Warpath

by Ryan Sayles

“Is she older than you, or younger?”

  “She’s older.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  Instead of answering, the boy turned and ran back inside the house, yelling, “Octavia!”

  Sangster waited and after a few moments a teenage girl wearing tank top and cut offs, came to the door. She was dark-skinned, pretty, with pointy little tits and not an ounce of fat on her. She looked him up and down, pushing her pokies out at him.

  “Where y’at?” was the traditional New Orleans greeting, only she said, “Where YOU at?”

  “What it is,” he said, giving the standard response.

  The girl smiled and said, “You ain’t no Algerine.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m looking for your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “A friend of hers is in the hospital,” Sangster said. “I just want to let her know.”

  “I can tell ’er.”

  “I’d like to tell her myself,” he responded. “Where she is?”

  “She’s workin’.”

  “Your little brother told me that much. Can you tell me where?”

  “It’s Tuesday, so I think today she’s doin’ the schools.”

  “The schools?”

  “Yeah,” the girl said. “She cleans a couple of the schools.”

  “Which ones?”

  “I think she’s on Old Aurora today,” she said. “That’d be Alice M. Harte Elementary or Edna Karr High.”

  Sangster didn’t know the schools in Algiers, but he could find them.

  “Thanks for the information, Octavia.”

  She cocked her head to one side and said, “You wanna maybe come in, have a drink?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Call me in four or five years, Sweetheart.”

  As he walked away he heard her say, “Chicken.”

  Back to TOC