The Corner Read online

  She’s young—thirteen last September—but she’s not young. Every boy in the neighborhood has noticed the curves and the way Tyreeka moves. DeAndre knew Linwood had his eyes on her; so did Chris and Sean. In that crowd, DeAndre was hardly the best-looking suitor. Tyreeka, he knew, saw him as too dark-skinned at first, too ordinary looking back then, before he let his dreds grow out and found his look. But DeAndre got close to her first by playing that he was interested in her younger cousin, Tish, who had been nursing a child’s crush on DeAndre.

  “You know my cousin like you,” Tyreeka told him.

  “Yeah,” he told her, “but I like you.”

  From then on, he was all over Stricker Street, spending near every dime he could scrape together by slinging at Hollins and Payson, or on Fulton, or on Fairmount. First, he bought her new Nikes; then it was trips to the movies at Harbor Park. By the time summer ended they’d seen every last thing that had come to the downtown theater complex—the good ones twice or three times. Whatever was left over went for shopping trips down at Mt. Clare or Westside, with DeAndre spending as much on his own clothes as he gave to Tyreeka. Then there was that video game down at Bill’s, the one called Street Fighter; DeAndre had her learn enough to play him on it, and not a night went by that they didn’t pour fifteen or twenty dollars in quarters into the slot. He was leaking money in those days, two hundred a week just to stay next to Tyreeka. Still, Linwood and Sean were losing their minds. Why, they asked Tyreeka, did you pick that ugly, blackass nigger?

  She knew where the money came from, of course. In the beginning, he actually brought her down to the corners to pass the time. She’d sit on the stoop; he’d serve a customer and then stop back to play around. But as things got more serious, he could see that it wasn’t right. There is no respect in having your girl out on the corner with you.

  The sex only started coming in the late fall, with DeAndre getting to her first in the back bedroom at the Dew Drop and later using his parent’s old house up the block, where the pinup girls stared down on them as they went at it. Out in the street, he talked trash like everyone else did, telling himself and everyone else he was gonna bust the bitch. But he genuinely liked Tyreeka and so he tried to be good to her, it being her first time and all.

  Now they’re together, but DeAndre is still worrying. Tyreeka likes to fool with his friends, and when it comes to girls, he doesn’t trust any of them. Linwood is still hungry for it. And Dewayne. And Tae is a creeper; he’s been flirting with Tyreeka since the day she moved into the neighborhood. No, DeAndre definitely has to take her to Ella’s dance, or she’ll be there without him and that won’t do.

  “Ella say Kiti gonna be mixin’,” says R.C.

  “Yeah, I be there,” DeAndre says, before turning his attention back to Boo. “You comin’?”

  “Huh?”

  “You comin’ down?”

  “Yeah.”

  And off he goes, a fifteen-year-old entrepreneur on his daily commute to the office. With Boo trailing, DeAndre walks past Stubby, who’s back out slinging Pink Tops at Fayette and Vincent since Collins rolled out; on past Scar, who’s selling green vials in front of the vacant house on the other side of the street; on past Drac, who’s working out with Killer Bee along Gilmor; arriving at last at the Fairmount corners, the market niche that he has made his own. Fairmount and Gilmor, home of the Big Blue Top.

  There, on his corner, DeAndre proceeds to have a day like no other, a sell-out-the-store bonanza that keeps him running into the late hours of night. He’s got a bomb and his name is ringing. Customers are coming at him from Monroe Street, from Hollins and Payson, from down below Baltimore Street. He’s out there when Boo sells off his allotment and settles up. He’s out there still when Boo has gone home for the night. He’s tired, working hard, and ultimately, getting a little bit lazy in the wee hours—all the more so after two Phillies blunts packed with that good Edmondson Avenue weed. By eleven or so, he’s no longer ducking back into the labyrinth of alleys that run off the 1500 block of Fairmount. He’s out in the open for most of the sales, carrying it with him, serving people right along Gilmor.

  He’s too busy to notice the unmarked Cavalier at the other end of Gilmor, too tired to bother sending the girl with the $10 bill back into the alley for her two vials, too ready to believe that he can go on like this forever, slinging on autopilot, making more money than even Tyreeka knows how to spend.

