Razorblade Tears

by S. A. Cosby

“What?”

  “I said they tried to fuck us up pretty good.”

  “You need to check the mirror,” Ike said. Buddy Lee lay back against the bench seat.

  “I’m not saying we didn’t take no licks, but we still here, ain’t we? A lot of people we used to run with are gone. Now, I ain’t much on religion, but like you said: Everybody got a skill. A thing they put on earth for. Maybe this is why we still around. To finish this,” Buddy Lee said lying back against the headrest.

  Ike wasn’t sure if he was hyping up himself or Ike. But he had to admit Buddy Lee had a point. They both went quiet as their bodies registered the pain that was sure to get worse as day gave way to night.

  “That knife means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Ike asked, finally breaking the silence. Buddy Lee pulled the jackknife out of his pocket. He held it in front of his face and stared at it for a long time before he spoke.

  “It belonged to my daddy,” Buddy Lee said. He didn’t offer any other explanation than those five words. Ike didn’t need one. The knife had belonged to Buddy Lee’s father. That explained it all.

  Ike changed the subject.

  “He knows where she is. He wouldn’t have gone through all this if he didn’t,” he said. Buddy Lee wheezed, coughed, then spit out his window.

  “Yeah, but he ain’t likely to tell us now. You think we could take him when he leaves his house? Get him out in the boonies and make him tell?” Buddy Lee said. Ike used a crumpled napkin to wipe the blood from his knuckles.

  “I know a guy might be able to help us get to him again,” Ike said.

  “Well, shit, I wish you had said that before I got my ribs rearranged,” Buddy Lee said.

  “We didn’t part on the best of terms. It’s a long story but he owes me. I think it’s about time I collect.”

  “You wanna go now?” Buddy Lee asked.

  “Ain’t no time like the present,” Ike said.

  “Can you drive? I think if I hiccup too hard I’m gonna pass out,” Buddy Lee said.

  * * *

  Ike got back on the interstate, then took the Chesterfield exit. Chesterfield County was a huge municipality that encompassed several small towns within its borders and enormous swaths of wilderness that remained essentially unchanged since before Captain John Smith had told his first lie about his adventures in the New World.

  Ike drove along rolling back roads lined by ditches deep enough to dive in and do the backstroke. Finally, he came to a shopping center that sat in the middle of a field on a lonely spit of land near Route 360. A cornfield bordered the strip mall to the north, and several abandoned shipping containers and trailers to the south. Ike remembered when he first got out, there had been a fleet repair shop near the strip mall. The place had been a huge sheet-metal monstrosity that bore more than a passing resemblance to his shop. Now even the bones of that building were gone. Scattered to the four winds or the nearest salvage yard.

  Ike pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall and parked the truck.

  “Stay in here,” Ike said.

  “Shit, you ain’t gotta tell me twice,” Buddy Lee said. He reached into the cup holder and retrieved his knife. He held it out toward Ike.

  “What I’m supposed to do with that?”

  “Stick people with the sharp end.”

  “I ain’t gonna need that,” Ike said.

  “Look, you said there was a long story to this shit. In my experience that usually means shit didn’t end all copacetic. You don’t need to go walking in there naked. So it’s either this or the gun,” Buddy Lee said. Ike’s eyes settled on the knife. Maybe he should take it. How long had it been since he’d talked to Lance? Ten years? A lot of things can change in that time. People forget their debts. Their loyalties change and shift like smoke. The knife would be protection. The gun would be an act of aggression.

  Ike grabbed the knife and put it in his front pocket.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ike said.

  “Ain’t like I was gonna run a marathon. Just don’t lose it,” Buddy Lee said. Ike gave him a look.

  “You ain’t gotta worry about that,” Ike said,

  * * *

  Ike heard the robotic ding of a doorbell as he entered the barbershop. There were five chairs with five different men and boys of various ages in them. The shop smelled of cleaning chemicals, machine oil, and air fresheners that reminded him of cheap cologne. The far-left wall was a bank of mirrors. The far-right wall had posters of Michael Jordan dunking, Mike Tyson boxing, and a chart of various hairstyles along with the prices for said hairstyles. A fifty-inch flat screen dominated the rest of the wall. The Wizards were playing the Celtics as subtitles crawled across the bottom. A slice of late-nineties R&B was raining down from a couple of speakers in the ceiling.

