The Corner Read online

  R.C., Tyreeka, Manny Man, and Boo all turn to look at the figure running right at them, but with his hood up, DeAndre is almost on them before there’s a glint of recognition.

  “It’s Andre,” says Manny, finally.

  “Hey, wassup?” says DeAndre, coming to a fast stop. Immediately, he’s in Boo’s face. “Where’s my money?”

  “I gave it to your mother,” Boo insists. “I swear.”

  “I want my money,” says DeAndre, giving off his best glare.

  Boo looks around for help. Tyreeka shakes her head; she told Boo to hold the money for DeAndre, to keep Miss Fran from running any kind of game. Now Boo’s got two choices: flat-out accuse DeAndre’s mother of stealing from him, or pay the debt twice.

  “I gave …”

  DeAndre rears up with a quick combination, lefts and rights coming in practiced sequence. Boo collapses on the pavement, stunned by the punches. His anger quickly spent, DeAndre refrains from a full-tilt stomping.

  Boo gets up slowly, embarrassed and hurt.

  “Come on,” DeAndre tells him, turning his head slightly and extending his chin. “Take a shot.”

  Boo looks at him strangely. He can’t put it together fast enough and he’s wary of a trap.

  “I don’t want to do that,” says Boo.

  Manny Man and R.C. are smiling now. Tyreeka, too. This is DeAndre on stage, at his corner best.

  “Go ’head,” he says, insistent. “I put your ass on the ground. I feel sorry for you. Take a shot.”

  Boo shrugs, then cranks up and launches a right hook. His blow lands solidly against DeAndre’s left cheek, snapping it back for just a moment. Boo freezes in the follow-through, scared, still trying to see where this is going.

  DeAndre doesn’t even bother to feel his jaw. He laughs, and for a moment, Boo smiles back nervously.

  “You sorry,” DeAndre tells him.

  R.C. and Manny Man fall out in a wild fit of laughter. Tyreeka is in love all over again.

  “Boo, you a sorry nigger!” R.C. shouts, doubling over.

  Boo smiles stupidly, hoping the beef is settled. But DeAndre is once again staring at him coldly, the laughter gone.

  “Every time I see you,” he assures him. “You gon’ get beat until I get my money.”

  Boo seems convinced. The next day he finds DeAndre at the rec center and calls him outside. At the edge of the Vincent Street alley, he offers up thirty dollars.

  “That’s all I got right now.”

  DeAndre takes the money.

  “I’ll have some more later in the week.”

  DeAndre nods. In this world, thirty in the hand is worth twice that in money owed. And besides, DeAndre reasons, the threat of a daily ass-whipping can only carry so far with the likes of Boo, who gets points for being a C.M.B. member. That’s the trouble with subcontracting to friends: When the money or the package gets messed up, there’s a limit to your response unless you genuinely want to do violence to the people you hang with. With a stranger, it might play differently.

  Not only that, but there’s now a small voice arguing for caution inside the head of DeAndre McCullough. It’s not like him to listen, but Boys Village got his attention. If he wants to be on the street for his sixteenth summer, he’s going to have to slow things down. The drug charge on Fairmount leaves him with three pending cases. True, the car case was bullshit; DeAndre wasn’t even in the car when they gave him the charge. And true again, the first coke case was hovering at the edge of dismissal because the arresting officer, a white police named Weiner, got himself killed a few months back. But DeAndre figures he has to worry about general appearances. A juvenile master might see all the docket numbers, conclude he was a crime wave in the making, and bang him hard for the Fairmount arrest.

  For the same reason, DeAndre has decided to take seriously the pretrial release conditions, showing up every day at school and then getting back uptown to his aunt’s house by half past three. Fairmount Avenue is still there for him, of course; he left that corner wide open and there is money to be made. But another charge now might cost him the summer.

  For three weeks after his release from Boys Village, DeAndre is at the high school when the morning roll is taken. True, he often ducks out of the last class periods to run the streets a bit. True, he does a minimum of classwork and no homework at all. True, his class participation consists of putting his head on his desk and imitating a cadaver. Even so, three weeks of present-and-accounted-for is remarkable for DeAndre McCullough. Rose Davis is impressed and tells him so. A few months like this and DeAndre could make the tenth grade.