  “FIVE-OH.”

  Aw shit. Coming up Gilmor. Two of ’em on a jump-out from a gray Chevy. And right when DeAndre was about to pass two vials to the girl. He drops them in the gutter and races into one of the side alleys. Behind him, he can hear the car doors slam and heavy footsteps. But fuck that, he knows Fairmount’s alleys and he knows where he’s going. He’s also a fifteen-year-old running on adrenaline and $120 high-tops; not many rollers are going to stay with that, burdened as they are with utility belts, Kevlar vests, and hard-soled shoes.

  The footsteps behind him fade, but as a precaution, DeAndre cuts through to Baltimore Street, then doubles back and waits a few more minutes before slipping back out onto Baltimore again. Then, finally, he saunters casually up to the corner, standing there for a moment, peering up Gilmor to Fairmount and the scene of the crime, so to speak. No cops, no crowds—just the regulars drifting back toward the corner.

  Then from behind him, he hears the screech of radials. DeAndre turns and they’re out of the car and on him—Huffham and some other roller that DeAndre doesn’t recognize. This time he doesn’t bother to run. He even manages a little smile, figuring he’s gotten over.

  “What’s up?” he asks Huffham.

  The cop is shaking his head, one meaty hand gripping DeAndre by the upper arm, lurching him into the liquor store window grate. It hurts like hell—especially when they yank his arms back and apply the cuffs.

  “Why’d you run?” the other police asks.

  “What?” says DeAndre.

  Huffham shakes his head again, but DeAndre could care less. He beat them straight up, ran them into the dust in those back alleys. He could have stayed hid forever if he wanted; he only popped out on Baltimore Street because he knew they didn’t have the coke. And now they’re late; they’re dragging his ass back up to Fairmount and the corner is cluttered with fiends and dealers. No way. They didn’t have it and DeAndre knew they never would.

  All the way up the block, he’s holding down the smile, trying to manage a hard-as-nails gangster look for the sake of appearances. He sees Linwood in the crowd. Dink-Dink, too.

  Huff ham is still gripping his arm, moving him toward the curb in starts and jolts. The other cop is a few steps ahead, bending down. Aw shit.

  “You want these back?”

  Got-damn. Couldn’t someone—anyone—out here have picked the shit up? Lord, please, I’m on a corner with every fiend in the neighborhood and not one of them sees fit to pick up two vials of coke lying in the gutter? He’d have gone on home if he thought the people at Fairmount and Gilmor were just going to leave Blue Tops lying all over the place.

  He waits for the wagon. The corner—his corner—watches the dethronement with indifference. DeAndre shouts toward the closest recognizable face.

  “Tell my mother I’m up the Western.”

  There’s no comprehensive ass-kicking this time, though he did run from the police—a sin that often provokes a Western uniform to deliver some parting shots on principle. Perhaps it’s because he’s fifteen, perhaps because he didn’t bolt a second time when they pulled up on Baltimore Street, and perhaps because Huffham and his partner are about police work by the rules. For whatever reason, DeAndre arrives at the station house unhurt.

  Huffham is good about trying to reach Fran as well, but that’s no surprise: the juvenile system is such a pain-in-the-ass complication for a working police that it’s better by far to get a parent or guardian to come up to the station and sign for the kid. In fact, some police will actually lock a kid up, process him, and then drive the arres
tee back home rather than suffer through the wait for a juvenile hearing officer. Worse, if the kid is committed to JSA custody, there’s also that drive to Hickey or Waxter. So for the rest of the four-to-twelve shift, they’re calling for Fran to come and get her son, trying to reach her by calling a neighbor who lets people from the Dew Drop use her phone. When that doesn’t work, DeAndre gives Huffham the number at his grandmother’s house on Vine Street.

  He’s waiting and watching, listening to the cop try to explain the situation, probably talking to Miss Roberta, who’s probably confused. No, she doesn’t know where Fran is. Fran doesn’t live here. Aw shit.

  Nothing is working. Fran is out on her own adventure and the connections aren’t getting made. At midnight, the shift changes and there’s no alternative but to call for juvenile intake. DeAndre’s still hoping that someone on Fairmount got the word to his mother, that Fran is on her way up to the Western now. But barring that, he’s bound for Hickey.

