Young Junius, page 7
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
“Just ease back,” Elf said.
“Who you telling?”
Junius took a moment to look at the guy, to really see him, and what he saw wasn’t good: a big dude, not as old as he’d first thought, maybe someone who knew Rock.
“That Pooh?” he asked.
Now Junius flat-out stared. He let up on Pooh enough that he could turn to see the night man too. For a second, Junius started to wish he still had the gun. But he didn’t have the gun, just had two hands full of Pooh’s jacket.
“Fuck. That is Pooh.”
“Stay back,” Elf said, though the man was almost twice his size. He kept coming like he hadn’t even heard Elf. He pulled Pooh up out of Junius’s hands.
“The fuck going on here? Who you?” The night man looked from Junius to Elf and back. Pooh started to stand, but the man pushed him back down into his seat. “You wait.”
Junius said, “Temple Posey my brother.”
“Who he to you?” Indicating Pooh.
“Rock’s crew.”
“Rock?”
Pooh nodded. “This motherfucker bucked Lamar.”
The night man did a double take, looked at Pooh then back at Junius, hard. Out the windows, Junius could still see the black tunnel walls speeding by; soon they’d arrive at Alewife.
“Lamar?”
“Big L rest in peace,” Pooh said.
Now the night man nodded. “That young gun, huh?” He looked Junius up and down. “And you even younger than he be!” He reached for Junius’s face, but Junius flinched away. “Yeah,” the man said. “Why you ain’t in school?”
“Vacation week,” Elf told him.
The night man didn’t take his eyes off Junius. “That bullshit?”
Junius shook his head. “No.” Then he added, “Sir.”
“Where Temple at?”
“He dead.”
“Shit.” The night man seemed to shrink about the shoulders. “Lamar have something to do with that?”
“Next stop, Alewife station. Alewife. Last stop on this red line train. Alewife is next.”
The train jumped, then started to slow.
“Did Lamar—”
Junius shrugged. “I don’t know. Trying to find that out.”
“Man, this niggah,” Pooh started to scramble up, but the man held him in place. “This niggah want to come up and get fixed. We can handle him.”
The night man bent closer to Pooh. “You will?”
“Shit,” Pooh drawled like the word was about ten letters long, most of them i’s. “With the quickness.”
Junius saw Alewife’s fluorescent lights and new white tiles appear outside the windows. He blinked at the brightness.
“We want talk to Marlene,” he said, feeling the brakes engage and the car suddenly stop short, then lurch forward. A crowd waited to board: the late-morning workers bound for Harvard, Kendall, and downtown Boston. “Ask her what happened to Temp.”
The night man curled his lips. “Marlene good people. I rolled with her brother Malik, way back.” The train stopped. Pooh squirmed to stand, but the night man held on. “How about I keep your boy here, we ride back to Harvard. Have us a talk.” He turned to Pooh. “How that sound?”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Junius said. “That would help.”
“I owe Marlene. Your brother too. Tell her E-Parish say, ‘What up?’”
“My man.” Junius reached out and they slid palms together, then clasped hands.
“Be careful. But if you have need up in 412, go up sixteen and ask for Miss Emma. She see you right.”
The train stopped and the doors opened. The mother with the baby got off at the other end of the car without looking back. People from the platform started to file in.
“Alewife station. This train will not be making any more outbound stops. Alewife station. Alewife.”
“Let me up, niggah,” Pooh said.
E-Parish pushed him back against the seat with a big hand. “Wait,” he said. “You and I gonna talk.”
“About what, bitch?”
Junius started out of the car after Elf, looking back at the big man one last time. He heard him say something to Pooh about Rock, Rock and crack, he thought, and then he was in the thick of the crowd, pushing his way through the boarding passengers to the clear part of the platform, heading for the back exit toward the towers.
