by Samuel Ligon
Jack gave me a name and number.
And I felt this surge.
Burke
We walk on Moses Beach at high tide, not many people out along the water, but the guiding hand of fate everywhere, even in the names of places, Moses Beach—like I’m Moses himself, handing down commandments and delivering my brother from his years of suffering and denial, proving again how lined up and right everything is at the moment, though I haven’t slept in I don’t know how many days and am running out of stories to tell. I ask Alina to tell a story, but she seems tired and fidgety, wrung out from our earlier joy and tears at being reunited.
On the phone at the gas station, Nikki said she’d have the money by five, and I’m wondering if I should just take it and get on my plane for Puerto Rico. Pick up more once I run out. I’m exhausted from Cinnamon and Alina, and I haven’t even met Nikki yet. I wonder if I should take Alina with me down to the islands, but that don’t seem like much of a vacation, truth be told, and she’ll need to be in school, anyway, which makes me wonder why she ain’t in school now. I ask her that, why she ain’t in school, and she tells me about this asshole Kyle Nikki’s been fucking behind my brother’s back, how he died last week on a motorcycle—another sign of alignment—with some rich bitch he was fucking behind Nikki’s back. Some gigantic soap opera. Alina blubbers about him, how good he was, the best man she’s ever known, filling me with so much hatred I can hardly control myself. But at least it wakes me up. And it’s another blessing, because now there’s no man to jump me, no one to help the whore, more proof of the righteousness of my actions and everything lined up in my favor.
“Is something wrong?” Alina asks.
“What could be wrong?” I say.
Just like her mother, denying Cash, denying me. Running into the arms of some other man ain’t never been her real daddy.
“You just seem—”
“Sugar,” I say, hugging her by the water. “It breaks my heart to think of everything I missed.”
It’s not her fault she never knew me. It’s that fucking Nikki.
“Can’t we go home now?” she says.
“Of course we can,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I got quiet like that. Nothing you can do to change the past. What’s done is done. You have to live in the present.”
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she says.
“Told me what?” I say, and she says, “About her and Kyle. But she didn’t love him. You should know that.”
“What about you?” I say. “Did you love him?”
She looks at me with her bottom lip puffed out and trembly.
“I miss him so much,” she says.
“But you got me now,” I say, trying to tamp down the hatred. “Right?”
I hold her crying against me like that, the waves washing over our bare feet.
“Ain’t that just like the guiding hand,” I say, “bringing your real daddy back when the fake one’s checked out.”
“I want to go home,” she says. “Can’t we go home now?”
“Of course we can,” I say, leading her toward the car, thinking maybe I will kill her. Maybe I just will. If my mother was alive, there wouldn’t be a question about it. Kill her and take Alina to Waco to be raised up right. Away from Nikki’s poison.
She sniffles beside me as we walk the beach. I hand her my bandana to blow her nose into, just like her daddy, not caring about her snot smeared on my handkerchief. But it seems like Puerto Rico might not be the best place to finish raising her. It don’t really matter what I decide or don’t decide, though. The hand will decide for all of us. I don’t want to let my emotions get the better of me—especially my love for Alina, which has been with me nearly all my life, certainly all of hers, from the minute I felt her being born all them years ago at Huntsville. I got to keep my head, even if her lying bitch of a mother does deserve to die. Mostly, I don’t want to hurt her more than she’s already been hurt. A girl needs her mother. But leaving her with Nikki might just hurt her worse in the long run.
Still, it don’t seem right to leave all that money on the table. Kill her now or kill her later, only the hand can decide. You don’t want to walk away from money you’re owed though, justice always such a tricky thing to figure out.
Alina climbs inside herself on the ride back to Long Beach and Nikki’s fate, not talking much, a little ungrateful, really, everything her family’s been through, everything I’ve tried to bring her. It’s not her fault, though. Maybe being reunited with her daddy after all this time is too much for her. Maybe the kindest thing would be to put her back with her mama where she belongs. It’s like she’s pouting, though, something I can hardly tolerate. I know she’s tired, but that don’t mean she should be ungrateful. And who’s the one been up two days without sleep? Who’s the one got a right to be tired, all the work I put in? She pouts on the seat beside me till I can hardly stand the silence.
“So you really liked that Kyle,” I say, “huh?”
She bursts into tears beside me, her face in her hands, bawling.
I pull to the side of the road and scoot over and hold her as she bawls and shakes against me. Even though she’s holding on to me as she cries, I can hardly contain my hatred for that cocksucker Nikki’s been fucking behind my back, even if he is dead. And Alina so ungrateful after everything I done for her, for all of them, everything Nikki’s done against us. I don’t know what the guiding hand will do with any of us once I see that bitch, but I hope it does decide to kill her. Alina cries and holds on to me, her hands on my back the only thing keeping me from crushing her here and now, her hands on my back even as she denies me with her tears for that asshole, Kyle, and I just don’t know how much more denial I can tolerate, praying to the hand she don’t become another whore of Babylon like her mother, even if that’s what they all become sooner or later. But telling myself, She’s your daughter, your daughter, your baby girl, even as she denies and denies and denies me.
