PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE

“See, man, I told you she was gon do it--she pimpin’ you, Darnell.” Victor shook his head and watched Charolette hang out the window of the El Camino. “She pimpin’ you big-time.”

“Daddy!” she yelled, her round face bobbing furiously above the door. “I want juice! In my mouth !”

Darnell turned away from Victor and Ronnie and the other men sitting on folding chairs and boxes in the vacant lot. A blackened trash barrel breathed smoke in the early morning cool, and the pepper tree branches dangled around them. “I’m fixin’ to go over my dad’s,” Darnell said. “He told me Sixth Avenue Baptist wants somebody to clean up that lot they got behind the church. I’ll be back tomorrow, Victor.”

He started toward the El Camino, and Victor called out, “Damn, homey, I might be a stockbroker by then.” Ronnie and the others laughed.

He put Charolette back in her car seat and she said, “ Daddy , I hungry. Hurry.” She watched out the window, saying, “Fire, Daddy,” when they circled around the lot to the street.

“Yeah, smoke,” he said, and she looked triumphant. She was almost 2, trying to learn about a hundred words a day. She stuck out her chin and sang to herself now, while he tried not to smile.

He hadn’t wanted a baby--Brenda had surprised him. When Brenda first brought her home from the hospital and laid her on a quilt in the living room, Charolette had spent hours sleeping on her stomach and Darnell had had all day to stare at her. The government funds had been cut off for seasonal firefighters. He stared at Charolette, but all he could think was that she looked like a horny toad, those rounded-flat lizards that ran past him when he was close to the fire; they’d streak out from the rocks, looking ridiculous. Charolette’s belly was distended round and wide, far past her nonexistent butt, and her spindly arms and legs looked useless. He’d sat home watching this baby, impatient with the helpless crying and the way she lay on her back waving her limbs like a turned-over beetle.

Now she was old enough to talk smack, and he could jam her right back--she understood. When he pulled into the driveway at his father’s house, she ran inside for his mother’s hot biscuits, and then she ran back to him, hollering, “Daddy, blow on it!”

“You so bad, blow on it yourself,” he said, and she spit rapidly at the steaming biscuit. “Yeah, right,” he laughed. “Wet it up.”

Darnell’s mother came to the doorway in her robe. “Brenda restin’?”

“Sleepin’ 24-7,” Darnell said. “All day, except when she at work.”

“That’s how it is your first three months,” his mother said, getting that blurry look like every woman who found out Brenda was pregnant again. “You sleep like somebody drop a rock on your chest. I remember.”

Darnell didn’t mind waking up at 6, when the curtains were just starting to hold light. Charolette called for him now. If he had a job, he had to start early anyway, before it got too hot. Brenda was a clerk for the County of Rio Seco and didn’t have to go to work until 9. So Darnell left her in the warm tangle of sheets and took Charolette to his father’s, where the men sat in their trucks drinking coffee before they went out. His father and Roscoe Wiley trimmed trees; Floyd King and his son Nacho hauled trash from construction sites. They all made a big deal of Charolette still in her footed sleeper, stamping from lap to lap and trying to pull dashboard knobs.

This morning Roscoe took her into his pickup truck and gave her a smell of his coffee. “Red Man, this girl stubborn as you,” he said to Darnell’s father.

Darnell watched Charolette poke at the glass. “Window dirty,” she said.

“Least she look a lot better,” Floyd said from his cab. “Next one gotta look like Brenda, cause this one look like Darnell spit her out his ownself.”

Yeah, Brenda hated hearing that, Darnell thought. He remembered when the baby began to stare back at him, to crawl, and then her eyebrows grew in thick-curved like his, her teeth spaced and square like his.

His mother came out to the driveway for the newspaper. “Y’all need to look for a bigger place,” she said. “A house, for Charolette to play in the yard. And you get a house, we can find a washer so Brenda won’t drag that laundry up and down no apartment stairs.”

“Mr. Nard rentin’ out his brother’s house on Pablo,” Floyd called. “Got three bedrooms, and he want $625 a month.”

“Yeah, and we can barely pay our $400 now,” Darnell said.

“I told you get you some yards,” his father said. “Steady yards, like I did.”

