Jude

by Kate Morgenroth

  “Yo, man, why aren’t you out there?” R. J. called as he approached.

  “Can’t today.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  He lifted his foot and showed R. J. his sneaker.

  “Man, didn’t I tell you that you got to get you some new kicks? Your old man will have to spring for them now.”

  “I was gonna get me some last week, but they didn’t have the ones I wanted in my size,” Jude said.

  “Yeah, whatever. You might be able to lay that shit on the guidance counselor, but it don’t work with me.” He grinned and Jude smiled back. That was why R. J. was the only person who he confided in—he was the only one who saw through Jude’s bluff and cared enough to call him on it. “So what’s the problem? Your dad’s got cash—I mean, he’s gotta if he’s skimming. What the hell is he doing with all of it?”

  Jude made a face. “I think he’s just cheap. But he says he’s saving it for my college education.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Jude shook his head.

  “Oh shit.” R. J. burst out laughing. “You better hope he’s just cheap, ’cause he’ll be lucky if you graduate high school.”

  “It’s not funny,” Jude said, but he couldn’t help laughing too.

  “Hey, listen, if he won’t spring for them, or you don’t wanna even go there, I can try my brother. If I catch him at the right time, I could score a hundred easy.”

  “Nah, man, you don’t need to do that,” Jude said. He knew how much R. J. hated asking his big brother. A year ago his brother had gotten heavy into the junk and started dealing to support his habit, and most of the time R. J. stayed as far away from him as he could.

  “That reminds me, I didn’t forget your birthday’s comin’ up. I got something for you,” R. J. said.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not gonna tell you, stupid. Then it wouldn’t be a surprise. But hey, did you go to Miss Perez’s class today?”

  “I cut,” Jude said. “I didn’t do the homework.”

  “Me neither, but I heard there’s a test tomorrow.”

  “Shit, I forgot about that.”

  “Listen, Frankie told me that Perez uses the same tests every year. So I’m gonna go through my brother’s old shit. My mom kept all that stuff. She thought he was a regular scholar—not that it does him any damn good now. Meet me at my locker the period before, and if I find it, we can memorize the answers. You up for it?”

  “Definitely,” Jude said.

  “Catch you then.” R. J. raised his fist and Jude hit it lightly with his own.

  But he wouldn’t be there tomorrow, or the next day, and the gift R. J. had for Jude would sit on the shelf in his locker for weeks.

  WHEN JUDE LET HIMSELF into the apartment and flapped down the narrow hallway into the kitchen, he found his father at the table emptying a plastic bag of white powder into a metal mixing bowl.

  Jude stopped in the doorway.

  “What?” his father demanded.

  “Nothin’,” he said quickly, crossing to the fridge.

  His father grunted.

  Jude retrieved a jug of orange juice and, standing with the door of the fridge propped open, tipped back the container and took a swig.

  “That is a disgusting habit,” his father said.

  He swallowed, wiped his mouth. “You do it all the time,” he pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean you should. Pour yourself a goddamned glass and go get me the baby powder from the bathroom.”

  Jude pinched up a corner of his shirt and carefully wiped the mouth of the jug. “You think it’s a good idea to pull this again so soon, Pops?” Jude tried to speak casually to cover the sickening lurch he felt at his father’s request. His father had cut the last four shipments. This would make the fifth in a row. You could get away with it once in a while, but each supplier had the name of his product stamped on the dime bags, and if quality was bad, the word spread. The packets his father filled were stamped with the words FIRST CLASS, and it usually was. On the street it had the reputation for being the purest cut you could buy, and it was always in demand. Or rather, it used to be. The junkies, who didn’t notice if you stumbled over them on the street, noticed if you messed with their high. You couldn’t cut five shipments in a row and keep your customers. Five in a row was stupid. Even worse, five in a row showed disrespect.

  “I think you should keep your mouth shut about things you don’t know anything about,” his father snapped.

  But the fact was that Jude knew all about it. Not from his father, but from the neighborhood where deals went down on most street corners, and the favorite topics of conversation routinely involved who was dealing, who was snitching, who was dipping, who was dead. R. J. had actually been the first to pass along the warning. Because of his brother, R. J. was usually the first to hear the rumors.

  “You’re telling me you think the other guys aren’t doing it?”

  “Sure they are,” Jude admitted. “But not like this, and if they’re doing it this much, they’re not getting away with it.”

  “But I am,” his father said. “We are. Now, go get me the damn baby powder.”

  “Pops, I don’t think …,” he started.

  It was his own fault. He should have known better.

  His father was up in a moment. It took only two steps for him to reach Jude, and then he was grabbing Jude’s shirt. His father’s fist cocked back, and then Jude’s head exploded with light and he was knocked back against the counter. The juice carton flew from his hand and landed on its side, liquid pumping out its mouth.

  Jude felt the hard edge of the counter against his back, and the first pulse of his heart brought the flower of pain beating in his cheek. His father dropped his hand and turned away, and Jude felt the urge to hurl himself at that silent, disdainful back. It took all of his will to hold himself still. Then after a second Jude pushed himself upright, and leaving the juice to spill itself on the floor, he walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom.