31
Mark
I end up in an apartment over a decaying garage in Hempstead with a dirtbag named Stan, figuring I’d better actually buy some blow before mentioning the gun, Stan repeatedly telling me what good people my cousin is as he weighs out an eight ball at the kitchen table.
“Jack ever tell you about the time I ripped off a Dairy Barn,” Stan says, “way the fuck out in Shirley?”
I shake my head, but I’m thinking the more criminal Stan is the better.
“You don’t want to shit in your own backyard,” he says, pouring coke onto a mirror from what must be a two ounce bag. “I’ll give you a taste,” he says.
I don’t want a taste. A taste is the last thing I want. I’ve only got two hours to get back to Nikki’s place, convince her the new plan will work, and hide myself. I don’t need to be any more wired than I already am. Or maybe I do.
“We were way the fuck out at Smith Point,” he says. “I told Jack that beach ain’t shit when you got Jones Beach or Robert Moses so much closer, but he was seeing this skank from East Patchogue, so of course he drags me all the way out there.”
He hands me a metal straw. I lower my face and snort a long rail, what seems like a quarter gram.
“You ever been out there?” he says.
I hand him the straw and feel the drip.
“Way out by Moriches? You know—where that plane crashed and everything? It’s a cover up, you know, flight 800 or whatever. You know that?”
He does two lines rapidly, one for each nostril, then pops up from the mirror, grinning. “Some good shit, no?”
“Really good,” I say.
“My uncle knows this guy,” Stan says, “who’s out in Moriches Bay that night and seen a cigarette boat launch the missile. Thought it was fireworks—couldn’t even see the plane, until it blew up right over him and started raining shit down, body parts and seat cushions and all kinds of
shit. Like Hiro-fucking-shima, man. That exactly what he said.”
The coke runs through me, cranking me up.
“Hiro-fucking-shima,” Stan says, twisting the baggy and tossing it across the table. I hand him the money.
“There’s this other thing,” I say, “you could maybe help me with,” and when he rattles off a list of guns he can probably get and their approximate prices, I want to kiss his dirtbag face. And when I say I need the gun now, like right now, he says he can probably get it in an hour.
“Don’t think I do this for anyone,” he says. “And it’s gonna cost. The piece, plus my time and risk. Let me see what I can do—”
“But I need it now.”
“Settle down, bro,” he says. “I hear you. Come back in an hour. And tell Jackie to stop by when he’s back on the Island. What am I, just criminal element to him now?”
Nikki
“I need the money now,” I tell him.
“I’m working on it,” he says. “I’ll be there in time. But if I’m not, do you have any cash—something to give him while you wait for me?”
I walk to my car, looking all around for somebody watching. Even though I know Burke’s probably lying, I can’t take any chances. I get the fifteen thousand from the bank and drive home, still seeing no one—time like a sludge I’m wading through. I put the money in a black vinyl bag with a flap and wrap the bundle with twine, focused, knowing I can handle Burke, reaching for the relief that washed over me when I heard Alina’s voice on the phone, saying to myself over and over, She’s alive. I place the money in the crisper drawer of the fridge and call Mark, but he still doesn’t have it.
“If you’re late,” I say, “you’re going to have to call. You can’t just walk in here. He might think you’re a cop. If you’re late—”
“I’m not going to be late.”
“You can’t just walk in here,” I say. “That guy—whoever—may be watching.”
“I can sneak in the back,” he says. “I can leave the money somewhere.”
“In the freezer,” I say. “But you can’t stay here. And you can’t let anyone see you or hear you when you come in.”
“They didn’t see me when I snuck out,” he says. “He called after I left, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So I can sneak back in.”
“But he might—”
“We’re going to have to see how it goes. I’m getting the money right now, so I have to go. Okay? But I’ll be there in a while. And I’ll make sure nobody knows.”
If he’s late, I don’t want him to see what I might have to do.
But I’m so grateful. More than grateful. And maybe he’ll understand if something happens and I have to do something. Because I trust him. Maybe I really do trust him. But then I have to move the money, because I’m afraid Burke will kill me when I reach to grab it from the fridge with my back to him.
Thinking, Alina, then pushing it away.
Trying to make myself empty.
I open the bag and look at the money, because I’ve already scattered everything I can think of as a weapon everywhere.
I can’t catch my breath.
The sunlight in the kitchen is too bright and too dull.
Because it’s almost time.
Trying not to think she’s dead.
That I talked to her and then he killed her.
I’ll take her raped and beaten if she’s alive. I’ll take her any way I can get her.
But if he’s hurt her, I’ll kill him. That’s what I have to contain.
If he hasn’t hurt her . . . I’ll. . . .
Breathe.
Like labor.
I retie the money bag and drop it in the center of the kitchen table.
I don’t know how or where to place myself for their arrival.
And once I get what I want. . . .
I walk to the living room, stick my head out the screen door.
Because I’m stronger than he is.