  It’s nearly two in the morning by the time the intake officer has DeAndre McCullough properly processed as a delinquent child. She commits him to the Hickey School in Baltimore County, citing not only the lack of an available parent to take custody and the current offense of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, but two other pending juvenile cases: another cocaine charge from September and a stolen car charge from August.

  He’s still waiting for the early-morning ride out to Hickey when word comes back that the training school is over capacity. New juvenile arrests are being sent fifty miles south of the city, to Boys Village in the lower reaches of Prince George’s County. That’s trouble. DeAndre was ready for Hickey; he’d heard about the place from half a dozen C.M.B. boys already. But Boys Village is way worse than Hickey, filled with D.C. niggers who like to beef with the Baltimore boys.

  His sense of foreboding increases as he rides south, the amber glow of the city receding as he’s hauled down Route 3 through miles of suburbs that give way to farms and woods and Lord knows what else. Highway signs point to places that DeAndre can only wonder about: Crofton, Bowie, Upper Marlboro. Watching the outline of an open-slat tobacco barn roll by under the moonlight, DeAndre wonders where in hell they’re taking him. Klan country, probably.

  On Fayette Street, the standing assumption is that any place in America without bricks and pavement and black people is, by definition, a playground for sheet-wearing, pickup-truck-wrecking, get-a-rope rednecks. It’s a powerful and enduring myth to the young men and women of West Baltimore, a self-imposed construct of the corner mind: They don’t want us out there. They don’t need us. Stray from the streets you know, you fall off the edge of the world.

  Staring out the van window, DeAndre sees stars in the winter sky. Boys Village. Damn.

  Might as well be the dark side of the moon.

  THREE

  R.C. is dying out there, his nostrils flaring, his breath coming in angry rasps. He muscles down to the low post, just outside the lane, one arm hard against his side, the elbow cocked. He’s glaring at Brooks, who’s looking like a lost ball in the tall grass of three-point land, dribbling, nervous after having been stripped the last two times down the court.

  Brooks passes across the key to Tae, who fires the ball back and cuts, a step ahead of the Bentalou defender. Brooks, of course, doesn’t see it. Nor does he see R.C. powering himself into position, using that elbow as a maul. A bounce pass and R.C. will be good for an eight-foot turnaround.

  Brooks dribbles twice, then cocks the leather orb against one shoulder.

  R.C. can take it no longer. “Ball,” he shouts. “Ball up.”

  Instead, Brooks lets go from thirty feet. The ball bricks with a brutal thud against the upper backboard. R.C. is wild-eyed; on the way back down court, he sidles over to Brooks and offers a quick shove.

  “Fuck you, motherfucker,” Brooks responds.

  “You a fuckin’ hawk,” sneers R.C.

  “So is you.”

  “Oh mah Gawd! You don’t see me throwin’ up shit like that.”

  “R.C., your shit is ass-ugly.”

  And so it goes. For exactly three minutes in the first quarter, the fledgling Martin Luther Kings had managed to stay with the B-squad of Bentalou’s fourteen-and-under team. For a minute or so, in fact, they were actually leading by a bucket, courtesy of Linwood’s penchant for grabbing offensive boards and then powering up.

  Sitting courtside with a small coterie of teenaged girls and younger boys—a rooting gallery for the M.L.K. team—Ella Thompson and Marzell Myers are ecstatic. Win or lose, today marks the rec center’s first foray into organized sports, and for a time at least, the boys seem to be holding together against a Bentalou squad culled from one of West Baltimore’s most established recreation programs. Playing for Bentalou’s teams marks a kid as possessing potential—if not as all-city, then at least as a coachable, teachable soul. Simply put, Herman Jones, who has run Bentalou for years, takes no shit; you obey the rules or you’re gone, your place in the program taken by some other kid who knows how to behave. About half of the Martin Luther Kings had, at one time or another, wandered down the hill to try out for a Herman Jones team. None had lasted.

