They had him in a pine box, and the first thing one of the newsmen say is, why that sure don’t look like much of a casket. Then somebody laugh, and then somebody else laugh.
Buck Boy’s sister and uncles and about a hundred cousins is up front and everyone is real quiet, just looking at that little box, with four little handles on it, no fancy-looking paint, nothing. You could see it was the lowest, cheapest casket come from out of Charlie’s Bargain Store someplace. The funeral men carrying it set it down in front of the church and took off like they was ready to duck bullets.
Rev. Jenkins is looking around for somebody to open the casket, but nobody move. Finally he open it. Buck Boy look fine. Got a nice suit on, but that casket gotta go. Rev. Jenkins look around the front rows and ask for Buck Boy’s mother, but she ain’t there. I see Victoria Robinson standing there shrugging, so Rev. Jenkins got on the podium and sprint through his sermon like nothing’s wrong, though he got one of them “We’ll-get-to-this-later” looks on his face. Soon as it’s over the funeral men come back and lift Buck Boy to the hearse while Rev. Jenkins march out of church in his robes hollering about the Gilbert Funeral Home and all the money they gave Mr. Gilbert for the funeral. There was about a hundred people following him and they was hot.
Mr. Gilbert’s funeral home is right around the corner. Rev bang on the door and Mr. Gilbert open up and peek his head out. He see that mob and he don’t open the door all the way. He’s a spooky old man and he smell funny and he’s always cranky, but his son Adam who they call Dirt plays guitar very good. Nobody but us wants Dirt in their band because he smells funny and everybody knows he works with dead people.
“I oughta skin you, Randy!” Rev. Jenkins say to Mr. Gilbert, and the crowd behind him raise up like they ready to trample Mr. Gilbert.
“It’s not my fault,” Mr. Gilbert say. “I can’t bury nobody for free!”
“By God, we had four thousand dollars in donations for that boy,” Rev. Jenkins snaps.
“Nobody gave me nothing,” Mr. Gilbert say. “I swear to you, Hillary, I’ve had him in here more than a week and I didn’t get a dime from nobody. No suit for him to wear, nothing. Didn’t charge ’em for storage neither.”
Rev. Jenkins, he turned and looked at Victoria Robinson, who had marched over there and was standing right behind him. “My mother said she sent the money,” Victoria say in a little voice, but she got a little jump in her voice and right then and there I knowed what happened.
Mr. Gilbert say to Victoria: “I tried to call your house but y’all ain’t got no phone. I went by there but nobody answered the door and there were reporters all over. I went by a couple of times.” And then he turn to Rev. Jenkins and say in a dry way: “I called you several times, too, Hillary, but you wouldn’t return my calls either.”
The Rev bite his lip and sway in his robes, then reach down and pull up his church robe to get at his pants pocket. “I’ll pay for the suit and casket right now myself,” he say.
“Nope,” Mr. Gilbert say. “It’s been paid for.”
“By who?”
“Mr. Woo. He come by and paid me an hour ago. He gave me enough for a nice casket and a nice suit. I only had time to buy the suit. I didn’t have time to order another box. And I didn’t have no spares around here I could use in the meantime neither.”
• • •
IT TOOK ALL AFTERNOON to sort out what happened at Mr. Gilbert’s funeral home, for now everyone knowed Mrs. Robinson took all them donations and used them to buy televisions and couches and dope and whatever else. There was a lot of people in that crowd that wanted to find her and beat her brains out, but Rev. Jenkins said let it go. He told the newsmen to not say anything about it and a lot of them said they wouldn’t but they did anyway. The Rev didn’t care. He had his hands full keeping the folks from trying to fry Mrs. Robinson, and I think they would’ve gone no matter what if it wasn’t for Victoria Robinson. That business tore her up and you could see it. She was only fourteen but she growed up right then and there. She really ain’t so bad like the rest of them Robinsons.
After a while Rev. Jenkins say he had to go to the graveyard and say the last words over Buck Boy, so a bunch of us ride in the church van with him. Me, Mr. Gilbert, Victoria Robinson, my sister Sissie, Goat, Adam, Bunny, Dex and his brother Ray-Ray, just about the whole Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band.
