Free Darnell Rock Reporting by Walter Dean Myers Page B

the time they just talked about what was going on in the neighborhood.
    “Preacher, you mind if this boy interviews me here?” Sweeby asked Preacher. Ace wasn't there. “He's that kid that said they should turn the basketball court into a garden for the homeless.”
    “Who's your daddy?” Preacher asked.
    “Sidney Rock,” Darnell said. “He works for the post office.”
    “Yeah, I know him,” Preacher said in a flat voice. “Go on, do your interview.”
    “I'm going to tape the interview, okay?” Darnell asked.
    ‘‘Yeah, go on,” Sweeby said. He straightened up and squared his shoulders.
    Larry sat down as Darnell set up his tape recorder. A man who was sitting in one of the chairs reading a paper folded it and put it down. He crossed his legs and turned toward Darnell and Sweeby. Darnell felt a lump in the middle of his stomach.
    “So, where were you born?” Darnell asked.
    “I was born in Live Oak, Florida,” Sweeby said, in the year nineteen hundred and forty-three.”
    Then what happened?” Darnell asked.
    Then what happened?'!”
Preacher stopped clipping hair. “You want the man to give you his whole life after he was born? You got to ask him some questions!”
    “You have a job?” Darnell asked, wishing Preacher had kept his mouth shut.
    “Had all kinds of jobs,” Sweeby said. “Good jobs, too. Worked up in Kentucky for a while as a driller in a mine, worked in New York City down on the docks, worked in Jersey City for Western Electric. That was a sweet job.”
    “Till they closed,” Preacher said.
    “I know whole families used to work for them,” the man who had been reading the paper said.
    “So how come you … you know … you don't have a job now?” Darnell asked.
    “Why you think I don't have a job?” Sweeby said.
    Darnell looked at Larry, then at Preacher. “You don't dress so hot,” he said finally.
    “Did I tell you that you don't dress so hot yourself?' ‘ Sweeby said. “You got a job?”
    “No.”
    “But you got somebody to take care of you, right?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, Sweeby Jones don't have nobody to take care of him,” Sweeby said. “And the little piece of job I got don't pay nobody's rent today. When I was a young man I used to get a job here or there and I could keep a roof over my head. Today, if you don't have a woman or some kind of partner, you got to make big money to keep an apartment.”
    “So how come you don't have a good job?” Darnell asked.
    Sweeby took off his hat and turned his head from side to side. “You see these ears of mine?”
    Darnell looked at them. They were small, like Larry's. “I see them.”
    “Well, I ain't got a good job because I ain't got nothing between these ears that anybody is going to pay any good money for.”
    “You know what I always say”—Preacher was giving a guy in the chair a nice fade—”it's a good thing your stomach don't control your feet. Because you know that if your stomach controlled your feet it would be kicking you in the hind parts every time it got hungry for all the dumb things you did in your life.”
    “What dumb things did you do?” Darnell asked.
    “Did what folks expected me to,” Sweeby said. “They expected me to sit in the back of the room like a big dummy, and that's what I did. Then theyexpected me to get out of school with nothing but a strong back, and I did that.”
    “That's what they expected all of us to do,” Preacher said. “And it didn't make much difference if you knew something or not, unless you were a preacher or a teacher.”
    “Or an undertaker,” the customer waiting said. “ ‘Cause you know down South the white undertakers didn't take no colored business.”
    “You never got your high-school diploma?” Larry asked.
    “Hey, who's this?” Preacher asked. “He your coanchor person?”
    “He's my friend,” Darnell said.
    “You think they don't have any high schools in Live Oak?” Sweeby said. “Sure they got high schools, and sure I got my