145th Street Read online

  “You have to go with Joe Louis being the best fighter of all time,” Willie said. “Joe held the championship for longer than anybody.”

  “That’s because he didn’t have to face Ali,” Tommy said.

  “How about Roberto Duran?” Pedro was sitting on a folding chair that was chained to the gate that covered Big Joe’s place.

  “Duran’s not a heavyweight,” Willie said. “When you talk about the greatest fighter of all time you have to talk about heavyweights.”

  “Why?” That’s what I said.

  “Because you do,” Willie answered.

  Now, that was a lame answer and everybody there, with the exception of Willie, knew it.

  The conversation was getting to be stupid and I knew it was going to get worse, because Mr. Lynch was coming down the street. Mr. Lynch was so old he had washed dishes at the Last Supper. Whatever you said he would bring up something from a thousand years ago that nobody ever heard about.

  “What you young people talking about?” Mr. Lynch motioned for Pedro to get off the chair.

  “These know-nothing kids thinking Ali could’ve taken Joe Louis.” Willie started flapping his lips again. “Ali couldn’t have taken Joe Louis if Joe was fighting with a paper bag over his head.”

  “Ain’t none of them could beat Jack Johnson,” Mr. Lynch said, parking his old butt on the chair. “Jack Johnson was the champion of the world and he fought all over the world.”

  “Ali would have eat him up,” Willie went on. “Now, that’s one thing I know.”

  Just when I was heated up enough to go upside Willie’s head we heard this squealing on the corner and we looked up and saw two police cars come tearing around the corner. They pulled up right in front of us and the cops come out with their guns out. Now, I wasn’t a fool and I knew when the police come tearing like that they’re looking for somebody. I did just like everybody else leaning on that rail did, said a quick prayer and put on my innocent face.

  One of the cops came over to us. “How long you guys been here?”

  “Two hours, maybe three hours,” Pedro said. “Except for Mr. Lynch. He just got here.”

  The cop took a glance at Mr. Lynch. Then he went over to Willie and started patting him down.

  Willie just stood there and I hoped he didn’t have anything on him illegal. Then the cop asked him how long he had been there and Willie told him the same as Pedro did, except for Mr. Lynch, we had all been there about two hours.

  Then I saw an officer pointing to one of the buildings and when he did that all the cops got around behind their cars and started crouching down as if they were expecting some heavy shooting.

  “Hey, we’re gonna move on down the street,” Tommy called out to the cops.

  “You stay right where you are!” this big cop called out, and like he meant it, too.

  Then the next thing we did was to look up at the building to see if we could spot anybody shooting. Now, I figured if there was a crazy dude up there shooting at people he was liable to shoot at us instead of whoever he was mad at.

  “Hey, man, we sitting ducks here on this rail,” Willie said. “And I’m sitting here on the end.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “If it is some crazy fool he’s liable to be aiming at you and hit one of us. Least if he hits you first it’ll give us a chance to duck.”

  “Hey, Mr. Officer,” Pedro called out, “we got to get away from here ’fore we get shot up.”

  The cop looked over at us and didn’t say nothing. I bet if he had his way he would have had us sitting out there in that police car.

  Some more cop cars came and before you turned around there’s about seven cars and a whole mess of people milling around 145th Street, trying to figure out what was going on. Then the kids started coming around and everybody was looking up at the windows where the cops were looking.

  One thing about 145th Street. Half the guys on the block don’t have jobs and so they’re always on the stoops or just standing around with nothing to do. And after a while that gets boring, so when the cops arrive like this it breaks the day up nice. Unless it’s you they’re looking for, of course.

  “Junior! Junior!” Old Mrs. Davis come running out of the Laundromat with her fat self. “Junior! Junior!”

  “Get back, there . . . !”

  Things were getting out of hand and the police tried to get people to move across the street. One of them got on the bullhorn and told all the kids to get off the street immediately. He must have meant that as a joke. The kids didn’t have anything to do and they weren’t going anyplace.

  So you had the kids just standing there looking at the cops and then you had Mrs. Davis moaning and going on about where Junior was. Junior is a wino who does little odd jobs around the block, but anytime any trouble goes down his mama starts running around screaming for him like he’s four or five years old.

  “There’s somebody up there!” a kid yelled.

  Now, what did he say that out for? Everybody hit the ground, including me, and covered up the best they could.

  I hadn’t seen anything, but then I wasn’t looking too hard. The thing I don’t want to be is a witness.

  Once I got on the ground I figured I was gonna stay on the ground until the mess was over with. But then I saw Willie sliding on his belly down the way and into the Eez-On-In, the little soul food place. I went right behind him and soon we all on the floor of the restaurant.

  “What’s going on?” Mamie, the girl who worked there asked, when all these guys came crawling into the restaurant.

  “The cops are looking for somebody,” I said. “You better get on down here on the floor next to me so I can protect you.”

  Flood, the manager, was eating a sandwich and he just slid down to the floor and kept on eating. Right then a policeman came in and told everybody to get down. He was crouching and the rest of us were down on the floor on our bellies and he was telling us to get down.

