Character Sketch: "Touch"

I'm a hardworking man...

And my days are long.

I wake up at 5 in the morning, and I’m going strong until about 8 or 9 in the evening. Get on home around nine thirty, and I'm in the bed by eleven.

Six days a week.


That’s what it’s like when you’re running the neighborhood community center. A very popular neighborhood community center at that.

I’d been running it for the past seven years. And in that time, I’d seen it grow from a little hole in the wall with cement floors and a few scattered chairs, only useful for meetings, to an sprawling center of the community.

The senior citizens held their civic league meetings there. The boy scouts and girl scouts met there every month. The workout room was getting good use. There were birthday parties, awards ceremonies and the like. Hell, there’d even been a few weddings there over the years.

I stand in the place at night sometimes, just before I'm leave, and look around in amazement.

I, Toucheaux Baptiste, had put my business management degree to good use. I was an expert at writing grants and obtaining funds, and this place was growing. And we were always in the black, never in the red.

I was helping people. Building up a community.

I, Toucheaux Baptiste, was doing a good thing.

And that was my nature, you see. Just like my great great Aunt Toucheaux. I was named after her.

Don't you laugh now because I was named after a woman. Don't laugh. I'm proud of my name.

I have a twin brother, who was born five minutes after me.

He's the unlucky one. His name is Tony.

I was lucky enough to be named after such a great woman.

For my Aunt Toucheaux Baptiste, she was the family matriarch. Great great woman. She lived to be 105 years old. I don’t remember much about her. I just remember, from a young child's point of view, that she was old as hell. She had long flowing silver hair, and she spoke the creole language all the time. Only spoke to me and my brother in clipped English from time to time.

“You boys, whatever you do in life, please make sure you take care of the village. The village, the community comes first. Always.”

We didn't know what that meant. We just wanted her to stop talking to us so we could go run and play in her big front yard.

We didn't go over there much. Sometimes we went just to visit and have lunch. This unnerved my mother something terrible. I’m not sure she ever adjusted to the Baptiste family and its ways. She’d always tell the two of us…

“When we go to Aunt Toucheaux house, you two best behave yourselves. Don’t touch nothing, you hear me? If you touch anything, I'm whipping tails, you hear me?”

My brother and I nodded our heads.

It would’ve been best that two hard headed boys were not told such things. It always peeked our ever active curiosities.

Aunt Toucheaux had trinkets and figurines everywhere. She called them antiques. We called it junk. And everytime we lifted an antique, there was money underneath. Dollar bills were even under placemats. I opened the kitchen drawer to get a spoon for my ice cream, and instead of silverware, there were stacks of shiny quarters. I'd never seen so much money, ever.

Mama would yell at us good. "I told you boys not to touch nothing in that woman's house!"

You see, Aunt Toucheaux was a true woman of the community. She ran numbers. She was a loneshark. She sold moonshine, too. I heard she ran guns. And no telling what else she was into.

(Probably why I love Eartha down at the Copper Skillet so much. She believes just as heavily in "supporting" the community in much the same way Aunt Toucheaux did.)

Yeah, I was named after this flawed great woman. I don’t mind. It don’t sound like a woman’s name. And the name fit right in where I was raised, in the Bayous in Lousiana.

Aunt Toucheaux's lecutures on community must've sunk into our heads. I ran a community center. My brother Tony was a hotshot lawyer. It trips me out everytime I see his commercials on TV, him standing there at a car wreck, decked out in a designer suit and fresh gators.

"Been in a wreck? Them people did you wrong? Did you fall on the job? One call, that's all. Call me! The Storng arm! Tony Baptiste, Attorney at Law!"

That Tony... he had his own special brand of community service going on.

Anyway, people don’t call me Toucheaux anyway..

They called me Touch.

I don't have to think back to far to remember where this started. My nickname has always been Touch. Me and my brother were some wannabe rappers back in our teen years, and we formed a group called "Touch Tone". We rapped over homemade beats laced with the touchtone sounds of the telephone. Our silly butts walked around with big sunshades on, and big fake rope gold chains with telephones hanging from them.

Let's just say Touch Tone won a few talent shows. Touch Tone was popular with the local girls. And that's about as far as that ever went.

It's just within the last few years that people took a notion to calling me “Touch the Baptist”. It started when all the grant money started coming in for the community center and progress was being made.

One of the elderly women of the neighborhood asked me one day, while looking all around, eyes darting back and forth in an effort to make sure no one was listening, “Boy, you doing all this with drug money?”

“No ma’am,” I said. “It’s being done with grant money from public and private sources. There's plenty of federal and private money available for community projects.”