“You ain’t got no cleanup jobs for me next week?” Darnell said, looking at the thin chain-saw scar on his father’s forearm.

“Yeah, Sixth Avenue Baptist wants you to do the lot--take two of you, two-day job.”

“You gon get Victor?” Nacho said.

“Yeah.” After Charolette, he knew he couldn’t go to college for Fire Science, and he’d gotten a warehouse job, but they laid everyone off a few months later. His father had fixed up the engine on the old El Camino, which had been in the side yard since Roscoe had gotten a new truck. He lent Darnell a mower, blower, weed-whacker and rakes.

“Victor a stone alcoholic,” Roscoe said. “Livin’ at Jackson Park now.”

Nacho said, “Shoot, he taught me how to draw, back in junior high. The brother was smart, too smart, started talkin’ ‘bout high school was boring. He just want to hang out, all day.”

“He hangin’ out now,” Roscoe said, frowning. “All day.”

Darnell said, “He just don’t like nobody to tell him what to do. He don’t like to answer to nobody.” He’d always watched Victor, who was five years older than he was; Victor got kicked out of school for spelling out “Superfly” in gold studs down his jeans, for outlining his fly with rhinestones. He’d quit the football team freshman year, refusing to cut off his cornrows.

“I’m tellin you, go door-to-door and get you some yards,” Darnell’s father went on, loud. “Build up a clientele.” Sophia and Paula, Darnell’s younger sisters, came running out in their nightgowns to see Charolette.

“Shoot, every dude with a truck and mower runnin’ around calling himself a gardener,” Roscoe said. “They want all these new houses gettin’ built.”

“Yeah, you should go see Trent,” Nacho said. “He got his own business, landscape design, and he live up there in Grayglen.”

Floyd laughed. “With the gray men.”

The houses were laid out in circling streets, and a sea of red-tile roofs was all that showed above miles of sandy block wall. Darnell saw crews of Mexican guys building new walls at one intersection, short Indian-looking men with bowed legs and straw hats. Two white guys with thick, sun-reddened forearms watched.

Trent’s street was all two-story houses and lush gardens. “A brother livin’ up here?” Darnell said to himself. He could tell by the yards most of these people already had gardeners. Trent was in his driveway, loading his truck with black hosing and pipes.

“Hey, Darnell,” he said, and Darnell was surprised Trent remembered the name. Trent was Victor’s age. “What’s up?”

“Not much,” Darnell said. “I heard you were livin’ large with your business, and I thought maybe you had too many yards, know somebody who needs a gardener.” He watched Trent count sprinkler heads.

“Man, I just do the planning and landscaping--I don’t cut grass,” Trent said, not looking up. “I ain’t into maintenance. After the irrigation, I’m gone.”

“Yeah, Nacho said you went to college for this, huh?” Darnell said, uncomfortable. “I just thought you might have some advice, ‘cause I been knocked on doors, and that ain’t workin’.”

Trent clicked his spit against his teeth. “I heard you workin’ with Victor Small and Ronnie Hunter. But you gotta buy ‘em some Olde English 800 to get through the day, huh?” He coiled hosing. “They scare people off.”

Darnell folded his arms. “Yeah. Depends.” So you think you better, huh, brotha man? Victor and Ronnie love to talk about your ass--grinnin’ and skinnin’ ‘til you drive down the street and shake your head.

“Sorry I can’t help you,” Trent said, reaching down awkwardly into the truck bed again. “Good luck, bro.”

“Thanks, brotha man,” Darnell said. Threading through the streets, he watched for shaggy grass and dandelions. Had to be a few yards let go in this maze.

At four lawns that looked weeks overgrown, he knocked on doors, his heart beating fast, but no one answered. Another ragged one, and a woman came to the door. He said, “Hi, I’m a gardener and I wondered if you needed your yard done today or on a regular basis.” He remembered his father’s words, back when Darnell had been small enough to stand on cool porches and listen.

“I gave you five dollars yesterday,” the woman said impatiently, looking back into her house, and Darnell raised his eyes. She was about 40, her lips more invisible than most white women’s--no lipstick, he realized, just when she said, “I can’t afford another donation.”

“I wasn’t here yesterday,” Darnell said, but she was adding loudly, “I don’t need anything done today.”

