moses

THE FIRST TIME MOSES dropped a dollar in my cup, I didn’t even know his name. I looked up at him, glad for the dollar. Maybe I said thanks, but it’s blurry sometimes, my memory is. One moment clear as water, then another moment, and it’s like somebody’s erasing bits and pieces of it.

What I’m seeing as I write this down are the shadows, brown and black and some kind of blue that maybe was the jacket he was wearing, a can of spray paint in one hand, a brush in his other. Maybe it was night. Maybe I asked him his name, because he said, I’m Moses. And I said, Then this must be the promised land. The Bible comes to me that way—quick and sharp like a pain. I had just turned fifteen, and with it came a new way of talking and smiling to get what I wanted. Maybe I was thinking I could get another two dollars out of his pockets.

But Moses just looked at me like he was looking at someone familiar and strange at the same time. Most kids just passed me by, laughing, sometimes throwing whatever they’re carrying at me—half a candy bar, an empty potato chip bag, a soda can. But Moses stopped, looked at me, put that dollar in my cup, said, Did you know Ben? I’m painting that wall for his mom.

Maybe I knew right then he was different.

No, I said. I don’t know anybody by that name.

She wants it to say “Ben, 1995–2009. We’ll always wonder about the man you could’ve been,” Moses said. Then she wants me to put “We love you forever” at the bottom. In small letters. Like she’s whispering it to him. That’s what she said—“Like I’m whispering it.”

You can hardly see it with the sun almost down. Moses pointed at the wall. Beauty wasted, he said. Look at him.

Maybe I squinted across where the painting was getting started. Maybe I saw a pale outline—the beginning of the ending of Ben. It didn’t mean anything to me, though.

I asked Moses if he played ball, because he looked real tall standing there, and I figured he might have seen me cheering. I was hard to miss on the court. At least that’s what people said, but I saw the way his smile went away.

We don’t all play ball, he said.

I would have asked him about this we all thing. But other people started passing by, and I needed to make some money. You stay blessed, Moses, I said, by way of saying “good-bye, now,” but trying not to be rude because he had dollars he was sharing with strangers.

Maybe I smiled, because he looked at me again for a quick second, and I think that was because of where T-Boom chipped my tooth when we were still together. T-Boom’s got the whole tooth missing, and after we knocked out each other’s teeth, I guess we figured there wasn’t anything left to do, so we stopped going out. But of course I still saw him—sometimes two or three times a day.

Moses had his girl with him. She looked down at me like I didn’t even have a right to be living, but I just gave the look right back to her. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed a number, said Hey, baby, then turned away from us, talking real quiet into it.

You must have some people somewhere, Moses said.

I pulled my top lip down over the chipped tooth, looked away from him and shook my head. I hadn’t felt any shame about that tooth before and didn’t know why I was feeling it now.

My people are gone.

Gone dead, Moses asked, or gone gone?

Both.

He nodded, squinting at me like he was trying to put some puzzle together.

The girl put the phone in her bag and turned back around, pulling at his arm, saying they were gonna be late. She talked like she’d been schooled in the real right way to say things: “We’re. Going. To. Be. Late. Moses.”

I’ll be back around to work on that wall tomorrow, he said to me, then let his girl pull him out of my line of vision.

And I guess I forgot about him, because it was getting real cold and I was thinking about getting to the House before T-Boom went home to his own mama and ate her dinner, then watched some of his mama’s TV and went to bed in the room he grew up in. And once the House closed, you couldn’t go looking for T-Boom at his mama’s because she didn’t know anything about where his money was coming from, so I let myself shiver until a few more quarters and dollars fell into my hat and then I put my sign away in my bag, blew my nose on my bandanna and packed up shop for the night. I got up and shook my legs to get the blood running back through them. The fuzz went away from my mind. A lady and man were walking toward me, and for a quick minute I smiled, thinking, Here comes my daddy. Coming to take me home. But then the man just patted his pockets and gave me one of those I’m sorry looks. The woman didn’t look at me at all. I stood there watching them move quick past where I was standing. Something got hard and heavy inside of me, and I knew real deep that my daddy wasn’t coming here to get me. Not this time. Not anymore.