Day four of fatherhood was even harder. That was the day that Corduroy earned the nickname: Ill Militant. Wisdom and Knowledge were building on the AIDS crisis when Corduroy entered, and Drum slammed the door hard enough to make paint fall off the walls.“I ain’t never going back to Uncle Tom Elementary.”
“Never,” cosigned Drum.
“Uncle Tom Elementary? Where you get that from?”
“Eights.”
“Crabs in a pot. The teacher the biggest, fattest, stupidest crab in the whole stinking pot!”
“Pot,” confirmed Drum!
Knowledge chuckled. “You sposed to take what’s good out of Ward Connerly Elementary and bring it back to your community.”
“What community?”
“Alltown, Ill Militant Corduroy. This community.”
“I mean they armed, ain’t they, Knowledge? Using my favorite line—crabs in a bucket.” Wisdom baited, “Alright, spill it, Ill Militant.”
“We doing history. Teacher gon’ tell us black people come from slavery. I said black people didn’t come from slavery. Black people came from Kings and Queens. She gon’ cut me off and say, ‘if you were ever listening to my lessons and not doing your independent reading, Corduroy, you would remember Blacks came from slavery and Africans came from Kings and Queens.’ I say ‘you not supposed interrupt people while they speak.’ She gon' cut her eyes at me. That’s what I was telling you bout grown-ups don’t be acting like grown ups. She snap back, ‘What did you want to say, Corduroy?’
“I come back, ‘anyway, I can read and listen to you, because what you saying only half true, so I only got to half listen.’ My man Huey said that. Am I right?’ she say, ‘Newton?’ I say, ‘Freeman.’ She roll her eyes and gets loud: ‘What were you going to say young man?!’ I say, ‘My new daddy—.’ She come in again. ‘New Daddy? I’d like to meet him.’ So, I just go on because I ain’t your pimp. ‘My new Daddy says, if you can understand chronology, then there is little in this universe, good or bad, that you can’t trace to Africa, even niggers.’ So then, Drum and me take advantage of this moment to reconnect to our people. We been practicing how we gon' do it. Drum kick that little beat.”
Drum pulled two fat, school pencils out of his back pocket and began beating out a complicated arrhythmic pattern, a deep house rhythm Peter Vessey would appreciate. Wisdom and Knowledge exchanged looks that revealed a new interest in Corduroy’s rant. “’While my man beating out the pattern I’m letting them know, with my flow, getting loose to let it go, a little nothing, you know’ You know? That’s when the teacher come down the aisle and pull me and Drum by our ears and drag us to Vietnam.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yeah, Pop. That’s what she call it. The Dummy Corner. Vietnam. She stupid. Ain’t she Drum?”
“Yep.”
“Then, the worst part is, after school we get jumped by bout ten twelve niggers…”
“Woa! Ill Militant!”
“Naw, Uncle Knowledge, you ain’t let me finish, we get jumped for dissing class, and they the main stars of the dummy corner. Kids be calling them Vietnamese like they really from another part of the world.”
"Ya’ll don’t look like you got in no fight”
“That’s because we was full of righteous anger. Right, Drum?”
“Right.”
Knowledge and Wisdom would not send their boys back to school. Drum and IM would learn a trade. The trade would be private medical practice. The next morning, Strong Foundations Independent Academy began in the old Hiram Revels library. It was there that the boys and the men gathered around the table to study the first draw of contemporary research on HIV/AIDS.
Wisdom and Knowledge tied a sort of over-generosity to the spread of HIV: raw sex and traded dope needles. No one used condoms. Needles were prohibitively expensive. Addicts were going to get high. History had proven that.Knowledge and Wisdom orchestrated a careful plan to educate the community and expand their staff of researchers. The boys staged a free street corner concert. Each boy wrote a song about how to prevent the spread of HIV. They set up in Condie Rice Park where all the big boys freestyled. Drum banged his pencils, and Corduroy delivered all the lyrics. Almost all of Condie Rice crowded around. Soon, the town was buzzing for condoms. Pete took note.
Knowledge and Wisdom filtered through the hypocrites to find a couple of like-minded parents in the crowd. They shared attitudes about home schooling as an alternative to Johnstontine Unified Publics, though one suggested, and all agreed, hunger was a greater problem than any other. Since the riots, Southtown residents had limited access to jobs and services—even if they had the money for groceries, they had to wait for the limited run of Alltown Public Transit, hire a cab, or own a car, which very few did, to go to a Northtown grocery store. The parents Wisdom and Knowledge met seemed like they would be assets to Strong Foundations, so Knowledge and Wisdom organized to meet with them at Pete’s on a regular basis. Everyone felt Pete’s was safer than any other place in Southtown to discuss revolution.