“You didn’t give me five dollars,” he said, finally looking at her eyes, rimmed with green shadow.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I--your hat,” she said, fingers holding her collar. “A man came by yesterday, he said he was out of work, and I--he had a hat.”

“Yeah,” Darnell said, hard. “Another Raiders fan.” He walked back down the bricks, wanting to kick apart the fancy iron mailbox exactly like Trent’s.

He drove, swerving through the streets until he found the only opening in the block walls. Where the cops? Can’t they see me? He remembered getting stopped months ago, Victor and Ronnie and him driving around up here looking for yards. The cop said, “You guys have been cruising for a while, knocking on doors. You got a reason?” Victor said, “Mowers in the back, man.” He didn’t care who he was talking to. “Don’t you have a record, didn’t you do a few weeks last year?” the cop said to Victor. “What was your first clue, Sherlock?” Victor said. “Was it my big arms?”

The tires slipped on loose dirt at the corner. Yeah, our marketing strategy just ain’t gettin’ it--door-to-door get us a sentence. If it was summer, he’d find a fire to make himself feel better, watch the flames shake up brush-covered hills, imagine himself on the line close to the roar and heat.

Three new houses were going up, and the bellied, blond construction workers hammering and laying brick looked up at the car. Born that way, he thought, his tongue thick and hot. Come out with hair like that, trucks with toolboxes behind the cab, stomachs already big enough--they get the job just like I can dance. Charolette’s car seat rattled empty against his elbow when he scratched the tires on the asphalt, but skidding around a corner didn’t make him feel any better. He looked at the crumbs crushed deep into the corduroy chair.

He’d used his Clark Kent voice one day on the phone, after he saw an ad for a security guard that read, “Mature white male pref.” He’d made the appointment with the cheery secretary just to see if he could, and then he threw a coffee cup against the wall; the clotted breaking sound made him feel better until he heard Charolette’s high-pitched screams, like a burning animal caught in dense chaparral. “That’s illegal, that ad,” Brenda was yelling, and he’d yelled back, “Right, let’s call our lawyer immediately, baby, we’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court.”

He pressed his fingers into the crumbs, feeling cool along his shoulders. I can’t pull that act now. Driving down the hill toward the Westside, he thought about going by Jackson Park, hanging out, talking yang about anything, but he slowed at his father’s street. “Daddy here!” Charolette screamed. Ain’t this crazy? he thought. When he told Victor, “She my buddy now,” Victor said, “You weak, nigga--you suppose to let grown females whip you.”

She fell asleep when he drove around the old downtown section, with the big historic houses and huge sloping corner lawns. He and his father had cut some of these, when Darnell was 11 and just learning to mow right.

At one old yellow house, ivy hanging over the porch, roses thick, he saw three Mexican guys in the yard. Straightening Charolette’s bent, lolling neck, he watched them ripping out a huge circle of ivy in the lawn, talking and chopping with machetes. Their radio blasted Mexican music, horns and swinging voices going so fast Darnell imagined them playing at 78 speed. He saw a shadow at the front screen; a gray-haired lady came out to watch the men, and he pulled away from the curb before she saw him.

All weekend, he kept hearing the music; he even turned the radio or TV to Mexican stations. “What are you trippin’ about?” Brenda said, folding the laundry that lay in drifts all around the living room. Charolette threaded string into the wrought-iron balcony, the front door open so they could see her.

“Nothin’, “ Darnell said, listening to what he thought was an accordion.

You really miss that firefightin’ slave you had, huh?” Victor said when they’d been at the church lot for a few hours. “Crazy nigga loved bein’ up there in the mountains with them cowboy white dudes.”

“No, man,” Darnell said. “It wasn’t about the other guys. I just liked it up there.” They pulled at the skeletal tumbleweeds and burned grass in the hard dirt, gathered bottles and disposable diapers. Darnell saw the rough brush where he’d dug firebreaks, the red-barked manzanita and tiny plants. Now and then he let his vision blur while he tore out weeds, and usually when he raised his head he was surprised to see cars rushing past him. But today he kept seeing the Mexican guys, their hats and laughing and music.

