Free Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin Page A

daddies’ offices and car dealerships. But he wasn’t going to play the game, not like this Doornail punk in his Ralph Lauren shirt and pressed khakis. A rich-ass polo player riding a horse and swinging his stick at someone. Branded right on the black man’s chest no less. Or the red, white, and blue of those Tommy Hilfiger clothes brothers wore in deference to the flag that kept them hungry. These men in their preppy clothes looked like white minstrel entertainers in blackface, but that was simpler for them than creating their own identities. The easy way out was the only way out for most of his friends back home. Join the army. March and dance for the Man.
    And he fell for it.
    Doornail placed the whiskey and cheeseburgers on the center conference table and the soldiers swarmed on them. The bottle got passed around despite the hour, and people talked about where they were from and what they thought of Europe so far. The marine baited them, trying to get them loosened up enough to talk shit about Sullivan. “I hear he’s a punk,” he said, but no one went for it. Brutus wanted to be back in his room. He didn’t touch the food, but he helped himself to the whiskey when it came his way. He hated the implicit assumption that he could be made to feel at home by this marine’s shit talk and fake jive. Semper fi? Semper idem, motherfucker. He could hear the staff sergeant and the white soldiers’ laughter through the walls.
    Then it was his turn to speak. “I’m from Philadelphia.”
    “Yo, Philly.”
    “No. Nobody in Philly calls it ‘Philly’ except people who aren’t from there. It’s ‘Philadelphia.’” That wasn’t entirely true, but he liked the idea of messing with him. “And as far as being in Hungary, well I ain’t really seen shit yet.”
    Some of the others nodded in assent.
    “You’ll get your chance,” Doornail said. “How ’bout you?” he asked another man. “Where you from, soldier?”
    The conversation went on like that, and they hung on every word. Doornail took tiny sips from the whiskey and pretended to get tipsy. Once they went around the whole group, he riled them with stories about the titty bars in Budapest and the hot-blooded Hungarian girls.
“Goddamn!
Springtime in Budapest is a glorious sight! Play your cards right, toe the line, and I bet your man Sullivan’ll hook you up with a pass to come visit.”
    The other soldiers bought the fake camaraderie like a five-dollar blowjob. One of them asked Doornail how he got the name.
    “Back in O-Town … I mean, Oakland,” he said, looking at Brutus. “I got it when I was a teenager, and it just stuck.” He practiced his little laugh. “When I was sixteen I moved into my own crib. Sure, O-Town had a bad rep, but I never felt endangered in any way until then. I get there and I can tell right away that some of the folks in the hood were waiting to fuck with me.”
    The word “fuck” sounded funny coming from him, like when an American solider spent too much time with the few remaining Brits and started saying shit like “bloody” and “wanker.”
    “It’s a predatory thing in Oakland, and I was the new kid. Like you men here.”
    Brutus paid a little more attention. He watched Doornail’s eyes as he spoke, but he couldn’t get any read.
    “Day I move in, I pick up this dead rat out back. Big sucker. And I nail it to my front door,
bam bam bam.
I wanted to send a message to the neighborhood. You know, don’t fuck with me. Sure enough, I get up next morning and the rat’s gone. Somebody came up and stole it right off my door. Now this is a tough neighborhood! But you know what? No one messed with me after that. People didn’t shy away. I mean, they couldn’t let me be a badass by crucifying a rat on my door, but they didn’t mess with me neither.”
    When the staff sergeant knocked on the door, everyone stood to shake Doornail’s hand. “Next time, I’ll see you men up in the city,” he told them, and exited like