Once Knowledge and Wisdom could convince Corduroy and Drum that the food shortage contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS, the four began to integrate HIV/AIDS education into all of their efforts. They imagined an education center. They didn’t want Southtowners to call Strong Foundations a school because Johnstontine would not approve. Moreover, they didn’t intend to do what Ward Connerly and Booker T. Washington did. They could distribute condoms, offer access to a small library, public lectures, and general education classes, and they could sell affordable, healthy meals. It didn’t sound like much of a business plan, but it satisfied a list of needs that Knowledge and Wisdom could find the resources to meet. They would offer nightly talks about self-actualization. They would offer breakfast and mediation. They had obtained likely contacts by networking. All they needed was the space. They went to the only man in Southtown who owned anything more than equity on the house he paid on--Pete.
Pete had recently adopted, himself. During the riots, a good friend had perished. A son survived, and that boy remained with Pete. Drum, Corduroy, and Eights were classmates. Ironically, Pete’s lifestyle, though not quite conducive for fatherhood, was more stable for Eights than living on the road with the dancer his dad had married. She was languishing in a slow decline in health and self-medicating with stardom. When the foreign press learned that she had HIV and her Polynesian husband had been killed in rioting, the world’s pity afforded Eight’s mom a second chance at that big career.
Eights couldn’t have idolized Pete any more if there had been a DNA match. Pete intended to make his new son the biggest man in history, and so, for custody of Eights, Pete contentedly traded the boy's mother a suitcase of secrets and a one way ticket to Hong Kong.
All this, combined with a contrary nature, made Eights a hard case.
Though Pete now owned a quarter of Southtown’s housing stock and two Reasonable Complexes, he and Eights lived above the bar. Pete came upstairs every morning just as his boy was heading off to school. Hugging the child goodbye in the morning, Pete inevitably smelled like liquor, smoke, and woman. When Eights left school, he came straight to Pete’s. As Pete set up the bar and auditioned bands, Eights counted down the lunch registers and did his homework.
Pete had recently adopted, himself. During the riots, a good friend had perished. A son survived, and that boy remained with Pete. Drum, Corduroy, and Eights were classmates. Ironically, Pete’s lifestyle, though not quite conducive for fatherhood, was more stable for Eights than living on the road with the dancer his dad had married. She was languishing in a slow decline in health and self-medicating with stardom. When the foreign press learned that she had HIV and her Polynesian husband had been killed in rioting, the world’s pity afforded Eight’s mom a second chance at that big career.Eights couldn’t have idolized Pete any more if there had been a DNA match. Pete intended to make his new son the biggest man in history, and so, for custody of Eights, Pete contentedly traded the boy's mother a suitcase of secrets and a one way ticket to Hong Kong.
All this, combined with a contrary nature, made Eights a hard case.
Though Pete now owned a quarter of Southtown’s housing stock and two Reasonable Complexes, he and Eights lived above the bar. Pete came upstairs every morning just as his boy was heading off to school. Hugging the child goodbye in the morning, Pete inevitably smelled like liquor, smoke, and woman. When Eights left school, he came straight to Pete’s. As Pete set up the bar and auditioned bands, Eights counted down the lunch registers and did his homework. Pete was great with math, so Eights could add and subtract by three, but Pete cared little for anything that wasn’t numbers or music. Consequently, the balance of Eight’s education consisted of attending Ward Connerly, helping Pete count down the counter, and tutoring from the groupies, roadies, and musicians who waited for night to fall and lights up on Pete’s Nights. Pete hated having to send Eights to Ward. He just consoled himself by remembering that Eights was enrolled in Ward by his real mom, not Pete, and there was no other option, which is why merciful men refrained from bringing children into this world.
At 4:45 a.m., Pete’s bar jammed on. An unlikely night for it, Pete had thought the whole eve. Not too many showed up, but these stayed on the coincidence of one of those lazy dawns when the musicians don’t want to go back to the hotel. There were three or four people on the stage, plenty for a combo. People sat and ate. A half dozen or so danced vigorously. One couple dipped and twirled as if they hadn’t walked in at 11 that previous evening and not stopped even to pee. Pete was overhearing a heavy conversation at the bar between Wisdom, Knowledge and a West Indian.
The men started with gun talk. The young men didn’t need or want guns, though the West Indian tried to convince them otherwise. Pete entered claiming to have access to anything for the right incentive. The West Indian revealed that he was looking for books. Knowledge and Wisdom were intrigued.
Ernest headed: the Aboriginal Australian Remembrance Society. It was a cold hustle, to Pete. The Society was legit, and anyone could farm a chapter. The chapter’s only obligation to the charter is to invest the money in remembrance of the Aboriginal Australia. Ernest saw through the hustle. People donate thinking they’re giving to an extinct community. Ernest didn’t bear any guilt for that, and neither did any of the other chapter chairs around the world. Common sense should have caused people to question why give money to extinct people; extant communities have resource shortages. As far as Ernest was concerned, the best homage to an extinct community was nurturing the endangered. The other societies invested donations into small business ventures. Ernest bought illegal guns, transported them, and then used the extra money to fund his private philanthropic endeavors.
