Carried By Six

Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticously. Any resemblence to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For my students, past and present.
May God bless and keep you one and all as you journey through life!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank Renni Browne for putting her unmatched editorial skills to work on the manuscript of this book. Thanks also to my good friends, Dr. Carson Carr Jr. and Deacon Ernest Williams of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, Albany, New York, for being there for me in fair weather and foul.

The same goes for the Rt. Reverend Robert W. Dixon, his wife, Georgia Dixon, and my entire Mt. Calvary church family whom I love dearly. My brothers, Walter and Forrest, and their families have been staunch supporters of my work as has been my son, John. I’d like to make a special note of my gratitude to the late Geraldine Ballard, who was always the very first person to read drafts of my books and did so with alacrity and great empathy for the travails of a writer. In this and more ways than I can count, her great loving spirit, compassion, musical artistry, and zest for life is sorely missed.

Thanks also to Professors Leonard Slade, Darlene Clark Hine, and Lillian Williams, Staff Inspector (Ret.) John Herritage, New York State Police, and Diane Turner, Suzanne Lance, Greta Petry, and the late Gartrell Turman, all of whom have been great supporters of my writing. I thank finally, Velma Cousins, for being such a good friend over the years and for all of her help and support.

CHAPTER 1

OBIE BULLOCK PULLED HIS BATTERED OLD CHEVY SEDAN in front of the Joseph E. Hill projects, checked the sign, and double-parked. He got out of the car and mopped the sweat from his brow with a big red handkerchief. It was only eight in the morning, but the pavements in North Philly were already warming up, just like every other day this week. He began the short walk to his building, past the graffitied concrete tables. The old men were already out playing cards.

“Heading towards the bus about fifteen minutes ago,” another player said. “Looking good, too, man. Go figure. Prettiest woman in the place and married to somebody ugly as you.”

The older man stood and threw up his arms. “Come on if you dare. These the fists destroyed Bucky Jackson.”

With that, Obie took off at a run towards the building entrance. The entire table collapsed in laughter, the other men clapping their hands and encouraging Tyrone, a bent-over senior citizen.

Tyrone stood and shouted after his disappearing foe. “Don’t mess with me, man, thunderbolts in these fists.”

Still laughing, something he hadn’t done a lot of lately, Obie entered the lobby. He looked up and down the corridor for Roy, who was away from his desk. Damn, the house committee had met with the police just three nights ago and agreed that two officers would be assigned to the building—and that one would always be on duty at the front desk, no matter what.

You’d think the rape and murder of little Shakeisha a month ago would be enough to make them keep their promise. And it wasn’t like Roy to leave the desk unattended. When he had to take a break, he’d go ask one of the men outside to take over for a few minutes. Obie sighed. This was no way to help make this place safe for the kids and the old folks, much less stop Son Teagle’s gang from taking over the building.

He walked to the desk. A copy of Ebony lay half opened on it, like Roy had been interrupted while he was reading. He pulled out the chair and sat down, ready to stay there until he came back. Probably had just gone into the recreation room to take a leak.

“Morning to you, Miss Taylor, that dress fits you just right, ought to knock them out in the office today.” Obie smiled up at a tall, graceful woman whose body was snugly wrapped in a yellow dress speckled with Yoruba symbols. “Yes, ma’am, you’ll surely be the queen of Chestnut Street this beautiful day the Lord has sent.”

She grinned and blew him a kiss on the way out the door. “Oughta be ’shamed of yourself, Obie, way you be sweet-talking us all the time.”

He had a snappy comeback ready, but just then four kids, followed by their twenty-six-year-old mother, burst out of the elevator and were all over him before he could even say hello.

Their mother, Serena, quickly reined them in. “Obie, you spoil them rotten, one day I’m going to leave them with you for good.”

Obie laughed. “I wouldn’t mind, one bit.” He looked at the kids. “We’d have us a ball, wouldn’t we?” They nodded unanimously, thinking perhaps of the homemade oatmeal raisin cookies and fruit punch that always awaited them when they stopped in at the Bullocks’ apartment. Then they were off, propelled through the door by Serena.

Obie turned back to Ebony, where Roy had apparently been reading an article about the fifty leading eligible bachelors of the year. Maybe his good buddy, stationed in the Hill project for the past four years, had been hoping he’d make the list some day. Obie didn’t get a chance to look at much of the article, what with the elevator banks constantly disgorging folks. All of them had something to say to Obie, who by this point was hurting for sleep.

Around eight-thirty, the elevator traffic slowed down. The building had just about emptied itself out, leaving only the old, the unemployed, and three or four of Son’s gang members, embedded in the apartments of decent folk. They’d come back from prison—most of them—settled in with their mothers or grandmothers, and proceeded to sell drugs. That’s what the meeting the other night had been all about.

