DARNELL AND ME WERE driving to his house like always, but nobody out on they lawn, not even the Thibodeaux boys and they live on the grass. This supposed to be a Friday night, it’s summer, and people should be washing cars, breathing some air, getting ready to go out. When we got to Picasso Street, I saw the record player wasn’t out on the front porch at Darnell’s. Mr. Tucker, Darnell’s father, play records on Friday evening, put the old beige stereo facing out to the street so you can hear it for a couple of houses. He play Billie Holiday, sad Billie, and some scratchy records by Earl Grant. I wanted to hear them, the organ real husky and low swinging in the background, because nobody play music on my street, but I knew tonight me and Darnell wouldn’t be sitting on his car in the driveway. No Tiny or K.C. coming by to say, “What up, homes?” Darnell always say, “The Lakers, man, they up by ten games.” Tiny answer, “I heard that,” and always looking down the street to see who at Jackson Park. He usually start singing, “In the Westside, the cool cool Westside, where the people gon party all night.”
Tonight it wouldn’t be kids walking by to yell, “Take that old stuff off the stereo, man. Play some Ice T, some Eazy-E. Bust a rhyme out them ancient speakers.” None of Mr. Tucker’s friends, Roscoe Wiley and Floyd, standing around to laugh at the kids. “Red Man ain’t hardly playin none a that rap mess. Listen. These people singin, not hollerin. World a difference, boy.” Darnell’s arms wouldn’t be around me at my waist, and his father working on a old battery or motor. The street was empty all the way down to the park. Nobody out in they yard or in the street because the cops looking for Ricky Ronrico, and they been searching one night and one day. Longer than it sound.
Everybody in the front room, near the swamp cooler. Darnell’s little sisters, Sophia and Paula, making those string bracelets all the kids are wearing. Darnell tell his father, “I heard it on the radio comin back.”
“Where was y’all working this week?” his mother ask. Darnell with the firefighter crew they run in the summer, out in the dry mountains all over the county, from the desert to near L. A. I only see him on the weekends, and he pick me up straight from work.
“We was over by Chino Hills. Rattlesnakes everywhere. I heard the two cops got shot on the south end, over on Eddy Avenue past the mall. That ain’t no black neighborhood.”
“So? Ricky Ronrico shot them and he black for a fact. Bout as no good as that sickly stuff he name after,” his father say.
Mr. Lanier standing there with a big shopping bag full of plums. “And you know they figure he somewhere on the Westside.” He live on the next street, always musty because he got a bunch of pigs out somewhere. My mother use to buy chitlins and pig knuckles from him every New Year’s, before we moved away from the Westside.
Mr. Lanier say, “That why I walk over here, ain’t taking no chances with my brake lights. Rio Seco finest in the streets tonight, lookin hard.”
It’s only the TV talking then, and I know everybody’s thinking about 1973. I was eight, and the only thing I remember was all the red lights flashing on my bedroom walls cause the cops came and took Mr. Wiley from next door. He was gone all weekend. Somebody had ambushed two white cops at Jackson Park, but I just knew the lights looked like Hawaiian Punch spilling over my bed, and I thought they were so pretty then.
“What they lookin for this time?” Mr. Lanier say.
“It was white sneakers back in ’73,” Mr. Tucker say. “That’s what they said the fellas did it was wearin. What was them two cops name?”
“I don’t rightly remember,” Mr. Lanier say.
“Please and Christensen.” Darnell talks real quiet. He never forget anything. “Kelvin and every other Westside brother between sixteen and thirty went down to the station, all weekend.”
His mother looking at her catalogs, don’t say anything. Her oldest son, Kelvin, live in L.A. now. Darnell’s father light another cigarette. “White tennis shoes,” he say. “But they got Roscoe Wiley and that other poet, the one use to teach in your school, Brenda.”
“Brother Lobo,” I say.
“Kept his ass for a week.” For a second between the commercials, we could hear the drip of water from the cooler, the fan going around over our heads. Mrs. Tucker put in a beautiful one, with wood and lamps, this summer.
