“Shit, he ain’t smilin’ at you.”

Hess stepped forward. Stewart grabbed the sleeve of his leather and pulled him back.

“Let him be, Shorty. He’s just havin’ a good time.”

Stewart felt the bunched muscles of Hess’s arm loosen under his grip.

“Buy me another shot, will ya, Buzz? I can stand another brew, too. Man, I’m thirsty as shit.”

Course you are, thought Stewart. All that speed you got in you.

They had two more rounds. After the set, Stewart got a go order from the bartender and motioned Hess and Martini toward the door. They killed a six on the drive uptown.

DEREK STRANGE HAD parked his Impala on Princeton Place under a street lamp and was locking it down when he saw Kenneth Willis’s green Monterey coming up the block. Willis slowed and pulled up to the curb, stopping behind the Impala. Strange saw that Alvin Jones, a crawler who never had been no good or brought any good along with him, sat beside his younger cousin. Dennis was in the backseat.

Strange waited for his brother to get out of the car. Jones leaned on the window lip, crossed his left hand over his right forearm to ash his smoke. As was Strange’s habit, he scanned the physical details: Jones wore a gold Ban-Lon shirt and a black hat with a bright gold band. He smiled as his eyes sized up Strange.

Strange straightened and gave Jones his full height and build. It was childish, he knew. Still, there were some things a man never could stop himself from doing, no matter how mature he was supposed to be. One was letting another man know that he had the goods to kick his ass if that’s what he had a mind to do.

“Lawman,” said Jones. “Must feel all naked and shit, out of your uniform. Where your sidearm at?”

Right under my shirttail, thought Strange. In my clip-on.

“Brother, you gonna hurt my feelings, you don’t say somethin’ soon.”

Strange said nothing. Through the windshield, he could see Willis’s big old row of buckteeth as he smiled. Willis, who had done time on a statutory charge, worked as a janitor, lived above a liquor store on H, and thought he was a stud. He saw Jones and Willis touch hands.

“My man,” said Jones, his smile gone, looking directly at Strange with his cold light eyes. “Makin’ the world safe for Mr. Charlie.” Jones took a drag of his Kool and let the smoke dribble from his mouth.

Dennis shut the door and slowly made his way from the Mercury toward Derek, clutching a paperback in his hand, wincing a little as he took an errant step. Sitting in a car, and getting out of it, were hard on his back.

“Remember what I told you, boy,” said Jones. “Hear?” But Dennis didn’t look his way.

Dennis met Derek by the Impala. Together they walked toward the steps up to the row house where they’d both been raised. They heard more comments coming from behind them. Jones said something about the police and then mentioned Darius Strange’s car, “another repop,” which made Willis laugh. The brothers did not turn or acknowledge them. Soon there was the sound of the Mercury turning in the street as Willis drove back toward Georgia.

“What you been doin’, man?” said Dennis.

“Worked today. Took this girl to the movies. You?”

“Just drove around some.”

“With those two?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go?”

Dennis fingered the check in his pocket. “Jones knows this woman. We was just over at her place for a little bit, you know.”

I do know, thought Derek. Whatever you were doing, it had something to do with bad. Always would, with Jones and Willis around. Buying or selling something that was wrong. Maybe running for that dealer, Hayes, stayed over on Otis.

“What were y’all doing over at this woman’s place?”

“Damn, boy, you gonna run me in?”

“Just curious.”

“We were gettin’ our heads up. You happy?”

Derek looked at his older brother with disappointment. It was a familiar look to Dennis, and he cut his eyes away.

“You gotta get high before family dinner now, too,” said Derek.

“Ain’t like you never burn it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t make it my everything.”

“Father Derek,” said Dennis, shaking his head.

“That woman y’all were visiting,” said Derek, not able to back off. “Is she that Bacon girl Jones stays with in LeDroit Park?”

“How you know about her?”

“You told me. Hard to forget a name like that.”

“This was another girl, had his baby. Lives over your way.”

“Just what we need down here, more children bein’ made by no-account brothers like Jones.”

“So now you put on that uniform, you lose your color?”

“Bullshit.”

“Now you gonna get up on your high horse and look down on the black man, too.”

“That is bullshit, Dennis. I’m just pointin’ out that this particular cat is wrong.”

“I got eyes. You don’t need to be lecturin’ me on things I can see my own self.”

They had reached the door of the house. Derek put a hand on Dennis’s arm. “Listen, all I’m tellin’ you is, you don’t need to be runnin’ in place out here. I can hook you up with some kind of job, you let me. I’m always meeting people, got small businesses and such, on my shifts. They’d be glad to do a police officer a solid, help out someone in his family, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s the way it works.”

“The system, you mean.”

“Yeah. Nothing wrong with it, either.”

“I ain’t interested.”

“What you plan to do, then, be some kind of professional victim? Give up ’cause of all this white oppression you always going on about? So, what, all these race-hatin’ motherfuckers out here can point to a shiftless nigger like you and say they were right?”

“Shut up, man.”

“Or maybe you just gonna keep hangin’ with trash like Jones, till something happens you can’t fix.”

“Told you to shut your mouth.”

“You and me, we weren’t brought up that way.”

Dennis pulled his arm free. “Dinner’s ready, I expect.”

“You’re better than you know.”

“I’m tired, man.” Dennis lowered his eyes. “Do me a favor, Derek. Let me be.”

FOURTEEN

THERE GOES JULIA,” said Dennis Strange, pointing to the screen of the family’s color TV.

“Diahann Carroll,” said Derek Strange. “That’s a fine-looking woman right there.”

“Reminds me of your mother,” said Darius Strange.

“Talks like a white girl, though,” said Dennis.

“Ain’t no crime in it,” said Darius.

“She be datin’ white men, too,” said Dennis. “I seen her in this magazine, on the arm of some British cat, one who does those interviews on channel five.”

“She’s still fine,” said Derek.

“Got your mother’s eyes,” said Darius Strange.

Darius sat in his green lounger, the sports page of the Washington Post open in his lap. His facial features had begun to sag, and his weight had shifted down toward his middle.

His sons sat on hard chairs beside him. Alethea Strange had cleared the dinner table and was back in the kitchen putting the dishes in a sink full of warm water.

The apartment was as it had always been. The furniture was the same furniture Dennis and Derek had roughhoused on all their lives. Their father’s hi-fi was used infrequently these days and now served mainly as a stand for Alethea’s herbs and African violets. Darius had not bought a record for many years. First Ray Charles went country, and then Sam Cooke had been shot dead by that woman back in ’64. He had just lost interest after that. And anyway, he was well into his fifties now. The new soul sound was for the young. He had given his records to Derek, who had become a deep rhythm and blues fan, the same way Darius had been years ago.

The men were watching The Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC. Bonanza had come and gone, and there was little else of interest on the other channels. They were waiting to hear the president, scheduled to speak at any moment. It was rumored that he would be making some sort of major announcement concerning the war in Vietnam.