ROY STILL HADN’T COME BACK, and Obie was worried. Given all the problems with security lately, he hadn’t wanted to leave the desk unoccupied and go off looking for him. But freed now of the distraction caused by the comings and goings of the residents, he took a careful look at the recreation room door and saw that it was slightly ajar. And wait a minute—Roy’s key ring was still in the lock. Yet the room was dark.

He quietly pushed the door open and turned the light switch on with his left hand. As he walked, he reached for the gravity knife he always carried in his pants pocket. Might be illegal, but it sure made him feel better. He pulled the knife from his pocket and with a quick flick of his wrist snapped the blade into its locked position.

He moved down the wall of the room at a half-crouch, easing towards the still darkened alcove where the restrooms were. When he reached them, he burst into the men’s room, knife forward.

Roy’s inert body lay sprawled between the corner and an overturned trash can. Blood was still coming from a wound in his throat and spreading over his white shirt with its silver badge. It was all over his blue pants and forming a pool on the floor.

On his shirt lay an envelope addressed to the Men of Africa United. Obie picked it up and was about to open it when he heard what sounded like a stall door opening.

Obie reached down and pulled the Glock .9 mm weapon from Roy’s holster, then slowly opened the men’s room door and walked out.

Standing at the side of its door, his body pressed against the wall, Obie knocked real hard.

Should he just bust in? No sir, buddy, too old and too smart for that. Good way to get blown away. But if he tried to get to the phone, the killer might come out and fire at him before he reached it. The son of a bitch only had one way out, and that was through him. Shit.

Through the rusted vents at the top of the door, Obie heard the distinct sound of metal against metal—the killer was locking and loading a clip of bullets into some kind of a machine pistol.

Whoever was in there would come out soon. No way he was going to stay and wait for the cops to come get him. Obie had to find a way to get out of the rec room. And quick!

What the eye could not see, the eye could not shoot. He’d just turn the tables on the guy and put him in a trap.

He quietly made his way back to the light switch and turned it off, plunging the entire room into darkness. He slammed the door shut, locked it with Roy’s keys, and inched his way along the wall towards the security guard desk some twenty-five yards away at the other end of the hall. Just make that phone, let the cops flush the killer out.

With his gun trained on the shut and latticed door, he backed down the hall. An image of house-to-house fighting in Ramadi flashed in his mind. Could surely use some of them mean-assed boys from his old squad right about now. At age forty-five and still hurting from his abdominal wounds suffered in Iraq, he was definitely getting too old for this kind of stuff.

The door of the recreation room exploded before Obie’s eyes—glass shattering, wood splintering. The noise from the killer’s machine pistol, an Uzi, reverberated along the painted concrete walls of the hallway.

A boy in his teens kicked the remnants of the door open. He wore dungarees, a red turtleneck shirt, and a blue bandanna tied around the lower part of his face to conceal his identity. The gold chains around his neck were so thick they looked like they belonged to an Egyptian pharaoh. Gold was on his wrists and ring fingers, too.

The Uzi exploded once again, the bullets spewing all over the walls, floors, and ceiling of the hallway. The kid didn’t even know how to control the firepower he had in his hands. Obie hit the ground hard, rolled, took aim, and fired to kill. Anger at Roy’s death and months of infantry fighting in Iraq left no room in his heart for halfway measures—aim for somebody’s legs and they just might shake it off and kill you.

As the teenager fell, he squeezed the trigger. The Uzi sprayed bullets in a chaotic pattern all over the room.

Obie fired again, and the slender body lay silent on the floor. The Uzi clattered onto the blood-soaked tiles.

Obie stood motionless in the hallway for a few seconds, then heard shouting outside and distant sirens coming closer and closer. He went over to the desk, threw the service pistol on it, and walked back down the slippery hallway floors towards the body. On the way, he kicked the Uzi with his foot, sent it flying down the corridor. He reached the corpse and tore the blue kerchief from the face—

WHEN THE FIRST COPS ENTERED THE BUILDING and trained their guns on Obie, they found him holding the boy’s head in his arms. Obie’s face was wet with tears, and great moans came from his powerful body. He was mourning the death of Trevon Teagle, the best center fielder he’d ever coached on the Joseph E. Hill pee-wee baseball team.

When Obie first met him, Trevon had been nine years old, small for his age, angry and hungry all the time. But he’d blossomed into the best. Boy, that little fellow could fly! See him running, eyes turned round on that ball, both arms pumping, twelve years old, glove up in the air. Then that leap towards the sky and the ball. Sudden shrieks, little boys throwing each other all around, happy brown-faced mothers hugging, shouts of “Trevon!” Then off to McDonald’s for burgers, fries, and all the milkshakes they could drink, everybody coming over to tell Trevon what a great catch he’d made, what a great future he had. Liquid mercury, that’s just what he’d been like on the field. And maybe, just maybe, those first shots of his that had missed Obie—that was on purpose?

“What’s your name?” A policeman, shotgun in hand, stood over Obie. “What happened?”