Ernest would be willing to exchange for Sidgisman. Ernest’s younger brother Sidgisman worked for the association. Though Ernest couldn’t start his organization without his brother, and, consequently, had taken him out of school at eleven, Ernest trained Sidgisman to study dutifully for hours each night. Though Ernest himself had gone through the twelve grades, and therefore had more formal education than his younger brother, Sidgisman possessed an aptitude for study far beyond the capacity of his brother’s instruction. Sidgisman earned his equivalency degree at thirteen and had been educating himself since. The boy focused on translating and refining prescription medicines as herbal remedies.
Knowledge and Wisdom wanted Sidgisman; they called it a residency, and the Jamaican smiled at the idea. It sounded more like school. Pete’s investment in the matter grew. Wisdom and Knowledge had access to books like that? They’d have to prove it to the Kingston man, and Pete wanted to see the proof, as well. Pete surmised that Knowledge and Wisdom had gotten up in Revels, but he had no idea the extent to which that was true.
That’s when Wisdom and Knowledge hit him with the bigger question.
Pete chuckled out of delight. “Ya’ll need a place for a center? Mmmm. I got a couple places, but I try to rent my places.”
“Yeah, Pete. We know. We know, but we asking you to give us the place.”
“Give.”
“Donate,” Knowledge clarified?
It was like Pete was even less familiar with that word. “Donate? Donate as in don’t get. Like I don’t get nothing for giving my hard earned property over for your use.”
“You not getting nothing? You getting to build up Southtown. Ain’t that reward enough?”
“Build it up in the day and tear it down at night. I ain’t no hypocrite.”
“You a father,” Wisdom interjected into the back and forth between the two others. “You want Eights at Ward?”
This, Pete did not want. Eights would be away from the dastardly influence of Johnstontine. Wisdom and Knowledge had been holding court in the corner of Pete’s for a month or so, and they had convinced Pete that they were good pro-black types. He trusted Eights with them--more than he trusted the Johnstontines.
Besides, Eights was ill behaved. The boy was just five, and he was already sniffing his balls. Eight’s ego couldn’t accept instruction. He would never admit to not knowing. He lusted for and disrespected women—including his schoolteachers. Plus, the boy had an obsession with guns. Eights attached himself to the weapons dealers, and he could already identify thirty different types of guns. Ernest knew Pete’s son well.
Eights needed the influence of positive male discipline. Pete’s lifestyle and that sort of discipline were mutually exclusive. When Wisdom and Knowledge told Pete about the school, the old man knew this could solve a lot of his problems with Eights.
The second thing Pete wanted was free, live entertainment. Eights was five going on a seventy-year-old blind blues singer--prodigy. Eights pops had named the boy Eighty Eight after a conversation with a touring Nigerian impressed upon the fellow musician the power of naming. At Pete’s, Eights was studying the best musicians in the contemporary world. Eights talked about Drum whenever the word drum came up. Eights spoke ill of almost everyone, so Pete was a believer even before he happened by Drum and the Ill Militant drumming and rapping on the benches in Condie Rice Park.
Pete felt good about it. Pete had never paid an act, and he had always managed to stay on the cutting edge. He would like to add a house show, and this was a gimmick guaranteed to pack in the early evening crowds. Positive energy churned about trade. But the boys weren’t a band...yet.
Pete smiled. “I teach Eights. Who’s to say your education better for Eights than mine?”
Knowledge was hurt. “Ain’t nobody standing in judgment on the way you educate Eights. We are just bringing something different to the table. Everything you teach Eights will do him well with us. We just want to round him out.”
“But your kids don’t need no rounding? Drum don’t need no rounding?”
“Course, everybody got learning to do.”
“I might not know much about books, but I know universal languages. Math. Math. That’s a universal language. I teach Eights some math. And I know music. Music is the other universal. And Eights know some music. Eights might teach you some math.”
“You right about that.” Knowledge nodded.
“But can’t none of ya’ll teach Eights bout music. Eights learning from pros right here in Pete’s. He get music education from the best in the world.”
“I’m not trying to take that away from you, Pete.”
“You want me to send Eights to your school. Give you a school and send Eights, but I got a school here. A school, and every great musician in the world come through here and show my son a thing or two, and let him try to teach them a trick of his own, and you can’t act like you wouldn’t want that for Drum. You don’t want Drum to study with the greatest of the great? You don’t want Drum to learn to be the best from the best?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I want the best for Drum.”
