once where you said, ‘Sometimes the world is out to get you. If we knew how bad the world really is, how ugly, how unfair, and how dark, we wouldn’t be able to go on,’” Barry Gray reads.
“It was something my father said to me. I learned early that it was better not to know everything.”
“Remnants of that world you grew up in?”
“And the world he grew up in. Everybody was dirty. Everybody was owned. Everybody was rotten. He said only the good die young because you have to be a little rotten to survive.”
“Do you believe that? That you have to be rotten to survive?”
“Rotten or lucky.”
“Have you been lucky?”
“That’s just another way of asking if I’ve been rotten.” Benny laughs. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to be different, just to find out that I’m not different at all. I’m exactly like my father. I was so hard on my pop. I hated my family. Who I am. I hated the way I looked because I looked exactly like him. I even hated my name.”
“And now? Have you given up on being different?”
“Different is the wrong word. Now I just try to be better. I’m not a good man, but I do my best.”
“Maybe that’s the definition of a good man. Doing your best.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Have you forgiven the world, Mr. Lament?” Barry Gray asks softly. “It seems to me you have a lot to forgive.”
“None of us can help who we are. We are born into the world we are born into. The family. The skin. Nobody gets to choose those things. You can’t be mad at a man for who he is. Only what he is . . . and the choices he makes.”
“What choice did you make?”
21
TWISTED
It was after two o’clock in the morning when Alvin and Money returned. Esther had gone to bed. Lee Otis too, but I paced like an anxious mother, teetering between driving to Gene’s and marching them out of there or letting them take care of themselves like they’d been doing long before I’d come along. I argued with myself that before I’d come along, no one had been shooting at them or playing their music. But before I’d come along, they’d still been young Negro men.
They didn’t need me to tell them the world was dangerous.
When I heard the scrape of a key in the door, I wilted in relief, flipped off the lamp, and lay down on the couch, determined to appear as though I were fast asleep and had been for hours. The light above the sink in the kitchen was on, and it illuminated the space well enough that I could see them through the slits of my eyes as they passed through to their room.
They had their arms around each other like they’d had way too much to drink and needed support. Alvin sounded like he was weeping. Alarm shot through me, and I spoke up from the couch.
“What’s wrong?” I barked.
Money jumped and Alvin staggered.
“Shit, Lament,” Money snapped.
“Nothing’s wrong, Benny. I’m just so happy,” Alvin sobbed.
“He’s drunk. He gets like this. His joy overfloweth,” Money said. Money didn’t sound drunk at all.
I said nothing more, and they continued through the sitting room and into the bathroom where Alvin peed for five minutes; the amount of liquid he released was impressive. I heard the flush of the toilet and the sounds of the sink before he exited and Money ushered him into bed, talking softly to him all the while. The light in the hallway was turned off and a door gently closed, and I thought at last I would be able to sleep.
“We got to talk, Lament,” Money said, padding into the sitting room. He turned on the lamp and sank into the chair at a right angle to my bed.
He’d removed his hat and his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves. His face and forearms were damp, and small water droplets clung to his hair like he’d washed to revive himself and gotten a little wetter than he intended.
“Esther still awake?” he asked.
“She’s been in bed for hours. But I wouldn’t think she’s been sleeping well. It’s hard to sleep when you’re worried.”
“Is that why you’re still awake? You worried, Lament?” he mocked.
“I told her I’d wait for you. You made me wait a long time.”
“And that pissed you off? You aren’t used to worrying about anyone else, are you? You don’t have anyone you have to look out for. Nobody but