“I just killed this boy here and he used to play Little League for me. He’s Son Teagle’s baby brother.”

“Teagle? Oh, Jesus, you better sit down. You’re in a whole mess of trouble.”

“Don’t worry about me, I been through worse. But my friend Roy, one of the project cops, he’s in the bathroom. I can’t believe it, but the kid slit his throat.” Obie didn’t even bother to wipe away the tears on his face. And didn’t even know who or what he was crying for—Roy, Trevon, Shakeisha, himself, his family, or the whole sorry state of affairs in this project that had once seemed to him and Dora Lee such a fine place to raise children.

JOHN SARNESE, POLICE CAPTAIN AND COMMANDER OF THE 89TH PRECINCT, had just walked into his office and smelled the coffee brewing when the call came in that an officer was down at the Joseph E. Hill project. The dead cop was Roy Cobb, a great guy and a stellar officer, and of course it had happened at the projects. Damn it all!

He hit the intercom button. “Miss Rutherford, tell Robbie to bring the car around front, I’ll be out in two minutes flat.” He poured what little coffee had already brewed into a mug, took a swig, and walked over to the mirror. He straightened his tie, put on his cap, patted the blackjack in his back pocket, and headed out into the precinct room.

He looked at the desk sergeant. “Get somebody to sweep the floors, for Christ’s sake, and make sure it’s done before I get back. I’d like to take a step without feeling things crunch under my feet. And don’t forget to make those corrections in yesterday’s morning reports. I’m getting tired of having to check over those things after you guys. That’s your job.”

With that, he was out the front door and hurrying down the concrete steps and into the big black unmarked Chevy with its leather-covered red light inside and the small radio antenna extending from the center of its roof.

He turned to Robbie, the slim, light-brown-complexioned plainclothesman who was his driver for the month.

Robbie pulled the cover off the red light, hit the siren switch, and drove slowly down the street. It was blocked by illegally parked civilian cars belonging to the precinct cops.

Once on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Sarnese’s car hit a traffic jam at the corner of Fifteenth Street, where a delivery truck was triple-parked in the midst of a swarm of horn-blowing cars. The driver and his helper were pushing a hand truck loaded with cases of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup down a ramp. There the captain’s car waited, jammed in on three sides, its siren blaring and red lights and headlights flashing. Sarnese watched other police cars, drawn by the call “officer down,” speed past the intersection on their way to the Hill project.

“Enough of this,” he said. “Back her up, then pull up on the sidewalk. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of here.”

When his car finally arrived at the project, Sarnese saw about ten empty police vehicles parked at all kinds of awkward angles in the street. It reminded him of the mess outside his station. He’d fix that problem, all right. Just wait until he got back. But right now he had more important things on his mind—one of his cops had been killed, and it shook him to the very core of his soul, almost as much as the death of that little girl Shakeisha a month ago. He’d break that gang if it was the last thing he ever did in his life.

When Sarnese came up, the police guards snapped to attention and saluted. Sarnese walked down the ground floor corridor and saw white-jacketed African-American and Hispanic medical emergency workers waiting while the detectives marked the area with chalk. The police photographers were already snapping pictures.

The captain went straight to the recreation room, where a group of men—some white, some black, some with wild-colored bandannas around their heads, others wearing Phillies baseball caps or Eagles Football T-shirts—sat around a ping-pong table with papers strewn all over it. All had police badges pinned somewhere on their clothes.

Just as the captain entered the room, the precinct’s chief detective sergeant looked up from the table.

“Will somebody please turn on the fucking fan?” A younger officer jumped to obey his order, but it was already on, probably running at the highest speed it could.

Obie Bullock sat at the table, his muscular arms propped on either side of the ping-pong net, which was lying flat because its clamps were broken. His yellow short-sleeve shirt was half open at the collar, and he looked dazed.

In the past, Obie had led marches protesting police abuse. And several times he’d called Sarnese himself to report cops sleeping on duty in the parking lot behind the projects. At first Sarnese had been irritated, but then one evening, just on a whim, he’d invited Obie to have a cup of coffee with him down at the local Dunkin Donuts, and before he knew it, their common military service and love of bass fishing had bonded them. Wasn’t long before they’d become good friends. And when Obie’s stepson, Jason, had been arrested for driving an unregistered vehicle with a suspended license, Sarnese, awakened by a post-midnight call from Obie, had come into the precinct, released the kid with a stern warning, and vacated the arrest. He figured Obie would have done the same for him if the shoe had been on the other foot. They had each other’s backs.

Just the other night, Obie had stood up in that meeting about Shakeisha’s killing and pledged the support of his organization—the Men of Africa United—to root out the dealers who’d infiltrated his building and the project. And Sarnese had sworn to back them up, so he was feeling pretty bad now. Shit, Bullock wasn’t even a cop, wouldn’t have the protection of the uniform. And even that didn’t mean much these days. If the thugs wanted to kill somebody, they did it.