“Alright, then we can maybe we can make a fair trade. I give you that old kitchen for your school. It’s in the heart of Southtown, bigger than you can tell from the outside. You can teach Eights and teach him from the best, and he can be the best, and these boys can come here and be taught by the best to be the best, learning, together, to be a band.”
Not to be outdone, however, Pete needed greater appeasement than any party involved. “Are there three or four people in this deal?”
“What you want from me, man? I’ll feed the project,” laughed Ernest.
“You got a couple boys play music. Sit out back when you come through here.”
“Sidgisman, man. He a well-rounded boy. And so, too, the Dentist--his friend.”
“Teeth,” tears welled instantly in Pete’s eyes, though they didn’t fall.
“He play guitar. He a fine young man. He but a child, but he a dentist, too. He fix teeth.”
Pete responded, with as little wavering as his voice would allow, “I know this white chick at Alltown Med School...” And it was done.
The young black boy arrived at Pete’s doorstep, just as the elder swept the sidewalk of 6:45 a.m. drunks, and Eights took off for his last day at Ward Connerly. At age twelve, Doc wanted dentistry to afford him large living. When he left school, he thought dentistry would pay for med school and bonus him some luxury to cradle him through his academic trials. Twelve year olds, unfortunate for Doc, couldn’t rent apartments. It was either go back to the far-South region and work out of the orphanage until he could rent a spot, or earn a scholarship to a residential medical school. He was free from the far-south Orphanage, now.
Doc had been a known whiz-kid in the far-South. He had hoped that a change of environment would afford him an identity overhaul. He decided to recreate himself as a musician. For most people, becoming a musician takes years of dedication. That is what separated Doc from most people. It took Doc moments to become functional at anything and months to become an expert. By age nine, Doc had completed high school. He began studying dentistry, believing a trade was a wiser choice for the times than a degree. By age eleven he was researching certification tests. People learned not to doubt Doc.
Even in the mid-South, Pete’s was known. Alltown Medical College was one of the few residential colleges willing to house a twelve year old. It was the best, and Alltown was home to the world’s most popularly held secret: Pete’s. Big kids at the orphanage respected Doc would meet the real Pete. Doc vowed, and it was as good as done. The day Doc got accepted to Alltown Medical College, he began studying every guitarist that anyone could find on record. Five months later, Doc and Sidgisman were gathering their songs and their nerve to audition for Pete’s.
Doc would have felt like a failure if the kids at the home could see what Alltown Medical College life was like--boring classes that discussed the minutia of the obvious and dorm life. Here he was sharing a room with one of the few white people left in entire America—Dangerfield. And of all the perfectly normal white people Doc had met, this one had to be the prehistoric asshole! The first few months his parents came to the school to do the playboy’s homework for him while Little Mistur Wuggiefield focused on adjusting. Doc spent more time in the dorm room with them than the son, which made it very difficult for Doc to lose his virginity, which was second on his mind to playing at Pete’s. To their credit, however, the parent Dangerfields, were way cooler than the kid.
The Dangerfields took Doc to Pete’s for the first time. There had been a reggae/jazz/ Vietnamese cover band on the stage. They played the Doors; the sound was eerie and seductive. The Dangerfields bought Doc a Long Island. He slumped into a booth watching the fish-netted thighs of beautiful women engage with the tented crotches of dancing men. He didn’t realize he had passed out until he felt soft hands stroking his penis and woke to find a pink-and-purple painted, hazelnut woman stroking his exposed erection. He ejaculated, a bit, reflexively, and she giggled at his accident. She slid his sticky penis back into his pants and snuck into the back room with him. Pete usually rented that cellar bedroom, but the room monitor saw that Doc was on the verge of unbecoming and allowed it for the privilege to peek.
Through Knuc, one of the few other kids in the bar, Doc met Ernest. Doc would have taken any job that allowed him to use his dentist’s license. He hadn’t anticipated being so unsuccessful at hustling his trade. People wanted their dentists to be older than twelve. Who could’ve known? When Ernest revealed to Doc that the potential client was none other than the world-renowned Peter Vessey himself, the mid-southern boy hollered!
“Fa’shoh! I’d do it for free. He the man!”
Maybe Pete wouldn’t have had the courage if the dentist had been older, like Dr. Tran. Maybe Doc’s obvious admiration weakened Peter’s defenses. When Doc asked Pete what he wanted, Pete indulged his daydream. Doc fashioned Pete a brazen mouth encrusted with ruby, emerald, and platinum. As if Pete needed any help drawing the attention of women, with a dimpled mouthful of rainbow, Pete ascended into pure irresistibility.
