Chapter One
Adrian arrived home from the war a broken young man. No
one was there to put back the pieces. Ma would have, for sure, but
she died on his twelfth birthday. Had she been there to see his
new knee and armless shoulder hidden within an empty knotted
sleeve, she surely would have been sad, but she would have
moved past the sadness quickly.
“You still have your mind and it’s a good one. Remember that,
boy,” Ma would have whispered from the grave, if she could have.
No consolation, he thought as he lumbered once again up
the old cement drive cluttered with weed-filled cracks and deeply
embedded oil stains. The netless hoop was still there over the
garage, and it still seemed an insurmountable height from the
ground. It wasn’t his thing, never had been. John Mike could always
jump higher and was much quicker, but that didn’t matter.
Adrian had to play and he had to win. Winning wasn’t everything,
Pa preached—it was the only thing. Winning meant surviving,
the Master Sergeant insisted with each war story he dished out
at the kitchen table.
Adrian limped up the ramp, through a sawed-off railing, onto
the front porch in need of painting. The porch, like the garden
in the back, brought the fondest memories of his mother. On the
long, dark green bench that hung from the rafters, he and Ma
cuddled each time Pa beat him down for not doing this or that
in the way John Mike did it. Mother and son swung to the tune
of Old Man River as it flowed sweetly and softly off Ma’s tongue.
All the while, the real river meandered downstream behind the
houses across the street, beyond the backyards of the Clyburn’s
bungalow, and the Levi’s remodeled two-story. In his mind’s eye,
whenever he thought of that porch swing and Ma, Adrian could
see just a hint of the moving river and that always added a nostalgic
backdrop to his recollections of her.
When he was just over three years old, right after Pa retired
from the Marine Corps, his folks moved from Georgia to Virginia
and bought the house on South Willow Street. At the time,
South Willow was part of a welcoming middle class neighborhood
of white Christians, according to Pa anyway, but slowly changed
into more of a melting pot as the city grew, a change the Master
Sergeant was not happy with—and he let everyone know.
Not long after they moved in, Pa constructed the front porch
and a door leading from there directly into the kitchen. From
that day on few people entered or left through the front door. He
added the ramp much later, after the accident that forced him
into a wheelchair.
It was around nine o’clock in the evening when Adrian shuffled
past Ma’s green bench. The porch door was open and, late as
it was, he smelled dinner through the screen door, fresh catfish
stew in the pot and cornbread warming in the oven. Good old
Esme was outdoing herself once again.
He swung open the squeaking screen door. Pa sat at the
kitchen table; dread instantly swirled around in Adrian’s belly.
“You’re late again.” Pa gripped the edge of the table in order
to pull himself up from his wheelchair ever so slightly, as if to use
that contorted position as the exclamation point for his accusation.
“You're late again,” Adrian mimicked the old man. “How are
you doing, son? I’m glad you’re home. Really son, how are you
doing?” he continued, trying his best to capture his father’s tired
accusatory drawl.
“Well Pa, thanks for asking, I’m just fine, except maybe for
a lost limb, a metal knee that doesn’t seem to be working right,
and a bit of self-pity—but no big deal, right, Esme?”
Adrian dropped his backpack and crossed the room to hug
the housekeeper who’d raised him, as he had done often since
his return from the war. Esme was his surrogate mother, had
been ever since Ma died. Back then, she was a Negro. Today she
is African American, and in excellent physical shape for someone
who just turned eighty.
“Well at least you’re alive.” The old man pushed himself back
into his wheelchair.
“I know. I know, and John Mike isn’t. Right, Pa? Isn’t that
what you were going to say—again?” Sitting across from his father,
Adrian edged forward in his chair as if to make his own exclamation
point. “I was there when he died! Don’t you remember
me telling you that, Pa?”
“Enough!” Esme cried out as she stood by the oven with her
back to the kitchen table. Pa might have been Master Sergeant
John Wheeler in the United States Marines, but Esme Charles was
and had always been the master of the house. She raised Adrian’s
mother Lillian and she raised Lillian’s children. She took nothing
off nobody—never. “Now, I’m going to serve Mr. Adrian…”
“Private Adrian,” the old man said. “He ain’t received his
discharge papers yet.”
“All right, I’m going to serve Private Adrian his dinner and
the two of you are going to sit across from one another and speak
respectfully. And you will not bring Mister John Mike—excuse
me, Lance Corporal John Mike—to the table.”
After ladling out a sizable portion of stew for Adrian and cutting
a number of warmed-up squares of cornbread, she returned
to the stove and began brewing a pot of coffee. All the time, neither
the Master Sergeant nor the Private uttered a word.
“Where is Daisy?” Adrian finally asked.
“Probably out whoring,” the old man answered.
Before he could say more, Esme was in his face. “Stop that
now! I won’t have you talking about Miss Daisy that way.” She
slapped down an empty coffee mug in front of him. “You knows
well, she is waitressing down at the café.”
“She’s serving booze at the Down & Dirty and God knows
what else she’s serving in the back room. You know that as well as
me, you foolish old woman, and don’t go trying to intimidate me.”
“All right. All right. I should’ve never asked.” Adrian cleaned
the stew from his plate and got up from the table to serve himself
seconds, for a change. Adrian was just under six feet tall and
thin, thinner than Jesus on the Cross, according to Esme, who
was constantly on his case about not eating enough.
“Please, Pa, just let me finish eating in peace.”
As soon as Adrian cleaned his plate again, Esme poured
each of the men in her life—the only living men—a cup of coffee.
Adrian took cream and sugar and the Master Sergeant drank
it black, no surprise to either of them.
“So, tell me how was it that John Mike won his medal?” Pa
asked as he devoured some of the brownies Esme baked earlier
in the day.
“Pa, I’ve already told you what happened, several times now.”
“I know, I know, but tell me again. I deserve that much.”
Just as Adrian grimaced, the screen door slammed behind
him and Daisy entered the kitchen, leaving the Master Sergeant
frustrated no doubt, but leaving Adrian happy to see her.
“Anything left for me, Esme?” Daisy asked. She poked her
head in the oven and lifted the lid to the pot of stew.
“Plenty, honey doll, if you’re willing to sit yourself down in
this here war zone and dodge bullets between bites.” Esme has
always been partial to Daisy, as everyone in the family knew, but
that was probably because Daisy was never the apple of Pa’s eye.
“Where in the hell you been?” Pa started up with Daisy, forgetting
he had just asked about John Mike for the nth time.
“For fucking Christ sake, enough is enough.” Adrian pounded
on the table and his empty coffee cup jumped. He pushed himself
up with one hand, the only one he had. “I’m going to bed.”
He retreated up the stairs. In the past, Adrian would have
stayed to help Daisy fight her battles with Pa, but not that evening,
not since Iraq.
