“Nice show, by the way,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“So, I think y’all are staying at my place tonight,” he said.
“Cool, thank you.”
I immediately started guessing what his spot was like. It’s a reflex after going on a couple of tours. You look at your host’s grooming and guess how dirty their floor will be. If they’re smoking, you assume they do it inside and that your sleeping bag will stink the next day. If they say they’re having a party, you hope they live in a big house so you can get loaded fast then sneak upstairs to sleep. He wasn’t smoking and he had a quiet air of having his act together, but I couldn’t get a read on him.
“Well, not my place.” He shrugged. “I live with my dad.”
“Oh, cool.”
Parents’ houses meant clean and quiet, extra beds and blankets, and an adult who might cook cheese eggs in the morning.
“Well, not really cool,” he said.
Sober Mason drove, gunning it to stay with JJ, who took wide turns on the suburban corners. I sat shotgun, palming the dash for balance. Behind me, Russell shouted over the engine in a slow, hippie drawl, “Heyyy, mannn, think JJ likes weeed?”
I turned and said, “I hope so, brahhh.”
We both drooped our eyelids and nodded slow and groovy, pinching invisible hookah hoses.
Lucius went, “Pssh.”
Mason said, “Just be coool when we get theeere, bros. This is JJ’s daaad’s house and he might be a naaarc, maaan.”
He was using the same voice as us, but somehow he sounded like the narc.
Last fall, Mason saw this hippie freshman guy perched on the steps of the college library, smoking a four-hose hookah by himself. Mason cracked up Russell and me with an impression of him, and it wasn’t until later that I thought about how hookahs have a few hoses, and there’s something very lonely about smoking one alone. Still, whenever weed comes up, my bandmates and I pretend to be the Hookah Guy.
We coasted to a stop in front of a brown ranch house. JJ’s bandmate Tim, an uptight guy with a pointy chin and suspiciously new guitar, pulled up next. We were the only signs of life on the sleepy street, so we left our stuff in the van and single-filed into the backyard through a gate in the tall wood fence. Waiting under a safety light by the back door, I watched Lucius emerge into the yard last, shoulders hunkered forward, looking around and nodding slow.
Mona wasn’t there, and I was jealous of all of Richmond for having the chance to see her that night.
A teenager who shared JJ’s horse jaw and curve of goatee sat spread-kneed in a lawn chair, pursing his lips to spit into a plastic fast food cup. A middle-aged man in an open Hawaiian shirt sprawled in the next chair, an arm’s length from an aboveground pool. The dad was the swarthy, 1970s version of handsome, with broad shoulders and a mustache. Lucius and I both thought of the rerun detective shows we’d watched while skipping school, guys like this, smart-talking ladies’ men who could take a punch. What would it be like to have a dad who checked out your girlfriends?
“What’s up, Dad? I brought some guests. They’re gonna crash here tonight,” said JJ.
“OK, then,” said Dad.
When he stood to shake hands, he tottered over the beer cans at his feet like a movie monster over a model city. He turned to JJ’s little brother and said, “You ain’t gonna say hello?”
The kid nodded, “’Sup,” the shadow under his ball cap shortening to reveal a constellation of zits.
“Aw, he’s mad because he’s grounded tonight and has to hang out with his pop,” said the father.
The kid’s brim went down and his face disappeared.
JJ made a couple trips to a pool house shed, passing out folded lawn chairs, then opening a mini-fridge and underhanding us beers. He opened the last one with the pointer finger of the hand that was holding it, then curled it up to drink as he hopped onto a red picnic table on the far side of the pool. A volley of pops filled the night as we opened our beers, too.
I checked for a text from Mona and the dad gave my phone a long look. I put it back in my pocket and he swept his eyes over us, “Y’all gonna catch some surf tomorrow?”
“We weren’t planning on it. Might hit the beach, though,” Mason said.
Dad nodded approval and burped into the top of his fist.
“You surf a lot, JJ?” I asked, and my voice echoed off the water in the pool between us. I’d never surfed before, and I live up to one black stereotype: I’m a horrible swimmer.
“When the waves aren’t too shitty,” he answered.
The kid piped up, “Imma go tomorrow. JJ, can I borrow your board? Mine’s cracked.”
“If you don’t get that thing fixed, you’re gonna sink like a nigger in the water,” rumbled Dad.
Father and sons had roostery southern drawls, mixed with a surfer’s long vowels. “Nigger” came out in three syllables, “Nee-yuh-gir,” and it traveled across the pool loud enough to knock me back in my chair.
After a whole life in the south, I was still shocked when I heard white people use that word. And this guy had said it loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Did the neighbors say “nigger” too? Casually, in small talk?
I could see them meeting on the driveway while picking up the morning newspaper.
“Good morning, Tom. Let’s see what’s happening in the world today,” the father would say.
“Mornin’. I wonder if there’s any nigger news in the Metro section,” the neighbor would answer, unsheathing the paper from its plastic sleeve.
“Must be. Niggers are always up to something,” the father would say, padding his way back into the house in black bedroom slippers with stuffed, red-mouthed Sambo heads over the toes.
The kid didn’t miss a beat and shouted, “Shit, Dad. I swim better’n a nigger, and you know it!”
Lucius was to my right, sitting stock still like a cat about to pounce. I hid my eyes by looking at the rippling pool water, feeling my bandmates’ attention turning toward me like it was my job to say something; seeing Tim and JJ fidgeting, probably worried that the cool out-of-town guys would tell everyone that their band was racist; JJ’s eyes shifting until he finally says, “Y’all. Come on.”
The dad looked up. “What? We boring you?”
“We’ve got guests.”
“Oh, we embarrassing you?” said the dad, belly straining his half open shirt when he leaned back to drain his drink.
JJ just sighed and looked down. I wondered how many years it took for him to realize it was wrong for his dad to say “nigger.” Or even how his pop explained to him that they could talk like that at home, but not at the supermarket. I doubted his dad was trying out the n-word for the first time this night.
I felt sorry for JJ. I also didn’t trust him anymore and set my beer down at the same time that JJ’s dad told the little brother, “And don’t think I didn’t hear you cussing. Watch your mouth, ’less you want another night at home.”
I was pissed off and scared at being stuck