“So who they want this time?” Mr. Lanier say again, getting up to go.
“They want Ricky Ronrico,” Mr. Tucker say. “And they talkin about somebody hidin him, wantin to harbor him. Huh.” His face pull itself together while I watch, like his eyebrows and that big nose and mouth get in a line straight up and down as a totem pole, piled on top of each other. Like he’s Indian all the way through. That’s why they call him Red Man. “Damn sure wouldn’t hide him if he came to me.”
Nobody on Picasso Street liked Ricky because he always raced his van up and down by the park. But that wasn’t what Mr. Tucker was thinking about, I know. Hearing that name remind him of the time Darnell spent two nights in jail, in the same cell with Ricky. Thinking about that still make Mr. Tucker hot.
“Go on and take Brenda home, now,” he say, real loud, to Darnell. “This ain’t no time to be out. And bring your ass right back.”
“Huh,” Darnell start to say, but then his father cut him off.
“You know you gotta drive her up to the Ville, and I ain’t playin.”
When we close the front door, I hear Mrs. Tucker say, “He twenty, he ain’t a boy no more,” and Darnell’s father quick to stop her, too.
“That’s the point.”
At first, I think he’s mad about the way his father talk to him. He don’t say anything going down Picasso, waiting a long time at every stop sign. “Good enough?” he whisper real strange at the last two, looking out his window. I look out of mine, and I see the chainlink fences around yards like they lit up, electric, because the sun just now going down. The folding chairs on somebody’s lawn seem like they on fire, glowing metal. I can smell the cooking meat, the way it drift through the streets when we get closer to Canales Frozen Foods.
Only railroad tracks to pass now, on Third Avenue, and then Canales and The Pit. After you leave the Westside, you smell nothing but orange groves for a few miles. My cousins from L.A. always laugh at me when they come out to visit Rio Seco. “Man, y’all niggers country. Only a hour away and might as well be in Mi-sippi. Y’all ain’t got no clubs, no disco, nothin live. You got Jackson Park and The Pit.”
Nobody’s even parked down there at The Pit now, that dirt lot bare as the desert. My mother use to work at Canales—they cook the meat for Mexican food, frozen burritos and tamales, and when the shift is going, the whole Westside full of a smell so rich, so warm and spicy, it’s nothing better. Mama said the meat itself was real poor, but when I was small, I’d walk down there to meet her getting off work, sit in the heat by the fence and breathe that smell, sometimes mixed with the barbecue smoke coming from the roof of The Pit. I couldn’t go nowhere near even the parking lot of that place—it was where people drank and played cards and ate ribs, and beat each other up.
Darnell look over there, laugh a little now. “Them old-timey kind that hang out at The Pit know better than to come out tonight. They scared of they own shadow cause it’s got a Mi-sippi accent.”
I’ve known Darnell since we were five, when I lived on Picasso. He’s been like this three times: when his friend Roger got shot at our graduation party, when he got out of jail that time last summer, and now. It feels strange not knowing what to say to him, and we’re almost all the way up Third to the Ville already.
Everybody from the Westside call it the Ville because it was only white people lived up here, on this slope, back then. Honkyville. We left the Westside and moved up here when I was nine. Some Japanese people, three or four Mexican families around by then, and after we came, the Orlandos and Tyners move here from DaVinci Street. But everybody on the Westside still call it the Ville and laugh at my father, say does our grass grow greener and our mail come earlier? When the Santa Ana wind blow the power out, do the city come and fix it a hell of a lot faster than they do on Picasso?
All the orange groves thin out now, and we pass by the little park just off Third. About five cars there, stoner white boys drinking beer, smoking at the picnic tables. Darnell say, “Can I get a swig, homes? Can we chill in the park with you?”
“Getting mad ain’t likely to change the situation, Darnell,” I say. “Don’t you go driving crazy on the way back to the Westside.”
