The new people in Sid Cutney's house

We kept up our block club meetings through the summer. Someone from the city was assigned to our neighborhood and met with us to talk about what we could do.

Sid didn’t come. He didn’t shoot at his wife or anyone else again, but kept busy keeping up his property and running down the neighborhood to everyone who’d listen. One gorgeous autumn day when I was out for a walk and passed Sid’s house, I saw him in his yard, leaning against a rake, talking to a white neighbor. He was telling him things were so bad a white woman couldn’t walk down the street alone. When he saw me come down the walk, he stopped midconversation and gave me a dirty look.

“Hi, Sid,” I called out. I waved my hands about me, so he could see how very alone I was. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Midwinter, he died in his sleep of a heart attack. His wife sold the house and moved to Arizona to be with their kids. The house was bought by a young white man who then rented it to a black family.

Donald and Ronald and I trooped over to welcome them to the neighborhood. The woman was friendly. The man stood silently behind her staring at us. There wasn’t much conversation and we didn’t stay long.

“I know what’s going on there,” said Donald after we left. “We’re gonna watch that house.”

So we did over the next couple weeks. We watched the cars that stopped at that house. The drivers could be any color, but they only stayed ten minutes. “Yeah, he’s dealing,” said Donald.

I called the police and they said there was nothing they could do about a house that had a lot of cars stopping for ten minutes, although, yes, that was the pattern of a drug dealer. Donald called the landlord and he said there was nothing he could do, the guy paid his rent on time, he should call the police if there was a problem. Donald and Ronald and I trooped over to the house again.

“Let me do the talking here,” said Donald as we approached the house. “A black man can talk to a black man like you white folk can’t. I’ll go ahead.”

The couple was home, Donald told them again about our block club and invited them again to a block club meeting. “We’s keeping the block safe,” he said. “I got kids, you got kids, we all want them to be safe.”

The woman looked behind her at the man. Her face was plaintive, she wanted to come.

I looked past them into the house. Bare hardwood floors, scratched and starved for oil. Canvas duffel bags and paper shopping bags sitting on the floor, a couple of straight back chairs, and a short couch that I thought I’d seen discarded in the alley most of the summer. The room reeked of loneliness.

I looked back at the man. He remained behind the woman, silent, not moving, like he was made out of poured cement. He was dressed entirely in black leather and he had a look on his face that I didn’t expect or understand. He said nothing, not even when the woman asked him again if it wasn’t a good idea to meet the neighbors. After we left, Donald and Ronald blasted the guy.

“That guy is selling, you can smell the weed in there!”

“More’n weed in that place, heavier stuff coming outa there and he just thinks he can squat in this neighborhood and do what he likes!”

“Maybe he’s not selling drugs,” I interjected.

“What do you think he’s selling?” asked Ron. “Newspapers?”

“They don’t have furniture.”

“Maybe he just run outa a place,” answered Donald.

They were right, of course, but he and the woman in that house haunted me.

“It must be hard to be a black man,” I said. Donald stopped walking. Ronald and I went a step farther, realized he wasn’t with us, stopped and looked back at him.

“You think it’s hard to be a black man?” asked Donald, staring at me.

“Yeah, everything in there, the whole feeling in that house. The woman, the man, too. Did you see how hard his body is, how he didn’t even move, how he stood behind his girlfriend. Like he couldn’t even speak, like he was scared.”

Donald’s mouth worked silently before he answered me.

“Yeah, it’s hard to be a black man. It is hard. And he’s making it harder for me and my kids. He’s making it real hard. Don’t be so sorry for him. He’s scared cause he’s got someone besides us lookin’ for him and that person got a gun. He don’t need your sympathy. If he’s not selling drugs now, he was before and I don’t want him in the same city as my kids.” Donald continued to stare at me, his eyes angry and frightened. Mine were the same.