21
Clarence took his time riding down the escalator at Porter. He knew Dee and Ness were watching the platform, and if they came up on Junius and Elf, his boys would make them wait. They better. He was pissed off enough already that he’d missed Junius as he turned off Mass Ave. When he drove around the block and came back, they were nowhere in sight.
Next was the bad taste he got when he parked and came inside without having his cigarette. Just wasn’t time.
He sniffed his fingers, again disappointed to get the tame smell of the air fresheners. Why these fucks had to move at this hour in the morning, he didn’t know. He wanted to go upstairs and chill out, stand and watch the commuters while he smoked a few Kools, even roll one up to get his day high going. But this shit—the one thing Rock put him on top of all week—just wouldn’t go straight. He wiped the back of his hand across his nose.
Some fool had put metal gloves in the middle of the escalators, probably to stop people from sliding down the ramps. He’d done it. Why shouldn’t kids do it now?
He looked back up the long escalator to the top. It was a long way. When you looked up, the roof was designed to look like white birds outlined on a light blue sky. Some stupid shit. But looking down toward the tunnel, the design was old trains on white. More dumb shit. Someone made these images on layers of triangles, the top part sticking to the roof and the sides hanging down, making an image when they all lined up—whether you were looking up or down.
Just some dumb shit.
It was all part of the way they were trying to make things nicer now, nicer than when he was coming up. They even put in a T station near the towers. Now kids wouldn’t have to ride the Rindge Ave. bus all the time; they could just take the subway like kings of the city. Clarence saw someone had already written a name on the tiles next to the escalator. That made him feel good, even if it wasn’t a name he knew.
He’d have his boys put his name all over Alewife station. That would get things going.
A woman bumped his shoulder heading down the escalator, running actually, like she really wanted to get her day going that much faster. The train wasn’t even coming—you could hear it if it was—so what was she running for? Nothing.
Clarence was more than halfway down to the platform now. Dee and Ness better have those kids.
At the bottom, he saw a handful of commuters waiting on the inbound level. One was the woman who’d bumped him. She was reading the Globe now, her big bag slung over her shoulder like when she bumped him. He sidled up to her like he was drunk, said in a low voice, “Hey, pretty lady, you want to buy some crack?”
Her eyes practically burst from her face. She saw him, but tried to act like she hadn’t.
“Smoke that rock, lady. That’s what I’m talking about.”
She shuffled her newspaper and stepped away, but Clarence didn’t stop. He took a cigarette out of his jacket and said, “We can smoke up right here. Help you get through the day, you know?”
Her face went white. She glanced around them and started walking, her newspaper tucked under an arm.
Clarence called after her, “I do not sell marijuana! You think just because I’m black I sell drugs? Is that what you’re saying?”
She started walking faster, and it made him smile when he saw a few people turn away disgusted.
Dee stood down the end of the platform that she was headed, but Clarence decided to give her a break. He turned around and saw Ness halfway down the tunnel, just as the sound of the train began in the distance.
Clarence headed toward Ness.
“You see me?” Clarence barked, about ten feet from him.
“Huh?” Ness’s eyes looked heavy, as if he might be partway asleep even standing here.
“I said, you see me come down just now?”
Ness shook his head.
Clarence wanted to hit him, but as he closed the distance between them, he decided to let it slide. He’d waited in Dee’s car all night, and now it was morning. They’d have smoked out—it was the same thing he’d have done. So it didn’t surprise Clarence when Ness told him he hadn’t seen Junius or Elf.
Still, on principle, he gave Ness one good slap across the side of his head and lunged at his gut with a left that he pulled back only at the last second. Ness flinched just the same—at least he was somewhat aware.
Behind them, the train pulled into the station, bringing sound and wind as it flew down the track and started to slow somewhere near the middle of the platform. People turned from the noise, and a few young suits even covered their ears. Clarence shook his head. He saw Dee finally walking down the platform toward them. About time.
Above the train, the tunnel was a series of white panels that gave you the feeling of being a rat underground somewhere, trying to get out of a tube. Clarence didn’t want to be down here any longer than necessary.