She smiled. She had no idea what I was talking about. I could see it in her eyes. She was just happy I wasn’t a drug dealer.

And sometime later, she raised her shaky hand at a community meeting. It was just after I'd given a speech on some of the progress and plans for the center and had opened the floor for questions. She stood up, and walked up to the front and stood next to me.

She grabbed my bicep with her wrinkled bony fingers and hollered, “If you want blessings, or some of that good luck in your life, all you gotta do is Touch the Baptist!”

“Touch the Baptist,” everybody yelled in unison.

Scared the hell out of me. Especially since I’m not even Baptist. I was raised Catholic. I haven’t been to a Mass in years, but I still claimed Catholic.

So every since then, the myth was in full affect:

If you touch the Baptist, you’ll be blessed. You’ll have good luck.


This was alright when it came to the old ladies. But some of them started winning the Cash 3 numbers game, coming into money. Good things were happening for them and their families.

And it all supposedly came from “Touching the Baptist”.

I gotta tell you, it got on my last nerve. It’s bad when you gotta hear each and every day, sometimes ten times a day,

“Can I please Touch the Baptist?”

That doggone prostitute Cinnamon Sugar was the worst one of all. I did all I could to avoid her tail. Everytime she saw my truck turn the corner, she’d step out in the middle of the street and block my way. I’d try to go around her and she’d move to block my way again. She’d walk slowly around to my drivers side window and rap hard on it until I let it down. She’d blink her eyes, like she just knew she was the sexiest woman on earth, and croon in a low voice

"Look at you, Toucheaux, with your pretty curly hair, and that sexy deep voice, with your ol'high yellow pretty self. There's nothing like a big strong pretty man. I'll do you for free, Touch! Anytime, Anyplace!"

"Come on, Cinnamon. Now you know that's not gonna happen."

"I bet if I do you, I'll win that Mega millions or that Powerball. And if I do, I'll split the 300 million with you. Right down the middle. I'm good for it. Just tell me where, how, when and how long. Me and you, Baby."

"Cinnamon, I ain't got time for you today. I got things to do, now. Come on, now."

She's put her hands on her narrow hips and say real low, "Baby, I just wanna know. Can I please touch the Baptist?"

I wouldn't even say anything else, just look straight ahead. She’d grab my tensed up bicep and squeeze it with her bony fingers.

“Bye Cinnamon,” I always yelled, just before hitting the gas and screeching off down the road.

And the whole world, even the dead, could see her standing in the middle of the street, doing some crazy Hammertime dance hollering “I touched the Baptist! I’m gonna make big money, money tonight, baby! Big money, Big money!”

One of the other prostitutes told me, when she came down to the soup kitchen we held on holidays, “You know, Cinnamon Sugar clear a good two or three hundred dollars a night whenever you come through and she touch you. You might be a good luck charm after all. A real live magic genie. I might have to touch you, too.”

I wish everybody thought that.

I wish Commander Bivins thought that.

Everybody wanted to touch the Baptist.

I just wanted to touch the Commander.

Let me tell you something. I’m all man and everything, all about taking care of a woman, being the man of the house. Just a man's man.

But there is nothing sexier than a woman who runs things. Nothing turns me on more than a woman who wields a gun. Lord have Mercy, I’ve seen this woman draw her gun, yell “Police”, and bust a door down with one kick. She’d run up in the place and drag out whoever didn’t do what she say.

She was the wrong person to mess with. She could jump a fence in a single bound. Knock down and cuff a fool twice her size. Interrogate a smug joker so hard that he would pee on himself.

She could clear the room with one look.

She was bad. She was ALL that.

And she loved her community.

A bit too much, if you ask me..

And that's coming from a man who's all about the community. Community is my life.

We’d been friends for many years. I was in the military with her late husband. I was there for her when he passed. I became a stand in father figure for her son, who's away at law school now.

I’d see her up at the bars over on Marietta street unwinding with some of the other cops, even though it wasn't her thing. “I’m all about comradarie and morale,” she’d told me one day. “I’m all about being a good boss, and if that means hanging out in a smoky bar drinking Shirley temples from time to time, then so be it.”

I would kick back with her sometimes. I didn’t like smoky bars myself, but I liked her. Yeah, her late husband had been my friend, but he was gone.

And no woman should be alone.

Unless she wanted to be.

So I started taking her out. A dinner, a movie on the north side of town, away from the static of the hood. Just a friendly thing, you see. It had to be hard running a police department. The girl had to woman had to kick back and unwind sometimes.

Might as well have been with me.

So one day, we were talking about some of the things she needed done around the house. She really needed some bookshelves built in her den. I volunteered to do it, since I'd done much of the carpentry up at the community center, for free if she bought the materials. We each took a much needed day off and got to work.

