Little Preston heard his parents talking about the monthly checks from the US Army that Butch’s father received. But he also knew that Butch had a job in the kitchen of a fancy Georgetown restaurant so he didn’t think things were that good in Butch’s house. He also took notice of an extremely glamorous lady who occasionally stayed there. He wondered who she was and why for those few fleeting days Butch’s father was stone sober, shaven, and handsome. And Butch seemed happy.
Then the lady would go away and Butch’s father would start drinking again. Like the night Prez was awakened by the sound of crashing glass. His parents were already at the window looking out. Butch’s father, clad only in undershorts, had heaved a garbage crate full of fruit peelings right through the big plate-glass window of Mr. Stein’s corner grocery store. Bedroom lights began switching on in the neighborhood.
“Goddammit, Stein! You bring yo’ fuckin’ ass over here from Poland and you won’t give us nuthin’. Not even r’speck. Where are you with your bad breath? The kids all say you got bad breath when you scream at ’em ta git outta yo’ sto’.” Hic. Hic. “Oh, sheeit!”
The cancer in his gut transformed each hiccup into a searing pain.
“Hic. Oh, that hurts. You better come on outta there, Stein, ’n talk to me. You got some explaining ta do. I know you’re in there hidin’ behind something all scared ’n shit like when we found yo’ asses in that concentration camp. Yeah, I was driving one of those tanks, I was in the 761st. I saved your ass! Fuckin’ Langston, where are you when I need you? Do you know From Beaumont to Detroit, Stein? ‘You Jim Crowed me/Before Hitler rose to power/and you are still Jim Crowing me/Right now this very hour’.”
Two more big hiccups and Butch’s father fell right on top of the pile of peelings. He rolled over and sat up, looking into the darkness of the empty store, while more bedroom lights were switched on around him and a siren could be heard in the distance, approaching rapidly.
By this time Butch was kneeling beside his father.
“Pops, c’mon, man, ya gotta get up and come inside before the cops come and take you away. Please, Pops. Please get up. Don’t ya hear the sirens? The cops are almost here. Please get up.”
“I’ll help you, son. You take one arm and I’ll take the other.” It was Little Preston’s dad.
“I’ll get his feet.” It was Mr. Davis from up the street.
“Just get one leg. I got the other.” It was Mr. Dixon from around the corner.
As they carried Butch’s father back to his apartment, bedroom lights began switching off. By the time the cops arrived, all the lights had been switched off. And when Lieutenant O’Brien stood before Mr. Stein’s damaged storefront and lighted his stogie, he could only hear the matchstick he dropped to the pavement.
*
Soon after, on another night when the neighborhood was trying to sleep, the howling of an ambulance broke the silence. It had come to take Butch’s father away. No one ever thought they’d ever see Butch cry, but there he stood, barefoot and in his pajamas, with tears rolling down his face, as his father was loaded into the back of the ambulance. Butch’s father was never seen again and Butch, rarely. He needed two jobs to take care of himself and his father’s medical bills, and he was nowhere near sixteen years old.
Then the mailman began delivering two mysterious envelopes to Butch’s mailbox every month. One was postmarked from Los Angeles, California. The other was local, from Washington, D.C. Soon after, the neighborhood’s first example of graffiti appeared on the wall in the empty lot where the kids played baseball, marbles, and tag. It was brushed onto the wall in lavender paint. It simply said, “THANK YOU ALL,” and was signed with a capital B that had wings.
The wings on the B became the subject of great conversation and debate amongst people in the neighborhood. Did the wings mean that Butch had big dreams and aspirations and would one day fly away from there? He was certainly smart enough. And if he could harness his energy productively, well, just maybe.
Others thought the wings meant Butch wanted to be a track athlete like his father had been, but not Little Preston who was already faster than Butch.
A small but vocal group of neighborhood mothers, including Mattie, put forward another interpretation of what the wings meant. Those wings, they said, were the wings of angels. Butch was not destined to be of this world much longer.