Sam stationed himself outside the storefront church that Sunday at the stroke of noon. People passing on the sidewalk gave him either a wide berth or a hard stare but Sam didn’t mind. He waited until he saw Tutu and Leon step outside and then planted himself on the sidewalk in front of them.
“Lord have mercy!” Tutu was loud and radiant, as she always was after church. “You look like you grew two inches and lost ten pounds.” She dimmed a notch. “You in trouble?”
Sam, beaming, shook his head.
“Well, you better come on home with us. I bet you could use you a home-cooked meal.”
Leon took his hand and gave it about a dozen shakes. Sam felt the warmth spread from his fingers to his heart. Their eyes met and held.
The three of them took the long way home. It was a fine day, not yet spring but no longer the dead of winter. Clumps of budded daffodils nodded under the bare trees lining Convent Avenue. The big blowsy forsythia bush at the corner of the yard in Fat Neck would be in bloom soon—one week of yellow ecstasy before the long drab season of green.
“Your mama’s been sick,” Tutu told him as they rode the elevator. “Had to miss work and everything—as if you care.” She fixed her eyes on his. “Her hair’s turning gray too. From fretting over you, Sammy.”
“Well, you can tell her I’m fine. See?” He spread his arms out and tried to smile.
“Yeah, all ninety-five pounds of you. One good wind would blow you clear to Jersey.” Sam and Leon traded a look.
As soon as she got lunch on the table, Tutu started in talking about her own mother. Did I ever tell you boys about my mama, Miss Hannah? Miss Hannah knew voodoo. Miss Hannah could cure whatever ailed you with roots and potions. She knew how to cast a spell and drop someone in their tracks just like that! Once, when I was a little girl, Miss Hannah was walking me to town and a little white boy started chucking stones at us. I pulled back my mouth with my fingers and stuck out my tongue till the boy ran inside crying to his mama. That white lady came storming out like her hair was on fire. “Either you take a switch to that child or I will,” she hollered at Miss Hannah. “And I mean right now.” Miss Hannah broke a branch off their willow tree, peeled down my undies and whipped me good. But after every whack, Miss Hannah turned her head and drilled that white woman with her eyes. I never cried out once. Two days later, the little white boy broke out in pox and almost died. He bore the scars on his face for the rest of his life.
“Miss Hannah’s voodoo,” Tutu concluded, glaring at Sam. “There’s a lesson there, child. When your parents slap you silly, it’s for your own good. Blood is thicker than water and don’t you let anyone tell you different. You’ve only got but one mama and daddy. Lose them and you’ve lost everything.”
“That’s where you come in, Tutu,” Sam shot back. “I haven’t lost anything as long as you’re there as my spy.”
“Hostage is more like it,” she cut him off. “Did anyone ever think to ask how I felt about this little game? Toting messages like some flunky. Going behind their back. It’s no different from lying.”
“But I did it for your own good.” Sam hated the little whine that crimped his voice. “If it wasn’t for me—”
“What in God’s name do you know about my own good?” Tutu’s eyes were molten with wrath. Leon, in the middle, tried to signal Sam with his eyebrows: Back off, man.
“But I saved you your job!”
Tutu, glowering, rose to her feet. “Did I ask to be saved? Did I?” Sam started to sweat. “You better think about saving your own precious hind quarters before you start in worrying about mine. I’m done spying for you, Sammy. I quit!” She turned her back on him—on both of them—and stormed out of the kitchen.
an hour later he was riding shotgun down the West Side Highway in a blue 1963 Chevy Impala with Leon at the wheel. Leon had barely said two words over lunch—but the minute Sam made noises about heading back downtown, he jumped up and offered to drive him. The Impala belonged to Tutu’s brother Morris, a cabdriver, but Leon got to borrow it on nights and weekends so he could pick up a little extra cash running old folks around on their errands. Gypsy cab. Sam was happy for the ride. It gave him some time to talk to Leon about the article without Tutu eavesdropping.
Driving in the City terrified Sam—in fact, ever since he flunked his road test, just being in the driver’s seat made him antsy—but it seemed to turn Leon loose. One hand on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio dial, Leon barely even looked at the road and never bothered with his blind spot or rearview mirror. Every time he hit the gas, he cranked up the volume. “When it comes to singing,” he shouted to Sam over the music, “a car’s even better than the shower.” Whatever song came on—“Everyday People,” “Sugar, Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Build Me Up Buttercup”—Leon sang along with perfect pitch and perfect recall of every word. Sam grabbed the dial and spun it just to test him. Rosemary Clooney. Frank Sinatra. Sly and the Family Stone. The Supremes. Janis Joplin. The Stones. The Archies. Leon never missed a note, skipped a beat, muffed a word.