“What do you suggest I do?” He finally look at me, and the scar push out mad and jagged on his forehead, just heading into his hair. Even when he got that, it turned into something else. He and his father were looking for a radiator at the junkyard, and he ran into a pole, split his head open. I took him to the emergency and they made us wait. Blood all in his hair, his pants got mud at the hems, and I was trying to clean him up when the doctor take him into a room. Darnell came busting out a few minutes later, said, “We gone. Now.” He told me the doctor didn’t believe the pole, kept laughing, “Your woman must have hit you over the head with something awfully heavy. What did you do to deserve this?”
While I laugh about stuff like that, Darnell get blind mad. I say, “I suggest you come inside when we get to my house. Cool you down.”
“I gotta be up at six to help Daddy fix the big truck. He’s supposed to pick up a load of brush somebody cleared off for fire season.” When we stop at the last four-way before my street, a boy pull up beside us, gunning his engine like firecrackers. Darnell looks over and wait til he drive off. “I suggest white boy racin his hooptie around fast as he want. Probably got a open container of Jack Daniels on the seat and shit. Hair streamin in the wind.” He don’t even bring his lips close to mine when he pull into the driveway. I thought he would walk me to the porch so I could stand on the steps above him, like always, and look into his eyes, touch his eyebrows, straighten them with my fingers.
Pop come up behind me when I look through the window to see Darnell’s car go down the street. “What the hell were you doin? You never even came after work to eat.”
“John, she never come home on Fridays, I been told you that.” Mama’s sitting at the dining room table picking through a bowl of beans, sorting out the rocks. “Darnell always pick her up since he workin for the Forest Service.”
“You didn’t have any business bein on the Westside tonight, Brenda,” Pop go on. “When this Conservation Crap over?”
“At the end of summer,” I answer. “Was it on the news, even in L.A.?” Rio Seco’s close enough to get on TV sometimes, but not usually.
Pop sit back on the couch. “City gettin bigger, and bad stuff always play on the news.” He turn to the nine o’clock early broadcast. “It was on the TV back in ’73,” he say.
The blonde lady doesn’t smile. “Police are following several leads in Rio Seco tonight in their search for murder suspect Ricardo Ronrico, who is believed to have shot and killed two police officers late last night. Officers Terry Kimball and Gregory LaDonna were attempting to serve Ronrico with a warrant to appear in court for sentencing on a parole violation when he allegedly shot them in this residence on Eddy Avenue.” They show the house, the neighbors standing around, cop cars everywhere.
“Bastard get us all in trouble,” Pop say. “How in the hell he get a name like that? He your age, Brenda?”
“He’s older than us, about twenty-five. Darnell say his brother name Falstaff after some beer and his sister Virginia Dare.”
“Oh, and how in the hell Darnell know him if this fool older?”
Mama say, “John, why you always assume the worst about Darnell?”
“Cause she don’t need to be drivin around with him and him only. His car looks like hell. He musta done somethin to get in all that trouble last summer,” Pop say, and I’m tired of hearing this.
“He was just sitting in the driver’s seat, playing the radio, I been told you,” I yell. “Him and Londale were taking down the election posters for Mack Ellison. Someone you didn’t vote for cause you said a brother couldn’t win for county supervisor.”
“Then why the cops take him in? Cause he didn’t have no driver’s license and no business bein there in that rich neighborhood.” Pop’s voice echoing.
“At least they was taking down the signs,” Mama say. “You always complainin about them bein up for months after an election.”
“Darnell don’t have a license because of that insurance shit, cause that white dude hit him and Darnell didn’t have insurance. Yeah, they had warned him, gave him tickets, offa that. You know how high insurance is on the Westside. You were laughing when you bought it last time, too, because of your address.” I feel that water pushing behind my eyes, starting to come up my throat, so I go in my bedroom and shut the door.
Mama come in a while later. “Did you eat at Darnell’s house?”
“I wasn’t hungry. I had a big lunch at work.”
“You sit outside in that nice plaza they got in front of the county building?” Mama lean against the edge of the bed. “I always think about you sittin out there with all the other secretaries, and them cute little cafes and boutiques they got now. Look like L.A.” Every time she even mention the county building, I hear how proud she is about my job. I had to stop telling her not to call me a secretary, I’m only a clerk, because she won’t listen.
