It’s hard to see Unc in the shade, with his being the same shade as
the shade, but you can always depend to watch his mouth, to track
that gold tooth, a glinting last to last extravagance. “It’s position, not
possession,” Unc says. “Not possession, but position,” he says, and
swanks into view.
Unc throws contemplative eyes to the sky. They’re the familial bug
eyes, impressive eyes, so big he might see the future, or maybe even
another dimension.
The man motions me closer, flaunting the only ring he wears—
probably his only ring left to wear—a pinky joint set with an ambit
of murky diamonds, and warns we can’t let this highgrade reach the
wrong ears. Then he pauses for what’s likely the sake of suspense,
pauses, and says, “You’ve got to have tools g o t d a m n y o u m e,
meaning your rides, your crib, your clothes, your gold, you’ve got
to, but all you got’s a molehill without a mouthpiece.” He points at
his cracked lips, opened with a sliver of space between them, a pipe-
smoker’s lips, forever scorched. “And those gorilla moves,” he says,
“i s w e a r f o g o d try em and see don’t they get you nothin less
than more of what you never wanted. That gorilla ain’t bout nothin,”
he says. “A smart one comes from here,” he says, and touches his
temple, “never from here,” he says. Unc assumes a southpaw’s stance,
shakes miniature fists with abnormally big unbruised knuckles, then switches to orthodox and whispers g o t d a m n y o u m e again for
God only knows.
Okay, now is as good a time as any to ask, good people, if you’d
please, please, preempt the hatetrocity. He’s my Unc, all right. My
real blood relative.
“Say, Nephew,” Unc says. “This how you play it. Soon as you knock
one, you keep your head down and palm up. Head down. Palm up,”
he says again, assuming the pose. He stands a while after, a Buddhist
maybe, lanky limbs hanging, lank neck sprouting out of his weath-
ered silk shirt, double-creased slacks, secondhand gators spraddled,
big-knuckled babyish hands unfurled to show nails long enough to
dredge coke, sharp enough to cut steak.
To be true, Unc is sympathetic almost with what the years have
done to him, with what he’s done to himself over the years, though
with the way he yearns he might make more years than us all, be
the only one alive the next coming, which is unsuspecting as shit,
considering advice you’d call unholy. Or might couldn’t. “Don’t turn
down nothin but your collar,” he advises, which helped him become
the first and penultimate around our way to hustle a plane, though he
now borrows hubcaps forever, hawks scrapmetal for rent, and sends
the mother of his youngest to a strip where the going rate is less than
you’d drop on prime sirloin.
Unc says i s w e a r f o g o d again for who knows why.
And people, you can say or think what you will, but my Unc might
not be, matterfact most likely isn’t, one of those old heads you can
pay no nevermind without it costing.
“Your rides,” he says. “Hellified mouthpiece or not, just you try to
knock one in a bucket. Just you try to knock one worth a damn with-
out a coupla rides from the year of and at least one American-made
manufactured when times was good.
