His room. He had only stayed there once, on Carney’s birthday. It had been a swell evening. He’d been moved to make more of an effort to understand other people and it had made for a good time. At different points during dinner he took in the family’s faces and puzzled at why he felt so comfortable. “What’s this cake?” “Betty Crocker.” The rain really started coming down, he was tired, and when Elizabeth told him she’d had the kids make up the bed upstairs, he didn’t put up his usual fight. He had wondered what it’d be like to wake up in a house like that, see the light coming in. Uncle Pepper. Don’t call him that, but he had a room upstairs with a thick, red oval rug, a pine bookcase full of Carney’s business-school textbooks, a rocking chair, and a bed that only he slept in, as far as he knew.
Pepper hurt pretty bad when Carney came in the next morning. He had awakened multiple times, waiting for sunlight. Sunlight meant that the white man hadn’t killed him yet.
Carney held up Bad Cologne’s pistol. “I got it before Elizabeth saw it,” he said.
Pepper reached over and tucked the gun under his pillow. “I’ll tell you later” was all he felt like saying when Carney asked what happened. He recited a phone number and asked him to call his doctor.
Elizabeth checked in on him. She was less irritated than she’d been last night. “You sure you’re okay?” She left eggs and bacon and a glass of Tropicana. John and May stopped in to say hi, skittish and worried. Like they were little kids again. Carney or Elizabeth had told them not to pry so they acted like this was a normal visit. He told them he’d be better in no time. They gently closed the door. Pepper turned to the wall. He thought, Reece Brown, Reece Brown.
Dr. Rostropovich knocked on the door to his room two hours later. No effete practitioner, he appeared to have attended medical school among mountain men and rowdies; his neck was a tree trunk and his hands were made for mangling, not healing. The doctor was not much of a talker. His idea of bedside manner was pretending he’d never seen you before. As far as Pepper knew, his practice consisted entirely of the jammed-up, gutshot, and otherwise fucked over. You crawl away from a rip-off, bleeding out on the gravel, Dr. Rostropovich was your guy. He probed where the bat had collided. He eavesdropped on Pepper’s insides with a taped-up stethoscope. He sensed where Pepper had hurt his back without being told, and poked it with a cold metal instrument. The cut above Pepper’s eyes had closed up, he observed. He left pills.
Carney came in soon after with chicken soup. He closed the door behind him and sat on the desk. “I told her you got into an argument in a bar and the guy’s friends joined in.”
“That’s ridiculous, some dipshits taking me in a bar brawl. A salesman who can’t even lie right.”
“Where’s that doctor from?”
“You call him up, he comes around.”
“What did he say—do you have a concussion? Need X-rays?”
“I got to take it easy.”
“That’s his diagnosis?”
“He’s not that kind of doctor.”
“Not what kind of doctor?”
“Not the kind who believes in all that stuff. You call him, he comes.” Pepper pointed to Dr. Rostropovich’s glass jar of pills. “You got a glass of water?”
* * *
***
Three days later Pepper and Carney were parked four doors down from Optimo on 107th, waiting for Dan Hickey to come out. The wind overnight had swept out the humidity and the clouds made the city seem like it was wrapped in a bum’s dingy overcoat. Carney read The New York Times he’d draped over the steering wheel while Pepper tapped the outside of the passenger door, brow knit, considering different combinations of violence.
Pepper and Carney didn’t have much to say to each other until the float came up the avenue. They heard the music first, a jumble of horns and drums. Reluctantly, they looked back to see. A small green rig tugged the parade float, which was decked out in red, white, and blue—the colors of the American flag, and also the Exxon oil company, sponsor of this roving display. The Exxon tiger mascot gyrated and strummed air guitar as two ladies in hot pants and rhinestone tank tops cavorted and waved to the passersby. A honeycomb of amplifiers perched on the tail of the float, inflicting a funk version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Nobody paid it much mind on those Harlem streets. There was too much to do.
“Fucking Doodle Dandy,” Pepper said.
“What are they going to do once Fourth of July comes?” Carney said. “They have to stop at some point.”
“In the war—”
“You were in a war? Who won?”
Pepper looked at him.
“Pepper’s feeling better,” Carney said. He folded the newspaper and nodded at the cigar store. “You going to recognize him?”
No, Pepper did not remember the faces of everyone whom he had beaten and who had beaten him—he had trouble retaining the faces of the dead—but his encounter on 104th was recent, and they hadn’t scrambled his brains that much. He was stiff, but more than up to the task of retribution.
His recovery was a matter of will and its modern assistant, pharmaceuticals. Dr. Rostropovich’s pills had kicked in Saturday afternoon and smoothed out Pepper’s wrinkles and kinks like a hot iron. Pepper shuffled to the rocking chair, to-ing and fro-ing, listening to the transistor radio. Iraqi soldiers on the Syrian border, Jimmy Carter nabbing endorsements. He “closed his eyes” a few times. A crochet throw materialized on his lap. It was soft. When Carney came up for the lowdown on how Pepper ended up on his doorstep, Pepper said, “You.”
Pepper had enemies, but none that resourceful or in any position to act on their hatred on account of physical limitations （maimed） or mental weakness （scaredy）。 He’d been off the circuit, laid up with his bad back, so it wasn’t a loose end on a job. He had, however, been rattling cages all over Harlem, knocking heads, knocking the heads of employees, which meant employers, and some of them might have manpower.
It took a minute for Carney to accept that the ambush was his fault. “I told Elizabeth what I assumed had happened—you were slapping someone around for looking at you funny, and ten of his buddies showed up.” He apologized.
“You think you’re Superman, Carney,” Pepper said. “The Red Conk. You come up with a setup, and it has to work, because it’s yours.” His father was like that, Pepper said. The money drawer in the bank pops open like magic, the watchman sticks to his schedule because you need him to. “You wriggle out of shit enough times, you start to believe you’re bulletproof. When you’re not. It comes around. It catches up.”
Pepper had taken some lumps for Carney. He’d be up on his feet soon. And when that happened, the least Carney could do was drive.
In the upstairs room, Pepper gathered what he knew about Reece Brown. Pepper worked security at Corky Bell’s poker games plenty in the old days. Low hassle, good money. Hoods and crooks showed up to play with the locals and slumming white folks, but they respected the game. When Pepper had to manhandle someone, it was an angry player on tilt after a bunch of bad beats, not a stickup man. The muscle work for Corky dried up. Then one of his games got robbed—by a white cop no less. He renewed his interest in proper security, and reinstituted his New Year’s games to send a message he wasn’t running scared. Pepper was there, eating tongue sandwiches and glowering, at those final ’73 and ’74 games.