It wasn’t a week since they’d shot a witness dead who was ready to testify against some members of the gang. The detectives heard that Teagle had sent a message from prison to the witness telling him he could either “take his money and lie, or take my bullet and die.” The guy had said he didn’t care what happened, he wasn’t going to stop talking until the last of the gang was locked up. Three days later they found his bullet-ridden body crumpled up in a dumpster outside a deli. As usual, nobody had seen a thing. And Sarnese couldn’t even blame them for not talking, because when all was said and done, the folks in the community had to live with Son Teagle’s thugs, meet them in the stores, run into them on the streets, cross their paths in the playgrounds, and take their kids to school through groups of them standing on the corners selling drugs. If he had to live in that situation, he’d be scared too.

His brusque nod to the detective sergeant signified that the captain would take charge. He grabbed a folding wooden chair, turned it around so he could rest his arms on its back, then sat down across from Bullock.

“You did a hell of a job this morning, but I guess you know it wasn’t exactly the smartest thing you ever did.”

“Just what I had to do to get out alive, captain. If I’d seen my way clear to getting to that phone, I would have—”

“We’ll cut this interrogation short here and get you down to the station, it’ll take a while to get things straightened out.”

Bullock, his face grim now, said, “Before we go over, I’d like to call Dora Lee and let her know what’s happening. And I’d appreciate it if you could have somebody contact the schools and let my kids know about this, so they don’t get the news from nobody else.”

“You can call her from my car.” Sarnese called out to Robbie. “Find out where the kids are and go over and let them know. After that, you can go down and pick up Mrs. Bullock from work and bring her home. Take one of the precinct cars.”

Sarnese and Bullock returned to headquarters, a weather-battered gray stone building with granite steps that had been worn down in the middle.

The television cameras were already there. Reporters elbowed each other, trying to get their microphones and tape recorders close to the two men. Bullock, his shirt stained with sweat, blood, and dirt from the morning’s events, kept his face straight ahead and ignored the crowd. Sarnese just pulled his hat down more firmly on his head and kept on walking. When he made it to the top of the steps, he turned to the reporters.

“Just a little bit of silence for a minute, please. We haven’t got all the facts yet on what happened over at the Hill project, but in about two hours I’ll hold a news conference and tell you everything we know. You’ll just have to wait.” He and Bullock disappeared into the station house as policemen barred the reporters from entering the building.

Sarnese stopped for a second at the precinct sergeant’s desk. “Get somebody out there in the street this minute—I want tickets put on every one of those illegally parked cars. That includes the car of the guy who’s going out to give the tickets. No exceptions, and that means you too. I’m sick and tired of this shit. Now I’m going into my office with Mr. Bullock here, and I don’t want to be disturbed by anybody, except the detectives when they get back. Hear that!”

TWO HOURS LATER, Captain Sarnese stood quietly by the mayor, the commissioner of police, and Obie Bullock as the mayor opened the press conference. An officer had been killed and his assassin fatally shot by Obie Bullock, the outstanding citizen and army combat vet who now stood by his side. All was in order, the mayor said, and although there would be an inquest as required by law, there would almost certainly be no prosecution of this man who’d seen his duty and done it.

The mayor, a tall, dark-brown-skinned man with streaks of gray in his hair, turned to the commissioner.

“It was a political assassination, pure and simple.” The commissioner raised his arm to show a photo of a bloodstained letter. “This was found pinned to the body of the dead officer. It says, ‘This is what awaits every man of the Mau-Mau—that’s the abbreviation for the Men of Africa United—especially Obie Bullock.’” He turned and said, “Mr. Bullock, as the founder and head of that organization, might like to comment.”

Bullock, looking for all the world like a retired linebacker, moved to the front of the steps at the top of the station house.

“I didn’t expect things to be this bad when we started our drive against drugs in the Hill projects and in our community. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the bad guys take over. Decent folks got a right to live without fear, and with God’s help, I’ll do my best to see they do.” His voice shook slightly. “I loved Roy like a brother, and Trevon…Trevon, he was like another son to me, and I will forever fault myself that I couldn’t save him from becoming a thug and a killer. But the pull of the streets and all those gold chains and Cadillac Escalades and five-hundred- dollar sneakers—hey, I just couldn’t compete.

“And now look what’s happened. One of the best men I ever knew, Roy, is stone cold dead, and Trevon is lying in the morgue next to him. I don’t know if the good Lord has ever sent me a worse day than this one, but I’m determined to stay in this fight. Ain’t never run from one yet.” He shook his head slowly and handed the microphone back to the commissioner.

At the rear of the crowd of reporters, in a sweat-soaked gabardine suit, a short, balding, trim man was scribbling away on a notepad. Sarnese recognized him as Walter Shapiro of the Philadelphia Gazette. He’d been chronicling the activities of the Mau-Mau for the past several months.