  “What’s going on out there?” Mamie asked.

  “We got a report of a man with an automatic weapon,” this cop said. “Anybody here know anything about it?”

  We all said no and then the cop eased out.

  “What they mean about some automatic weapon?” Pedro asked.

  “It means when it hits your butt you’re automatically dead,” Mamie said, and she got a good laugh out of that.

  That laugh that Mamie got lasted about a good ten seconds when all of a sudden we heard another one of them big-eyed kids saying something about seeing somebody at a window.

  We stuck our heads up a little so we could see what was going on. One of the cops started running around the front of the car and slipped on some dog doo. When he hit the ground his gun went off and a shot came through the window of the restaurant. There was glass all over the floor and Willie let out a scream. By this time the cops were shooting away at that window.

  They must have shot maybe a hundred shots and people was running and screaming. One cop went down behind a car and when Mamie looked she said he was bleeding.

  “They got him in the head!” she called out.

  The mess was getting serious. Willie was bleeding right next to me and now the cop was shot in the head. I slid over to the counter and started to get behind it.

  “We don’t allow nobody behind the counter,” Flood said. “You know that!”

  Outside the shooting started again and I squinched under the counter the best I could. Mamie got down next to me and I put my arm around her and she snuggled up.

  After a while the shooting stopped and I heard somebody outside say, “They got the guy with the automatic weapon and it was some Arab!”

  We waited for a while and then started getting up from the floor. I stayed behind the counter in case it broke out again. Then we all kind of edged around outside to see what we could see. I looked around. No cops had been shot, but the guy who had slipped in the dog doo was having his elbow looked at. We heard somebody shout and everybody hit the ground again. B
ut then we saw that it was just Mary Brown. Mary is one of those smart sisters who has a good job downtown.

  She pointed up to the window that the cops had shot out.

  “You shot up my new drapes! I don’t work all day for you fools to be up here shooting up my drapes!”

  “Who lives in that apartment with you?” this cop with some gold braid on his hat said.

  “Nobody!” Mary say.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” the cop asked.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Mary said. “But wherever he is, he’s not messing up my new drapes!”

  “If he’s up there they just killed him,” somebody said.

  “Let’s go, lady,” this cop said. Then he went to take Mary by the arm.

  She snatched it away from him and said she wasn’t going anywhere with them unless she had a black man with her. She started looking around for somebody to go with her when a cop grabbed me by the arm and said, “You come with us.”

  “Hey, why I got to go?” I asked. “I don’t know anything and I don’t want to see no dead people.”

  Didn’t do a bit of good because they made me go up there with them. My knees were shaking and I had to pee so bad I didn’t know what to do. Mary was going up the stairs like she was in a hurry to get somewhere. The cops made us go up first and they came behind. I tried to turn around and they gave me a push in the small of the back but I saw they had their guns out and they were looking more tense with every step. They had one cop who was a brother but he was trailing behind and looked like he was fixing to run any minute.

  When we got to the floor where Mary lived I held my breath and closed my eyes. If I was going to die I sure didn’t want to see it coming.

  Mary went to her door and started fishing out her keys and the cops stood on either side of the door. She unlocked the door and then the cops eased me and her back. Then they hit the door and rushed in.

  What I saw when they let me in was something I will I never forget as long as I live. There was about a couple thousand bullet holes all over the room. The ceiling was all shot up from where the cops had been shooting from the street. The window was all shot up. Her drapes were raggedy. The refrigerator was shot up. The stove was shot up. The kitchen cabinet was shot up. She had a box of salt that was so shot up it was all over the room. But that wasn’t the worst part of it. Right in the middle of the floor was her dog, deader than a doornail. I don’t know how he could’ve got himself so shot up like that. They must’ve hit him once and then he didn’t know what to do with himself and kept trying to get back in front of the window.

  “You killed my dog?” Mary put her hands over her face and let out a long wail. “You killed my dog?”

  Mary sat on the side of the bed that wasn’t covered with plaster and began to cry. The cops just looked for a while and then they started getting themselves together.

  “That dog look like a terrorist to me,” one of them said. You could see they were breathing easy again.

  “That’s probably the baddest dog in Harlem.” That’s what the cop who was a brother said.

  “How are we going to write this up?” one cop asked. He had got there after everybody else but you could tell he was a boss.

  “I know one thing,” Mary said, “somebody’s going to pay me for this, and that’s the truth. I’m going to sue the city.”

  We all felt a little better about things then and I was glad I was the one that went up with Mary so I could tell the others. We were just at the top of the stairs fixing to go down again, when the first cop stopped quick and I looked to see what he was looking at. He was standing a few feet from a door at the end of the hail. It was open just a little. The cops looked at each other and the guns came out again.

  The routine was the same as Mary’s place. They called out for anybody that was in there to come out. When nobody came out two cops wearing bulletproof vests rushed the door. Five or six cops went in behind the first two and there was some shouting inside and then nothing. Then, one by one, the cops came out. Their faces were pale. Something was wrong big-time. They whispered something to the officer in charge and he nodded. Some of the cops started downstairs with Mary. One stayed behind and leaned against the wall. I pointed toward the door, and the cop shrugged. I went to the apartment and pushed the door open.

