The young'un nodded. Hot tears trailed down his face.
La Payasa withdrew her crew.
The Boars tried to not move or panic. He fumbled for his cell phone as he pressed his free hand against his wound. 911 might not come to his address, but he could hope. A banging came from the door.
"We got a little unfinished business," Omarosa said.
"What?" The Boars leaned against the door.
"You got the cash on you."
Shit. "No I…"
"Before you finish that lie, I still got young buck right here."
"I called 911."
"You think I can't blast my way in there and out before they get here? Or go through them if I had to?"
Omarosa was patient. That was the way of her kind. And she wasn't one to leave money on the table. Dred wasn't directly responsible for her brother's death but he employed that dog, Baylon. Even as she thought the name, her heart burned with the fury of vengeance. That was also the way of her kind. It was bad business to be on the wrong side of the fey. "Don't make me repeat myself."
The Boars slid the five hundred he had on him under the door.
There were many days when Percy thought about what it would be like to have a real mom and dad. She'd get him up out of bed and fix breakfast while he dressed. By the time he got to the table, his dad would already be reading the paper, but he'd set it down at Percy's approach. His mom would put a plate full of eggs, sausage, and hash browns in front of each of them. They'd discuss issues of the day over the meal, both of his parents enjoying talking with him while also simply spending time with him. And they knew what was right and wrong. They laid down rules like no television until homework was done and how he had to go to church with them. But when they were done, his dad would take him outside and play football in the yard with him. His mom doted on her husband and kids, buying clothes, making food, cleaning the house, and yet finding time for them while helping in the community. His dad took him to school, where Percy proved to be extremely talented. He worked hard in school and was respected. The teachers liked him there, especially Mr Combs, who encouraged him to write more and pursue his dream.
It was the same dream.
Percy was embarrassed to bring anyone back to his house. Miss Jane lying in bed, covers pulled up about her like a burial shroud, a lighter in one hand and a bottle wrapped in aluminum foil in the other. Never sure if she was dead or alive, since she always smelled of decay and burnt skin. Her skin pallor leaned toward blue. Her shirt halfopen, revealing the full swell of her left breast. Her hair a matted mess. A trickle of foam escaped from the crease of her lips. Her eyes vacant. Now she truly was gone, and ever since his mother had died it was on him to take care of his little brothers and sisters. Some days it was too much. Piles of clothes left about the house. Percy's hoodie shadowed his eyes, eyes which bounced all over the place as they walked down the street. The peach fuzz on his lips itched slightly, well, not really, but he couldn't help messing with it.
More comfortable around the animal than people, Mad Had ran his fingers through Kay's fur, removing any burrs or knots. Dogs didn't judge. They didn't care if you had a bad past. They didn't care if you walked funny or talked funny. They didn't make fun of you. They were loyal and loved you. Kay wouldn't answer to any other name. Not "boy" or "dog" or a whistle or any gibberish meant to call him. His name would be respected and anything else was an affront to his canine dignity.
Part of Percy wanted to encounter something strange. King, Lott, and Wayne often had to fight weird creatures. They'd whisper about it when they thought he couldn't hear because they didn't want to glorify any of the fights they had. Fighting seemed to make them rather sad, like it was something they had to do but took no pleasure in. They weren't like the other boys out here who loved to fight, bragged on it like they had something to prove. To King and them, fighting was a last resort. Percy wanted something, an adventure, to call his own. To show them that he could hang with them. His own creature, maybe with the body of a leopard, haunches like a lion, feet like a hart. And a snake's head. That would be cool.
"Yon caitiff," an aged woman said, strolling up to Percy.
"Me, ma'am?"
"Who else?" She placed her had on Mad Had's head. "Oh, you're a fine lad. You both are. So brave and so true. Do you know where you're going?"
"Not really. I thought-"
"You'd follow your heart. Careful, there are no damsels out here. Tarry your heart and find the castle." The woman steadied herself as if suddenly dizzy.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm almost out of tricks. Tell Sir Rupert that I can only be freed by she who imprisoned me and that he should quit searching."