  “Be with you in a minute, chief,” said one of the barbers, an older man with white sideburns but coal-black hair on top. The cacophony of buzzing coming from the various trimmers sounded like lazy hornets flying around the clients’ heads.

  “I’m looking for Slice. He here?” Ike asked. The older man stopped and gave Ike a long once-over.

  “Who’s asking?” the older barber asked. Ike hesitated.

  “Riot. Riot Randolph,” he said.

  The clippers in the old barber’s hand started to tremble. He snuck a glance toward the back of the building. A pair of blue velvet curtains hung over an opening there.

  “Hang on,” the old man said. He flicked a button on the side of the clippers and sat them on the shelf behind him. A cell phone appeared in his hand. Ike watched as the man’s thumbs flew over the screen. Seconds ticked by and then the older man looked up at Ike.

  “Take a seat,” he said.

  “You gonna finish or you want me to come back?” the older barber’s client asked. The rest of the guys in the shop burst out laughing.

  “Slow your roll, young buck, or my Parkinson’s might kick in,” the older barber said.

  “You ain’t got no Parkinson’s, Maurice,” the client said.

  “But that’s what I’ll tell people when they ask why I chopped your head up, though. I’m just a confused old man,” Maurice said, adding comical withered intonation to his voice at the end of his statement. Another burst of laughter filled the shop. Ike sat in the last chair in a row of chairs bolted to the floor and to each other. Ike felt a hair tickle his throat. He coughed and grimaced. The muscles in his chest felt like they were wound tight as a fishing reel. Every breath made him wince. The pain in his body was getting close to matching the pain in his soul.

  “Look at this shit. Man, I don’t know why they got this stuff on the TV,” a large man in the third chair getting his beard dyed said. He pointed at the flat screen, bringing his hand from under the smock covering his upper body. Ike followed the man’s finger and saw a commercial for a show about a drag-show competition.

  “You know why it’s on. White folks love seeing Black men in dresses. It’s a whole thing about feminizing us, making us weak,” the barber dyeing his beard said.

  “It’s a C-O-N-spiracy, huh, Tyrone?” a young light-skinned brother working on a client’s lineup said.

  “Oh, you don’t think they want our ‘women’—quote, unquote—independent and our men weak and gay? That’s how they keep us in line. It ain’t paranoia if it’s true, Lavell,” Tyrone said. Lavell laughed.

  “Now you sound like one of them super-woke brothers on YouTube in the kufu hat,” Lavell said.

  “Look, I don’t care if they gay and shit, but why they gotta be all over the place with it? They getting out of pocket with that shit,” the man getting his beard dyed said.

  “How they rubbing it in your face, Craig? They breaking in your house and putting lipstick on you in your sleep?” Lavell asked with a chuckle.

  “You know you sounding real suspect, Lavell. You got some sparkly high heels under your bed?” Craig asked.

  “Yeah, they yo momma’s,” Lavell said. Maurice brayed at that remark.

 
“For real, though, them boys up there, they the result of the government splitting up Black families. Made welfare more attainable than living on one income. Made women think they didn’t need no king in they life. That’s how you get niggas in wigs and makeup prancing around like goddamn Tinkerbells,” Craig said.

  “I don’t think that’s how it works, man,” Lavell said. Craig snorted.

  “Let my boys come home talking about that gay shit. They gone be living in a cardboard box down by the river. Nah, bump that, I’m a beat that shit out of them. Any man let his son grow up gay, he done failed. It’s like Chris Rock say, your only job is to keep your daughter off the pole and keep a dick out your son’s mouth,” Craig pontificated.

  “I’ve watched a bunch of his HBO specials, and he ain’t never say that last part. And why you thinking about a dick in your son’s mouth? You need therapy, Craig,” Lavell said.

  “Forget you, Lavell, that’s why I get Tyrone to cut my hair,” Craig said. One more round of laughter filled the shop as the conversation moved on to the Wizards’ chances or lack thereof against the Celtics.

  Ike gripped the sides of his chair. A dull ache worked its way up from his hands to his forearms. He realized the chairs in the barbershop were similar to the chairs he’d seen in the police station. Ike used to like coming to the barbershop, before he started losing his hair and took to shaving his own head. The agile banter, the casual camaraderie, the give-and-take of friendly insults and jabs—it was all a part of the character and culture of the barbershop. Many times he thought of it as the last place you didn’t have to apologize for being a Black man.