“Sure I do, Mr. Shapiro—I’m no fool. But I ain’t going to let it get the best of me.”

The commissioner, a Puerto Rican, said all necessary protection would be provided.

The mayor stepped forward. “I just want to emphasize that fact. There’ll be no intimidation of good citizens in my administration. That’s all for now, the news conference is over.”

The television cameramen and reporters followed him and the commissioner, peppering them with questions, until they got into the mayor’s black Cadillac and drove off slowly down the street.

It was still partially blocked by the policemen’s private cars. But a ticket was tucked under the windshield wipers of each vehicle. Not that this made John Sarnese happy. At any other time, he’d have hoped the commissioner would notice the tickets. But now, what with the killings and all, he was just going through the motions of being his usual hard-nosed self. Somehow he had to find a way to bring some measure of peace to the Joseph E. Hill project and protect those people over there—that was his sworn duty.

And with Teagle, you never knew when or where he would strike next. Nothing was out of bounds for him. Seemed like the prison walls couldn’t hold him. Or stop him.

CHAPTER 2

DORA LEE SAID GOODBYE TO OBIE, hung up the phone, and sat unmoving at the receptionist desk at the Spruce Street firm of Raleigh and Waterbottom. Her black hair, done up in cornrows, was only a shade darker than her glistening ebony skin, and her eyes had a slight slant to them. She wore a pale gray linen dress that was sparkling clean, ironed, and starched to perfection. It seemed to deepen the rich blackness of her skin.

Just the other morning, she’d dropped a plate of hot cornbread off for Roy on her way out to work, and you’d have thought it was a five-course breakfast from the way he’d thanked her. Just a nice Georgia man, with two grown kids and lots of friends amongst the card-playing old men who hung around in the rec room and swapped jokes with him when the weather was too bad for them to go outside.

And Trevon! She couldn’t believe he’d gone so far down the thug road as to kill a cop—one he knew, one who’d tried to help him go straight. Lord knows Obie had done everything possible to help that boy out. Took him on team trips upstate and over in Jersey, attended his graduation from elementary school, bought him a bookpack when Mrs. Teagle couldn’t scrounge up the money, gave him books on Jackie Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Tony Gwynn, and now this…it was all just too sad to think about. Like some curse had put been put on black children so they’d vanish from the earth.

Dora Lee turned away from the typewriter and began to sort the mail. About halfway through the pile of letters, her eyes fell on an envelope addressed to her. It was green with borders of red.

It contained two sheets of paper and a picture. A message, written in what looked like blood, was on one sheet: “Bullock, stop fucking with us.” The second sheet was a crude map of the route Dora Lee took to get to work. The photo was a snapshot of her, dressed in a springtime paisley dress, as she exited from a nearby subway stop.

Dora Lee was quickly surrounded by white-shirted executives clamoring to know what had happened. Then she saw her best friend, Ruth Lenhardt.

She put her arms around Dora Lee, who sat stock-still at the desk, the green envelope and its contents resting under her hand.

Dora Lee slowly turned her head towards Ruth. “They want to kill us. Those rotten gangsters think they can run us out of our home. They got another think coming.”

DORA LEE SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE CAR as Robbie—such a nice young policeman—headed straight up Broad Street. He was quiet, like he sensed that she needed some time to sort things out. And she really did. She had a lot to think about.

First, there were the children, just two of them at home now. They had to be made safe, and that would be no easy task what with all the activities they were involved in. Sabaya, in her senior year at the High School of Creative and Performing Arts, had the promise of a scholarship to Oberlin College in the fall. But how was she going to concentrate on her piano and keep those fine grades up with all of this violence going on around her? From today on, every time she walked into the recreation room she’d see traces of bloodstains—the janitorial staff would scrub and scrub to get them out, but the walls would never come all the way clean. Dora Lee knew that from the time when the Thompson boy was shot near the eighth floor stairwell. More than that, she knew Sabaya was secretly seeing Hashim, her long-time friend from elementary school who now floated on the fringes of the Teagle gang. Play with fire…

As for Timba, their fifteen-year-old, today’s events were bound to twist him inside. He and Trevon had been good friends until a few years back when Trevon tried—unsuccessfully, praise the Lord—to recruit him as a drug runner. Not long afterward Trevon put his hands on Sabaya’s butt, propositioned her, then called her a cock tease when she told him to get lost. Despite being younger, Timba sought him out and whipped him good. Don’t mess with his sister! But though he was a great athlete, strong and quick like his Dad, Timba was doing poorly in school. He was already walking a narrow path between the streets and the books, and she didn’t want to see him fall off like her son Jason had before Obie came into their life eighteen years ago.

And Obie, sweet and impossible man! He would take everything that had happened today real personal-like, and there was no telling what he’d do now that Teagle had crossed the line and threatened his family. Wouldn’t surprise her one bit to see him sweep through the stairwells by himself one night and toss any dealer he could get his hands on right down the steps. And that just wouldn’t do, what with him being the head usher at the church and all. It had taken a long time for her to get him going to church regular and trying to keep that temper of his in check.

