Romeo's Way Page 4

  Which is why Steadman had appended some pages he’d labeled “A sampling of the opposition.”

  The first page was a transcript from a show on a cable network hosted by Dr. Rodney Shipp. Shipp was well known as a civil rights “lifer” who had his own organization called Community Action Under Sacred Effort, or CAUSE. He was often compared to people like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, but he apparently bristled at the comparison. He liked to call himself “the Muhammad Ali of civil rights.” There was a famous picture of him with boxing gloves on punching a portrait of George W. Bush.

  The transcript came from an interview Shipp conducted with Dr. Harnell Dickerson of Cornell University:

  Shipp: What do you make about what Samuel Johnson said about racism in America, about it not being anything like it once was?

  Dickerson: I think he needs to get off his symbolic crack pipe and go back to class.

  [Laughter]

  Dickerson: It troubles me that we have a brother like this saying things he knows will play to a base, that’s all it is. He’s offering up tom turkey with all this white meat.

  Shipp: Watch it now. No crazy uncles in this room.

  Dickerson: Let’s call it like it is.

  The train was clackety-clacking at a nice pace. I put my head back on the seat and closed my eyes. Started to drift. My mother told me once that I’d been a fussy child. When I’d get out of control she’d put me in a baby car seat and put the seat on top of the washing machine, and the vibration and sound would lull me to sleep.

  Still works.

  But one thing a fussy child doesn’t like is getting woken up. It can lead to gnarly things.

  The voice that pulled me out of slumber was saying, “Sir.”

  I opened my eyes with malice.

  He was either a twenty-year-old who looked fifteen, or a fifteen-year-old who wanted to start shaving. His hair was blond and cut short, military style. He wore a white T-shirt, the sleeves of which hung mostly empty around his spindly arms.

  He was holding a pamphlet in his hand, so I could see the front. It had a cartoon drawing on it, a family of four—dad, mom, little boy, and girl—huddling outside their home, looks of fear on their faces. The headline said: Are You Ready for What’s Coming?

  “Not interested,” I said.

  “I think you should be,” Spindly Arms said.

  “What you think doesn’t matter to me.”

  “What’s that say on your arm?”

  He was looking at my left forearm tat.

  “Vincit Omnia Veritas,” I said.

  Spindly squinted.

  “It’s Latin,” I said. “It means, ‘Leave me alone, I’m trying to sleep.’ ”

  He smiled. “Does not. It’s something about truth, right?”

  That immediately made him more interesting. I snatched the pamphlet. It was a tri-fold. I opened to the first panel and ran my index finger down the page.

  “What are you doing?” Spindly said.

  “Sh,” I said. I read the next two panels the same way. It took about five seconds. It was a screed against blacks and gays, and warned about a coming domestic war.

  “What do you intend to accomplish with this?” I said.

  “Knowledge,” Spindly said. “People need to wake up.”

  “There’s no knowledge here,” I said. “Only rhetoric intended to inflame.”

  “So what? Are you ready to deal with the facts?”

  “I didn’t see any facts in here.”

  “You’re just blind, then,” Spindly said.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to rest my neck, and because you need to hear a few things.”

  He sat in the chair opposite me. “You need to hear, my friend. They are going to come gunning for you. Anybody who is white. It won’t matter.”

  “So your answer is hate?”

  “It’s not hate to tell the truth,” he said. “The truth will set you free.”

  “You’re quoting Jesus now?” I said.

  “You better believe it,” he said.

  I turned the pamphlet to the back and saw, in small print at the bottom, the name of a church.

  “This your church?” I said, holding it up.

  “So?”

  “You’re doing all this in the name of Jesus?”

  “That’s right. Are you a Christian?”

  “More of a blend,” I said. “Eighty percent Stoic, fifteen percent Platonic––”

  “You’re a pagan.”

  “Now listen, junior. Jesus did not say, ‘Go into all the world and call people names.’ He said love your neighbor as yourself—”

  “You can’t quote Jesus—”

  “He said love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.”

  I was doing pretty good for a guy who’d read the Bible through twice, the last time ten years ago. Of all the philosophical and moral systems out there, it seems to me you can’t improve on the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. The trick is to get people to buy in. Especially those who claimed to rep him, like Spindly Arms here.

  “You don’t know anything about Jesus,” Spindly said.

  “I’ve read the Sermon on the Mount. And I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t talk about people the way you do.”

  “I know Jesus personally, in my own life.”

  “You don’t know Jesus from a hole in your underwear.”

  “You’re of the devil,” he said with absolute conviction.

  “I’m more like a baseball announcer,” I said.

  “I rebuke you!”

  “It would be much better if you didn’t rebuke anybody and learned to think for yourself. Get away from this claptrap and read some good books.”

  “God is going to judge you,” he said.

  “Then I expect he’ll be fair,” I said.

  “He is a God of wrath.”

  “I got some wrath, too, and if you stay—”

  “When this country goes down, you’ll pay for it,” he said.

  “What I paid for is a nice, quiet seat,” I said.

  “I can stay here if I want to.”

