So he asked me, what country in Africa did I think his ancestors were from? I couldn’t tell him. “So we’re all African, but you’re not European?” It was a fair point, and I told him so. This new son of mine is no dummy.
Big T drove Mercedes-Benz, and on the way to his crib, I thought about how much more I liked eating dinner with him than with my actual son, which made me feel ashamed. Big T liked sports and good food and could debate race relations without sounding like an ignoramus, and even though Hank would fully “admit his privilege,” I don’t think you could find three American men of any racial background who would pick Hank over Big T in a who-is-a-real-man contest.
“You all right, old man whitey?” Big T asked as he drove.
“I’m straight,” I said, using brother language.
And then we were at his crib, which was off South Street in a small building he owned. There were six or seven little apartments, all occupied by people paying rent to Big T. My new black son was running work, and I was prouder and prouder with every new bit of info he revealed about himself.
Inside, all of his furniture was leather. Nice-looking, sleek, modern. He had a huge TV, and he flipped on some basketball right away, but I was too tired to hang and told him so, explaining that it was all the fucking meds.
He laughed and said I was to sleep in his bed, but I protested.
“What? You’re too proud to sleep in a black man’s sheets?” Big T said with this angry expression on his face that I had never seen before.
I didn’t know what to say, and had one of those awkward white-people moments that didn’t exist even ten years ago.
But then he said he was just playing with me and then added that he insisted I sleep in his bed. He had washed the aforementioned sheets, and he was just fine on the couch.
He said, “If you have another seizure you could fall off the couch and crack your head open on the coffee table,” which was thoughtful and probably true.
And so we did the handshake again, after which I said good night and went into his bedroom.
He had a nice king-size bed that was very normal looking. No leopard-skin blankets or black fists on the walls or red-green-and-black Africa cutouts or anything like that. It could have been any successful white person’s room anywhere in America, which was sort of a disappointment in some ways, because you would think a brother would have more style than that.
As I lay in Big T’s bed, I began to see that Sue and Big T were making a real commitment to me, involving me in their wedding plans and looking out for me as my fucked-up brain healed. If you toss in my favorite queer couple, you might start to think I had all the family I needed for the rest of my life, even without Hank. I could swallow that pill if it weren’t for Ella, and so I realized that I had to make things right with Hank somehow.
Frank’s words echoed in my head, and that was fucking me up, because I didn’t want to deal with that Indian motherfucker Clayton Fire Bear. And yet I could see that closure was necessary. I was slipping, and my mind was no longer even sound enough to be left alone with firearms. I also needed to give the knife back. Deep down I knew that was a mission I still needed to accomplish. I’m not sure why, but right then and there, in Big T’s bed, I decided I’d do it.
I slept better than I had in decades.
I woke up at five a.m. like always and found Big T stretching in the kitchen. He told me he was going out for a jog, and I nodded and smiled. That’s a real man right there. Up by five. Seizing the day.
He asked if I was cool, and I said, “Always,” so we went outside and I watched him jog down the street as I sparked up my first cigarette of the day on the sidewalk and the sun rose over the City of Brotherly Love.
Everything seemed okay in that good early-morning moment, like it always does.
And then I remembered my promise.
“Fire Bear,” I said.
14.
Sue showed up at Big T’s apartment, and we all got in the Mercedes and drove down to Delaware. His parents lived in a pretty nice house in a little suburban neighborhood. The first floor was packed full of their family and friends. Sue and I were the only nonblacks.
With Big T’s dad, I tried to do the only brother handshake I knew, but was surprised to find out the old man didn’t know it. When I went in for the part when you bang your fist on the other brother’s back, Mr. Baker asked me what the hell I was doing.
Big T made it okay by saying, “This guy’s blacker than you, Pop.”
Sue was a big hit with the women, who pulled her away from us right away. Just like in white families, all the men gathered around the television to watch sports while the women talked loudly about nothing at all.
I was surprised when one of Big T’s uncles put on golf and the room fell silent with each shot. I had seen the occasional brother on the golf course in my day, and I guess Tiger Woods changed everything, but Tiger was only part black, and regardless of all that, I had never been in a living room packed with golf-watching blacks, so a new experience to say the least. His uncles and cousins were wearing argyle sweater vests and prep-school shoes, and it became obvious that Big T was the blackest sheep of the family, so to speak.
The day passed, and there were good eats, as you might expect—the best ribs I had in years. And I ate four pieces of cornbread, because white people are shit at making cornbread, so a honky has to capitalize on such opportunities whenever they come along.
At one point I went looking for the toilet, and upstairs I ran into Big T’s father in the hallway. Turns out his name was David too, only he went by Dave.
I asked him if he named his son after Teddy Pendergrass, maybe because he had been listening to some Teddy P when Big T had been conceived.
Dave told me that his son was named after Theodore Roosevelt, and when I asked why, he said he was a history buff and had always liked the name Theodore.
I told him my father had named me after King David in the Bible, and Dave said he wasn’t religious.
So I told Dave that I had called in a favor for his son at PNC Bank, and he nodded and said he knew. It was then that I realized Dave might be a little jealous of the good relationship I had with his son.
I asked him where the can was.
“Why are you wearing nothing but camouflage?” he responded.
I told him I had spent some time in the jungle over in Vietnam, and the government had recently cut out part of my brain. I took off my bucket hat and showed him my scar.
He glanced at it and then pointed to the end of the hall, so I hit the head and left it at that.
Then I fell asleep on the couch, watching golf.