Most of all, Dora Lee was worried about Obie and her. Credit card bills that had somehow piled up, the coming college tuition, his night shift work, and all of his anti-drug activities were eating away at the comfort between them, the closeness. She loved him too much to see that happen.

And she had final exams coming up in her secretarial science and computer courses next week. She was already behind in the reading. And what were they to do for dinner tonight?

You just ask the savior to help you,

Comfort, strengthen and keep you.

Jesus is able to help you,

He will carry you through!

The verse repeated itself in her head, over and over again. Just that one verse. She saw Reverend Johnson, short and dark, singing that song in his husky voice from the pulpit last Sunday. The power of the music had lifted her soul then, and she decided now that she would face this problem as she had faced every other one in her life. She would continue to praise God and thank him for her many blessings. Yes, she would! He will carry you through.

The patrol car pulled up in front of the police station. The polite young officer said, “Mrs. Bullock, good luck to you. You and your husband have made us real proud.” Dora Lee knew what he meant. African-Americans around the city had been uplifted by the Bullocks’ struggle against the drug dealers.

Little did he or they know the cost. And some of it was real personal. It had been a month and a half since she and Obie had made love.

WHEN OBIE DROVE UP in front of the Joseph E. Hill project for the second time that day, he was bone-weary. Just that morning, things had been looking up a bit—kids fine, Babe Ruth league about to begin, Sabaya all set to take a special summer music course. And then there would have been the August church picnic, and the annual family reunion trip to Pine Hill, just outside of Gastonia, North Carolina. And things with Dora Lee might have gotten sweeter once they were down there.

It had been all too simple, too good. Now everything had crashed down around him. He’d already been in trouble. Now, just like that, he and his family were in serious danger.

It was five o’clock, and as Obie and his family walked into the courtyard of the project, the old men were still out playing cards and checkers. But this time nobody greeted Obie warmly or teased him. For one thing, he and his family were accompanied by two white officers, their assigned bodyguards.

For another, about a hundred yards away from the playing tables, sitting on the swings and playing loud rap music on a gigantic ipod box, was a group of seven or eight teenage boys. Their bodies were swaying to the music of the M.C. Rappers, and as they danced, they kept pointing towards the Bullock family. They were friends of Trevon and junior affiliates of the Teagle gang.

Obie knew them all by name. Wasn’t one of them he hadn’t tried to set right, but the dealers had too many things to offer them and he’d lost the contest for what was in fact those kids’ lives—five years from now they’d all be dead, crippled by gunshot wounds, or stuck away in some prison cell.

Obie, who was holding Dora Lee by her hand while the kids walked in front of them, said, “Leave ’em be.”

As the Bullocks approached the entrance to the apartment building, the boys started to shout.

Timba had a fade haircut and a confident walk, with just a hint of the street in his stride. He suddenly darted across the playground, and before anybody could stop him, he’d crashed into the leader of the gang and snatched up the boombox. He was about to throw it on the sidewalk when one of the cops came up from behind him, grabbed the box, and held Timba back. The other cop gave the boombox to its owner and scattered the kids.

They retreated to a far corner of the yard, where they regrouped. Their leader turned up the machine even louder and shouted, “Yo, Timba, you faggot, your ass is mine!” as the Bullock family and its police escort finally entered the apartment building.

Just as everybody was on the elevator and the doors about to close, Obie stepped out, nodded to the cops, and said, “See the family upstairs, I’ll be right up. I got something to do.”

He walked slowly out of the building door and towards the gang of boys. Now the group at the table came to life.

He kept on walking across the yard. When he got within ten feet of the teenagers, he said, “Duwan, Djersha, Lumumba, and the rest of you all, come over here for a minute.” His voice was low but clear—every word seemed to echo through the yard. “I want to tell you something. And turn that thing down.”

Looks of astonishment and disbelief came over their faces. But at one time, when they were all younger, Obie had been one of the few caring men in their lives. Some vestige of gratitude remained. Duwan, their leader, nodded to the fellow with the boombox and he turned it off.

“Mister Bullock, ain’t nothing you can tell us. You offed Trevon, and he was our brother. End of story.”

Obie’s eyes ranged across the angry faces of the boys, all of whom wore their hair in Rastafarian style and their balloon-style pants low on their hips. Tattoos adorned their arms.

“Trevon is dead and gone and I’m truly sorry I had to kill him. Ain’t nothing to be proud of. But he cut Roy’s throat, then tried to machine-gun me. So I killed him stone dead. And that’s an awful waste of a human life, because Trevon could have been a lawyer or a doctor or a major league star, not just some janitor like me. The sky was the limit for him, and he never got off the ground. But that ain’t neither here nor there right now, question is about you all.”