  “But you don’t want to,” I said.

  He frowned. “Who says?”

  “Mr. Peanut,” I said.

  He kept frowning. I have that effect on people.

  There was a small, unopened bag of peanuts on the seat next to me. I picked it up and fastballed it at him. The bag bounced off his chest.

  “Hey!” he said. “You threw peanuts at me.”

  “Now that’s a fact,” I said. “Go write a pamphlet about it.”

  For a moment he looked like he wanted to say something else. So I put my hands on the arm rests and feinted like I was going to stand up. That got him up and out of the seat in a hurry, and heading down the aisle.

  The whole thing saddened me.

  There are three kinds of people in the world. First, there are those who can think, but don’t, because it takes work. And they have never been made to work. They’ve been given inflated grades because self-esteem is more important than actual learning, and their teachers haven’t been taught to think, either. So in front of PlayStation the fantasy world bleeds over into the real world and two shall become one flesh.

  Then there are those who are told what to think, and take it from whoever moves their loins. It’s feelings-based, or some psychosis, as in the case with poor Spindly.

  Finally, there are those who actually do think, and who are open to being convinced, should the evidence demand it. This takes work and courage, and those are two of the rarest commodities in any culture, any time.

  The first kind of person is a drain.

  The second kind is dangerous.

  The last kind can end up dead if either of the first two gains power.

  Spindly had left his pamphlet. So I decided to do some origami on it. I don’t know how to do origami. I crumpled it into a ball, tore some of the paper on either side, and bent those pieces out. And I was done. I had either a blowfish with fins or the head of Prince Charles.

  AS I TRIED once more to get some sleep, a picture popped into my mind. Of a woman named Helen Feist. She was a colleague of my mom’s at the Yale Divinity School. When I was ten, my mom was hit with a nasty virus that took her out for a few weeks. This Helen quietly and without fanfare attended to my mom’s needs, such as making sure I got to school, and cooking exotic soups that got my mom back on her feet.

  Helen Feist walked with a limp. I asked my mom about it and she told me Helen lost her right leg to an infection she got in Calcutta while working with Mother Teresa.

  It seems to me that Helen Feist is the picture of Jesus the world ought to see, not the one painted by the guy I’d tagged with peanuts.

  The thought calmed me and I started to nod off.

  But a pleasant sleep was not to be.

  “Sir?”

  I opened my eyes. A portly conductor whose head was too big for his hat was standing there. Behind him was a tall man in an ill-fitting gray suit that went with his humorless gray face.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir,” the conductor said, “but this man says you assaulted his son.”

  I looked the man in the face. There was a slight resemblance, from the nose to the hate in the eyes.

  “Assaulted?” I said.

  “You apparently threw an item and hit the son in the chest.”

  “Oh, you mean the peanuts,” I said. “In that case, I salted his son. If his son is afraid of legumes, there’s not much I can do.”

  “I want this man off the train,” Gray Suit said.

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “Is this the Old West or something?”

  “There are rules of conduct, sir,” the conductor said.
br />   “Tell you what,” I said to Gray Suit, “I’ll give your son satisfaction. A duel.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Cashews at ten paces.”

  “This is outrageous,” Gray Suit said. “If he doesn’t get off this train I’ll press charges.”

  “Assault with a deadly goober?” I said.

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Mostly sad,” I said. “What are you raising your son to be?”

  “I want him off!”

  The conductor put his arm up. “If you’ll let me handle this, sir. Please.”

  “I will be checking on you,” Gray Suit said, “and with your supervisor.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” the conductor said.

  The man in the suit gave me a final look, then stormed down the aisle and down the stairs.

  I looked at the conductor. He seemed apologetic, but resolute. “If he presses this, I’ll have to write up an official complaint.”

  “I could always take him by his pants and throw him off the train,” I said.

  The conductor tried not to smile. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Getting written up in any kind of official capacity was not the way to start off my clandestine operations. I don’t think my employers would be pleased.

  I said, “I suppose the way to avoid the whole thing is for me to get off the train.”

  “That would do it, yes.”

  “Which would be a minor victory for the jerks of this world.”

  The conductor shrugged.

  “And less paperwork for you,” I said. “Where’s the next stop?”

  TOSSED OFF THE train in San Luis Obispo. I felt like a Greek hero trying to get to Ithaca, now waylaid on the island of lost souls.

  This island had a smattering of taxis at the train station. I hailed one. The driver wore a crocheted Persian-style fedora and spoke with an accent.

  At least at this moment, the Greeks and the Persians were not at war.

  I had him take me to the Greyhound bus station, which turned out to be on the other side of town.

  I’ve been in many Greyhound bus stations. There is a sameness about them, but they each have their own feel, too. With San Luis Obispo midway between L.A. and San Francisco, this place had a stopping-off vibe, a transient feel, a restlessness.

  In other words, I fit right in.

  I got a bus ticket for San Francisco, the bus leaving in an hour and a half. That gave me time to sit on a hard bench with a vending machine sandwich and my copy of Montaigne.

  Life of the party, that’s me.