“You’re incredible,” Sam crowed. “You should be on television—like American Bandstand or Ed Sullivan or something.”
“What’s incredible? Another Negro with rhythm?”
Sam didn’t know whether it was cool to laugh. “No one in my family can even carry a tune—except Tutu.”
Leon let that slide.
“It’s all about church,” Leon said, weaving through the traffic. “When I opened my mouth to praise the Lord, I just hit the notes without trying. It was like I was born to sing.”
“That’s how I felt when I learned to ski,” Sam jumped in. “I was up on this frozen mountaintop and it was like an icicle speared the center of my brain. Don’t ask me why—I just knew I could do it.”
“Seriously?” Sam nodded. Leon went on, “I thought skiing was something rich white folks did to scare themselves.”
“Well, there’s that, I guess.” Sam spun the dial to the classical station and a Mozart aria fluttered around them. “But for me, it’s almost—you know—holy. The only time I really believe in God is when I’m flying down a mountain.”
“That’s just not right.” Leon batted Sam’s hand away and twisted until he landed on Wilson Pickett belting out “In the Midnight Hour.” “Cold is evil. Cold is death. Cold is the opposite of holy. You oughta come to church more often, man. Empty your mind, open your mouth, and feel the spirit working through you. Plus, it’s a lot warmer than skiing.”
Sam grabbed the dial. Now Mahalia Jackson was wailing “In the Upper Room.” It was like stereo—Mahalia in one ear, Leon in the other. He didn’t even strain for the high notes.
“You have any white friends, Leon?” Sam asked when the song was over.
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“You have any black friends?” Pause. “And don’t say Tutu cause she’s not your friend or your family.”
“I don’t get it,” Sam barreled on. “I mean, everybody talks about civil rights, equality, freedom, integration, blah, blah. But there’s not a single black kid in my school.”
“And there wasn’t a single white kid in mine.”
Long pause. “Someday We’ll Be Together” started playing but Leon let it spin without singing along.
“You probably think I’m just some stuck-up white kid who’s hanging out with you because I’ve got a thing about your grandma.”
“No. I think you’re hanging out with me because I’m driving your white ass home.” They laughed.
“But seriously . . .” Sam took a deep breath and told him about the article. “I’m thinking I’d write it in interview format. Or all in your own words. Like, the story of Leon Carter, as told to Sam Stein. It’d be for the school paper—but that’s just the start. Maybe Ramparts would pick it up—you know, the underground rag? Or The Village Voice. Or even the Times magazine—gotta shoot high, right? First thing, I’d have to interview you—get all the facts straight.” Leon drove on in silence, exiting the highway and nosing the Chevy into the maze of Lower Manhattan. At a traffic light, he turned so he could study Sam’s expression. When the light turned green, he turned away, still without speaking.
“What street did you say you lived on?” he said finally.
“Just drop me off here,” Sam told him as St.-Mark’s-in-the-Bowery came into view.
Leon pulled over but Sam didn’t get out. The radio was still blaring—“Chain of Fools”—and they let Aretha get to the end of the song. Then Leon switched it off. “That article idea? I think it’d be cool,” he said quietly. “Granny says you’re always scribbling away on something. Let’s see what you can do with me.”
“cool!” was still rattling around his brain when he threw open the apartment door. “Fab news! Leon’s like totally cool with the article.” That’s what he would have said if Kim had been there—or Richard—or even Eli. But the place was deserted. Just a note on the kitchen table in Kim’s plump round little-girl handwriting: “Back soon. .K.”
Sam took a breath. Shook the bees out of his head. Grabbed his notebook and a pen. Pulled a chair up to the kitchen table. Sat down. And started writing.
Leon Carter sings like an angel and drives like the Devil’s on his tail. And maybe he is. Because Leon Carter is young, black, and male in America—and if ever there was a combination to make the Devil give chase, that would be it.
Now what?
He sat with his pen poised over the page, but no other words came. He read over the three lines, flung the pen across the room, and let his face fall into his palms. Now what? Snappy little lede he had there—but aside from driving and singing, Sam didn’t know the first thing about Leon Carter. Well, not quite accurate. He knew Leon was lean and handsome. He knew that his father was dead; his mother was messed up on drugs—or something—back in Virginia. He bagged groceries at a Harlem supermarket and drove a gypsy cab and gave his grandmother whatever he could spare so she could buy herself a grave. He went to church on Sunday. What else? Did Leon remember anything about his daddy? Did he have a girlfriend? What were his dreams? His fears? Secrets? Where did he see himself in ten years?
Sam didn’t have a clue.
That’s why you need to interview him, asshole.