  The baby powder was in the cabinet above the sink. He retrieved it, shut the cabinet, and caught his reflection in the mirror, cloudy and splattered with sprays of toothpaste. There was already a red welt rising on his cheek, and his father had nicked open the skin with the plain gold band he wore on the ring finger of his right hand—but that didn’t interest Jude as much as the eerie expression of calm the mirror reflected back at him. From his expression someone might assume he didn’t care. He remembered when he had practiced for hours just this blank look. He’d thought that maybe if he didn’t show the fear and shame and anger, then maybe he wouldn’t feel it either. It hadn’t worked.

  When he returned to the kitchen, his father was mopping up the juice with a wad of paper towels. Jude set the powder container down hard on the table; it must have been open, because a cloud huffed from the top.

  Jude was about to exit the room again when his father called to him in a very different tone, “Hold on a second there.”

  He stopped but didn’t turn. He heard his father open the door to the freezer.

  “Better put this on your face.” His father circled around him and held out an ice pack.

  “It’s not that bad,” Jude said, but he took the ice pack anyway.

  “You know, you should just slug me back. You’re as tall as I am now, and when you put on a little muscle, you’ll be bigger than me.” His father draped a casual arm over his shoulders and gave him a little squeeze.

  Jude felt sick with disgust—both for the way his father tried to make it up to him and with himself for putting up with it. It was all so predictable and so pathetic, but he forced a smile and said, “I couldn’t hit an old man.”

  “Who’re you calling old man?” His father released his shoulders and playfully jabbed him on the arm. “You’re a tough guy, you know that?”

  It was his father’s highest compliment. “I’m gonna go watch some TV,” Jude said, starting down the hall.

/>   He followed the narrow corridor to the living room and settled down in the corner of the brown couch. They had rented the apartment furnished, and they had the brown couch and a green armchair in the living room, a metal folding table and four mismatched chairs in the kitchen, and a narrow twin bed and dresser in each bedroom. They had been living there two years and had added nothing but a TV, which rested on the seat of the armchair.

  Jude didn’t even notice the bareness of his surroundings. It was what he was used to. Before moving to this apartment they hadn’t lived anywhere much longer than a year; they had moved from one city to another with the speed of the guilty, and since they never stayed, they never accumulated anything. Once, Jude had put up a poster in his room—of Michael Jordan in midair, stretching toward the basket—but his father tore it down during a fight, and Jude didn’t try to hang another.

  Jude flicked on the TV and sat there surfing through the channels and holding the ice pack to his face until it lost its chill and turned to a soft gel. By then his stomach was rumbling, and he decided to brave the kitchen to get something to eat.

  His father must already have added the baby powder, because when Jude returned, he was bent over the mixing bowl filling one of the tiny wax-paper envelopes. Even though Jude’s flapping shoe announced his arrival, his father didn’t look up. That meant the spurt of regret had passed. Everything was back to normal.

  Jude opened the freezer and inspected the contents. “You want something to eat?” he asked.

  His father placed the dime bag in a small pile with the others he had filled and picked up an empty. “Not hungry.”

  Jude removed a Salisbury steak TV dinner, stuck it in the oven, and set the timer. He found a roll of duct tape in a drawer and wound it around the toe of his shoe. Then he sat back down at the kitchen table to wait for the buzzer. Since there was nothing else to do, he watched his father fill the glassine bags. His father’s fingers were short and thick and clumsy. The clumsiness came from the knuckles—swollen and lumpy with arthritis from the fighting he had done as a young man. Jude knew that not only was it difficult for his father to cut the shipments, it was also painful. Normally he would have offered to help, as he was almost twice as fast, but his cheek still throbbed in a painful reminder, so he just sat.

  And that’s exactly where they were when the two men arrived.

  3

  JUST AS THE SMELL of the Salisbury steak started to fill the room, Jude heard the sharp crack of wood splitting. Their door must have taken only one good kick to buckle in its cheap frame, because a second later he heard the footsteps.

  Jude glanced over at his father. He was sitting bolt upright in his seat.

  When Jude looked back, there were two men standing in the doorway to the kitchen. They were both old—one gray haired, the other bald—but despite their age they were still powerful men, bulky under their overcoats. The gray-haired man entered first; he held a briefcase in one hand. The bald one followed; he carried a rifle.

  The second man raised the rifle to his shoulder … then looked at his companion.

  So Jude looked too.

  The gray-haired man was gazing at Jude’s father. It was almost as if the man looked sad, Jude thought—but that was crazy.

  The man nodded slowly, meaningfully.

  Jude glanced over at his father just in time to see him return the nod. Then his father turned to meet Jude—s gaze. It was as if his entire life had been moving toward that moment in the small, grubby kitchen.

  “You were right,” he said to Jude. “You were right.”

  It was the only time his father had ever said those words.

  With the silencer the noise of the rifle was barely louder than a cork popping from a bottle.

  His father was looking at Jude as the bullet hit. His father’s eyes widened in surprise, then they went suddenly flat, as if a connection had been abruptly severed.

