Carry On by Lisa Fenn

Author:Lisa Fenn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

IMPASSE

On days when we filmed at the school, I ran out to get substantial lunches for the boys in lieu of their meager cafeteria meals. If I drove them home from practice, we stopped for dinner on the way. Big Ma always cooked for Leroy, but knowing I could get one more good meal into Dartanyon that day helped me sleep easier.

The boys’ fine-dining request typically landed us at a Subway sandwich shop: a seafood salad sub for Leroy, and the Italian combo for Dartanyon.

“Who wouldn’t wanna eat fresh!” Leroy would shout, mimicking the Subway commercial tagline.

“Nothin’ fresh about what you’re ordering,” Dartanyon would say. “Don’t you know better than to eat seafood out of Lake Erie?”

“Don’t you know you’re black and not an Italian?” Leroy would chide.

“Have them burn the bun so it’s a black Italian sandwich,” Kameron Mogadam, our cameraman, said. We’d initially used a handful of different crews, but Kameron had become a regular fixture in our days. He was a compact, fast-moving, faster-talking Persian in his early forties. Kameron liked to say that his brain ran on a caffeine-fueled stream of thoughts that had direct access to his mouth. And because he approached each day with the mind of an optimist and the heart of an aging cynic, he could be completely lovely and wholly irreverent in the same moment. Mix in a dash of self-effacing humor, and Kameron quickly disarmed even the most heavily shielded individuals. Even Leroy.

“Your name is Kameron, and you’re a camera man?” Leroy snickered upon their introduction.

“Don’t mess with me, Leroy,” Kameron said. “I’m slightly taller than you.”

“Kameron the Kamera Man! Kameron the Kamera Man!” Leroy teased. “Man, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!” In addition to being a gifted videographer, Kameron could engage in the juvenile sort of teen-boy humor that I could not—silly Internet videos, satirical scenes from Family Guy, and heated debates over PlayStation versus Xbox. The three of them sang songs I had never heard and quoted movies I had not seen. But after those exchanges were exhausted, Leroy and Dartanyon were completely blank slates. Any time I felt completely lost in teen humor, or on the verge of losing all control, I put my reporter cap back on and did what I do best—kill the mood with serious questions.

“Dartanyon, what do you miss about your mom?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I miss her cooking. Her pancakes were da bomb.”

“Oh, I love pancakes too,” I said, excited about this connection. “I make them with lemon zest and cornmeal. Did she make them from scratch?”

“Sure, like she scratched together a few nickels and got us all a box of Aunt Jemima for dinner,” he said, amused by my naïveté once again. “Yeah, I guess she scratched them up real good.” Leroy nodded in understanding.

“Do you like your name?” I tried again. “I’ve never heard the name Dartanyon before.”

“Only white people have time to sit around deciding whether they like their name or not,” he said, chuckling.

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