Right. Always a good idea to get the story before you try to tell the story. Ask leading questions. Don’t assume you know the answers. Open your ears and your heart but remain impartial. Record, don’t interpret. Observe, don’t judge. Once you find the story, let it tell you how to tell it.
Isn’t that what Mr. Coffin always told the high school newspaper staff?
Sam picked the pen up off the floor and started pacing. He tried to empty his mind—then tried to fill it with facts. He tried to put himself in Leon’s shoes, in his skin. Leon was black. His hair was springy. He had a voice so beautiful it made you tremble to hear him sing. He’d been poor all his life. He wanted money! He wanted to count for something, to be somebody who had nothing to do with bagging groceries. He wanted his big break—who didn’t? But who was going to give Leon Carter a break?
Sam sat down at the table again and started doodling under the single flimsy paragraph he’d penned in a lather. Smiley faces. High-heeled shoes. His signature ten different ways. What if Leon were writing a story about him? What would he need to know to get it right? That Sam dreamed of being a famous writer? That try as he might, he really couldn’t understand Kim’s obsession with the Black Panthers? That he was secretly convinced he was a total fraud? That despite everything he still looked up to Richard? But why would he need Leon to tell his story anyway? He could tell it better himself. Couldn’t everyone?
Come to think of it, why did Leon need Sam to tell his story? It was a kind of theft, wasn’t it, telling someone else’s story for them? A double theft when it came to black folks. White people had taken everything from black people except their souls and their stories—and now Sam was going to take Leon’s story too? The one worldly thing Leon had left—scooped up and cranked out for some high school newspaper? And he was planning on making a career of this?
But Leon said he was cool with it. So did that make it right? Who was Sam fooling?
If he had any pot, he would have rolled a joint and smoked it—but Richard was the keeper of the drugs and the last thing Sam wanted was to be caught rummaging through Richard’s shit like some pathetic junkie.
He poured himself a glass of water, gulped it down, poured another. Then he slammed the notebook shut and started pacing again. His father once told him you could extract a core from an ancient tree and map the forest’s weather for centuries—wet years and dry years, plagues of insects, fire, flood. Sam didn’t care about trees—he cared about people. What if you could take a core of someone’s brain? Like Leon. Like Richard. Or even Kim. Who was she really? What did she want? What set her pulse racing when she woke up in the middle of the night? He and Kim lived together, slept together, breathed the same air, but did he really have any idea what went on inside her?
The simple truth was that he didn’t know shit about shit. It didn’t help that he and Kim hadn’t said more than two words to each other in days. The silence was killing him.
Richard was right—he had to let her go or she’d hate him. But would that be any worse than hating himself?
leon crossed the hallway in two strides and leaned his long torso into the kitchen, bracing his forearms on the door frame. “Guess what?” His grandmother didn’t even look up from her Bible. “Sammy says he wants to write about me.”
“Is that a fact?” Tutu guided a string between the two faces of the book, closed it, and folded her hands over the cover.
Leon saw that she was still brooding over what Sam said about saving her job, but it was too late to backpedal now. “Smart as he is, he’s bound to write something good. You told me yourself—”
But Tutu raised her palms in the air to stop him. “What I told you . . .” lowering her hands to the book again, “is that he’s not half as smart as he thinks he is. If you had the opportunities that boy has—”
“Aw, Granny.”
“If you’d finished school like I told you to.” Here it comes. “If you quit singing for a second and started listening. If you’d been born rich and white, instead of poor and—”
“You always told me that didn’t matter. Who the Lord favors . . .”
“You think that child’s your friend?” She wouldn’t let him finish a single sentence. “You think he’s going to make you into somebody just by writing about you?” She was shouting. “I’ll tell you what’s going to be. He’s going to write something that makes himself look good. Look good—feel good—just like his parents did with me. ‘Good old Tutu—been around forever—part of the family.’ They think they believe that. But it’s a lie—just like Sammy’s lying to you, Leon. I gave twenty years of my life to that family—never sick a day. I took pride—you better believe I did. And look at the thanks I get. ‘Don’t mind her—she’s just the maid.’ Just the maid! And those civil rights people are no different. Folks who never did an honest day’s work in their life telling me I need to find some self-respect. Uncle Tom—Aunt Jemima.” She spat out the hated names.
Now Leon had his palms up. “Not me, Granny. I never said that. I know how hard you work . . .”
“Sammy Stein doesn’t even respect himself—so how do you think he’s going to respect you? I was a fool to believe those people were any different. Don’t you be a fool, Leon. Stay away from that boy. Tell your own damn story—or better yet, keep it hid so no one can take it from you. You open your soul to Sammy, and nothing good will ever come of it. Trust me.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Now I’m going to lie down. I’m tired to death.” She squeezed past him, stomped across the apartment, and shut herself in the bedroom. Case closed.