  This conversation showed him that there was another side to the barbershop. A side he’d always known was there but had dismissed. It could be a place of circular logic, where obtuse thinking was confirmed and reinforced by a pervasive groupthink. Yeah, you had some brothers like Lavell going against the tide, but for the most part everybody got in fucking line. Did they really think boys were gay because you weren’t a good father? He might not have been there for Isiah the way he wanted to, but even he knew that didn’t make his son gay. He didn’t pretend to understand Isiah’s life, but he understood that much.

  Six months ago, you would’ve been laughing right along with them, though. Before they put a bullet in Isiah’s head. Before they killed your boy, Isiah thought.

  “You alright, chief?” Maurice asked. He eyed Ike warily.

  “What?” Ike said.

  “You breaking my armrest there, chief,” Maurice said. Ike released the armrests and saw he had nearly pulled the hard-molded plastic off the iron frame. A brother with a clean-shaven head the size of a basketball leaned through the curtains. His skin was the color of obsidian.

  “Come on back,” he said. It sounded like bricks in a washing machine. Ike got up and went through the curtains. He entered a storeroom set up to be an office, and a luxurious one at that. A large ornate wooden desk with a leather-bound chair under it. The floor covered in deep-pile brown carpet. A glass-top coffee table sat in front of a plush leather recliner. A tray with three half-gallon bottles of gin, bourbon, and rum sat on the right side of the recliner. In the recliner was a trim Black man in a pair of black dress pants and a gray T-shirt under a silk black button-up long-sleeved shirt. Tightly coiled dreadlocks fell down to the middle of his back.

  The clean-shaven man stepped in front of Ike.

  “You carrying?” he said.

  “Just a knife in my pocket for work,” Ike said. The clean-shaven man patted Ike down with hands the size of car batteries. He pulled the knife out of his pocket.

  “Get it back when you leave,” the man said. He went to the corner of the office and leaned against the wall.

  I’ve heard that before, Ike thought.

  “Been a long time, Ike. Thought you didn’t go by Riot no more,” Slice said. He spoke with a soft lisp and a hint of southeastern Virginia rolling around in the back of his throat. When Ike had gone inside Slice was a skinny seventeen-year-old kid taking over the North River Boys for his brother Luther. Now he was Lancelot Walsh aka Slice aka the Man in the Cap City. After Luther got hit they’d all retreated back to Red Hill. Slice had been in a bad place. The whole crew had been in a bad place. Romello Sykes and the Rolling 80s had killed Luther in retaliation for a scrap they’d gotten into at a house party in the middle of no-fucking-where. It wasn’t even business. Just some personal dick-swinging bullshit. The North River Boys had gone running back home to Red Hill with their collective tails between their legs. Romello had snatched off their masks and revealed them to be the wannabe gangsters they really were.

  Ike, no, Riot couldn’t let that shit go. Fuck Romello and fuck the Rolling 80s. He hadn’t been a wannabe. He’d found Romello. He’d dealt with Romello. Then the state of Virginia had dealt with him. They were the ones who put him in prison, but Ike had been the one who’d taken away his wife’s husband and his son’s father.

  “I needed to get your attention. How you been, Slice?” Ike asked. Slice bore down on him with his coal-black eyes like chips of hematite. He was drinking dark brown rum out of a cut-crystal glass.

  “What you doing here, Ike? I thought you won’t ’bout this life no more? Last I heard you was cutting rich people’s grass, giving the La Raza a run for they money,” Slice said.

  “I was. I mean I am. I need a favor.”

  “What kind of favor could somebody like you want from somebody like me? You want me to take care of whoever beat yo ass? Oh yeah, you done got walloped, bruh,” Slice said. Ike set his jaw and pushed his tongue into his cheek.

  “I need a meet with a homeboy I think is one of your clients. I need it today,” Ike said. Slice smiled. It was like watching an icicle form.

  “What you know about my business, Ike?” Slice said.

  “I know you run shit from Cap City to Red Hill and up to DC. I know you move weight and guns up the Iron Corridor. I know you own Club Roja. Nice touch. You name it for Red Hill? And I think I know you can set this meetup because this motherfucker is the type that would either buy big weight or want to tag along with some real ballers. And you the realest baller I know,” Ike said. Slice sipped his drink.