“Yeah, Mama, I sat in the sun. I’m going to sleep now.” After she close the door, I look outside my window, listen for the helicopter. It takes off from the top of the county building, where they got a helipad. Sometimes when I’m at Darnell’s, in the front yard in the dark, the police shine the spotlight from it and cut over us jagged as lightning. Circling loud and angry as a wasp, make the whole street silver. Mama always asking me what new flowers they planted in the county plaza this month. I sat out there today, next to the fountain pale blue like glass. People popping open their soda cans loud, little rifle shots. I can’t stop thinking about Ricky Ronrico, about what those red flashing lights in my bedroom would look like now, me in Darnell’s blankets on the couch. I lay in the bed for a long time, hearing the helicopter then, humming distance, hoping Darnell went straight home and didn’t run into Tiny or someone else who loved to instigate, just stand on the corner and talk smack.
When I wake up, I know they still haven’t caught him. I could feel it somehow, almost see Ricky Ronrico’s face, and I call Darnell right away. He say the Westside still steppin light and drivin slow, but not too slow, and I can hear a smile in his voice, know he’s thinking about last night.
“You suggesting you still pick me up at the usual time?” I say, and he laughs. He always come about two o’clock, so we can go by the park. I clean house for Mama; Pop already at work, doing an extra shift. He already talking about property taxes due pretty soon, even though it’s not till December. Me and Mama make a peach cobbler since we had all these peaches from my Aintie Mae out in Perris. Mama sew up a hole in Pop’s other work pants, and I fix the rip in my white blouse. When Darnell come over, Mama’s done. “How are things on Picasso?”
“Quiet. People doing a lot of talking, but mostly it’s nothin but a long wait.”
We tell her we’ll just stay at Darnell’s and play cards, and won’t go cruising or looking for parties.
“Well, why you don’t stay here and play cards then?” She turn her head at me like she does when I know she know why we don’t stay here. We sit around at Darnell’s, and people come over to watch the basketball game or wrestling, and everybody’s laughing and talking about everybody else. Nobody come up here. Nobody borrow an egg or bring over some extra greens, and the phone might ring, but the doorbell doesn’t. “I won’t be late,” I say, and she shake her head.
But when we on the Westside, it’s not Saturday any more than the day before was Friday. Nothing seem natural at all. The sky was tinged all brown, like usual, but even the smog seem angry, and the palm trees hanging dusty, sorry-looking. The streets gray and glittery, rising in the heat almost, and everything faded, like the color been drained out. The houses and cars pale, people’s lawns sand-color; we in one of those old-time photos Mr. Tucker has from Oklahoma, from where he grew up.
The heavy chains are up blocking the parking lot by Jackson Park, and not a brother in sight. “Daddy didn’t want me to come and get you,” Darnell is saying, but he put his hand on my arm. “I’m tellin you, I had to think twice about it.” He smile at me careful, touch a knuckle to my neck. “Good enough?” he whisper.
His father’s inside watching TV, talking on the phone. Darnell and me play dominoes in the back, and Tiny comes in after a while. “Man, it’s definitely cooler back here than in the front room with your old man, homes. He so pissed, put you in a world of hurt you say the wrong thing.”
“I know. And everything wrong. You in the streets, hot as it is?”
“Just kickin it.” Tiny anything but tiny. Six-two, got a big natural even though nobody wearing naturals anymore. He just love his own hair, and everything else about himself. “Man, when Johnny Law pull your hooptie over,” he say, “you put your hands like this.” Spread his fingers out wide. “You put them hands on top of the wheel and pray with em apart.” He was driving his mother’s car an hour ago, got stopped on the way from the liquor store on Third.
“The wheel ain’t good enough for me,” Darnell say. “Remember when I was at that gas station last year, six in the morning and the cashier trip that silent alarm by accident? Shoot, seven black and whites and I hadn’t even picked my pump. I had my hands outside the window, man.” He slam down a domino. “Least you wasn’t wearin that nasty John Shaft leather piece you call a coat. Lucky it’s summer. You usually look so bad cops stop you on G.P.”