Before the swelling went down on Pete’s gums, the Jamaican Spot enrolled its first six attendees. Their time was split between repairing the Jamaican Spot and conducting community surveys for HIV/AIDS research. On the first day, that meant hauling all the old junk out of the back of the kitchen, and then identifying uses in the community for all functioning objects, cataloguing, and, finally, storing all unwanted items. So it went, one day after one day, until the Jamaican Spot became a self-sustaining community resource center. Pete became the backbone of Wisdom and Knowledge’s operation. Pete liked what the boys represented—self-awareness, sustaining and magnifying the community. Bam. Revolution.
And, revolution was hot. The Jamaican Spot had opened in Southtown on the humble but quickly became a happening locale. After all, they served lots of food for money Southtowners could afford to pay. A person could put down 3 American dollars, which wouldn’t by a half cup of rice in most regions of the world, and get a heaping bowl of callaloo. Goat, plantains and escovitch fish had educational value. People in Southtown never saw themselves as part of a global community until they tasted culture jerked and flavored with mango. This was edgy enough.
The kitchen of The Jamaican Spot however, was deceptively large, as Pete had promised. There was space enough for cooking, but also for a private dining hall. In the evening, Wisdom and Knowledge hosted free community dinners. Here, all were welcome to break bread with a world traveler—generally a touring musician or foreign expatriate—to share experiences on common themes. The visitors never failed to spin the most harrowing tales, but some Southtowners nearly matched the most daring ones told with their own. For a significant minority in Southtown, the teach-ins had the appeal of a soap opera cabaret: “As the Revolution Unfolds.”
Bright Corners made Strong Foundations a household name. After the Jamaican Spot opened, the main concerns of the founders became sustaining the economic dues of the organization, containing the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and providing food to the community. Two small girls, whose mother was one of Southtown’s few outspoken HIV Positive residents, joined the original Strong Foundations training class. These two scholars contributed the idea of decorating a path to the door of Strong Foundations. One of the girls approached Wisdom after she heard him talking about a donation of glow-in-the-dark paint that he wanted to put to good use. The young girl summoned all her courage to approach Wisdom, who had by now become a tall, dignified man.
“A good idea,” she offered informatively, “is to leave a trail of treats with pictures.”
Corduroy and Drum laughed because the girl sounded like she was speaking gibberish to them, but Rose’s little sister, Lily, defended staunchly.
“She right. You put the picture on the floor and the next one and follow it to a surprise.” Rose and Lily’s vision became a reality, a harbinger, really, of change.
Strong Foundations mapped the path to the Jamaican Spot from the clinic, the schools, and Pete’s. Pete installed two dozen street lights, and the Jamaican Spot held a free feast in his honor. The feast erupted into an orgiastic display of gratitude. With the Glow in the Dark paint, stirred and poured at the ready, the guests of the feasts broke forth from the dining hall and tagged Southtown in honor of Pete.
Southtown was proud of their Bright Corners! Ooh, the people shined about that. Corduroy and Drum bemoaned the light pollution, but Southtown was much safer for it. People started taking the evening bus again. Those glow-in-the-dark murals redeemed many a forbidding corner.
Soon after, there followed tours. Of course, all tours started at the Jamaican Spot and ended at Pete’s.
Since Strong Foundations had become something of a tourist attraction, Knowledge felt obligated to turn the dining area of the Spot into a museum, of sorts, and lined the walls with pre-Reparations heroes for whom the city streets were, or should have been, named. Southtown didn’t know much about pre-Reparations anti-heroes, but this upgrade to the decor drew vendor offers. In the name of incubating entrepreneurship, Wisdom and Knowledge agreed to accept a couple vendors.
The men started with gun talk. The young men didn’t need or want guns, though the West Indian tried to convince them otherwise. Pete entered claiming to have access to anything for the right incentive. The West Indian revealed that he was looking for books. Knowledge and Wisdom were intrigued.
Ernest headed: the Aboriginal Australian Remembrance Society. It was a cold hustle, to Pete. The Society was legit, and anyone could farm a chapter. The chapter’s only obligation to the charter is to invest the money in remembrance of the Aboriginal Australia. Ernest saw through the hustle. People donate thinking they’re giving to an extinct community. Ernest didn’t bear any guilt for that, and neither did any of the other chapter chairs around the world. Common sense should have caused people to question why give money to extinct people; extant communities have resource shortages. As far as Ernest was concerned, the best homage to an extinct community was nurturing the endangered. The other societies invested donations into small business ventures. Ernest bought illegal guns, transported them, and then used the extra money to fund his private philanthropic endeavors.
Ernest would be willing to exchange for Sidgisman. Ernest’s younger brother Sidgisman worked for the association. Though Ernest couldn’t start his organization without his brother, and, consequently, had taken him out of school at eleven, Ernest trained Sidgisman to study dutifully for hours each night. Though Ernest himself had gone through the twelve grades, and therefore had more formal education than his younger brother, Sidgisman possessed an aptitude for study far beyond the capacity of his brother’s instruction. Sidgisman earned his equivalency degree at thirteen and had been educating himself since. The boy focused on translating and refining prescription medicines as herbal remedies.Knowledge and Wisdom wanted Sidgisman; they called it a residency, and the Jamaican smiled at the idea. It sounded more like school. Pete’s investment in the matter grew. Wisdom and Knowledge had access to books like that? They’d have to prove it to the Kingston man, and Pete wanted to see the proof, as well. Pete surmised that Knowledge and Wisdom had gotten up in Revels, but he had no idea the extent to which that was true.