  “You keeping tabs on me, Ike?” he asked. The question itself was fairly innocuous, but the subtext was as menacing as a tiger sitting in your back seat. Ike had known dangerous men all of his life. There were several John Does buried in a pauper’s grave that would say Ike was a dangerous man. They radiated a dark energy that was fueled by the fusion of determination, will, and the not-so-subtle ability to not give a fuck. Slice was one of the most dangerous men Ike knew. He’d earned his nickname from his penchant for slicing off fingers and tongues. Not those of his enemies, but those of his enemy’s brothers and sisters, wives and children.

  “Not like that, Slice. I just be hearing stuff. I’m out the game, but the game don’t want to leave me alone,” Ike said. Ike could feel a mad tension in the room wash over him and swallow him whole. Slice stared at him over the edge of his cup. Craig had spoken about kings. Ike didn’t want to be a king. A king never sleeps. He ends up like Slice. Staring at everyone and anticipating how they might try to come for his crown.

  “And who is the motherfucker you want to meet?” Slice said. He drew the word “motherfucker” out until it sounded like it had seven syllables.

  Ike crossed his arms.

  “Mr. Get Down,” Ike said. Slice’s eyes crinkled. He chortled.

  “You want to talk to Tariq? My business partner? Oh yeah, I’ve got a piece of his catalog. He’s an investor in a few of my clubs. I put some money in that Brown Island Jam he put on last year. That runt has fattened my pockets a lot over the years, and I gotta be honest with you, Ike, it don’t seem like you wanna sit down and break bread with this nigga. I don’t think I’m gonna be able to help you out, homie. I can’t have you messing with my bag,” Slice said.

  Ike felt the spit dry up in his mouth. He’d been afraid of this. Time makes loya
lty thin. People shed it like snakeskin.

  “Oh, because he your business partner?”

  “I know what you about to say,” Slice said.

  “I know you do. Cuz I was more than your business partner. I was your boy. I was Luther’s boy. I’ve never asked you for nothing. Not even when I went inside. You the one told me you was gonna make sure I was straight in there. You the one told me I had nothing to worry about. You the one said Mya and Isiah wouldn’t have to lift a finger. You said they was family. Then you sent her three hundred dollars. Once. I put in work and what did I get for it? Four niggas trying to punk me and a wife who had to work three jobs to take care of our son while I was on some old thug-life shit,” Ike said. It dawned on him that he was yelling. The monster in the corner pushed off the wall but Slice held up his hand.

  “Shit was complicated, Ike. Ain’t none of us know Romello’s cousin was hooked up with the East Coast Crips. We didn’t know they was running things in Coldwater. You went inside and we was fighting for our lives out here. Shit got real fucking hectic. Did I fuck up with Mya and Isiah? Yeah, and that’s on me. But let’s be real. Ain’t nobody put a gun to your head and made you go find Romello and beat him to death in the middle of the street. That’s on you,” Slice said.

  Ike took a step forward.

  “Yeah that’s on me. I killed that motherfucker with my bare hands in front of his mama and his girl. I went to prison for seven years and left my family. I own that. But I did it for your brother. I did it for the North River Boys. I did it for you. I did it because nobody else would. I cared more about my clique than I did my woman and my son. I gotta own that, too. But I know if things had been the other way around and I had been the one to get my head blown off in a trick’s bed that was running with the Rolling 80s, your brother would have done the same thing for me. That’s what Luther was about. You saying things got complicated. But you won the war. You retired the Rolling 80s. Moved your mama and your whole crew out the trailer park and up into Carytown. When y’all was popping bottles and making it rain, I was shanking motherfuckers. When you was fucking strippers and video models, I was listening to that revolutionary bullshit from the Black God Coalition so I’d have somebody to watch my back. When you was drinking Cristal I was drinking toilet wine. I got out and I never came looking for you. I let it go that you had my wife wiping people’s asses and had my son wearing hand-me-downs. I made a promise to them that I would not be the person I used to be. But now I’m here and I’m asking … nah, I’m telling you: you owe me. You owe my wife. I’d say you owe my son but he’s dead. And you protecting the one person that might be able to help me find out who did it.” Ike paused. “What you think Luther would say right now?”