, though well maintained, was out of place among the late-model imports of Friendship Heights. Sonny Wade and Wayne Minors had not been here long and did not intend to stick around. They had come to check out the business address for Flynn’s Floors and were surprised to discover that it was a residential location.

“Party’s endin,” said Sonny.

“For them it is,” said Wayne.

A young white couple and a young black couple moved across the front yard of the colonial and came to a stop near a white work van. It looked like they were about to split up.

“By God, look at the titties on that redhead,” said Sonny.

“I’d make a tunnel outta them bad boys,” said Wayne.

“And what would you drive through the tunnel?”

“You know what they say about little dudes.”

“They got little pricks?”

“Ho,” said Wayne.

Sonny picked up a cheap 8? 21 monocular he had purchased at a surplus store and put it to one eye. “Our gal Mindy said it was a black and a blond, large and young. They’re both big. Could be them.”

“What you gonna do, walk up and ask ’em?”

“Keep your eyes on the white boy.” Sonny handed the monocular to Wayne, picked up his cell from the red velour seat, found the number he was looking for in his contacts, and punched it into the keyboard.

They waited.

“He’s answering,” said Wayne with a short giggle.

“Hello,” said Sonny. “Is Chris Carpet there?”

“Who is this?” Chris’s annoyed voice came through the speaker.

Sonny hit “end” and took the monocular back. Looking through it, he said, “Boy’s staring at his phone like it’s gonna tell him somethin.”

“But now he’s got your number on the caller ID.”

“Why would I give a fuck? He’s the thief. He stole from me. What’s he gonna do, go to the law?”

“Should we follow him to where he’s goin?”

“I’m thinking,” said Sonny, stroking his walrus mustache.

Katherine took Chris’s keys and the two of them got into the white van. Ben and Renee walked toward her black Hyundai, parked up by 41st Street.

“That coon’s really got some size on him,” said Wayne.

“The white boy looks like a tougher nut, though,” said Sonny, squinting. “The way the other one walks, all loose… somethin about him says soft to me.”

“You know what they say: Cut a tall boofer, he falls like a big tree.”

“I got Mr. Carpet’s number,” said Sonny. “We can get hold of him anytime. Let’s follow the black one and see where he goes.”