The Turnaround Read Online Free PDF Page A

“My cousin got a stereo make this one be ashamed.”
    Later, Larry, Charles, and Raymond sat on the government fence, a barrier painted yellow and white at the end of the street. Rodney had politely asked them to leave, saying he planned to meet a girl he knew, a customer he had met at the record store. Raymond suspected that Rodney just wanted Larry and Charles out of his basement and had made up the date.
    Larry and Charles had grown more belligerent behind the alcohol. Larry got louder, and Charles had become quiet, a bad sign. Raymond had taken them up on their offer to join them and was drinking a beer. He was three quarters done with it and could feel its effect. He had never had more than one, and he didn’t really care for the taste. But it made him feel older to drink with these two. He kept an eye out for anyone who might tell his parents that they had seen him drinking beer in the afternoon.
    They talked about girls they’d like to have. They talked about the new Mach 1. As Larry had done many times, he asked if James and Raymond were related to Earl Monroe, and Raymond said, “Not that I know.”
    There was a lull in the conversation while they swigged beer. Then Larry said, “Heard some white boys came through, couple weeks back.”
    “White bitches, ” said Charles.
    “Heard they talked some shit to your mom,” said Larry.
    “She was walking home from the bus stop,” said Raymond. “They weren’t sayin it to her, exactly. She was passing by the market when they were callin out, is what it was.”
    “So it was to her,” said Larry.
    It wasn’t a question, so Raymond did not reply. His face grew warm with shame.
    “Anyone did that to my mother,” said Charles, “they’d wake up in a grave.”
    “My father say you got to be strong and shake it off,” said Raymond.
    “Hmph,” said Larry.
    “It was my mother, I’d go ahead and shoot the motherfuckers,” said Charles.
    “Well,” said Raymond, hoping to put an end to the embarrassment of the conversation, “I got no gun.”
    “Your brother got one,” said Charles.
    “Huh?” said Raymond. “Go ahead, man, you know that ain’t right.”
    “I heard it from the man who sold it to him,” said Charles. “A revolver, like the kind the police carry.”
    “James got no gun,” said Raymond.
    “I guess I’m lyin, then,” said Charles, staring straight ahead. Larry chuckled.
    “I ain’t sayin that,” said Raymond. “I guess what I’m sayin is, I didn’t know.”
    Larry lit a cigarette and tossed the match out into the street.
    “He got one,” said Charles, looking into his beer can, shaking it to see what was left inside. “You can believe that.”
    JAMES MONROE liked to keep a clean red rag hanging from his back pocket when he worked the full-service pumps up at the Esso. Once he got the gas going into the car, he’d wash the windows, using the long-handled double-edged tool that sat in a bucket filled with diluted cleaning fluid. When he was done scraping the excess fluid off the windshield and rear window, he pulled that rag and wiped softly at any smudges or residue. Didn’t matter if it needed to be done or not. The act showed the customer that he took pride in his job and cared about the appearance of their automobile. Because of this one little thing he did, what he liked to call his “finishing touch,” he would occasionally receive a tip, sometimes a quarter and sometimes, around the holidays, fifty cents. Didn’t matter if it was only a dime, really, or even just a look in someone’s eye that said, That young man cares about his job. When you got down to it, it was about respect.
    James had been the first black, to his knowledge, to be hired at the station. In his mind, he was not breaking a racial barrier but rather changing a tradition they had up at this particular Esso. In the past, the proprietor had always hired neighborhood white boys and their friends. James had been persistent, going back many times to