After they’d come down the long dirt road from the dump, Darnell gave Victor $50 and kept $75 for himself. He waited in front of Tony’s Market, and when Victor came out with the big 40-ounce bottles of Olde English 800, he said, “I can’t hang with you guys today; I got somethin’ to do.”

Victor unscrewed the cap. “Take me by Esther’s, on your pop’s street.” He still wore his hair long and cornrowed neatly to his head, the tails stopped just at his neck. He let it go weeks before he could pay Esther to redo it, and today it was rough and clouded between the rows. “You go home to baby-bawlin’, man, and I’ll be chillin’ out, eight-ballin’.” He took a big swallow.

The next morning his father told him Mrs. Panadoukis, the doctor’s wife up in Hillcrest, wanted her whole bank of ice plant cleared. When he got to Jackson Park, Darnell threw the empty car seat in the back, and Victor said, “Nigga, this the last job I want ‘til next week. Don’t you know black absorbs heat, man?”

“Shut up, Victor,” Ronnie said. “You know you already broke.”

“Hey,” Victor said, “I ain’t gotta work every day, like Darnell.”

The ice plant had died, and the woody, tangled mesh was easy to tear from the dirt, but the piles were heavy. Ronnie and Victor took off their shirts, and Darnell remembered they didn’t have anywhere to wash them. Their backs glistened in front of him. Ronnie’s radio was far away, the music thumping faintly when they clambered up the steep bank, but at lunch they unwrapped their sandwiches and turned the radio up.

“ ‘I don’t go nowhere without my jimhat,’ ” Victor sang along with Digital Underground. Then he said, “Yeah, my man Darnell ain’t been usin’ no jimmys--he got another one on the way.”

Darnell said, “Least I ain’t gotta worry about AIDS--you be messin’ with them strawberries.” He wondered how they’d gotten that name, the desperate, ashy girls who hung out at the park doing anything with anybody for some smoke.

“When you need some, man, you don’t care,” Ronnie said. Darnell heard a scraping step on the cement, and he saw Mrs. Panadoukis, her face frozen, coming around to the back door with her purse. She looked away from them, her lips tight, and fumbled with her keys. They were silent, the music loud.

When she’d closed the door, Victor and Ronnie busted up. Darnell saw her held-tight cheeks. He looked at Ronnie’s chest, Victor’s fresh braids; he remembered the Mexican guys laughing in the ivy. The Mexican guys could be saying anything, talking dirty or yanging about the lady they were working for, but it would be in Spanish and they’d sound happy--their radio was jolly, funny, that bright quick music spangled as mariachi suits. Ronnie’s radio--uh-uh. The bass was low, shuffling around her, and the drums slapped her in the face.

“You ready?” he said, and they went back up the bank, bending and tearing, Victor making them laugh.

“Darnell, you just graduated a few years ago, man, you remember Mr. Rentell, that drivin’ teacher? Serious redhead, always tryin’ to talk hip. He came by the park the other day, talkin’ ‘bout, ‘Victor, is that you?’ He start storyin’ ‘bout why was I hangin’ out, couldn’t I do better? I told him, ‘Man, I can still drive, don’t worry--let me have your car, I’ll show you.’ ” He threw ice plant down the slope to Darnell.

They loaded the El Camino in the front yard. Mrs. Panadoukis had paid them, her eyes averted. Darnell thought, Sorry we don’t look good. He saw a Baggie on the lawn and bent to pick it up, thinking it had dropped from the car. But someone else had put it on the grass; he saw a green flier inside and a small rock. Looking down the street, he watched a silver Toyota pickup stop for a second at each lawn. A hand threw out Baggies. He saw rakes and shovels against the cab window, mower handles in the bed.

“Nguyen’s Oriental Gardening Service,” the flier read. He spread it on his lap in the car, and Victor said, “Come on, man, it’s hot.”

“Let experienced Oriental Gardeners take care of your lawn and shrubs, we will mow, edge and fertilize for only $60 a month. Weekly.” The note had been printed on a computer, and a picture of a bonsai tree was in the corner, with a phone number.

Darnell took Victor and Ronnie to the store and then to the park, hearing Mexican music and the voices of the Asian guys he remembered from school. Tim Bui and Don Nguyen--two Vietnamese guys who wanted to be homeboys, hanging out at the picnic tables with Darnell and the brothers. They tried to imitate Darnell’s voice, and after a while they could dance better than some of the crew that performed at assemblies. Nguyen--that last name was like Smith in Vietnam, he remembered them explaining. “Like Johnson for niggas,” Ronnie had laughed. Alone in the car, he drove to his mother’s.