“My middle name, homey. General Principle.”
“You ain’t marked down my fifteen, baby. Oh, I know it hurts.” He look up at me. “We ain’t goin nowhere today, I can see that.” I give him the points, and Tiny go into the kitchen for some Kool-Aid. No air is moving at all.
Miss Ralphine from across the street is sitting at the table with Darnell’s mama when we come out the bedroom to walk Tiny to the front yard. Her face is small like a baby’s under her wig, and even though she must be seventy, the only wrinkles are on her forehead where she raise her eyebrows all the time. I know what she’s fixing to say. “Brenda! How you and this boy? When y’all gettin married? I needs to go to a weddin soon.”
She been asking for two years now, since we graduated together. I smile and tell her I don’t know, while Darnell and Tiny pass under the fan and look up for some air.
“Where you think you goin?” Mr. Tucker say. Him and Mr. Lanier just outside the front door, looking at a battery recharger.
“Damn, give me a break,” Darnell say, and then he lift up his hands. “Sorry. The feet stops here.” I see Jane Jones walking down the sidewalk, wearing her uniform. She works at Church’s Fried Chicken on Sixth Avenue. “Tiny, Darnell. And Bren-da,” she call out, saying my name all slow. She still won’t forgive me.
We went to work experience at school together, for a year. Bank of America took us for clerk/tellers, and we figured out how to talk different, talk white, dress right. Like I do at work now.
But Jane was twice my size, her shoulders big as Darnell’s, and dark. Brother Lobo, the poet, used to call her “the real thing.” Ebony. I was always jealous of her face and skin when we were little; her jaw was so smooth, her neck so long, and she never had marks on her skin like I did. Mine light enough to show nicks and scratches for months. When it came time for the county and the banks to call us for jobs, though, I saw how they checked Jane out. We were both talking right at the interviews, but her hair, her shoulders. She could relax her hair every day, and it would still be African; she wear a short fade, and it make her neck even longer.
She never asked me about the job at the county. I didn’t see her for a long time, and Darnell told me her mother had gotten sprung, started smoking that rock cocaine. Jane had to take care of her, so she got a job at Church’s.
“You gon walk with me, Tiny,” she say over her shoulder, “or Brenda gotta have a harem?”
“Don’t be opening your mouth tonight just to see if your tongue work, boy,” Mr. Tucker holler at Tiny’s back.
We stay in the back room then, and Darnell mess with my hair, tease me about my neck. “What if I give you a most embarrassing souvenir of my love?” He try to pinch my neck, and then he’s kissing me, but Sophia and Paula keep running in and out to get something. We give up and go in the front to help Darnell’s mama cook, because everybody who barely knows the Tuckers could come by and eat on a Saturday. We make chicken, fry up with pepper and onions, string beans, macaroni and cheese, neckbones and blackeye peas for Mr. Tucker. Yellow cake with chocolate icing. That’s how she cook every Saturday.
All the kids eat, and Mr. Tucker, Mr. Lanier, and then Roscoe Wiley comes from down the street. They all sit in the living room and watch TV, Sophia and Paula and they friend Takima go singing out the back door, and Darnell take me out to the side steps by the kitchen. The night got hotter instead of cooling off, it seems, and we can smell the greens tree tangled up the chainlink like it’s cooking in the air. Pop told me about a storm he sat through once in Tulsa, time going fast but in circles.
Nobody walk by, and then we hear the helicopter again for a long time, over near Seventh Avenue where all the hotels and restaurants are. Miss Ralphine come over to say they got a SWAT team at the Holiday Inn; they plan to find Ricky Ronrico tonight, and that’s headquarters, she heard on her police radio. They must think he’s in the Westside for sure.
Only Mr. Tucker left in the living room now, and Darnell and me watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” with him. “Not a dark face on the screen,” Darnell say, and he keep getting up to drink something, sit down careful so he don’t touch my leg. “This shit getting old,” he say, “and we out of soda.” The helicopter circles around like a race car on a track in the sky. When I wake up, the phone ringing and the movie’s been off. The police just raided Mr. Wiley’s house on the corner, and he talked big trouble when they tried to take his son for questioning. Said they heard he had evidence in the house, and went through all the rooms. Darnell’s mama tap her foot on the linoleum fast as a cricket, and when Tiny come in the screen door everybody jump. “Boy, what in hell you doin out?” Mr. Tucker say, his whole face pomegranate red. Red Man. “Get your ass on the couch where it belong on a night like this.”
