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Ike tried to remember a time when men with badges coming to his door early in the morning brought anything other than heartache and misery, but try as he might, nothing came to mind.
I might just cut grass for a living but I know an insult when I hear it.
“You didn’t say nothing about him being a reporter. Or that he graduated top of his class at VCU. You didn’t talk about him winning the state basketball championship in high school. You just kept talking about abominations. I don’t know what you thought he was, but he was just . . .” Ike paused. The word caught in his throat like a chicken bone.
Life sends us down some strange roads on our way to our destiny.
“You think I don’t care? I had to bury my only child in a closed casket service because the mortician couldn’t put his face back together. My wife wakes up crying in the middle of the night screaming Isiah’s name. I look at his daughter and realize she won’t remember what his voice sounded like. I wake up every morning and I go to bed every night praying he didn’t go from this world hating me. You see some tattoos and all the sudden you an expert on who the fuck I am? You don’t know nothing about me, man. What, you thought you’d walk in here and get the big, scary-ass Black nigga to go kill
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Did Buddy Lee really think he was the only one who was hurting? He didn’t have a monopoly on grief. There wasn’t a moment that went by he didn’t think about Isiah. Every day it got a little bit harder and a little bit easier. Whenever the pain ebbed slightly he felt guilty. Like he was disrespecting Isiah’s memory if he didn’t feel an agonizing ache in his chest every single second. The days it got harder he sat in the shed and drank until he could hardly stand.
Buddy Lee had it all wrong. Ike wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He wasn’t afraid to spill blood. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop.
Maybe he didn’t deserve to grieve Isiah. It didn’t seem fair for a man to mourn someone abundantly that he had loved so miserly.
He felt strange. He was well acquainted with his rage. It lived inside him like a demon waiting for moments like these. Seeing the stone should have released it like a hungry beast freed from a cage. The familiar sensations associated with it weren’t immediately present. His vision hadn’t taken on a crimson sheen. His stomach wasn’t doing yoga poses in his guts. Was this the numbness people talked about? That crippling feeling that took over your body when you were finally pushed beyond your limits.
“Oh, you get the truck. But you also get pulled over four or five times a month because ain’t no way your Black ass can afford a nice truck like this, right? You get the truck but you get followed around in the jewelry store because you know you probably fitting to rob the place, right? You can get the truck but you gotta deal with white ladies clutching their purses when you walk down the street because Fox News done told them you coming to steal their money and their virtue. You get the truck but then you gotta explain to some trigger-happy cop that no, Mr. Officer, you’re not resisting
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Green don’t matter if it’s in a Black hand,”
They’d hit each other with one verbal haymaker after another. Searching for the soft and secret places to make the deepest cut in a way that only someone who has shared your bed more than once can do effectively.
“This is who I am. I can’t change. I don’t want to, really. But for once I’m gonna put this devil inside me to good use.”
That was the thing about violence. When you went looking for it you definitely were going to find it. It just wouldn’t be at a time of your own choosing. It jumped up and splattered your nice new boots before you were really ready. The thing is, if you chase it long enough, you realize you’re never really ready for it. Shit happens and you either roll with it or you don’t. Eventually you got used to it.
Human beings were wired to get used to just about anything. That didn’t make you hard. It made you indoctrinated.
There was no turning back. There was no path that led anywhere except down a long road as dark as your first night in hell and paved all along the way with bad intentions. They could call what they were seeking justice, but that didn’t make it true. It was unquenchable, implacable vengeance. And life, inside the graybar and out, had taught him that vengeance came with consequences.
Don’t we matter just a little bit? What we had, you and me, don’t that matter to you at all?”
It hurts so bad, Ike. It’s like I ain’t got no room in my heart for nothing but hurt. Is that why you didn’t come home? You can’t stand looking at hurt anymore? Is that how it’s gonna be? Like it’s one night. Then a couple. Then you don’t come home for weeks. Then one day you gone. Is that what this is, Ike? You testing the waters on your way out the door?”
It seemed like Mya had cried so much her eyes were permanently bloodshot. Those eyes haunted him. Rimmed in red and empty as an abandoned church, they made him feel helpless. Every night her soft whimpering cries tore pieces out of his soul as they slept back-to-back in a bed that seemed to widen until it felt like they were barely in the same room. She was right. He was tired of seeing her hurt. He couldn’t stand to see the pain that twisted her face into a sorrowful mask. Her pain, her sorrow, his powerlessness. He was sick of it all.
Over the last few months, death had carved a valley between them as deep as grief and as wide as heartbreak. Now another man’s death had bridged that gap, if only for a moment.
An avalanche of memories washed over him and buried him under the weight of all of his mistakes. So many mistakes.
Ike knew what gave Buddy Lee’s eyes that murderous sheen. It was the rage coursing through his veins. A poison that killed off certain parts of yourself. The parts that made you weak. It was coursing through Ike’s veins, too. It was powerful but deadly. It made you determined but reckless. It gave you an edge that could turn against you and slit your own throat.
Derek wasn’t the type to tell you to fuck off. He just cut you off like you never existed. Erase you like you were a math problem on a blackboard. The last time they had talked was when he had called Buddy Lee to tell him he and Isiah were getting married.
There was an ugly part of him that pulsed and festered whenever Derek brought up his sexuality. It made him say things he couldn’t take back in ways that couldn’t be forgotten.
“I was standing next to one of the richest men in Virginia while he told a nasty joke about why Black men have such big dicks, as a Black woman served me another glass of prosecco. Gerald’s dad laughed at that joke so hard he started choking. All these rich sons of bitches at my house to celebrate the great Gerald Culpepper announcing that he’s going to give up his judgeship to run for governor. He says it’s because he wants to help people.” Christine’s voice began to quaver. “And all I could think about was that none of these people here gave a damn about my son. My baby. Laying in his grave.
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This conversation showed him that there was another side to the barbershop. A side he’d always known was there but had dismissed. It could be a place of circular logic, where obtuse thinking was confirmed and reinforced by a pervasive groupthink.
“I’ve learned to always be ready to be disappointed by white people. Doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it don’t shock me anymore. You ain’t the worst I’ve had to deal with,”
I used to laugh at that joke because it was my granddaddy saying it. I never thought, I never had to think how somebody like you would feel about that joke. Then when I got older I stopped thinking about it, because if that joke was fucked up, then what did that say about my granddaddy? What did that say about me that I laughed at it?”
“It’s easier to keep your head in the sand than it is to try and see things from somebody else’s point of view. There’s a reason why they say ignorance is bliss,”
“I think maybe for the first time in your life you’re seeing what the world looks like for people that don’t look like you. I mean you still ignorant as hell, but you learning. But then, so am I. We both learning. We both done said and did shit that we wish we could take back. I think if you figure out at one point in your life you was a terrible person, you can start getting better. Start treating people better. Like as long as you wouldn’t laugh at that joke now, I think you on the right road.
I put my grandparents through hell, and all they ever did was try and love me. I was so angry. I used to walk around waiting for an excuse to go off. Angry at God for taking my parents, angry at my parents for dying, angry at my grandparents for trying to pretend everything was gonna be alright. I was so messed up.
“You love a person enough and you’ll make excuses for almost anything.
How many chances does a man get to make the right decision before fate decides he doesn’t deserve another bite at the apple?
It occurred to Buddy Lee that anything could be a weapon if you were dedicated enough. Even love. Especially love.
Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit,”
“The only thing I’d want to say to Isiah is that I’m sorry. And I couldn’t say it enough even if I had forever to say it. I couldn’t say it enough,”
‘I could kill them all a thousand times and it wouldn’t even come close to being enough. But it would always be worth it,’