He spit over the handrail that separated the inbound level from the open air above the outbound one.
“Shit,” Clarence said. He stepped to the railing. The few outbound passengers waited around the escalators, and he knew as soon as he looked down that that was where Elf and Junius had gone.
Dee finally came up. “What up, C?”
Clarence waited for the train guy to say his piece about the doors closing and the station before he spoke. “You didn’t see them, right?”
Dee shook his head.
“Either of you watch that train?” Clarence pointed down to the outbound side.
They both thought for a moment, then nodded. They were lying. Clarence wanted to hit both of them or at least Ness again, but he took a deep breath instead. Then he clapped Dee on the ear.
“Fuck is wrong with you? These niggahs come down here, you think they take a commuter rail?”
“Nah,” Dee said. “We checked and it don’t stop here.”
“Right. So you see them hit the inbound?”
“No.”
“So then where they go?”
Clarence knew they could have stayed above ground, kept running along the tracks in either direction, but that didn’t make sense in this cold. No, they had to take a train.
He hated the fucking tunnels. When he got back to the car, he would smoke a joint, too, he decided. These fucking punks were causing him too much trouble.
Of course they took a train: the only one they could.
Clarence turned to head for the escalators, and the train cars started to pull past. For a second, he thought he recognized someone in the last car, another young buck like Dee and Ness, this one sitting on the train like a dumbass.
Clarence shook his head.
The youth today: wanting to be soldiers when they didn’t know shit.
22
In the station, Junius pulled his hood down over his eyes and hunched forward. He leaned into the crowd, trying not to appear tall. Elf wouldn’t have that problem, but Elf also wouldn’t be able to look around and see if anyone from Rock’s crew was waiting. Junius knew they’d have someone out by the main entrance, selling shit even this early in the morning, so he went left off the train, toward the back stairs. Alewife had two exits, each letting out onto a different side of Route 2.
He tried not to stick out, didn’t speak and didn’t run, just shuffled toward the stairs. Someone ahead of them looked familiar, Rob from his baseball team last summer—a white kid who went to the parochial school in North Cambridge. Rob nodded as they got closer.
“What up?” he asked.
Junius wanted to ask if he’d seen any of Rock’s crew. Instead, he said, “Nothing. Life.”
“What you doing?” Elf asked.
“Not much. Waiting for this girl I know from up my school.” Rob winked and put his hand out for Junius to hit it, so Junius did. “I think she’ll let me stick that.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Elf laughed.
Rob was fifteen, already in his sophomore year. His hair was tight on the sides, spiked up top. He had two lines cut in above his ear. He wouldn’t know Temple was dead or about Lamar either. To him, everything was the same as always.
“Get yours,” Junius said.
Rob gave Elf some dap, smiling a big smile. “Yo, I catch you.”
Junius went up the stairs with Elf just behind. Most people came through the garage in the morning and used the other entrance, so these stairs on the opposite side of Route 2 were empty.
They came outside at the end of the frozen football field and trekked back across the grassy mud in the opposite direction they’d run the day before, hopped the fences for the pool again, crossed the deck, and came out by the baseball diamond.
The same homeless were out front of the Food Master, begging for dimes. By the afternoon, they’d be paying someone fifty cents to buy a cough syrup, then they’d drink it and pass out. Junius had made that buy for them once or twice when he didn’t know better. Somehow the store managers were smart enough to cut off the bums from buying Robitussin, but they’d sell it to a kid from the towers pairing it with a loaf of bread every time.
“Hold up,” Elf said, catching Junius’s shoulder. “Who that?” He pointed to a guy at the bus stop by the towers, probably about eighteen years old. Junius knew him, knew he wasn’t in school anymore and had never played baseball. Sometimes he sold shit out behind the diamond or around back of the supermarket. That meant he was either a runner for Rock or part of Marlene’s crew. And they couldn’t leave it to chance.