Charolette ran out to see him. His father and Roscoe were stacking wood from a pepper tree beside the house. “Y’all finish the doctor’s-wife’s job?”

“Yeah,” Darnell said. “Ice plant was dead anyway.”

“She pay you? She love to talk when she get started,” his father said.

“She didn’t get started with us,” Darnell said, slipping the flier into his pocket.

“You pay off your crew?” Roscoe said. “You the big boss now--you take your cut?”

“What, you think I’m crazy?” All the way home, Charolette put the rock inside the Baggie and took it out. “Little rock?” she said. He looked at the stone--those guys were smart. The flier couldn’t blow away, couldn’t get wet.

He kept thinking of the Vietnamese kids at school, how the teacher had looked at them, but he saw Mexican faces for some reason. When he and Charolette made their weekend shopping trip, he tried not to stare. On the Westside, almost as many Mexican families lived on some streets as black families. He watched the men riding 10-speeds with plastic bags of laundry tied to the handlebars--guys, alone, leaving one to guard clothes in the Laundromat and going in a group to the store. They bought whole chickens, tortillas, chips, fruit, and he watched their faces, knowing that was where he was supposed to look to figure out what he was missing. On the street, he saw a mariachi band walking down the sidewalk with the huge guitars and glittering suits; they went into Our Lady of Guadalupe, where Darnell had gone to Catholic school.

On Monday, he drove slowly past the corners where they always gathered, crowds of Mexican men waiting for daywork. And he saw the shortest, Indian-looking guys--their eyes were slanted, their hair thick and straight, their legs bowed into curves.

The men shifted and scattered when a construction truck stopped at the curb, crowding around the driver. Darnell watched five guys jump in the back. Some of the disappointed ones stared at him, and he tried to recall what he could of high school Spanish. All that came to his head was “ Como se llama? “ and “ Hermano, hermana “--useless stuff. He licked his lips and leaned.

“I need a guy who can speak English,” he said, and three came over.

“I speak English, bro,” a skinny, dark guy said, and Darnell knew he’d been in prison by the teardrops tattooed near his eyes.

“I’ll give you 10 bucks to help here, man,” Darnell said. “I need two dudes who know how to mow lawns, and I want them to look Oriental, you know, like those guys over there.” He pointed to the short, slim men.

“He wants los indios ,” the guy said, muttering to the men. Several of the Indian men gathered around him, and he brought over four with anxious faces and small, tilted eyes under thick brows. Darnell thought of Charolette’s brows suddenly, how delicate they were.

“You guys can do gardening?” he asked. They nodded, and he said, “But I have to be able to talk to you--who speaks English, even some?”

The youngest one, without a hat, said, “I try speak pequeno . My brother not so much.” He gestured to the older one next to him, in a baseball cap.

“Get in,” Darnell said. The two men were so small compared to Victor and Ronnie that air still flowed through to touch his shoulders. “Where you from?”

The young one said, “Mexico.”

“I know--I mean where in Mexico?”

“Osaka,” he said, and Darnell frowned. Wasn’t that a city in Japan?--he’d heard the name. “Write it down, OK?” he said, and the guy wrote Oaxaca on the back of the green flier.

He watched them work at Mrs. Munson’s, where his father had given him the yard. Anyone could mow, and Juan, the younger one, did the front while Jose did the back. Darnell edged and helped them blow the paths clean. It took 25 minutes.

“Be back on the corner next Monday,” he told them. “I think I got regular work if you want it. Four bucks an hour.”

Juan said, “All day?”

Darnell said, “I hope so. Where you learn English, man?”

“I went in college one year,” Juan said. “I love English.”

“Chill out, homey,” Darnell smiled. “See you Monday.”

He wouldn’t tell Brenda what he had in mind, and when she said, “You’re drivin’ me crazy with that little plannin’ smile and won’t give up no information,” Darnell just smiled it again.

“I gotta go see Nacho,” he said. “Maybe I can make some more money.”