Walk back to the kitchen.
Because the only thing he has to lose is his miserable, worthless life.
I open a beer and try to drink.
I can’t scare Alina. Can’t show her more than she’s already seen.
And if she honestly believes he’s her father. . . .
The beer wants to come back up.
I’ll tell her the whole story, not caring anymore what she knows or doesn’t know. As long as she’s alive.
A car door slams.
I walk to the window, but it’s just Mrs. Hansen, across the street.
My hands shaking.
He said they’d be here at five.
All of me shaking.
That I was to treat this like a reunion.
The hard part will be making Alina believe. She’ll want to see love.
It’s four-fifty-two.
But once I know she’s okay, I can make myself do anything. Show her whatever she needs to see.
It’s been four-fifty-two for an hour.
I realize I’m not dressed for the occasion, panic, and run upstairs to put on my new, black, funeral dress.
When I walk out of my closet, pulling the dress over my head, he’s at the door to my room with a gun in his hand, grinning.
My stomach turning inside out.
“Nikki,” he says. “We finally meet.”
All this ice in me.
“Where’s Alina?” I say.
I forget to breathe.
Forget everything.
“Where’s Alina?”
“Go on and pull that dress back off,” he says. “I think I like you better without it.”
Mark
I can only get four hundred from the ATM and Stan wants twelve. I give him the Rolex David Lambert gave me after the ’98 recount.
He studies it, considering.
“It’s real,” I tell him.
He turns it over in his hand.
“Come on, man,” I say. “That’s worth at least three grand, maybe four. And I’m coming back tomorrow, maybe tonight, with the cash.”
“I’ll hold the watch,” he says, “Until you bring the money. But this ain’t a fucking pawn shop.”
Nikki seemed better when I talked to her on the phone, more self-contained, but deeper inside herself too, focused on what’s in front of her. Maybe too focused, like she could fall all the way into whatever she’s becoming and never crawl out.
Stan hands me a nine millimeter pistol with two extra clips in pouches on the band of a shoulder holster, loaded.
He shows me how to pop the clip, how to pull the slide to chamber a round, where the safety is.
“Those are hollow points,” he says. “So you can expect a good size hole out the back of whatever you hit.”
He wipes the gun with a dishtowel and hands it to me butt first, the towel still wrapped around the barrel in his grip. “Don’t do anything stupid with this,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, but he won’t let go.
“I don’t care if you’re Jack’s cousin or not—if this comes back to me. . . .”
“It won’t.”
“Get your finger away from the trigger,” he says. “Even if the safety’s on, you don’t put your finger near the trigger. Holster it.”
I put the gun in the holster, the holster in the grocery bag.
“Don’t show it unless you’re going to use it,” Stan says. “Do you understand? They’ll take it away and shoot you. If you show it, you better have the nerve.”
He hands me the metal straw and nods toward the mirror on the table. I lean down and snort one line and then another.
“Thanks, man,” I say, and Stan says, “God bless.”
I chamber a round in the car, but leave the safety on. The gun�
��s heavier than I thought it would be.
“Hit him in the chest,” I imagine Kyle saying. “You want a big target.”
“The balls,” Cynthia says. “Blow his balls off.”
I chew the insides of my cheeks as I crawl back down to Long Beach through rush hour traffic. Wondering if I have the nerve.
“You do,” Cynthia says. “Of course you do.”
“You can do it,” Kyle says.
“Take a deep breath before you pull the trigger,” Cynthia says. “And hold it.”
“Squeeze gently,” Kyle says, “as you exhale.”
I still hate him. But less.
Maybe I should hate him more, for encouraging me to kill somebody—setting me up for prison.
Not that I plan on killing anyone.
I just need to hold him for the cops.
I cross the bridge over the bay into Long Beach.
“Of course you’ll kill him,” Cynthia says. “You heard what Stan said. Don’t show the gun unless you’re going to use it. Do it for her and her kid.”
There’s a car parked on the street in front of her house.
I drive past, turn the corner and park.
I check the chamber again, but leave the safety on. I’m good at this kind of thing, I remind myself, slinking up the sidewalk toward her house—good at fixing things. But I’m carrying the holstered gun in a grocery bag.
I walk back to the car, dump the bag, unholster the gun, and jam it in my pants like a television killer, hoping I don’t blow my own balls off.
Trying to be as strong and focused as Nikki.
“Do it for the baby,” Cynthia says. “Do it for everyone.”
32
Cash
I didn’t know how hurt I was, shock maybe, though the sting where Nikki stabbed me started to rise and radiate as I made my way to the big house on Duval, the seat of my shorts soaked with blood. The place was empty. If I had my mother’s gun, I would have gone back and finished it once and for all for the both of us. But I didn’t have a gun. I wrapped a bag of ice with a dishtowel and laid against it on the basement couch, chasing Percocets with whiskey until the pain started to back off and I drifted away, Nikki finally floating through the haze and hovering over me like a dream, here and then gone, the fight draining out as we studied each other in the dim light from the stairs.