Seymour is a wizened old jerry-rigger, chop-shop artist, contract cleanup man, and general problem solver who lives and works out of a large garage a few blocks from Hawk’s loft, two stops over the Broadway Bridge into the Bronx. The garage houses the Blue Elephant, Hawk’s car, though Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys use it most of the time. NUBIAN CZAR is painted in large black letters on a plywood board over the doorway.
Seymour’s an old guy with gray-white Jeri-curls and lots of miles on his odometer. His eyes don’t match, one squinty, the other open and roving. His forehead’s a map of creases. He rocks back, ensconced in his vinyl living room chair, then hunches forward behind his heaped desk, a small blowtorch and a hammer acting as paperweights. There’s some sort of yellowing social-worker degree framed on the wall in the cluttered office of the garage. He works with a halfway house, organizing recovering addicts into CLEAN SWEEP crews. A hard bunch of kids, with raised welts on their arms, caps turned partway around, they sweep their asses off after parades or block fairs getting the streets ready for the rollers, or do heavy interior scrapping and lot-cleaning projects.
Seymour wears expensive shirts that look like they haven’t been washed in two years under country-jean overalls. He always addresses Hawk like his mind is his car.
“Your car’s been groaning a little over the hills of Central Park. I ask the boys if they’s forcing the car. ’Cuz all things gotta flow at their own pace, find their own rhythm.”
“Yes, Dharma Seymour,” says Hawk.
Seymour always has this half grin forming when he begins analyzing Hawk and/or his car. Hawk can’t ever tell for sure when his chain’s being yanked, though Seymour gives the impression that if behind all the practical advice he’s messing with Hawk in some way, it’s all in Hawk’s interest. Like the man has some well-oiled fuel line and valve to the Way and the Truth. Old men at the IHOB seem to seek Hawk out as someone to explain the world to. Maybe Hawk’s role in life is to receive advice, all of these scholars of the art of living knowing what’s best for him. They imply that if he could learn to stop thinking for himself and do everything they said he’d be happier. The trick was to listen more fluently.
“You think the car’d make it for a trip out in the country?”
“You fixing to go somewhere?” Seymour says, looking up from a colorful take-out dish that Mikey calls a “Czar Salad” that he gets from the Cuban-Turkish-Chinese restaurant on the corner. They sit in Seymour’s office while he mixes scrambled egg and ham hocks into multicolored noodles with a chopstick.
“Just a trip with my lady, and I don’t want the car breaking down.”
“Not to worry, Hawk. I got the whole thing lined up nice, but I don’t like to mess with a man’s car ’til he gives me the absolute green light.”
“You mean the greenback,” Hawk says, though Seymour has never charged him more than ten bucks for any repair and is constantly grafting parts to the car. “How long you think it’ll take?”
“I said relax, it’ll be ready.”
“I got a riddle for you,” Mikey says, later, on the street, sky flat green-gray and streets lined with trash mounded up like body bags. They’re headed to Sammy’s to pin buttons for the Broadway Festival on the weekend.
“Ten birds on a fence. You shoot one. How many you got left?”
“Nine,” Hawk said.
“Zero. You ’spect those birds to sit and say ‘shoot me next’?”
“You ever think about splitting town?” Hawk asks Mikey. “Like, go to fucking Wyoming or Montana?”
“Why would a brother go there?”
Mikey busts his ass all over the city carrying his shoe-shine box, hands out his card in front of the Plaza Hotel next to the carriages and the men saying, “Buggy ride? Help put a horse through college.” Mikey’s got clients who stay in the hotel who give him fifty dollars to come to their suite and shine all their shoes and talk with them about basketball. Mikey hands out his business card:
King Mikey
MOBILE ROYAL SHINE
“The Right Scuff”
It has a crown on it and Seymour’s address and phone number. Or midmorning Mikey’ll come by the cart and Hawk will fix him a sausage the way he likes it and someone’ll ask Mikey if he’s working and he’ll shine ’em up right there and the customer might order a sausage and Hawk and Mikey will work the morning together, commenting about the day’s events and the state of the world with the customers while making small business.
Mikey has a cot in Seymour’s garage and manages the CLEAN SWEEP crew at the block festivals and events. If there’s something Seymour needs done Mikey sees that it’s handled. Otherwise, he’s up and out early looking for business types or pimps.
“Great worker, but he ain’t strong in the area of personal planning,” Seymour says.
So Seymour got Mikey to put a part of every VA check in a long-term interest account. Just a small part he couldn’t touch that went in direct deposit against a rainy day.
“You two both gotta take care of your no-thinking selves,” Seymour says. “There ain’t always enough love to go around.”
“Man, I feel lucky tonight,” Mikey says when they’re out on the street after two hours of pinning. “Let’s play a little poker. They got a rotation game on tonight. Seven Stud, Hold ’Em, and Hi-Lo Omaha. Man, I feel like I’m gonna hit the numbers.”
“Fuck the numbers,” Hawk says. “I just want my money back.”
“Someone says they’d give you back all the money you’d lost. Only you could never gamble again. Would you do it?”
“Would you?” Hawk asks.