That’s when Wisdom and Knowledge hit him with the bigger question.
Pete chuckled out of delight. “Ya’ll need a place for a center? Mmmm. I got a couple places, but I try to rent my places.”
“Yeah, Pete. We know. We know, but we asking you to give us the place.”
“Give.”
“Donate,” Knowledge clarified?
It was like Pete was even less familiar with that word. “Donate? Donate as in don’t get. Like I don’t get nothing for giving my hard earned property over for your use.”
“You not getting nothing? You getting to build up Southtown. Ain’t that reward enough?”
“Build it up in the day and tear it down at night. I ain’t no hypocrite.”
“You a father,” Wisdom interjected into the back and forth between the two others. “You want Eights at Ward?”
This, Pete did not want. Eights would be away from the dastardly influence of Johnstontine. Wisdom and Knowledge had been holding court in the corner of Pete’s for a month or so, and they had convinced Pete that they were good pro-black types. He trusted Eights with them--more than he trusted the Johnstontines.
Besides, Eights was ill behaved. The boy was just five, and he was already sniffing his balls. Eight’s ego couldn’t accept instruction. He would never admit to not knowing. He lusted for and disrespected women—including his schoolteachers. Plus, the boy had an obsession with guns. Eights attached himself to the weapons dealers, and he could already identify thirty different types of guns. Ernest knew Pete’s son well.
Eights needed the influence of positive male discipline. Pete’s lifestyle and that sort of discipline were mutually exclusive. When Wisdom and Knowledge told Pete about the school, the old man knew this could solve a lot of his problems with Eights.
The second thing Pete wanted was free, live entertainment. Eights was five going on a seventy-year-old blind blues singer--prodigy. Eights pops had named the boy Eighty Eight after a conversation with a touring Nigerian impressed upon the fellow musician the power of naming. At Pete’s, Eights was studying the best musicians in the contemporary world. Eights talked about Drum whenever the word drum came up. Eights spoke ill of almost everyone, so Pete was a believer even before he happened by Drum and the Ill Militant drumming and rapping on the benches in Condie Rice Park.
Pete felt good about it. Pete had never paid an act, and he had always managed to stay on the cutting edge. He would like to add a house show, and this was a gimmick guaranteed to pack in the early evening crowds. Positive energy churned about trade. But the boys weren’t a band...yet.
Pete smiled. “I teach Eights. Who’s to say your education better for Eights than mine?”
Knowledge was hurt. “Ain’t nobody standing in judgment on the way you educate Eights. We are just bringing something different to the table. Everything you teach Eights will do him well with us. We just want to round him out.”
“But your kids don’t need no rounding? Drum don’t need no rounding?”
“Course, everybody got learning to do.”
“I might not know much about books, but I know universal languages. Math. Math. That’s a universal language. I teach Eights some math. And I know music. Music is the other universal. And Eights know some music. Eights might teach you some math.”
“You right about that.” Knowledge nodded.
“But can’t none of ya’ll teach Eights bout music. Eights learning from pros right here in Pete’s. He get music education from the best in the world.”
“I’m not trying to take that away from you, Pete.”
“You want me to send Eights to your school. Give you a school and send Eights, but I got a school here. A school, and every great musician in the world come through here and show my son a thing or two, and let him try to teach them a trick of his own, and you can’t act like you wouldn’t want that for Drum. You don’t want Drum to study with the greatest of the great? You don’t want Drum to learn to be the best from the best?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I want the best for Drum.”
“Alright, then we can maybe we can make a fair trade. I give you that old kitchen for your school. It’s in the heart of Southtown, bigger than you can tell from the outside. You can teach Eights and teach him from the best, and he can be the best, and these boys can come here and be taught by the best to be the best, learning, together, to be a band.”
Not to be outdone, however, Pete needed greater appeasement than any party involved. “Are there three or four people in this deal?”
“What you want from me, man? I’ll feed the project,” laughed Ernest.
“You got a couple boys play music. Sit out back when you come through here.”
“Sidgisman, man. He a well-rounded boy. And so, too, the Dentist--his friend.”
“Teeth,” tears welled instantly in Pete’s eyes, though they didn’t fall.
“He play guitar. He a fine young man. He but a child, but he a dentist, too. He fix teeth.”
Pete responded, with as little wavering as his voice would allow, “I know this white chick at Alltown Med School...” And it was done.
