Mostly they walk around town, ride city buses, occasionally take the train under the water to the other city. Rides a bicycle a humorous sight for that old guy Chester Noteworthy, drink at the corner of Broadway and 40th at the bus stop, watch traffic cops during rush hour. This what they do. They’re retired. Though they didn’t work too hard during their money-earning years. Friends since elementary, basketball together at Tech, since Chester got Buster that job with the security firm. Chester one of those crazy old guys you see riding an odd bike through city streets. Kind of bicycle attached to it sundry items that confuse and grab your attention. Horns on the handlebars, tassels streaming multicolored waves, cards in the spokes, stickers over, on, and throughout, baskets hanging on both sides of both tires filled with bric-a-brac. So much stuff strewn about that bicycle that it appears as though Mr. Noteworthy has been riding clear across North America. When Chester rides he tights a reflective strap around his right ankle. Horns and honkers and flashlights and a radio cassette player and change of clothes and left-wing propaganda stickers and African National Congress stickers and power-fist stickers and Free Mumia stickers and Free Leonard Peltier stickers, every spoke covered in gossamer gauze some wrapped in streamer paper. Mounted two flags on the back. One an Oakland Raiders pennant, the other an African continent drawing by hand. Chester, seventy-two years old still married to Mama Good, honks his horns (multi-phonic) at all the pretty girls. Or guys who might strike his fancy. He laughs when you stare at his bike. When I first noticed him swore he was homeless and so would you. But I was wrong.
Buster Brown doesn’t ride bikes. When you see them together, Chester pushing the bicycle slowly. “This is Gloria,” Chester says, waving at his bike with a steady hand, “She’s my girl and I like to ride.” Then he’ll laugh and laugh. Has a drink in a brown paper sack. Liquor store run by an old friend. Lots of folks around these neighborhoods are old friends.
Why don’t you ride, Buster?
Well, my good brother, I never did learn. Can’t swim, neither.
Chester calls himself The Obso King. Mama Good only calls him Chester. “What do you do for a living?” a poor stranger asks.
“Why, I’m the Obso King, my brother. One of me’s walk around all the darn day see what there is to see, thas all. Thas what I do. There’s always something to see always a story to tell. That’s what I do for a living. God willing.”
“You walk around and see what there is to see?”
“Don’t chu know it.”
“What do you see?”
“All kinds of things.”
“Does it ever get boring? These same streets, this neighborhood, this town?”
“Nope.”
“Ever been outside of California?”
“Not since the Army days back in the back of things.”
“How many days do you get out there?”
“Seven days a week, my brother.”
“Ever just see the same ol’ thing?”
“Same old thing is fine by me; the same ol’ thing is always changin’. Nothin is the same twice, tell you so.”
“What do you do, Buster?”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah.”
“Buster Brown is a talkin, lip-flappin’ man, I say. Even when there’s nothin to talk about. It’s what I do. Good for nothin’ else.”
“And we’re always shuttin him up, too.” Chester laughed.
“Shut up, man,” said Buster.
“No, sir. You shut up.”
“All right, then, let’s go.” Buster held up two fists.
“Where you want to go?” Chester asked, smiling.
“I’m gonna go back to yo house and see me some Mama Good, is what. She’ll take care of me.”
“She take care of you with an ass whippin, boy.”
“Not ‘for I whip yo ass.”
“Come and get me.”
“Make me.”
“Show me somethin’”
“I’ll show you something.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Not as much as Mama Good is waitin’ for me.”
“Wait with some of this,” Chester said, and he held his crotch in his fine hand.
They went on for a while, sipping at brown sack, leaning against the bus stop bench, bantering and occasionally shouting at the younger packs of kids. The cool kids, young men and women in puffy down coats and hanging pants, earrings and tattoos, sipping from brown sacks, getting into fine cars. Or beaten-down cars. Or walking. Or catching the bus downtown.
Strapped to Chester’s bicycle, Gloria, long walking staff. Sometimes the Obso King walks the streets with this staff. He walks fast for an old man, slightly stooped, holding firm with that fine hand to the wooden pole. Then he switches hands. “Gotta work the left,” he says. “Hey, boy, you goin’ to school?” he yells at a young teenager goose down puff walking away from Oakland Tech at one in the afternoon. “I’m done,” said the teenager.
“You’d better get that education, boy.”
“Why? So I can have a bike like you?” and the boy laughed. The Obso King laughed, too. “Don’t make me whip your butt,” he said, the boy ignoring him. “Don’t make me find your mama.” The boy ignored him again, walking away from the bus stop, away from the school, heading south on Broadway toward downtown.