Deacon King Kong(22)

“Just his dock. There’s other docks over there.”

“The Elephant’s funny about the Cause, Bunch. It’s his turf.”

“Who says?”

“Everybody. Even Peck and the Gorvinos don’t monkey with the Elephant.”

“The Elephant ain’t Gorvino family, Earl. Remember that. He works with them, but he’s mostly on his own. If it ain’t cigarettes or tires or refrigerators, he ain’t interested.”

“I hope so,” Earl said, scratching his ear, his face etched in doubt. He squashed his cigarette and fiddled with his pencil. “Bumpus ain’t the only one who ended up finding Negro freedom at the bottom of the harbor care of the Elephant. That’s some party I hear, when that wop gets mad.”

“Get your subway tokens out and get rolling, would you? I told you, we ain’t gonna touch the Elephant. He ain’t interested in our business. Him and Peck ain’t tight. So long as we take care of our business quiet, we’ll be all right. This is our chance to ease Peck out and make some big dollars.”

“How we gonna get our supply without Peck?” Earl asked.

“That’s my business.” Bunch sat down at the table, removed his kente kufi African cap, and ran a hand over his thick, dark hair. “Go over to the Cause Houses and clean up the old man. Bust his eye out. Break his arm. Set fire to his clothes. But don’t ice him. Just soften him up like it’s a mugging gone sour. Then we give his church a little donation from our redevelopment fund, and that’s it.”

“Shit, Bunch, I’d rather Peck do it. Or Deems.”

Bunch stared at him grimly. “Is you losing heart, bro?” he said softly. “If you are, I understand, because business is gonna get heavy soon.”

“It ain’t about heart. I ain’t for beating up no old man, then paying his church.”

“Since when did you grow a conscience?”

“It ain’t that.”

“Maybe I should call in Harold.”

For the first time, Earl, who had been slouched in his chair at the table, sat straight up. “What you wanna let that nigger outta the cage for?”

“We might need an extra hand.”

“You wanna tighten up the old man or you wanna nuke the projects?”

“Where’s Harold living these days anyway?” Bunch asked.

Earl sulked silently for a good minute. “Virginia,” he said finally. “It should be Alaska after that last job. Fucking firebug.”

“That’s the kind of talent we might need if Peck gets mad.”

Earl rubbed his chin with the tips of his fingers, brooding. Bunch clapped the young man on the shoulders with both hands from behind, then massaged Earl’s shoulders. Earl stared ahead, nervous now. He had seen what Bunch could do close up with a knife, and for a moment a fleeting panic gripped him, then passed as Bunch spoke: “I know how you are about them church folk. Your ma was church folk, wasn’t she?”

“Don’t mean nothing.”

Bunch ignored that. “Mine was too. We was all church folk,” he said. “Church is a good thing. A great thing, really. Building up our community. Thank God.” He lowered his head to Earl’s ear. “We ain’t tearing down our community, brother. We’re building it up. Look at all the businesses I got. The jobs we’re providing. The help we give people. Is the white man opening car washes? Is he running car-rental places? Restaurants? Is he giving us jobs?” He pointed to the window, the filthy street, the abandoned cars, the dead brownstones. “What’s the white man doing for us out here, Earl? Where’s he at?”

Earl stared ahead, silent.

“We’ll give the church a bunch of money,” Bunch said. “It’ll work out. You in or out, bro?”

It was an affirmation, not a question. “Course I’m in,” Earl muttered.

Bunch sat down at the table again, leafing through the Amsterdam News, and then nodded Earl toward the door.

“Straighten out that old man. Clean him up good. Lop off one of his nuts if you have to. I don’t care what you do. Send a clear message, and we’ll leave Harold for another day.”

“That assumes Harold knows the difference between day and night,” Earl said.

“Just get it done,” Bunch said.





7





THE MARCH OF THE ANTS



Just before fall each year, for as long AS anyone could remember, the March of the Ants came to Building 17 of the Cause Houses. They came for Jesus’s cheese, which came magically to Hot Sausage’s basement boiler room once a month, with several one-pound hunks Sausage kept for himself, which he stored inside a tall stand-alone pendulum clock he’d found years ago in Park Slope and dragged into his basement to repair it. The repair never happened, of course, but the ants didn’t mind. They happily headed for it every year, crawling through a slit in the building’s outer door, marching through the labyrinth of discarded junk, bicycle parts, bricks, plumbing tools, and old sinks that crowded Hot Sausage’s boiler room, moving in a curling line three inches wide that snaked its way around the discarded junk to the clock itself, which stood along a back wall. They climbed through the broken plate glass and across the clock’s dead hour hand, then down into its guts and innards to the delicious, odorous white man’s cheese wrapped in wax paper that lay inside. After demolishing the cheese, the line moved on, snaking its way out the back of the clock and along the wall, gobbling whatever was in its path—bits of old sandwiches, discarded Ring Dings, roaches, mice, rats, and of course their own dead. These ants were not normal city ants. They were big, red country ants with huge backsides and tiny heads. Where they came from no one knew, though it was rumored they might have wandered over from the nearby Preston Carter Arboretum in Park Slope; others said a graduate student from nearby Brooklyn College had dropped a beaker full of them and watched in horror as the beaker smashed to the floor and they scattered.