The young black boy arrived at Pete’s doorstep, just as the elder swept the sidewalk of 6:45 a.m. drunks, and Eights took off for his last day at Ward Connerly. At age twelve, Doc wanted dentistry to afford him large living. When he left school, he thought dentistry would pay for med school and bonus him some luxury to cradle him through his academic trials. Twelve year olds, unfortunate for Doc, couldn’t rent apartments. It was either go back to the far-South region and work out of the orphanage until he could rent a spot, or earn a scholarship to a residential medical school. He was free from the far-south Orphanage, now.Doc had been a known whiz-kid in the far-South. He had hoped that a change of environment would afford him an identity overhaul. He decided to recreate himself as a musician. For most people, becoming a musician takes years of dedication. That is what separated Doc from most people. It took Doc moments to become functional at anything and months to become an expert. By age nine, Doc had completed high school. He began studying dentistry, believing a trade was a wiser choice for the times than a degree. By age eleven he was researching certification tests. People learned not to doubt Doc.
Even in the mid-South, Pete’s was known. Alltown Medical College was one of the few residential colleges willing to house a twelve year old. It was the best, and Alltown was home to the world’s most popularly held secret: Pete’s. Big kids at the orphanage respected Doc would meet the real Pete. Doc vowed, and it was as good as done. The day Doc got accepted to Alltown Medical College, he began studying every guitarist that anyone could find on record. Five months later, Doc and Sidgisman were gathering their songs and their nerve to audition for Pete’s.
Doc would have felt like a failure if the kids at the home could see what Alltown Medical College life was like--boring classes that discussed the minutia of the obvious and dorm life. Here he was sharing a room with one of the few white people left in entire America—Dangerfield. And of all the perfectly normal white people Doc had met, this one had to be the prehistoric asshole! The first few months his parents came to the school to do the playboy’s homework for him while Little Mistur Wuggiefield focused on adjusting. Doc spent more time in the dorm room with them than the son, which made it very difficult for Doc to lose his virginity, which was second on his mind to playing at Pete’s. To their credit, however, the parent Dangerfields, were way cooler than the kid.
The Dangerfields took Doc to Pete’s for the first time. There had been a reggae/jazz/ Vietnamese cover band on the stage. They played the Doors; the sound was eerie and seductive. The Dangerfields bought Doc a Long Island. He slumped into a booth watching the fish-netted thighs of beautiful women engage with the tented crotches of dancing men. He didn’t realize he had passed out until he felt soft hands stroking his penis and woke to find a pink-and-purple painted, hazelnut woman stroking his exposed erection. He ejaculated, a bit, reflexively, and she giggled at his accident. She slid his sticky penis back into his pants and snuck into the back room with him. Pete usually rented that cellar bedroom, but the room monitor saw that Doc was on the verge of unbecoming and allowed it for the privilege to peek.Through Knuc, one of the few other kids in the bar, Doc met Ernest. Doc would have taken any job that allowed him to use his dentist’s license. He hadn’t anticipated being so unsuccessful at hustling his trade. People wanted their dentists to be older than twelve. Who could’ve known? When Ernest revealed to Doc that the potential client was none other than the world-renowned Peter Vessey himself, the mid-southern boy hollered!
“Fa’shoh! I’d do it for free. He the man!”
Maybe Pete wouldn’t have had the courage if the dentist had been older, like Dr. Tran. Maybe Doc’s obvious admiration weakened Peter’s defenses. When Doc asked Pete what he wanted, Pete indulged his daydream. Doc fashioned Pete a brazen mouth encrusted with ruby, emerald, and platinum. As if Pete needed any help drawing the attention of women, with a dimpled mouthful of rainbow, Pete ascended into pure irresistibility.
Before the swelling went down on Pete’s gums, the Jamaican Spot enrolled its first six attendees. Their time was split between repairing the Jamaican Spot and conducting community surveys for HIV/AIDS research. On the first day, that meant hauling all the old junk out of the back of the kitchen, and then identifying uses in the community for all functioning objects, cataloguing, and, finally, storing all unwanted items. So it went, one day after one day, until the Jamaican Spot became a self-sustaining community resource center. Pete became the backbone of Wisdom and Knowledge’s operation. Pete liked what the boys represented—self-awareness, sustaining and magnifying the community. Bam. Revolution.And, revolution was hot. The Jamaican Spot had opened in Southtown on the humble but quickly became a happening locale. After all, they served lots of food for money Southtowners could afford to pay. A person could put down 3 American dollars, which wouldn’t by a half cup of rice in most regions of the world, and get a heaping bowl of callaloo. Goat, plantains and escovitch fish had educational value. People in Southtown never saw themselves as part of a global community until they tasted culture jerked and flavored with mango. This was edgy enough.