  It was a one-room place like Mary had. It wasn’t shot up near as bad as her place. A few bullet holes here and there, a catsup bottle busted up on the floor. Then I looked at the bed and saw the kid.

  He was a little knotty-headed boy with lips that stuck out like he was pouting, and skinny black legs that twisted oddly away from his body. The television was on with the sound turned down. The way I seen it, the boy was home watching cartoons when he heard all the noise outside. Then he must have turned down the TV and went to the window to see what was happening.

  I didn’t see where he was hit, but I saw all the blood on the bed and it didn’t take a whole lot of figuring to see he wasn’t breathing. A feeling came over me, like I was lying on a beach at the edge of a lost world with a wave of hurt washing over my body. I looked at that kid’s face again. He could have been my little brother or cousin and I wanted to say something to him, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I covered him up, went on outside, and closed the door behind me.

  The cops took Mary downtown to make some kind of statement and I went on down to the street. I knew what I wanted was to hear Pedro and Willie and Tommy and all the other brothers and sisters on the block talking about that kid. I wanted them to say how bad they felt about it and what a shame it was the way life could slip away so easily in Harlem, in our community, on our street. Maybe when we got together and let our pain out it would rise up and reach someplace where the kid could feel it, too. I don’t know if any of that made sense, but it was how I felt.

  “Is it true what they said about shooting a dog?” Willie asked.

  He took my arm and looked into my face. I didn’t have to tell him there was more to it.

  Billy Giles told his wife that he was just going to the gym to work out. If he’d told her the truth, that he was going to fight again, he knew she would have cried.

  “You’re not going to eat anything?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” he said. He had seen her making supper, and had known that he wouldn’t be eating anything.

  “Don’t stay out too late,” she said. She reached up and touched the tip of his nose with her index finger. “I’ll think you’re out with another girl.”

  “I’ll bring you some ice cream,” he said, framed in the doorway of their apartment. From where he stood he could see into the bedroom where the baby’s crib stood against the wall.

  He closed the door, waited for a moment for the click that said that Johnnie Mae had locked it, and started down the stairs. He felt a little sick to his stomach. There had been a time, not too long ago, when he would have been excited to be boxing. Somewhere between that time, between sixteen and nineteen, the nervousness had turned to a kind of nausea that he would dream about in the early hours of the morning.

  Chops and Tommy were on the stoop talking to some girl he didn’t know. The air was cool and he sucked it in between his clenched teeth. The smell of fried fish was heavy in the air and he wished that he had eaten something.

  He started the long walk up the hill toward the Eighth Avenue subway. Win or lose he’d take a cab home. Now he walked slowly. There wasn’t any hurry. It was seven and he wasn’t scheduled to fight until ten. It would take less than a half hour to get to the Bronx gym and minutes to get into his gear.

  On the corner a guy played a saxophone, the sound sliding into the darkness and echoing off the bricks. It was too cold to be out playing a saxophone but Billy guessed the guy was dealing with demons that needed to hear a tune. You did what you had to do, he thought.

  The program hadn’t started when he reached the gym and made his way to the fighters’ entrance. There was a bunch of girls hanging around on
the first floor, and Manny was in the middle of them. Manny flashed him the high sign and he flashed back. He went upstairs where Al Gaines was listening to the radio.

  “Get out your clothes and I’ll tape your hands,” Al said. “Manny talk to you?”

  “No,” Billy answered.

  “He said he might want to put you on early,” Al said.

  “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” Billy said. He took off his street clothes as Al tried to find a better station on the little radio he had been bringing to the gym since Billy knew him. Billy put on his groin protector and slipped into the green trunks he always wore.

  Al kept up a steady stream of talk as he taped Billy’s hands. Billy grunted his answers and tried to think about the first time he had fought for Manny. Manny had worked his corner that night, had kept yelling at him to “show strong,” and he had won. After that first professional fight he remembered walking out into the night, his face still stinging from the blows he had received, and feeling taller than he had ever thought possible.

  Al finished with the taping and Billy shadowboxed in front of a mirror. Other boxers were in the locker room; some were changing clothes, others listened to music. A young, awkward kid was bragging about how he was going to start the night off by knocking out his opponent. Billy knew he was afraid.

  The room was too small for all the nervous sweat, for all the odors, for all the heat that the bodies generated. Now he sat on the end of the rubdown table, smoothing the edge of the tape with his forefinger as if it were necessary, listening for sounds that would tell him the fight in progress was over and that it was his turn. He had been fighting preliminaries for nearly three years and knew his limitations and abilities. He would win or lose tonight—it made little difference. Either way he’d collect the one hundred and forty-five dollars for the bout. If he put up a good show there’d be another preliminary bout for him when a spot became available. He could pay some bills and still have enough to take Johnnie Mae to a movie.