“Man, this ain’t Alabama,” Tiny say, but then he smile. “I couldn’t miss the food, now.” He don’t even eat, though, just sit on the floor far away from Mr. Tucker. “Lester and Jimmy and Birdman say blood cool and they hope he get away with it. He probably in L. A. anyway. Ain’t no place to hang in this country-ass…”
“Shut up, boy, fore I shut you up,” Mr. Tucker holler; I feel tight in the chest. If we say Ricky Ronrico’s name, they’ll come busting in for us.
“You call your mother, Brenda. You won’t be home for awhile.”
On the phone, Mama sound mad, but she say he’s right. Anther TV show is gone, and I think Darnell asleep, but he staring at the wall. The old beige stereo sits quiet next to the fireplace, under the picture of the African queen. She’s even darker from all the years of smoke settled on her.
Mr. Tucker asleep in his big leather chair, and Mrs. Tucker go into their bedroom. Tiny still on the floor, and me and Darnell the only ones awake. He doesn’t have a bedroom; he’s slept on the couch since I’ve known him. He put his arm around my neck for a minute, and I rest my chin on that soft part by his elbow, but then he shift away again. “Too hot,” he say. Huh.
On the eleven o’clock news, the blonde lady starts out with, “Rio Seco police have captured murder suspect Ricardo Ronrico, the object of an intense manhunt since Friday.” He was in a house on Gate Street, way back on the south side where he shot the two police. On the screen, his hair is all nappy, his eyes flat and red, lips with a gray ring around them. “My man sprung, seriously sprung. Rock daddy,” Tiny say, and I didn’t even know he was awake.
“Clues as to his whereabouts were found in a raid of a house earlier in the evening,” she go on, and Darnell say, “Yeah, tell me. Treasure hunt time. How many stolen TVs and shit you think they found?”
“Blood knew better than to hang out on the Westside,” Tiny say. “Nothin but a anthill. Stompin easy.” He look at me. “Unless you want to move to the Ville like Brenda.”
“Shut up, Tiny,” I say. “Don’t start on me.”
“Wasn’t nobody bangin on your daddy’s door, huh?” he keep on, and the blonde lady smiles. “In our next story, children learn about the great outdoors in some of the Southland’s many summer camps.” The little white kids race around, building fires, hiking in the woods, and Darnell say, “Please.”
He pull me up from the couch. “I be back soon, Tiny. Brenda’s daddy gon be breathin fire, so it ain’t like I’ll be lingerin.” I’m about to say something, and I hear Mr. Tucker’s chair creak.
“They got him,” Tiny say to Darnell’s father, and I’m pushed out the door.
The car seat warm as the couch was. I kiss Darnell’s neck, give him problems driving. I won’t see him again for another week. I look out at the streets, see Lester and Jimmy walking, and Darnell honks, but he doesn’t slow down. It feels strange driving, like we still in a bottle even though the car windows are open. I unbutton Darnell’s shirt, and when we’re getting ready to pass the canning plant, I pull on the wheel. “Stop for a minute,” I tell him, and he let me turn into the parking lot.
I feel like things should be all messed up, tumbleweeds and palm fronds and boxes thrown around like after the winds come in winter. I want to tell him I’m afraid for him every day, but he won’t listen, I know. “Go close to the building,” I whisper, and it’s the weekend, so I can’t smell the spicy breeze I want. I pull Darnell down onto the seat, and he say, soft, “You know I don’t have no protection. I didn’t think about it.”
“I know,” I say, and kiss his eyelids, put my hands like fans on his back. I think if the helicopter flew over now, shone the floodlight on us, they’d see my arms covering the back of Darnell’s neck, where the skin so soft and blind.