“The suspense is killing me,” she said, rolling her eyes, and he didn’t even get angry. He went to Nacho’s and said, “You the artist--can you make me a flier, one I can Xerox? I’ll show you.”

He laid out the sheet for Nacho. On it he’d written the message, and Nacho laughed. “You serious, man? You want me to print or script?”

“Print,” Darnell said. “And put a picture in both corners--those little incense burners like you see in a Japanese garden.” He thought for a minute. “Man, I hate to copy, but I bet the pine tree works.”

He copied 300 of the sheets on light-blue paper, and then he went to the nursery for small, sparkling white rocks in bulk and bought Baggies at the store.

He took Charolette with him, long before dawn. She was sleepy for a few minutes, but he whispered to her, and she said, “Dark, Daddy?” He said, “We’re cruisin’ in the dark, baby. Watch out for trains.” He remembered being angry, in a hurry, stuck behind the long trains that came through the Westside; now he tried to catch them so that she could listen in wonder to the clacking wheels and watch for the engineers.

“Choo-choo train!” she yelled.

They went to Grayglen first, Darnell driving on the wrong side of the street to drop Baggies on lawns. He pitched two onto Trent’s, laughing. Charolette couldn’t throw them far enough, and he gave her a pile to wreck so she wouldn’t cry. “These dudes ain’t even up yet, but they’ll go to work soon, and then they’ll find this when they get the paper,” he told her.

“Newspaper?”

“You got it.” They twisted through all the new streets, then went downtown and dropped more. They ended up in the university neighborhood when the sky turned gray. “We don’t want nobody to see us, or we turn into pumpkins,” he said, and she remembered Halloween, he could tell, because her face lit up.

“Cut pumpkin!” she screamed.

“You just like me, don’t forget nothin ‘,” he said, reaching over to touch her hair. “You’re gonna kick some butt in school, girl.”

His father laughed silly. “ ‘Tuan’s Oriental Landscape Maintenance Service,’ ” he read out loud to Roscoe. “Boy a damn gardener, talkin’ ‘bout maintenance. ‘Expert Asian landscapers will mow, edge, fertilize and maintain your garden with weekly service for only $50 a month. Call now to keep your landscape beautiful.’ ” His father turned to him. “Who the hell is Tuan?”

Darnell said, “Nuh-uh--it’s Juan. And Jose. If I get enough calls this week, I’m hirin’ two Mexican dudes.”

Roscoe said, “You know, he ain’t crazy. They all want Mexican guys. But I don’t know how you gon pull it off when they see your ugly face.”

“They ain’t gotta see me, just send the check here, to your address,” Darnell said. “In case we move.” His father raised his eyebrows. “And I’ma need to borrow some money, for a new mower. If this works, I’ma have to get a truck.”

“You got the El Camino,” his father said.

“Yeah, but I need that for my jobs. I need a used Toyota or Isuzu, for these dudes. Paint the name on the side.”

The eyebrows went higher. “You serious, huh?”

“I want to call Mr. Nard about his house. Serious as a heart attack.”

He practiced his voice in the bathroom. Brenda was at work. He tried to remember Tim Bui’s words, which ones he left out, how he talked. He sat watching Oprah with the sound off, but no one called until the next day, and he was ready. A woman said, “Tuan’s Landscape?” and he said, “Yes, ma’am, I can help you.”

“Are you reliable?”

“Yes, ma’am, very reliable. We come every week, and do the best job.” He chopped off the words carefully, his heart racing heat all the way to his ears.

He told Juan that they would have to comb their hair straight back, and no straw hats. He took them to K mart for white T-shirts, green pants and work boots. “And no talking, if the people are around to watch you,” he said. “I don’t want them to hear Spanish.”

When he explained it as best he could, Juan frowned. “But if they say, speak to you? If they want different?”

“Just say like this--’Call my boss, he help you.’ ”

Juan looked at the flier closely and smiled. “I am Tuan, eh?”

“Maybe, man,” Darnell said. “Maybe I am.”

But he felt strange staying at home, waiting for the calls in the empty, tiny and stifling apartment. Summer--the shimmering bells passed on the sidewalk below, the Mexican popsicle guys with their carts. Darnell went to the bathroom mirror, pulled at his eyes to make them long and narrow. He touched his new haircut, a fade with three lines above each ear. His father hated the razored cuts, said, “What the hell, look like a damn mower got you.”