I have to tell you, besides seeing my daughter born some fifteen yeas ago, that had to be one of the absolute best days of my life. We had the best time.

I built shelves with the Commander.

I painted shelves with the Commander.

I ate with the Commander.

I watched a movie with the Commander.

I danced with the Commander.

I made love to the Commander.

I swear. Hear me now, believe me later. That was one of the best days of my life.

I understand what they mean now when they say time stood still.

Time stood still that day.

To hell with that “Touch the Baptist” business.

I touched the Commander.

I was walking on air after that. I went down to the police station whenever I got a chance. I was front row and center whenever she gave the neighborhood updates at the weekly community center town hall meetings. I was waving and smiling hard whenever she drove by, playing that Dianna Ross music. (Not sure what that was about. But hey, if she liked it, I loved it).

If the collar of her shirt was crooked, I’d stick my hand out and straighten it. If her hair was in her face, I’d move it out the way. If her badge wasn’t hanging right, I’d straighten that up too.

I was crazy about the commander.


Then one day, I’d made a trip to her office at the police station, just to give her a bag of fresh vegetables from our award winning community center garden, as I liked to do from time to time. She asked me to close the door, because we needed to talk.

And my smiling tail did just as she asked.

She was sitting in her chair, with her feet propped up on her desk, in her trademark black outfit, staring at me.

I wanted to kiss the commander. Right then and there. But I hadn't been physical with her since that day that time stood still.

And I took a step closer to her. She held up her hand to halt me.

“Uh, we can’t do this, Touch,” she said. “People are starting to talk. And we just can’t do this.”

“What?” I said.

“This situation that's trying to get started between us. It's a breach of community trust. Not good for the community.”

"What?"

"Touch, you heard what I said. You're not deaf."

I threw the bag of vegetables down. “Screw the community!”

“Keep your voice down now,” she said, in a tone like she was talking about the weather. “Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” I said. “I'm down for you, Lutrice. Me and you, we got something special. I won't calm down.”

“Oh yes you will. And you will right now,” she said. “You’re gonna pull yourself together, walk out that door, get in your truck, and go on back to the community center. That's what you're gonna do. Right now.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

"Nope."

"Yes you are."

"Lutrice," I whined.

"No, call me Commander from now on. Commander Bivins while I'm on duty."

Let’s just say, she got her way. I left up out of there.

Crying like a bitch.

Shit.

It hurts to even talk about it right now.

Things hadn’t been that great between us since then, when that happened. Nothing but business when we talked. She’d sent a text message wishing me happy birthday.

I deleted it. I didn’t even answer it and say thank you.

And I tell you, my mind ain’t been right since then. I swear, every time I close my eyes I’m thinking of her. I’m thinking of that soft brown skin. The sweet scent of her still clings to my nostrils. I can still see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes.

I can stll taste her and feel her.

I still see her guns on nightstand. And I can hear her gun holster knocking up against the wall and the bed post when I was loving her down.

It’s like she’s on me, and I just can’t get her off of me.

My heart was all broke up. Wish I could do what everybody else like to do: touch myself for a bit a blessing, some good luck, or whatever came along with touching me.

And I did that sometimes. I’d put my hand on my own chest. Nothing special ever happened, save for feeling the beat of my own heart.

Even though it was broke, it was still there, beating hard.

Touching myself brought me no blessings. It brought me no good luck.

I guess touching me didn’t do for her what it did for others, either.

Getting to sleep at night was hard. It was fall now, and my baby girl Lil’ Touch, who always spent the summers with me, had gone on home back to Louisiana to her Mama. I loved having her around. At least she gave me something to focus on. I wish I could get custody of her. But it was best she be with her Mama and stepfather and siblings.

I was too much of a mess. And as a man, that’s hard to admit.

I think about this each and every night when I’m alone with my thoughts, trying to fall asleep.

And tonight, I was laying there, listening to the sound of the evening rain, when I got a call on my cell phone from the Commander.

“Touch, I need you,” she’d said.

My heart felt like it stopped. I even got light headed. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Let me rephrase that,” she said, when I didn’t respond. “I need you down on Pine Street. There’s been another murder. And Frank Simpson is out of town. You’re second in command of the Neighborhood watch, so I need you down here asap.”

My heart started beating again.

Business, I told myself. It’s business.

“Okay, give me fifteen minutes. I’ll be there.”

She disconnected without saying another word.

“Yes, I’ll be there, Lutrice,” I said as I got out of bed and pulled on my pants.

“I’ll be there, Commander.”

I’ll always be there... whenever you need me.