  But the time went by and the bus took off. It’s not anything like a train. But at least this time no one bothered me. The seat next to me stayed empty.

  IT WAS PAST ten when the lights of the city came into view. San Francisco is packed together on hills, a sparkling pincushion of a city. Looked nice on the outside, but there were sharp points underneath.

  Steadman had booked me a room at a hotel off Market Street.

  It was a bracing night so I decided to walk. I had a single duffel bag with a strap. I did some curls with it as I went. I’m of the Charles Atlas school of getting fit. Atlas gained fame in the early twentieth century as “the worlds’ most perfectly developed man.” He got together with a business partner and sold a course through the mail. The course was advertised in the back of comic books, with a comic of its own. A skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face by a big bully at the beach. Back home he kicks a chair, crying out how tired he is of getting shamed in front of girls. So he sends for the course and in no time he’s buff, goes back to the beach, and punches the bully in the snout. His girl now loves him because he’s become a real man.

  Such is the hagiography of the American male.

  But when you cut through it, Atlas was basically touting a series of isometrics. He’d seen lions at the zoo exercising their own muscles that way.

  It works. So even if you’re walking in San Francisco at night with a bag, you can give your muscles something to do.

  And deep breathing. Charles Atlas liked that, too. It’s good for you. So I did, and the smell of ocean and fish mixed with the scent of cars and cables. I walked through the Embarcadero and then up Pine, and right on Kearny. Off in the distance Coit Tower was lit up like a glow stick. I turned again onto a street that was narrow and where the signs had more Chinese script. I checked the address of the hotel once more, and knew I was getting close. I thought about stopping at an all-nighter and having something to eat.

  I stopped for a second and checked my phone. No messages.

  The moment I put the phone back in my pocket I got shoved from behind, into a wall. Barely got my hand up in time to keep my face from making an impression. I dropped my bag and did a one-eighty, crouching, ready to strike. There were two guys standing there, one of them holding a knife.

  “Put your wallet on the ground,” the knife-wielder said. He was the taller of the two, and skinny. His hair was not exactly what you’d call finely coiffed. It was stringy, is what it was, hanging to his shoulders.

  “Look, guys, I’m just visiting,” I said.

  They were in their twenties, white. The other guy was shorter and stockier. Maybe fat if the light was better. He took out a telescopic steel baton and triggered it out. “I’m gonna break your legs,” he said.

  “This is not cricket,” I said.

  They looked at each other. I could have taken them both out then, but I was feeling compassionate.

  “I’ll let you go,” I said.

  “You hear that?” Knife Guy said. “He’s gonna let us go.”

  Baton Guy smiled. Before he took a step, I calculated the geometric pattern he’d take to get into striking position. He would have to pull the baton back, too, which would buy me another few fractions of a second.

  My timing was perfect, and I knew Baton Guy had never listened in Geometry class. The moment he took the baton back I dropped the way a soccer player does when he kicks the ball back over his head. What I kicked was two balls.

  Baton Guy doubled over into a perfect right angle.

  I anticipated Knife Guy’s move, which was to come directly at me in my prone position. But he was slow and I grabbed Baton Guy’s shirt and pulled him down, a human shield.

  Again, timing perfect. I could feel the knife go into Baton Guy’s side.

  Poor Baton Guy was having a bad night.

  I pushed him away from me, rolled right and sprang to my feet. Knife Guy looked like he was in a horror movie and just saw the monster behind the door.

  He started running.

  I caught him within twenty yards by the back of his shirt. I cupped my free hand and banged him on the ear. That little move creates instant disequilibrium. Dragging him back to his fallen comrade was no problem.

  Baton Guy was groaning and holding his side. A good amount of blood was already on the ground.

  I threw Knife Guy on top of him, crosswise, so they formed a plus sign. I put my foot on Knife Guy’s back and pressed.

  Baton Guy shrieked.

  “I don’t want anybody bleeding to death, okay?” I said. “I think your problem is education. There’s just no discipline anymore. You have to know there are consequences for bad behavior. Without that, society falls apart.”

  Baton Guy croaked, “I can’t breathe.”

  “You just can’t go around doing this sort of thing,” I said. “It isn’t right. Now, one of you is bleeding pretty badly and won’t be riding a bike anytime soon. The other one still needs to learn, am I right?”

  “Don’t kill us,” Knife Guy said.

  “I’m not a murderer,” I said. “But if you two keep this up you’re going to come to a bad end. What I want you to do is go to a library and check out a book. Will you do that for me?”

  “I can’t breathe!”

  “The book is the Bible. I want you to find the Sermon on the Mount in there. Okay? Say, Sermon on the Mount.”

  Neither one said anything, so I pulled Knife Guy’s arm behind him and bent it to the breaking point. He screamed.

  “Say Sermon on the Mount,” I said.

  He didn’t, so I bent his arm some more. Then he squealed something that sounded like Sermon on the Mount, like a two-year old was saying it.

  “Read that and think about it, right?”

  Knife Guy didn’t need any further prodding and nodded his head.