When we got to the graveyard it was almost dark outside and very quiet. The graveyard men had left the gate open, but there was nobody around and you almost couldn’t see because there were no lights and it was getting dark and lonely with the wind blowing. Rev. Jenkins drove in on the paved road and said it suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know where to find Buck Boy’s grave ’cause he’d rushed out of church before anybody could tell him where it was. But I knew, and I told him to keep driving around those little curvy roads till I told him to stop. When I saw Mr. Woo standing by himself on a little hillside with his yellow straw hat in his hand, I pointed and told Rev. Jenkins that’s where Buck Boy is buried. And that’s where he was.
2
RAY-RAY’S PICTURE BOX
There’s five members in The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band: me, Goat, Beanie, Bunny, and Dex. Dex actually counts as one and a half when you include his little brother Ray-Ray. Ray-Ray ain’t a full member. He’s like a half member. He don’t play nothing. He bangs on the cowbell and hoots and hollers mostly. He’s more like a mascot. He’s a brown-skinned boy with a clean, short haircut. He’s only nine, two years younger than us, but he likes Kool and the Gang songs. Him and Dex is like night and day. Dex is serious and quiet and plays the guitar. Ray laughs and talks loud all the time. He likes to please. Ray-Ray will do anything for ice cream.
When we was little, Dex had to take care of Ray-Ray all the time. When they walked to school together, he’d tell Ray-Ray “Walk behind me,” and Ray-Ray would walk a half block behind. I understand. I made my sister Sissie do the same thing when me and Dex went to school together. Sissie wouldn’t bother with Ray-Ray. She’d walk a block ahead of him and make Ray-Ray walk another block behind her by himself, so he was actually two blocks back behind everybody. Of course, he’d get in all kinds of trouble being by himself, on account of his marbles wasn’t all there. Like the time he got Hate Whistle mad. Hate Whistle’s a drunk from The Bottom. His real name ain’t Hate Whistle. His real name, somebody said, is Herbert. But mostly he’s called Hate Whistle.
I never seen Hate Whistle take a drink. He’s a happy drunk. He staggers around The Bottom all the time, smelling like whisky and laughing at nothing. Sometimes he plays baseball with us when we ain’t got enough people and we don’t mind because Hate Whistle’s funny, plus nobody wants to play on our team, since we can’t play nothing but music. Hate Whistle likes to dance on the sidewalk outside Mr. Woo’s when we practice upstairs. Just look out the window and see him down there dancing in the street, he’s just so happy and dancing around, and who don’t like an audience?
The only thing about Hate Whistle is . . . well, you guessed it. Ray-Ray hit Hate Whistle’s button one morning on the way to school. Me and Dex was walking to school that day and heard a lot of hollering and turned around and seen Hate Whistle chasing Ray-Ray around, so we had to go back and get Ray-Ray, and we was all late for school on account of Ray-Ray.
Dex said to me, “I didn’t even know he could whistle.” Then he said to Ray-Ray, “From now on, just walk next to me and don’t say nothing.”
Ray-Ray done that, but he was never quiet on them walks to school. He was always asking questions to Dex. Ray-Ray asked a lot of smart questions for someone who’s supposed to be not all the way there, like “Why do a bicycle have two wheels instead of five?” or “If Martin Luther King is dead, is we gonna be adopted?”
And Dex would say, “I don’t know. Be quiet.”
Sometimes Ray-Ray would complain, too. He’d say, “Dex, there’s noise in my head. C
an’t you hear it?”
Dex would say, “It’s the ocean, Ray-Ray.”
“Where is the ocean?”
“It’s far away, Ray-Ray.”
“If I can hear it, why can’t you?”
“I don’t know, Ray-Ray.”
Them two was raised by their daddy, Mr. Ernest. He was a short, heavyset man from down south. He never waved or talked too much to kids. Mr. Ernest was quiet like Dex. He went to work every day like clockwork, some kind of construction job because he always came home dirty, wearing concrete-type construction boots and a work hat. Dex said his daddy was from Alabama, but he never talked to me too much about him. His daddy was strict. I once went by Dex’s house to pick up Dex for rehearsal and just before I turned in the gate I heard some talking on the side driveway and peeked over there and seen Dex outside talking to Mr. Ernest. I was too far off to hear what was said, but Dex said something to Mr. Ernest, and after he said it, Mr. Ernest grabbed Dex by the collar and slapped him across the face. Didn’t say a word, just slapped him again and again, “slap, slap, slap,” like that. Dex never cried or yelled. He stood there and took it.