Percy smiled as the old woman staggered off. He nodded to Mad Had, who ambled silently after him. A song caught on Percy's lips.
"Jesus loves the little children…"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Without a home, Mulysa was his own master with nothing to lose. While part of that meant he was free to go wherever he wanted, in his heart he knew that he was a man without a home. Dred hadn't reached out, too busy grooming his next pet, Garlan. Dred had a habit of discarding people who were no longer of any use to him. Or were used up. Broken. It wasn't as if Dred didn't discard Baylon as soon as he was done and Baylon was his boy, yet he followed that fool fake Jamaican like a hobbled puppy. Somehow Mulysa convinced himself that it would be different with him. And though Mulysa still possessed his skills and ferocity, he was tainted. Marked. That was what he assumed, as he slid in the booth at Marble's Cafe. The owner, a Seventh Day Adventist, fisheyed him, not wanting any foolishness, as he didn't put up with dealers or wannabe pimps. Mulling over a plate of Marble's thick, potato-wedge fries, alongside the remains of a sandwich of ham, turkey, and bacon fried up and topped with three cheeses, Mulysa could have been either. Carried on waves of nostalgia — like an old man reflecting on his life, despite barely being out of his teens — Mulysa knew he'd run out of life. The days wound down for him. He was as certain about that as he was about the fact that he had a tail. He had the sense that the sword of Damocles about to fall and split his skull. A fatal intuition he couldn't shake. The engine which drove his life had simply run out of gas and he was exhausted.
He had checked out one of his old spots, a place he stayed before the Camlann, but it was little more than a lot grown over with weeds. He pulled back the flimsy plywood sheet which covered the door, part of which broke off in his hands as he bent to it, to slip into the abandoned house. Beer cans littered the floor. The house had pockets of shadows as little light poured in around the boarded-up windows. The pungent tang of soured meat assaulted his nostrils. Dirty dishes piled in cold, gray water with a strange orange film on them. With a molding layer of macaroni and cheese burned to the bottom, the pot turned on its side provided shelter for a stream of cockroaches. He had stayed here for several months. That was how he had lived and he'd thought he had life by the balls. But seen in dim light against the backdrop of peeled paint and ripped-up carpet, his life amounted to a waste. No one would mourn him if he died.
Pain was something they all had in common, but it looked different on everyone. For Mulysa, no, for Cheldric, the old wound had the voice of his uncle.
"You're ugly. No one will want to get with you. Might as well get used to paying for it. We all do, one way or another, anyway." Then his uncle would get his head up in some herb, some Crown Royal mixed with Pepsi in his glass, and stare at the television whether it was on or not.
"You're dumb. No sense in doing anything that will make you any dumber or careless. So don't do drugs." Then his uncle would clear the books from the table with an angry swipe and glare down on him like he was a ghost of his past, pull out his belt, and beat Mulysa until he was spent.
"You're fat. Watch what you eat. You're young now, but don't become slow or let your body betray you." Then his uncle would send him to his room, without dinner, confining him to the dark to amuse himself or at least be
out from underfoot.
"No one wants you. I took you in after they abandoned you. You're lucky you have me." Then his uncle's eyes bulged in surprise and his neck opened up like a screaming mouth vomiting blood when Mulysa ran a box cutter across it. He was eleven.
Ducking out of the hovel, the sun mocked him. Someone jogged after him or something put him on edge. Hunted him. He forgot how paranoid the drugs made him.
Mulysa had never thought much of what it meant to be a man. Women were casualties of his conquests. Bitches. Hos. Chickenheads. Skanks. Less than human. Barely a collection of orifices on which to pleasure himself, reflections of his selfhate upon which he could vent more of the same.
Ever since he'd been out of the Shoe, he'd been directionless. Dred never summoned him, nor set him up with his own package to sell and get on his feet. Didn't use him for any work. Acted like Mulysa was dead to him. Without explanation or warning. Suddenly he was a pariah to all the folks he knew. So he'd come full circle.