  In the evenings, he has Tyreeka over to his aunt’s house whenever possible. Other nights, he brings Tae or R.C. up to Etting Street to watch movies or play Nintendo. Beyond that, he’s trapped inside with his young cousins, waiting for that juvenile hearing notice and figuring that if he can pretend to be a changed person for two months at most, he’ll be back on the street.

  Having dealt with Boo, there’s just one other bit of unfinished business for DeAndre. He’s heard the talk about Tyreeka and Tae. Tae, it turns out, wants to try for Tyreeka and, while sharing a hack up to Etting Street one day after school, he broaches the subject to DeAndre.

  He likes Tyreeka, Tae admits, but he won’t make a move unless DeAndre agrees. “So,” he concludes, “what you think?”

  DeAndre shrugs. He could say no, but that probably wouldn’t stop Tae, especially with DeAndre stuck up on Etting Street every night. And, DeAndre reasons, if he says no and is ignored, he’ll look vulnerable. On the other hand, it could be something of a test for Tyreeka. See how loyal his girl really is.

  “I’m saying take your best shot,” says DeAndre.

  Tae nods and they shake on it.

  “But do it now,” DeAndre adds. “Because I’m gonna want her back by summer. The girl stood by me and shit. I mean, she stood with me when I was down and I’m gonna want her back.”

  Tae nods in agreement. Fair is fair.

  “He’s back,” says Fat Curt, caning away.

  “Damn,” says Pimp. “I ain’t even had the chance to get lonely for the man.”

  Curt laughs softly, and the two old friends beat feet toward the mouth of Vine Street. Grizzled and worn, Scalio is waiting there, a look of growing discomfort on his face.

  “You seen him?” he asks Curt.

  But there isn’t a spare moment in which to answer. Just then, the man himself comes cruising around from Lexington, grimacing behind the wheel. Scalio sags at the sight.

  “Shit,” he says, falling in behind Curt and Pimp, “they gave him the wagon.”

  At Fayette and Monroe, there is no sight more unwelcome than that of Officer Robert Brown, back from his vacation, laying hands upon the sinners and working the silver bracelets hard. He leads this afternoon’s blitzkrieg from the driver’s seat of the Western District jail van. Bob Brown and his lockup-on-wheels.

  “What day is it?” asks Bread.

  “Today Tuesday,” says Eggy Daddy.

  “Zebra Day,” says Bread, with finality.

  The others nod in agreement. Zebra Day is the blanket corner explanation for anything involving drug enforcement in West Baltimore. If it carries cuffs and a nightstick and hits you hard, it’s got something to do with Zebra Day.

  “Where he at?”

  “Gone down Fulton and round the block.”

  “Aw shit. Bob Brown comin’ through.”

  The patrolman grabs a tout down at Gilmor, then wheels up to Lexington and rolls the wrong way around the corner at Fulton Avenue, coming up on the Spider Bag crew, where he grabs one of the lookouts. Then down to Fayette again and up the hill to Monroe, where he takes off a white boy trying to cop outside the grocery. Then down to Payson and back up Lexington to Monroe, where he grabs one of Gee’s workhorses.

  “Bob Brown collectin’ bodies.”

  “Best move indoors.”

  Slowly, the corner crews drift off Monroe Street, moving through the back
alley between Fayette and Vine, slipping through the minefield of trash and broken furniture until they’re at the rear of 1825 Vine. They can’t help but see Roberta McCullough framed in the rear kitchen window. Though most manage to avoid eye contact, some of the older heads try to be neighborly.

  “G’mornin’,” says Bread, waving.

  And Miss Roberta, unsure, simply returns the wave.

  That the shooting gallery has moved from Blue’s to the rowhouse adjacent to the McCulloughs is no surprise; since Linda Taylor caught the Bug and died in January, ownership of 1825 had settled on Annie, her daughter. Already on probation from one drug charge, Annie was doing little more than waking up every morning and chasing the blast until she fell into bed at night.

  And make no mistake: Rita and her patients caught a real break when Annie decided to open her house to them in the dead of winter. After all, there was no heat or running water in Blue’s, and since Blue had been locked up, the fiends had stripped out all that was left of the furniture and most of the windows. By contrast, Annie would open the kitchen oven for warmth that could be felt throughout most of the first floor. And while Rita worked the candles and cookers at the kitchen table, the front room served as the lounge, with the regulars stacked up on what was left of an L-shaped sofa arrangement, all modular and maroon and looking like it belonged in the lobby of a Ramada Inn.