I never did ask Dex what Mr. Ernest said or what it was about.
I never seen Dex’s ma. I heard somebody say she worked at the post office in Falls Point. I never asked about her, ’cause it was kind of a secret, about Dex and Ray-Ray’s mom. Whatever it was, it was probably gonna come out in The Bottom one way or the other anyhow. Dex being my best friend, I wasn’t the type to ask him about that kind of personal thing. But one afternoon me, Ray-Ray, and Bunny was playing handball—it was mostly me and Bunny playing while Ray-Ray runned around laughing and fetching the ball for us—and after a while we set down to rest along the grate fence there and Bunny said, “Ray-Ray, where’s your ma?”
“I don’t know,” Ray-Ray said, “but I got naked pictures of her.”
Bunny’s eyes got big. “Butt naked?” he said.
“Yep.”
“Where at?”
“In a picture box in my basement.”
Bunny plays sports good and fights the best on our block and he got the nicest house and the prettiest ma, so he’s kind of the leader of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band, even though he don’t play guitar that good. Dex plays guitar way better than him. Bunny said to Ray-Ray, “If you bring me that picture box, I’ll get you some ice cream.”
Ray-Ray rocked from side to side when he talked, standing on one foot and then the other. He rocked from side to side a little bit, thinking, then looked at the sky and said, “Where’s Dex?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Bunny said, “I’ll get you a big ice cream cone if you bring me that box. What kind ice cream you like?”
That done it. Ray-Ray liked to please, and Bunny was leader of The Bottom Bone Band, and Ray-Ray loved himself some ice cream. “I like banilla,” Ray-Ray said. He said everything that starts with a V as a B. Like “banilla” for vanilla, and “Bincent” for “Vincent.”
“Vanilla it is.”
Ray-Ray runned to his house and come back with a shoebox. He gave it to Bunny, who placed it on the ground along by the fence in the park and opened it up.
Whether it was really Ray-Ray and Dex’s mom in them pictures, I don’t know, for there was a lot of different women. I can’t say really who it was, but when Bunny opened that box of pictures, my world kind of come apart. Nothing in my life put me ready to look at them pictures. It put girls in a whole new light. I never seen girls like that before. There was all types of girls, doing all kinds of things. Bunny flipped through ’em so fast and wild, he wouldn’t hardly even let me get a look. He pushed through a few of ’em and finally tossed ’em in the box and stood up. “I’m gonna make me some money,” he said.
“Where’s my ice cream?” Ray-Ray said.
“I’mma get it for you.”
Bunny headed out and we followed him to Mr. Johnson’s grocery store on the Boulevard. Once we was inside there, Bunny drawed some money from his pocket—Bunny kept hisself some money, always had a quarter or fifty cents some kind of way—and brought Ray-Ray a giant vanilla ice cream cone. Then he said, “You go on home, Ray-Ray.”
“What about the box?”
“I’ll give it back in a little while.”
“But I got to bring it home.”
“Lemme make my money back first,” Bunny said, and he headed off and me and Ray-Ray followed him along the Boulevard. But instead of turning back to our street, he crossed over the street and headed straight to the Cool Out Spot.
The Cool Out Spot in The Bottom was on the other side of the Boulevard behind some railroad tracks and bushes near an old soft drink factory that’s been closed down for years. You can hide behind the bushes there and sit on an old wood fence near the old factory and drink beer without no grown-ups seeing you. That’s where all the kids from The Bottom hung out, like The Six, boys from two blocks over who is our main competition in sports. The Six wasn’t just six of ’em, by the way, it was a bunch of ’em. But they beat us in everything: baseball, football, Halloween fights, fistfights. They was older and cooler but they didn’t have no band. But what they did have was Bo, Lightbulb, Chink, Junior, Amuneek—that was his real name, “I’m Unique”—Poogie, Toy Boy, and his older brother Tito. Tito was the leader of them Sixes. He wasn’t too bad, but his little brother, Toy Boy, he was rough. All them Sixes was a little rough, but we got along okay. At the Cool Out Spot you was mostly safe from them anyway. It was kind of an agreement. No gangs from anyplace in The Bottom could beat up on you at the Cool Out Spot, so long as you had beer or brung soda or cakes or something to trade or share. It was a peace spot. Even some of the real bad ones that come around later, The Black Spades and The Seven Crowns—some of them was full-out bad—if you was at the Cool Out Spot it was mostly okay.