There was a bridge under 19th and MLK, across from the Children's Bureau, where he now stayed. The four culverts on either side of the bridge were like little apartments. Crystals hung from the top between the cracks like salt stalactites. The dirt floor, white like chalk, had a moldy mattress, almost a part of the hill, resting on it. The fine sand got into everything: his backpack, his blanket, his clothes, but the concrete walls sealed him up nicely. Entombed him. Alone, in the dark, he reflected on his life. Sometimes he had to chew over the pain of his life in order to write his story. Sometimes that was easier to do with the distance of fiction.
He ate in peace. Despite being the only person in the spot — and the owner having a penchant of passing the time by waxing philosophical with his customers — Mulysa ate alone. In uninterrupted silence. The best sort to speed him on his way. He recognized the hardened eye, the one-handunder-the-counter style readiness, prepared to grab a bat or gun or whatever in case Mulysa broke bad.
In his time, Mulysa might have robbed this place, mugged the man's kin, or killed someone he knew. Mulysa was bold with it. He came up admiring folks like Green, who knew how to get shit done. Folks knew his name, his face, and the details of his do, but no one spoke out. Mulysa modeled his own stalwart career with the same approach. It only took one to speak out, but if no one did it meant he didn't have a wake of ardent admirers.
No one was immune to life's little tragedies just like no one was immune to the potential of drugs to make a good person do bad things. The theory assuaged the emaciated thing he called his conscience. That was what he would say to them, any of them. That it wasn't their fault. His neither. It was the drugs. Faceless, nameless, blameless, because ultimately they were a force of nature and blaming them for the destruction wreaked in your life was like yelling at a hurricane. He tried it out loud to see how it might play.
"You can't blame me. Drugs, they like a tornado or some shit. Can't be mad at them neither. They just do what they do." It sounded like every bit of bullshit to him. Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he dropped the wadded napkin into his half-eaten piece of peach cobbler and pushed away from the table. He left a five-dollar tip on the ten-dollar tab and didn't know why. He left the building unsettled, something nagged at him. Some detail he'd missed.
The last thing he saw was an empty forty bottle coming toward his head.
How did one refer to the recently dead? They were still alive, still real in the memory of those who knew them in the present. But they were still gone. Past tense. Alive in name only. Baylon had been without power or control for so long he wasn't about to go back to either state without a fight.
"What brings you to the front lines?" Baylon asked Dred.
"Just checking on things." Dred's voice a conveyer belt of shifting accents. A hint of Jamaican patois in one breath, formal English in another, and relaxed hood-cent in the last. Shifting with his identity of the moment.
"Surprised."
"By what?"
"That you still remembered the ones you came up with," Baylon said sardonically.
"I remember." Dred let the slight pass. He'd allowed Baylon the one as long as he didn't cross the line.
"Those you hurt."
"You hurt, nigga?" Dred desired to control everyone and everything around him by the tools at his disposal: fear, threat, intimidation, violence, and death. Remorseless eyes marred his prettyboy looks.
"Look at me. I gave everything to you."
"Listen to you. You sound like my bitch."
"You right. Shit." Baylon hated this. What he wanted to do was break out a sawed-off. But he couldn't raise a weapon to the man. It was as if, despite all Dred had done, Baylon was still bound to him. To the end.
"Guess you had to get that out your system."
"Something like that."
"Now can I get to the business I came to speak on?"
"What's that?"
"Them Julios." Every Mexican was "Julio" to Dred.
"What you need?"
"We need to end this once and for all. You need to put the word out that you want a parlay."
"If we fly the truce flag, you can't do anything. So how's that gonna help."
" We ain't flying the truce flag. You are. They probably still think you speak for me. That's they fault. Call for it at the site of the new Camlann."
Not that Baylon had much of a name to trade on, but he hated that Dred could so casually play it for nothing. Not too long ago, Baylon stood tall. His word was bond. Now he'd been drained of most of his life. By Dred. "That how you going to do them?"