  For the McCulloughs next door, the decline and fall of 1825 represented more than the daily irritation of nonstop drug traffic; that much was a given with crews already slinging at either end of Vine. For W.M. and Miss Roberta, a shooting gallery next door meant living with the possibility that they would wake up at three in the morning to the smell of smoke and find their Vine Street home and a half-dozen others ablaze. The McCulloughs could watch the foot traffic and imagine dozens of addicts stumbling in and out of that worn, wood-floor kitchen next door, dropping matches and knocking over candles. Any night now, Annie’s crew might burn half the street out of doors.

  The McCulloughs could call the police, of course; Miss Roberta had thought about that. But then again, she had seen how many times the police had run through Blue’s and boarded up the place, only to have the fiends pull off the plywood and start over again. And what if Annie and her houseguests found out that the McCulloughs had called in on them, or even mistakenly believed that the McCulloughs had done so? If the police did come, it could mean more trouble than help. No, there was nothing to do but watch solemnly from the kitchen window, hoping against hope that Annie might pull herself together and tell the circus to move on.

  Today inside 1825, the regulars warm themselves at the stove door and wait for Bob Brown to fish his limit. Bread, Fat Curt, Eggy Daddy, Dennis, Rita, Shardene, Joyce and Charlene Mack, Chauncey from up the way, Pimp and Scalio—all of them lazing around the first floor, waiting on Mr. Brown.

  “He comin’ back down Vine,” says Scalio, peering at the edge of the front shade.

  Annie moves toward him, muttering nervously. “You should come back from the window,” she warns. “He gonna see you signifyin’.”

  “He ain’t see shit,” says Scalio, watching the wagon disappear at the east end of Vine. He moves to the door, cracking it enough to see Bob Brown’s jail van turn north on Fulton. Heading back up to the Western, maybe. Going to the lockup with a wagonful.

  “Motherfuckin’ Bob Brown,” says Charlene Mack.

  “He too evil,” agrees Bread.

  Scalio goes outside, paces cautiously for a minute, then starts walking back up to Monroe. Down the block the Spider Bag crew is trying to set up their shop, the touts seemingly indifferent to the loss of their lookout. Pimp and Bread slip out the back door, then come back moments later with news.

  “Death Row puttin’ out testers.”

  In a heartbeat, the house is emptied of fiends, save for Rita, who stays in the kitchen, poking at the raw flesh of her left arm with a syringe. Two minutes more and a half-dozen of them are back, stumbling through the back door, winded from the run.

  “You was quick,” says Rita.

  Bread snorts derisively. They didn’t even get across Fulton before Bob Brown rolled down Lexington. And not just the wagon alone; Mr. Brown has a two-man car following him. The girl police, Jenerette, and that new white boy, the one with the marine cut.

  “They just snatchin’ niggers up,” moans Annie.

  “Zebra Day,” says Eggy Daddy.

  It’s a timeworn phrase on these corners, dating back to the late 1970s, when some tactical wizard in the police department reckoned that the drug war could be won by alternating between East and West Baltimore and sweeping the corners clean at the rate of twice a week. Mondays and Wednesdays on the east side, Tuesdays and Thursdays on the west side, with Fridays off so the police could get a jump on their weekend—that was the Zebra schedule. On all other days of the week, the West Baltimore regulars might be subjected to ordinary law enforcement, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays, all bets were off and anything might happen. Knockers, rollers, wagon men, plainclothes jump-out squads—every spare soul in the police department seemed to be lighting on the corners. On Zebra Day, a routine eyefuck that might otherwise be ignored by a patrolman would buy a Western District holding cell, just as a routine insult would often result in a mighty ass-kicking. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays in West Baltimore, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were largely without meaning. On Zebra Day, there was no such thing as probable cause; any police could go into your pockets by invoking the Zebra logic.