Bunny made a lot of friends that day. There was a bunch of pictures in that box, maybe fifty or a hundred—that shoebox was full to the top—and they all gathered around. Bunny announced he was selling the pictures, but mostly everyone was just looking. Somebody asked where he got the pictures and Bunny said, “Ray-Ray here said it was his ma,” and Ray-Ray smiled. He was always trying to please. Some of ’em laughed, but not all of ’em. The Six knew Dex, and they knew Dex would stick up for hisself and was one of the few of our band that could actually really play sports. They stood around them pictures staring and passing ’em around except Tito, he took one look in that box and walked away and sat on the far end of the wooden fence and drunk his soda without saying nothing. But the rest of them Sixes and a couple of them Black Spade boys who was there, they runned through them pictures with their tongues hanging out. Bunny finally sold a few of them pictures for twenty-five cents apiece.
Ray-Ray was there licking on his ice cream cone the whole time, and dim as he was, he seen trouble. He wanted his picture box back and asked for it a couple of times, but them boys didn’t bother with him. They kept sayin’, “We’ll give ’em back in a minute,” flipping through the pictures. So Ray-Ray finally started towards home. Bunny looked up and seen him going and figured Dex would be coming next, so he closed up the box and said, “I got to go,” and cut out after him. I stayed where I was, for I figured I was in trouble either way. I had got to thinking about Dex. Dex was my closest friend in The Bottom, and if Dex got mad I wouldn’t have no close friends. Plus I never seen Dex mad. I think Dex never did get mad at me once that I could remember, but I seen his daddy mad, and that was enough for me.
I thought about this as I watched Bunny run after Ray-Ray, and I figured I’d better stay at the Cool Out Spot and let Bunny work that out, because it occurred to me by then that Bunny had took advantage of Ray-Ray in a bad way, and hot as them pictures was, I wasn’t feeling so good about seeing ’em now. I figured if Dex came at me and I was at the Cool Out Spot, there was others that seen them pictures, and he’d figure it just wasn’t worth it
to fight all The Sixes and them two Black Spade gangsters that was standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and sodas, and all of them seen the pictures too, so maybe he wouldn’t blame me for nothing.
So I stood there trying to be cool and talking to Tito. Me and him always got along because Tito likes music and his aunt goes to my church and likes it when I play organ there.
Well, five minutes later, Dex and Ray-Ray turned the corner and come to the Cool Out Spot in a hurry. Bunny wasn’t with ’em. Dex walked up to them boys crowding around their various pictures—I guess about five of ’em still had pictures in their hands they had bought, and some had already gone home with their pictures. He said, “Where’s Bunny?”
Toy Boy spoke up. Toy Boy was a tall, thin, light-skinned boy. He was just as bad and stupid as his brother Tito was smart. Toy Boy wasn’t worth two cents. He had bought one of them pictures and was holding it at his side when Dex come up. Toy Boy said, “He’s gone,” and started laughing. Dex stepped up to him, but Tito stepped between ’em and told Toy Boy, “Be quiet,” and he said to Dex, “Bunny left out, Dex. He’s gone.”
“I want them pictures back,” Dex said.
Toy Boy didn’t want to give his picture back, and neither did the others. But Tito snatched the picture out of Toy’s hand and then stepped over and snatched every picture out every one of them Sixes boys’ hands and gived them back to Dex.
“Where’s my money?” one of ’em said.
“Shut up,” Tito said. Tito was the leader of The Sixes. None of them messed with him.
Dex took them pictures without a word, then spun on his heels and took Ray-Ray’s hand and walked back to the block. I followed behind him. I knowed he was mad, so I said, “I ain’t had nothing to do with it, Dex.”
“Whyn’t you come and get me?” he said.
“I didn’t know where you was.”