He stared at his face. “Homey, don’cha know me?” He’d seen Victor at a stoplight last week, near the park. Victor’s eyes were half-slit and hard. “Work been slow , huh?”

“I been doin’ somethin’, but I got somethin’ for us next week,” Darnell had said. He did--his father had told someone Darnell would clean up property for fire season. He knew Nacho had told Victor about the flier, about Tuan’s. He splashed water onto his face. Homey--don’cha know me? His chest was clotted with warmth when he sat on the cold edge of the bathtub. “What you gon do if somebody don’t pay?” Roscoe had said.

“Go over there and collect.”

“Who you--Tuan’s bodyguard? His butler?” Roscoe laughed.

“Shit, whoever I gotta be, long as I get the cash.” But he was shaking.

“I was just playin’,” Roscoe said gently, touching his elbow. “You gon do outside jobs, get a beeper so you don’t miss calls. Beepers are cheap.”

“Yeah, and I’ll look like a dope dealer,” Darnell had said, turning away. “Ain’t that what I’m supposed to look like anyway?”

He paced around the living room now, the bells fading, and he turned up the radio to pound the walls.

In a few weeks, he had so many yards that his father and Roscoe found a blue Toyota pickup he could buy on time. He took the El Camino to Jackson Park the next day, sweating, thinking of Victor’s eyes. He’d rehearsed what he would say. Victor raised his chin half an inch when he saw Darnell. “ Brotha man,” Victor said. “What you need?”

“Need you guys for a job,” Darnell said.

“Homey, don’cha know me? I’m just a nigga with an attitude.”

“You ready?” Darnell said.

Victor smiled. “I heard you was hirin’ illegals, man. You don’t want no niggas, word is.” Ronnie hovered beside him, silent.

“If I don’t want no niggas, I better kill myself,” Darnell said. “I got two Mexican guys doin’ yards. Now I can do other jobs all the time. But see, Victor, man, I gotta be sweatin’ every day, man, not like you. I can’t wait ‘til I’m in the mood.”

“Man, you think you big shit,” Victor smiled harder. “At least I ain’t no strawberry.”

Darnell breathed in through his nose. “I ain’t pink.” He hesitated. He had practiced this, too. “I’m just whipped, by two women. And got another one comin’ to further kick my black butt. You always talkin’ about ‘Niggas ain’t meant to be out in the sun, absorbin’ that heat.’ Proper maintenance keep you from shrinkin’ and fadin’, man, don’t you know?” He waited. “You comin’?”

Victor ran his hands over his braids. “I’m thirsty, man.”

When he got home, the phone rang before he could put Charolette down. He held her giggling under his arm and said, “Tuan’s Landscape Maintenance.”

A man said, “This sounds like a really great deal. I live in the Grayglen area, and your prices are reasonable compared to others.”

“Yes, we try to make price very cheap.” He was out of breath and said, “Please, can you hold, sir?” He put Charolette down. “When you like us to start?”

“Well, as soon as possible,” the man said. “Can you come Friday?”

“Yes, Friday.” Everybody wanted a perfect lawn for the weekend. “We come Fridays, and you send a check to Tuan’s Oriental Landscape, 2498 Picasso St. Pay by mail once a month.”

“Picasso Street?” the man said. “Isn’t that on the Westside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you guys were Oriental--I bet you want to get out of a minority area like that. Pretty rough in the black neighborhood.”

Darnell’s face and neck prickled. “Yes, sir, we move soon. Very soon.” After he’d hung up, he saw Charolette unfolding the towels Brenda had stacked on the couch. “Daddy talking?” She imitated his clipped voice. “We move soon, sir.”

“You ain’t gotta talk like that,” he said roughly. “Leave the towels alone before I get mad.” He stared at the laundry, at her round face set hard. “Let’s go look at a washing machine for Mama.”

“Move, Daddy?” she asked again, since it had bothered him when she said it the first time. When he tried to take the towels away, she said angrily, “ Move , Daddy!” and shoved him. He pretended to fall over on his back, and then he caught her on his chest to tickle her, so she couldn’t get away.