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“He’s got the devil’s understanding,”
“That Negro ain’t showered in two years. His body is dying of thirst.
If I was a fly and wanted to get to heaven, I’d throw myself in your mouth.”
“Nigger, your cheese done slid off your cracker.”
“Wait, friend,” the old man said. “I’ve known you two minutes and I’m tired of the friendship already, mister.”
And may your health always be fine, and the wind at your back. May the road rise up to meet you. And may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Whyn’t you wind yer neck in and pay attention?”
“Bro, is your head soundproof?
“Bumpus ain’t the only one who ended up finding Negro freedom at the bottom of the harbor care of the Elephant.
They were a myth, a wisp of annual horrible possibility, an urban legend, an addendum to the annals of New York City’s poor,
The ants were poor folks’ foolishness, a forgotten story from a forgotten borough in a forgotten city that was going under.
And there they stayed, a sole phenomenon in the Republic of Brooklyn, where cats hollered like people, dogs ate their own feces, aunties chain-smoked and died at age 102, a kid named Spike Lee saw God, the ghosts of the departed Dodgers soaked up all possibility of new hope, and penniless desperation ruled the lives of the suckers too black or too poor to leave, while in Manhattan the buses ran on time, the lights never went out, the death of a single white child in a traffic accident was a page one story, while phony versions of black and Latino life ruled the Broadway roost, making white
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As if hours of talking about Jesus and the Bible would substitute for a kiss, a smile, a solitary meal together, a book read to him at night.
“What fool would keep money ’round a pastor?” Rufus replied. Sportcoat nodded knowingly.
but Lord, she was . . . I wouldn’t throw her outta bed for eating crackers, that’s for sure. Not back then. She was well upholstered.”
This was juicy indeed, juicy enough to risk your life over but not juicy enough to get involved.
The way he drinks, solid food makes a splash in his stomach when he eats it.
“I can’t use them. I don’t like those guys.” “Why not? That’s two guys. If you put ’em together, they’d make one man.”
Then he placed his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the street alone, giving the silent roaring rage inside him time to ease down and out, and after several long minutes he once again became who he was, a solitary middle-aged man in the August of life looking for a few more Aprils, an aging bachelor in a floppy suit standing on a tired, worn Brooklyn street
He slowly slid his key into the lock, entered the car, and sat behind the steering wheel in silence, staring. He sat in the soft leather of the car for several long moments. Finally, he spoke aloud. “I wish,” he said softly, “somebody would love me.”
Maybe she’s like me, he thought. All show business at work, gruff and bitter, but at home, at night, crowing to the stars for love and company. Or maybe I’m a moron, he thought bitterly. Just an aching heart—in a city full of them.
But that idiot’s so dumb he lights up a room by leaving it.
“But I’m not a person who knows enough about what should or should not be to leave things as they are when they got no purpose that I can understand.
Rather he seemed resolved to a kind of silent sadness that made her, despite herself, feel drawn to him, for she knew the feeling well.
Everything she did, Potts realized, every move—the gentle arcs of her neck and mouth, the way she held herself erect along the wall and stretched a long arm out to wipe her forehead with gentle silklike smoothness—made something inside him want to kneel down.
james mcbride invented romance i think...
“Nothing in the world is normal,” he said. “I can’t understand why you’d even hope for that.”
Another dream spent. He’d had many of them. He supposed he was glad, really. He was off the hook. The responsibility, the magic that his grandmother had talked about was a weight he was not built to bear. Love, real love, was not for everyone.
Sausage sighed. “Well, I reckon to really understand the world, you got to die at least once.”
“You’re so tight with money your ass squeaks when you walk.”
He was a wonderful stranger, a lovely dream, and now he was just like any other cop. Bringing bad news. And probably reports. And more warrants. And more questions. Always questions from these types. Never answers.
There’s love in this world, mister. It don’t stop for nothing or nobody. You ain’t never seen that?”
And still New York blamed you for all its problems. And who can you blame? You were the one who chose to live here, in this hard town with its hard people, the financial capital of the world, land of opportunity for the white man and a tundra of spent dreams and empty promises for anyone else stupid enough to believe the hype.
But then, she thought, every once in a while there’s a glimmer of hope. Just a blip on the horizon, a whack on the nose of the giant that set him back on his heels or to the canvas, something that said, “Guess what, you so-and-so, I am God’s child. And I. Am. Still. Here.”
“If you wanna talk in circles, Joe, join the circus. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Some of those goons at the Seven-Six couldn’t fill in the return address on an envelope.
Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. The lies they tell each other sound better to them than the truth does when it comes out of our mouths.
“I holler about Jesus’s cheese because Jesus could baptize shit into sugar! Because if I didn’t have Jesus and his cheese, I’d kill somebody. That’s what Jesus did for me for sixty-seven years. He kept me sane, and on the right side of the law. But he run out of gas, sweetheart. He got tired of me. I don’t blame Him, for the hate in my heart done me in.
I need cleaning myself, he thought. If I let her clean me the rest of my life, maybe I’d have a chance at happiness. But why would she bother?
Potts tried to ferret out the difference between an unfair world and a terrible one. Thinking about it confused him.
He’s a drunk. One of those guys who dies at twenty and is buried at eighty.
The emptiness of the room was a warning to her that there was danger nearby, because death meant eyewitnesses, and the fewer witnesses the better.
At least I ain’t got enough wrinkles in my face to hold ten days of rain.”
Nobody owns the block. Nobody was king of nothing in New York. It’s life. Survival.