  Jude watched as he tilted slowly sideways, slipped off his chair, and landed facedown on the floor. Though his limbs were bent uncomfortably beneath him, he didn’t move, and as Jude stared a pool of deep burgundy spread from beneath his chest, like the tide washing up across their linoleum floor.

  With the gun still propped on his shoulder, the shooter looked at Jude. He had nothing of the wild, glazed look Jude had noticed on the faces of the neighborhood men who usually took care of these things. The old man’s hands were steady and his eyes were calm. He was waiting for orders, Jude realized. Just like a soldier.

  “Should I take the kid out?” the shooter asked.

  “He wasn’t supposed to be here,” the gray-haired man said. “You said he stayed at school to play ball.”

  “Sorry, boss. He always did before. What do you want me to do?”

  Jude could feel the thud of his heart as if his whole body hammered with it. He tried to say, “Please.” His lips moved, but no sound emerged.

  The silence stretched out, and the man with the rifle seemed to take that as answer enough. Jude could see him fit the gun more snugly into his shoulder and sight on him with one eye.

  But just then the other man said, “Wait. Not yet.”

  The shooter lowered the rifle and shot a puzzled glance at his companion.

  Jude blinked, took a shaky breath, and held himself perfectly still as they moved into the room—as if they might forget about him if he kept quiet enough.

  The one holding the gun skirted the table and looked down at the body, probing it with a toe. The other—the boss—put on a pair of gloves, then lifted his briefcase onto the kitchen table across from Jude and opened the catch.

  If someone was going to take out his father, it should have been Benny or Mike or even Willis, Jude thought. They were the ones who took care of stuff like this—not strangers, and certainly not these strangers. They both looked over fifty, and there weren’t too many people in the business that were still around at thirty, much less fifty—at least not in Jude’s neighborhood.

  The boss began swiftly loading the pile of dime bags into the briefcase. A few had drops of blood beading on the wax. He set those aside and packed the rest. Then he looked up at Jude and said, “Paper towels?”

  Jude pointed at the cabinet under the sink.

  The man turned toward the cabinet, then stooped, retrieved the towels, kicked the cabinet closed again with his foot, and came back to the table with the roll in hand. He tore off a couple sheets and delicately mopped at the blood on the remaining bags. Then he loaded them up and wiped down the table.

  Jude kept his eyes on the man in front of him—kept his eyes away from the motionless figure on the floor.

  The man put the paper towels back and returned with a roll of tinfoil. Pulling out a long sheet, he picked up the metal mixing bowl and tapped the remains of the powder into the middle. He twisted it up like a doggie bag, packed that also, and closed the briefcase with a snap. Then he returned the tinfoil to the cabinet where he’d found it … and paused there by the sink. He said, “Do you smell something burning?”

  The other man sniffed. “Maybe the oven.”

  The boss opened the oven door. “It looks like we interrupted dinner. I’ll turn this off for you, okay?” He didn’t wait for Jude to answer, but spun the dial setting for the oven. Then he turned again to the shooter. “Go and keep an eye on the door for me, will you? Make sure no one gets nosy.”

  “We should get going, boss.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The big man gave his boss another look but left the room without another word.

  Once the shooter had gone, the man crossed back to the table and took a seat opposite Jude. “You’re Jude,” he said.

  Jude was so shocked at the sound of his name that he didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t really a question.

  “You look just like your father when he was your age. You got the girls running after you like he did?”

  Jude shook his head, wordless.

  “I don’t be
lieve it, a good-lookin’ kid like you. Listen, I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer me truthfully. You understand?”

  Jude nodded.

  “I want you to tell me what your father meant when he said ‘You were right.’”

  “I told him,” Jude said, and his voice came out hoarse, little more than a croak.

  “Told him? Told him what?”

  “I told him that he was taking too much.”

  “I see. So you were expecting this?”

  No, Jude thought, not this. I couldn’t have been expecting this. But he nodded again. Because he had been expecting this, only without really thinking it would ever happen.

  “I wish to God your father had listened to you, but I’ll tell you this. You gave him something I couldn’t. You gave him some warning—and I’m glad. It clears my conscience a little. I don’t like having to take out old friends.”

  “Old friends?” Jude repeated. His father didn’t have any friends that Jude knew of. The only person his father had was him.

  “We grew up together,” the man said. “We’re not exactly friends, but when you go that far back with someone, that means you do something for them if you’re in a position to. He called me, and I got him this gig. It was the least I could do. Your father did me a couple of favors before you were born, when things were different for him.”

  As Jude was listening to the man talk about his father, he was also aware of the creep of the blood as it spread out from his father’s body. The floor in their kitchen wasn’t level, and the blood was making its slow way downhill toward Jude’s feet. He hooked his sneakers over the rung of his chair and tried hard to concentrate on the man’s words.

  “You know, life’s a funny thing. You think you know where you’re going—you think that you can plan it all out, but it doesn’t work that way. Back when we were kids and playing ball together in the empty lot on the next block, you think we ever imagined that we were gonna end up here? Like this?” The man leaned over, resting his head on one hand. “I guess that it was our choices that brought us here—mine and Anthony’s both—but it doesn’t feel that way. You know what I mean?”