“Yes, you!” Obie aimed his finger dead in the center of Duwan’s chest. “Because you’re going to end up the same way as Trevon if you don’t change your ways. Find you all a job, a school, something to do, because cops or no cops, your bosses upstairs or not”—he jerked his head up towards the apartments that had been taken over by the dealers—“I will personally hold each and every one of you responsible for anything that happens to anybody in my family, or for that matter any of the decent folks that live in this here project.”

The boys were silent, and Duwan, along with the rest of them, almost unconsciously took a step backwards from Obie. They all knew what he’d done to a six foot 250-pound lunatic who’d come swinging a knife in the midst of the playground one day, threatening to kill the screaming toddlers. Had walked straight up to the man, grabbed him in a judo lock, turned him around, and busted his knife arm before he could slash even one of those children.

Obie folded his arms across his chest. “Now, you all go on home and mourn Trevon—that’s the right and proper thing to do. Mrs. Teagle can use a lot of sympathy right now, and I feel sorry for her. But don’t come messing with me and my family, ’cause you’ll find a heap of trouble.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Obie saw one boy who seemed to be trying to conceal himself behind the others. He was light-brown-skinned, wore his hair bald and was dressed in a summer shirt and regular-cut blue slacks.

“You, Hashim, don’t be trying to hide from me. Especially don’t want to see your ass nowhere around here. Now, all of you, get!” He turned and walked off, and when he reached the door and looked back, they were gone.

The men at the table were mute. Obie had walked into the lion’s den and out again. A couple of them kids would as soon shoot a man as take a drink of water.

ON THE ELEVATOR TO THEIR TENTH-FLOOR APARTMENT, Obie felt like his mind was running a mile a minute. Never mind that his family was at risk. He had to be back at work tonight by twelve o’clock and hadn’t even had one minute of sleep.

When he reached his door, the two policemen were waiting outside. The older one said, “We’ll be out here till eleven o’clock, when our relief shows up. Any problems, just give us a yell. And I’d appreciate it if you could let us have a couple of kitchen chairs.”

Obie thanked the men, said he’d get them the chairs, and entered the apartment. The door opened directly into a living room painted white but full of the earth colors of Africa. Hanging on the wall above the heavily upholstered blue couch was a brown and yellow Kinte cloth with pictures of African villages, and women—tall and willowy like Dora Lee—carrying water from the wells to their thatch huts. In the background, men sat smoking their pipes and pointing towards Mt. Kilimanjaro.

On another wall was a reproduction from the Philadelphia Afro-American Museum, a Nubian sculpture of an African woman’s head. Whenever Obie looked at the picture, he was drawn into a stream of time that flowed back to his very wellsprings, so much did the woman’s face remind him of his grandmother from Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

In another part of the room were photographs of both Dora Lee’s and Obie’s families, with neatly typed captions beneath each glass-covered picture. There was grandfather Conrad Bullock, standing with his family in front of a whitewashed church, straw hat in his hand. Beside him stood grandmother Bullock, dressed in white and holding a black parasol to shade herself from the fierce North Carolina sun. The boy children, including Obie’s father, were dressed in knickers, and the girls, their hair plaited in long pigtails and tied with ribbons, wore white dresses and wide straw hats.

There was also a picture of Dora Lee’s mother in a red blouse and black skirt, her school uniform, as she stood in a class of students in Barbados. Beside her hung a picture of her husband, immaculate in the red and white uniform of the Barbados police. The floor of the room was covered with a deep-pile red rug they’d found tucked away among remnants in the back of a store over across the Delaware Bridge in Jersey. It had been a prize find.

The centerpiece of the living room was a mahogany table Dora Lee polished most every day. A big black Bible was in the middle of the table, and either Obie or Dora Lee had read aloud from it every Sunday morning as long as they’d been married. At first they’d read to each other—Jason, Dora Lee’s boy, well on his way to his first incarceration in reform school, would have none of it. But when Sabaya and Timba were old enough to understand, Obie and Dora Lee had taken turns reading to them on succeeding Sundays. The children stopped protesting when they realized it didn’t do any good.

Family prayer and the Bible always came before the Sunday morning breakfast of biscuits, scrambled eggs, bacon, and grits Obie cooked himself. Dora Lee would stay in bed until time to eat. He’d never missed a Sunday, even when, in the early days of his marriage, his head throbbed from the bourbon still flowing in his bloodstream. What with the church and all, he’d hardly ever touched the hard stuff for a good seven or eight years now. Dora Lee didn’t like it, and it set a poor example for the children.

But he needed a good belt of whiskey right now. The images of Roy and Trevon were running in his head like a movie he couldn’t get to stop. And he had truly loved Trevon, could hear him now talking softly with Timba years ago when he used to sleep over, saying he was going to be an airplane pilot, go all over the world, then maybe one day invent his own kind of airplane, so big it could carry almost a thousand people. Timba had said it was impossible, but Obie could still hear Trevon telling him no, he could do it, he just had to keep reading those airplane books. “You just wait. You be seeing what I can do one day.”