"I'm in a loose-end-tying mood. It's time to tighten up the ranks. I still got to rock the cradle on my latest crew."
The storm, relatively calm now, would soon pick up in intensity. Tristan carefully followed the road along its snaking path. The rain beat a harsh rhythm upon the roof of the car as it snailed its way down the long, winding road. Like cotton tufts churning in oil, the clouds choked the indigoblanket sky, plunging the night into deeper shadow, a foreboding whisper in their overhead passing. Large, looming trees lined each side of the dismal, dark road like protective guards. Tristan wiped away the angry tears that pooled in her eyes, checking herself in the rearview mirror. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of tears. The windshield wiper danced madly as she continued to fight them back. The rain fell unceasingly in annoying splatters. The low moan of the wind left her undaunted. Headlights sliced through the thin drizzle of rain as the car headed up the forgotten, dimly lit access road. Plenty of sound filled the silence. Birdsong. Gravel spit up by tires. Crickets in dusk light. The gurgle of torrents of water. No words needed to be said, even as the car slowed to a halt in front of a locked fence. A narrow footpath, full of thorny branches, circled him, leading to a denser stretch of woods. Tristan shoved Mulysa in that direction. The constant rain splattered tree branches and leaves, slickening rocks as the pair nearly stumbled several times as they walked. Twigs snapped in their passing processional.
She kicked him in the back of the legs, forcing him to ground. If he tried to defend himself, it only brought on more punches. Her blood pumped with righteous fury. She hooked him in his head, groin, stomach, and throat. He curled into a ball, brain seized up. Mulysa's head fell forward, his chest tightened as if he had shards of glass in his lungs.
"Are you afraid to die?" Tristan asked.
"Yeah. I guess. We all are," Mulysa said like a general tired of war.
"That don't sound like the Mulysa I knew. The Mulysa I knew didn't let anyone's needs come before his own. Didn't back down from anyone. Didn't care whose territory he ran in. He wasn't afraid of anything.
"I'm afraid to meet God." The words came softly, without irritation or bravado. More resigned than anything else. "For Him to tell me that I wasted my life down here. That I pissed over all the opportunities He gave me."
She put a dirty look on him. Meek like a tree trunk, he disgusted her. He was too easy to insult. This wasn't the Mulysa she wanted. This animal was alre
ady broken and beaten down. This one sounded too much like the little girl trapped in her that she never gave voice to. The one who was also afraid, not of His judgment, because she was ready for that. She could carry that. No, she feared "… that He loves you anyway."
"Love. I don't even know what that means anymore."
She understood the resignation and the black hole from which he operated… but he was still a dog that needed to be put down. Tristan reached over his shoulder and stabbed him in the chest. He bolted, running on pain and adrenaline, already dead. It hurt to breath. He tripped, his head bouncing off a stone, leaving his ears ringing and his world blurred. Tristan landed on him and stabbed until he quit defending himself.
Classes in school would always have a timeout whenever a student entered holding a note. Prez's heart skipped a beat. If the student knew him, they'd try to catch his eye and give him a nod, but most times the kind of students trusted to run the administrative errands of the principal's office weren't the kind who ran in the same circles as Prez. In the usual routine, the teacher took the note then read it silently. Like they were on some reality show, all of the students studied each other for any tell as they waited to see who had been voted off the island, whose journey would end here. The teacher then called out a name and the student perked up with a "who me?"/"what did I do?" look of complete innocence. Too many times, Prez's name was called. All eyes turned to him, accompanied by a few stifled snickers and some exhales of relief that their name wasn't called. He'd march to the front of the class — under the weight of the glaring eyes — to receive the note like a communion wafer and then pass into the hallway.
His mind turned over the devious things he did, which ones might rise to the level of being called to the office. A dead man walking the green mile to his execution, the journey and the wait did their psychological jobs. He reflected on the cost of his antics. He pondered the various crossroads moments of his life and the decisions he'd made. He'd wonder "what if?"
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