  Of course, it was all myth. The years had passed and the corners had grown and the once-awesome spectacle of Zebra Day had become merely a trace memory, the Baltimore Police Department having moved on to new tactics and new slogans. These days the corner regulars invoked the voodoo incantation of Zebra Day more than the police ever had; even thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds—born after the advent of the original Zebra—were still citing it as explanation for whatever events happened to occur on those days. Like today, a Tuesday in March, when Bob Brown is pushing the jail wagon, harvesting the corners, moving the sullen herds to and fro like some saddle-assed West Texas cowpoke.

  Must be Zebra.

  Peeking out of Annie’s front door, Eggy Daddy watches the top end of Vine for a few minutes more and, sure enough, the wagon makes the turn from Monroe, rumbling down the gentle slope of the alley street. Vine is empty now—Bob Brown has succeeded in momentarily chasing the crews indoors—but still the man is on an angry tear.

  “He just all mean and miserable and a motherfucker,” says Charlene Mack, ascending to alliteration. “One day, someone gonna hurt him.”

  Grunts of affirmation all around.

  “Someone gon’ put a bullet in his ass,” says Eggy.

  Someone, someday. Along Fayette Street, they’ve been saying such stuff about Bob Brown for twenty years, talking for two solid decades about a reckoning that never seems to come. Long after the rest of the police department has conceded the Fayette Street corridor to drug trafficking, Bob Brown is still decidedly undefeated. Long after every fiend in an eight-square-block grid wished him dead and gone, Bob Brown is still clinging to the real estate in eight-hour-shift installments. It’s sad and comical, but in some way genuinely noble: Bob Brown, walking the beat or riding that wagon, trying to herd the pigeons, trying to rake all the dry, brittle leaves into a pile on a windy day.

  On one level, they hate him for it. Hating Bob Brown is an obligatory act for every fiend in the neighborhood. But at the same time, the souls on the corner allow a grudging respect for Mr. Brown and his game. If nothing else, the man is consistent, a moral standard in a place where it’s increasingly hard to take measure of morality. He can be brutal, but at the least he is consistently brutal, resorting to violence only when there is some justification for it. And when Bob Brown turns a corner, the odds are exactly the same for everyone. If he says get, you get or you go to jail. If he wants to go into your pockets, you put your hands against the liquor store wall and le
t him search, because there is no point in running from Bob Brown. If you run today, you’ll have to come back to the same corner tomorrow, and then, as sure as night follows day, there will come a reckoning. And if Bob Brown, while knocking you on your ass, decides to call you a low-life motherfucking piece of shit, you are—at that moment, at least—a low-life piece of shit. At street level, there can be no arguing with the man.

  Even those who want Bob Brown dead have to acknowledge that it isn’t racial. Oh yeah, Mr. Brown is big and white and nasty, and every once in a while, on a day when he is truly pissed off, he might even let go of an epithet. But the Fayette Street regulars have lived with Bob Brown for years now; they’ve seen how much abuse he’ll readily heap on the white boys he catches creeping north out of Pigtown, venturing across Baltimore Street for a chance to hook into a better product. In their hearts, they know it isn’t race; it’s much more than skin-deep.

  Bob Brown hates everybody, they are quick to assure you. And then, later, they think on this and realize that not even a police as mean and miserable as Mr. Brown can muster hate enough for everyone. Bob Brown doesn’t mess with the ladies up at St. Martin’s, or Miss Roberta, or Miss Bertha, or the people out at the bus stops going to work in the morning. No, when pressed, they have to admit that Bob Brown is not quite so unreasoning.

  “He just death on drugs,” says Gary McCullough, watching from the steps in front of Annie’s as Bob Brown and his full-up wagon bounce around the corner and turn on Lexington.

  “That’s what it is,” agrees Tony Boice. “He don’t like dope fiends even a little bit.”

  On the corners, they tell themselves that it’s more than police work, that it’s something that happened to Bob Brown, or maybe to someone in his family. His first wife got addicted and turned out by her supplier, some claim. Not his wife, others argue, but a younger sister, who came up an overdose back in the seventies. The exact details have never been nailed down and, absent facts, such apocryphal stories become more melodramatic with each telling: Bob Brown grieving for lost loves and wasted relatives, swearing to make generations of Fayette Street fiends pay the price for some deep and painful family secrets. Out on the corner, only the worst kind of scenario could explain the angry timelessness of the Bob Brown Crusade.