  Six unanswered points and the early M.L.K. lead proves an illusion. R.C. and Brooks keep up their argument; Dewayne is stripped twice after trying to dribble into a crowded lane; Tae beats his man to the baseline, then wastes it on a 360-degree move that leaves him in no position to shoot. By contrast, the Bentalou squad runs a controlled offense, working the ball around a perimeter and down to the low post, where a six-foot-six prodigy unsettles the M.L.K. defense with a lazy, unstoppable turnaround move. Down by ten, Tae calls time.

  “Take Brooks out,” demands R.C.

  “Fuck you, nigger,” says Brooks.

  “We gotta get our shit together,” says Tae.

  “You gotta pass the ball,” R.C. pleads.

  “I give it away and it don’t come back,” Tae counters.

  On the other side of the court, the Bentalou team forms a tight circle and listens intently as Herman Jones critiques their performance, his voice never rising above monotone.

  He is a coach, and in every fundamental way, his children are coached. By contrast, the M.L.K squad is under the direction of sixteen-year-old Dontae Bennett, who in his informal capacity as a leader of the Crenshaw Mafia Brothers has assumed control of the basketball team as well. Tae’s responsibilities begin with the lineup, and end with making sure that everyone who made the trip from Fayette Street to the Bentalou gym gets some minutes. As for coaching or playmaking, there really isn’t any point. The M.L.K. players run a street game: on offense, separate games of one-on-one in which each kid panders to the glory of the highlight film playing in his brain; on defense … well, Ella’s boys don’t exactly bother with defense.

  Tae is the point guard. Linwood is low post. R.C. and Dewayne are the forwards. Brooks, the smallest kid in the gang, is the other starting guard. Boo, Brian, Manny Man, Dinky, and Randy are working off the bench. As for DeAndre, he’s on the disabled list, trapped in a fifteen-and-under cottage on the Boys Village campus.

  “What we gonna do?” asks Dewayne.

  R.C. shows his frustration. “Man … What the fuck …”

  “Shut up, R.C.,” says Linwood. “Let Tae talk.”

  They all turn to Tae, who puts his head down and stares at the gym floor. The buzzer sounds and the Bentalou players drift back onto the floor.

  “Shit,” says Tae. “I dunno. Just go beat their ass.”

  When they meet again at the half, they’re down eighteen.

  “Damn,” says Manny Man. “They fuckin’ us up.”

  From the sidelines, Ella takes in the disaster with an optimist’s detachment. True, they’re losing, but then again, the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center was without an athletic team a month ago. Now, in early February, she has ten of the corner’s readiest recruits playing an exhibition game inside the house that Herman Jones built. It’s a fine start,
regardless of the score.

  She needs a coach, of course. She’d had one for a week, a recovering addict known to all at Fayette and Monroe by the name of House, and Ella, on meeting him, understood just how right and perfect a street name could be. House was a six-foot-four, two-hundred-forty-pound brick structure topped with a wide smile and clean-shaven head. Legs like tree trunks, hands like shovels—when the man went out walking in West Baltimore, suburbanites in miles-away Catonsville got the urge to cross to the other side of the street. House was a presence.

  Down at Francis M. Woods, Rose Davis offered Ella the school gymnasium three days a week, but only if she could assure adult supervision for the new rec team. A corner warrior come in from the cold, House seemed the ticket. He wasn’t much of a coach, he told Ella, but he’d go down to the gym with the boys, keep them from foolishness.

  A few weeks back, on the day of the first scheduled practice, House showed early and gave Ella some of his story, telling her about the years lost to dope and coke and about the Narcotics Anonymous creed that finally saved him. His heart damaged by recurrent endocarditis, his limbs and torso scarred from a half-dozen shootings and cuttings, House was proud and humble at the same moment. Two years clean, he assured Ella.

  The boys drifted in—Tae and DeAndre, R.C. and Manny Man, Dewayne and Dinky, Brooks and Brian—and House took stock.

  “This it?” he asked.

  “This is the basketball team,” said Ella, delighted.

  R.C. grabbed a basketball from Brian’s hands, then pantomimed a power move. “I’m nice,” he assured the new coach. “What can I say? I have skills.”

  DeAndre snorted. Standing behind R.C., Tae reached in and stripped the ball free.

  “Bitch!” shouted R.C.

  “I got skills,” mimicked Brian. “You got used, you mean.”