He walked straight back into the kitchen, took down a bottle from the cupboard, and made himself a stiff bourbon on the rocks.

He heard Dora Lee tell the kids to start their homework. She came into the kitchen.

“Who is? It’s been a terrible day for all of us, that doesn’t mean you have to start drinking whiskey again.” Dora Lee began to take pots down from the cupboard. “And I don’t know what we’re going to have for dinner, either.”

Obie filled the ice tray and put it back in the freezing compartment. “You’ll find something, baby. I’m going to sit for a while, then we can talk these things out after dinner.”

“Nope.” He headed to their bedroom, where he sat down in a scuffed leather chair they’d bought years ago at the Salvation Army store. He reclined the chair, put the drink on its arm, and watched the news for a few minutes.

Suddenly his own face appeared on the screen. Lord, it was lined. Life had really done a job on him, and it wasn’t through with him yet. All them childhood years in the tobacco fields and young years of military campaigns and maneuvers—always under the hot sun—had told on him. And his fight against the drug dealers would probably have him looking like he was in his fifties by next month, if it didn’t kill him dead first—

A young black woman, light-complexioned and somewhat hard of voice and look, had shoved a microphone in his face.

“Do you think, Mr. Bullock, there’s anything you might have done to spare the boy’s life? After all, he was only sixteen years old.” Obie watched with some satisfaction as the camera cut away without recording his reply. He’d told the woman, “You got no idea what you talking about.”

He picked up his glass, got up from the chair, and walked out to the patio balcony that overlooked a big water fountain in the middle of the project. The sight of the fountain calmed him under all circumstances. Almost like it could play a song for him. And he needed that water song now. That and a good long talk with his brother Boatwright down in Carolina, because all of this confusion around the killings was going to make it hard for him to continue looking after Justine and Uncle Ward, who lived up in Germantown. Justine stayed with their aging uncle, and it was Obie who took her to treatment every week and saw to his uncle’s prescription needs. Boat would surely have some good advice on how he could handle that.

And home base had to be made secure. First and foremost, the dealers down below in those apartments had to be evicted—they were the real headquarters operation for Teagle’s gang in North Philly. By hook or crook, the Mau-Mau had to get rid of them.

Else little black boys would keep on growing up to the point where they were shoving one another out of the way to get in line for a short life or the sure fate of a life in prison—almost begging for it every day in their songs, screaming for it with their body motions, saying I’m going to fuck with everybody’s space and peace and quiet till you put my black ass in jail. Like prison was their natural home, the place God intended for them to be.

Obie was looking out at the water when he heard a knock on the bedroom door. He turned and watched Sabaya come into the room. My, how his little girl had grown up.

She was medium tall and wore her hair cut short in fluffy, shiny curls. Obie noticed how the tight dungarees and the bright yellow blouse showed off her curves. Every day brought her closer to womanhood, and every day he worried about the temptations surrounding her in these mean-assed streets.

He turned back to the balcony, knowing his daughter would come up, sit down on the little wooden bench, and talk to him while he kept looking down at the fountain.

“Daddy, I’m scared. What are we going to do now?” Sabaya fingered the cross on the gold chain she wore around her neck. He’d given it to her on her fourteenth birthday.

Obie shook the ice cubes in the now empty glass of bourbon. “Right now, we ain’t going to do nothing but get us a good dinner. Go on in and help your mama. We been through a lot already, always managed to come out okay. We’ll get out of this one too.”

“But this time it’s different, Daddy. How am I supposed to get down to J.C. Penney’s this summer for my job?”

Bullock put his arm around her shoulder and led her back towards the kitchen and a fresh drink. “Just come on, now, I’ll take care of everything.”

“But if I don’t work, where will we get the money for my clothes for school this fall?”

Dora Lee had a pot of water boiling for spaghetti and was pouring a jar of meat sauce into a pot. The counter in the cubbyhole of a kitchen was covered with salad makings.

Dora Lee stopped tearing the lettuce. “Please don’t take another drink—you know you have to go to work tonight. It’s already almost seven, next thing you know you’ll be losing your job. Then where will we be?”

Obie eased his way past Dora Lee, almost pinning her against the stove as he reached for the bottle. “You all are worse than a pack of hound dogs. Just leave me be.”

He made his drink and thrust the bottle back into the cabinet. As he walked out of the kitchen, he noticed Timba on the telephone in his room, really a corner of the living room that had been set apart by wooden screens. Timba slept there on a convertible sofa.

Obie knocked on the wooden shutters—Dora Lee insisted on knocking even though Timba’s space was only semi-private.

“You’ll have to get off the phone,” he said. “Got to make an important call.”

CARRIED
BY SIX

Allen Ballard

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CARRIEDBY SIX

Allen Ballard

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CARRIED
BY SIX