Junius shook his head. “I don’t know him.” They ducked into the dugout and watched. They could see their breath puff out in front of them, and it made the wait seem long. After a time, the bus came and carted the guy and a few others off toward Mass Ave., heading for Harvard Square.
“Let’s go.”
They got up and walked toward the towers, Junius keeping his hands by his sides. He went slow, trying to watch everything around him all at once. He’d read comic books about soldiers fighting in jungles and G.I. Joe ninjas stalking their prey. He’d imagined himself like them, moving slowly and calmly, his awareness raised to new levels.
A car sped toward them and drove through a puddle of wet sludge. Junius jumped back from the splash, and it just missed him. A homeless man in a yellow watch cap pointed at them and laughed a broken-mouth laugh.
Up the street, Junius didn’t see anyone selling or waiting to buy. Maybe sales didn’t start this early in the morning. Maybe it was the right kind of day to find Marlene.
“Where they be?” Junius asked.
Elf nodded toward the towers. “They here. Waiting. Half they customers from the towers anyway, so they just wait in the lobby. Stay warm.”
Across the street, they passed the old Chinese restaurant. It hadn’t opened for the day yet, but still smelled good. Junius’s mother had taken him and Temple there once on a Sunday for the buffet. The place had some damn good food. Junius remembered more than ten feet of choices and eating himself silly, piling his plates high. He tried to eat more than Temple but couldn’t. It was a good memory. The kind he wouldn’t be making with Temple anymore.
Junius stopped short, turned to Elf. “What you doing here, man? I mean for real. Why you come for this?”
“What you trying to say?”
“I mean why don’t you just take care yourself? Why you come on this trip?”
Elf looked lost, his eyes focused on something far away. Then he said, “Come here,” and pulled Junius into the parking lot, around a corner and behind the high brown walls that surrounded the restaurant.
Removed from the street’s view, he pushed Junius into the corner. “What you mean?”
“You keep going back on this, man. Saying you don’t want to be along, but then you do anyway.” Junius spread his hands in front of him. “I mean this some serious shit. You can leave.”
Elf laughed. “You a stupid niggah, you know that?”
He pushed Junius’s shoulder, backing him into the wall.
“You think I go back now? Think I can? Maybe before that shit with Lamar, I’d have left. Maybe if I left it be when we up on my roof, let my brother and Ramon tell Rock where you at.” He shook his head. “But not now, motherfucker. Now we both in this.”
Elf’s hands turned to fists, and Junius remembered how he hit Lamar, the good punches. He saw the cut still swollen on Elf’s lip. He got himself ready for Elf to push him, ready for Elf to swing. But he wouldn’t fight his man.
Elf stood his ground.
“Shit, man.” He touched his lip with his tongue. “Fuck wrong with you. You don’t think you better off with your boy?”
Junius shook his head. He turned away, avoided meeting Elf’s eyes. “It’s not like that. I just give you a choice. You want to break, I understand.”
“Nah. You don’t think I want to see what up with Marlene? Follow this shit through?”
“I mean—”
“No.” Elf put his hand on Junius’s shoulder. “We do this. I don’t got shit else.”
23
They pushed out onto Rindge Ave. and headed straight up the block. Junius knew he had as much chance of seeing someone from Marlene’s crew first as Rock’s. Problem was, he didn’t know what Marlene’s crew would do if they saw him.
Rock’s people? That he knew.
But Marlene’s could do nothing, something good, or something very bad. He was hoping for nothing.
“The fuck you used to do up in these shits?” Junius asked Elf as they walked.
“Used to mess with this ho.”
“That what Lamar was saying?”
Elf shrugged. He laughed and brushed the tip of his nose with his thumb. “Yeah, yeah. It was.” There was a pause for a couple of steps before Elf said, “I fucked his sister.”
“What?” Junius stopped short, his hands going up to his head. He remembered Lamar standing over Elf and how mad he looked, saying something about Elf knew not to come around.