The kitchen of The Jamaican Spot however, was deceptively large, as Pete had promised. There was space enough for cooking, but also for a private dining hall. In the evening, Wisdom and Knowledge hosted free community dinners. Here, all were welcome to break bread with a world traveler—generally a touring musician or foreign expatriate—to share experiences on common themes. The visitors never failed to spin the most harrowing tales, but some Southtowners nearly matched the most daring ones told with their own. For a significant minority in Southtown, the teach-ins had the appeal of a soap opera cabaret: “As the Revolution Unfolds.”
Bright Corners made Strong Foundations a household name. After the Jamaican Spot opened, the main concerns of the founders became sustaining the economic dues of the organization, containing the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and providing food to the community. Two small girls, whose mother was one of Southtown’s few outspoken HIV Positive residents, joined the original Strong Foundations training class. These two scholars contributed the idea of decorating a path to the door of Strong Foundations. One of the girls approached Wisdom after she heard him talking about a donation of glow-in-the-dark paint that he wanted to put to good use. The young girl summoned all her courage to approach Wisdom, who had by now become a tall, dignified man.
“A good idea,” she offered informatively, “is to leave a trail of treats with pictures.”Corduroy and Drum laughed because the girl sounded like she was speaking gibberish to them, but Rose’s little sister, Lily, defended staunchly.
“She right. You put the picture on the floor and the next one and follow it to a surprise.” Rose and Lily’s vision became a reality, a harbinger, really, of change.
Strong Foundations mapped the path to the Jamaican Spot from the clinic, the schools, and Pete’s. Pete installed two dozen street lights, and the Jamaican Spot held a free feast in his honor. The feast erupted into an orgiastic display of gratitude. With the Glow in the Dark paint, stirred and poured at the ready, the guests of the feasts broke forth from the dining hall and tagged Southtown in honor of Pete.
Southtown was proud of their Bright Corners! Ooh, the people shined about that. Corduroy and Drum bemoaned the light pollution, but Southtown was much safer for it. People started taking the evening bus again. Those glow-in-the-dark murals redeemed many a forbidding corner.Soon after, there followed tours. Of course, all tours started at the Jamaican Spot and ended at Pete’s.
Since Strong Foundations had become something of a tourist attraction, Knowledge felt obligated to turn the dining area of the Spot into a museum, of sorts, and lined the walls with pre-Reparations heroes for whom the city streets were, or should have been, named. Southtown didn’t know much about pre-Reparations anti-heroes, but this upgrade to the decor drew vendor offers. In the name of incubating entrepreneurship, Wisdom and Knowledge agreed to accept a couple vendors.
During the day, the scholars used the dining hall for a workspace. Here, the students plotted. Doc and Knuc led the student research team, which included Knowledge and Wisdom, themselves. Doc and Knuc thought Knowledge and Wisdom were the oddest and smartest men in the world to let two students be the teachers. Doc and Knuc fell very in love with life at the Jamaican Spot, and they, too, became possessed by the spirit of community regeneration. The boys built a small clinic in a lean-to against the Jamaican Spot. They set regular hours and, though their lives were very busy—attending classes at Alltown Medical, leading the Strong Foundations research team, and growing and changing into young men, Knuc, the herbalist, and Doc, the dentist never failed to arrive for their scheduled hours.
The Sanctuary Band: the boys learned fast. If Knowledge and Wisdom had something to do with it, so be it. Before long, the group played with timing, nerve, and jump. Doc knew more songs than a jukebox, but maybe not more songs than Eights. Sidgisman led Drum, in many ways, but Drum was an instinctive innovator. He battled his mentor relentlessly, as often getting the better as being bested. Corduroy had the gift of gab. Not only could he charm the crowd, he’d field requests, improvise rhymes and games, and even handle hecklers. During Mic Fights, a Saturday afternoon treat for the town kids, I M held down the crowd with cool and control. Mic Fights at Pete’s got rough, but no one wanted to get roasted by an eight year old, so all participants afforded Corduroy’s authority great respect.
Wisdom, Knowledge, and Ernest could regularly be found at Pete’s. Pete kept a table for them. Activists types added authenticity to the crowd. Pete could impress other subversives. During a contest to his intelligence, his authority, his manufactured dripping ringlets or his red, green, and platinum teeth, Pete would point directly to the Strong Foundations leadership and declare himself wise and knowledgeable enough to be buying Southtown out of mental slavery.
Wisdom, Knowledge, and Ernest could regularly be found at Pete’s. Pete kept a table for them. Activists types added authenticity to the crowd. Pete could impress other subversives. During a contest to his intelligence, his authority, his manufactured dripping ringlets or his red, green, and platinum teeth, Pete would point directly to the Strong Foundations leadership and declare himself wise and knowledgeable enough to be buying Southtown out of mental slavery.
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