King's War

by Maurice Broaddus

"What you mean?" Wayne passed a bowl of mashed potatoes.

  "He stays up in his crib. Avoids us."

  "You know why?"

  "Cause of… how things went down. You know how tight he was with King."

  "Yeah. I keep meaning to check in on him," Wayne said.

  "Someone ought to. He up in his room all day."

  "He back with Big Momma?"

  "Naw, he on his own." Rhianna piled salad on her plate. "He's just sort of… lost… without King."

  King's personal mission, Prez, had come far, too. He'd fallen into drugs, but King walked with him through his addiction to the other side. Addicts could always find one another, like they had a radar for that weakness.

  Despite the familiar sickness in his stomach, Fathead still chased after his high. Though he remembered the first time he got high with crystal clarity – a memory driven home by the fact that he had sex for the first time while high – the rest of that summer he could barely recall. Not feeling whole, he doubted himself. But when he smoked marijuana, it was like aspirin for the soul and fixed the ache for a while. The shameful things he had to do to earn only gave him more of a reason to get that high. Shooting up was the next obvious progression. The first time he shot up, he shot his load straight into his muscle. It burned so badly, he didn't think he'd walk again. Luckily, he had internet access and taught himself how to properly shoot up. Setting up his rig, he located a vein on his wrist and got off. The high was perfection. Effortless. For the first time, he knew wholeness. All his hopes, dreams, and worries faded; fear no longer consumed him. Life suddenly worked. A few hours later, it was over and he was scared again. After that, it was a short trip to the land of an addict's broken promises and second/third/fourth chances: snorting crystals up his nose, drunk on Stoli, stoned on Ambien stolen from rehab, breaking into his parents' house, and writing checks to himself.

  Fathead plopped down on the couch in what passed for a living room in the Outreach Inc house. He shifted without purpose, not quite knowing what to do with himself. His family didn't exactly sit around discussing the day's events with one another, so he withdrew from the dining room table, unsure what to do with himself. His hands found a pencil next to a notepad on the coffee table beside him. Without asking whose pad it was, he began to doodle his name on the pad. An ornate "F" as if he sketched what a tag of his name might look like.

  "Man, look at you. You about as uncomfortable as a fat man adjusting his thong." Wayne walked over to him. "Want me to hook up the games?"

  "I don't even recognize that gaming system. This shit should be in a museum." Fathead covered his mouth in a "my bad" gesture for cussing.

  "It's free. It's here. And your alternative is sitting on the couch staring at nothing."

  Their Nintendo 64 couldn't exactly compete with the latest game system, but it had been donated to the house, in that way rich folks gave away their "old" things when they got the latest model. Part of him chided himself for being so constantly cynical. It wasn't as if he wasn't called to love the wealthy also, but somehow it was so much harder for him. He hated the waste, the excess, the sense of entitlement. Life was simple and was to be lived simply. Plus, he grew up with this game system, so he could beat any of the kids on the games.

  Fathead picked out a hunting game that came with guns that plugged directly into the television. Spreading his legs shoulder-length apart, he relaxed his knees to squat low. He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and turned his gun sideways. He twisted his right and then left, popping the joints in his neck, then nodded to Wayne.

  Wayne did a sly double-take, staring at the boy like he was a damn fool. "Does the mask help?"

  "I'm more into it." Fathead raised the mask. "You know they call me 'Wolf', right."

  "Thought they called you 'Fathead'."

  "That too. See, I used to raise timber wolves on my uncle's property. One day, when we were out hunting on his property – man must have a thousand acres – we found a litter. The mother had been shot dead. So we decided to raise the litter. Sold all of them but one off. My uncle decided to keep that one for himself. Probably how I got such a good sense of smell."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This one time I was standing downtown on the circle, I turned to my friends and was like 'Dude, I can smell Noles from here. He's on his way.' Now Noles stay down on Washington and Lynhurst, and sure enough, two and a half hours later, he came walking up. I smelled him just as he was leaving the house."

  "You use the truth interesting ways." Wayne hit start on the game.

  During the course of the next hour, Fathead claimed to be a trained martial artist and having died and been brought back five times in one night. What Wayne had been able to glean from the endless stream of BS that flew out of his mouth was that Fathead sold weed and hung out with a rougher set than he intended, who attacked him a few times. And trouble always followed him.

  Percy, hanging a few steps away from everyone else, hid on the couch. Where the spread of light from the lamps failed to blanket. He loved many of the people in this room, Rhianna, Wayne, and Esther especially, but he sat on the fringe of them as if an invisible wedge separated him. A recurring dream troubled him in ways he didn't understand and couldn't articulate. At first he thought about how his friends all seemed beset by disturbing dreams which set them on edge. But his dream came from a different place. The images stayed with him during the day. No one noticed his odd posture, shoulders pulled in, a large man tucking his body within itself if possible.

  A ruined church, a place of hope reduced to a darkened chamber. Overturned pews and a broken altar, the hall lit by the suffuse light of dimming candles. A boy came in holding a white gun – a pearl-white hand grip, white shaft – on a velvet pillow. He passed in front of a fire. Two boys each carried stands of ten candles. A young girl, in his heart he wanted her to be Rhianna, came in holding a cup. The cup was pure gold inlaid with precious stones. Percy knelt before the cup, ready to drink. The liquid burned like fire and tasted of ash. Then he'd wake up.

  The familiar sickness rose in Fathead's stomach and threw his game off. Eating probably wasn't the best idea, but he didn't know when he'd next have a proper meal. He hoped that something sweet would take the edge off his pain. As if she knew, Rhianna brought him a plate with two pieces of pie on it. He was struck by how sweet his fellow users were. That was, when they weren't scheming to take each other off. Unlike Rhianna, who had her baby to give her a reason, he was afraid to come off the drugs. Bad as things got, despite the terrible things he had to do to earn, the only times he truly felt worthless were when he didn't have a girlfriend. He'd go home when he ran out of options. Then it occurred to him that he had no idea what movies were out, what television shows were on or if a new war had broken out. That world didn't matter.

  A coiled threat waiting to spring, Tristan waited beside Iz's bed, her knee bouncing with its own energy as she ground her teeth. The room door remained closed as she waited for a doctor to make her appearance. This was not how she wanted to spend another evening. She missed the days of sitting on the floor between Iz's too-skinny, white-girl legs, Iz's fingers scraping the jar of hair-braiding oil, foraging for it to give up the last of its contents. Not that Iz was all that skilled at braiding hair, but her touch was intimate and knowing, her very presence reassuring.

  Tristan shifted in the uncomfortable green vinyl chair, which had no give to it so she never found a sweet spot she could rest in. Her black hoodie covered her crest of mauve-dyed braids and shadowed most of her face. She filled the seat with her bigboned frame, though she didn't have a trace of fat. Amber eyes with gold flecks took in the features of her beloved while she slept.

  "You about to jump out of your skin." Iz toted an IV stand behind her as she baby-stepped from the bathroom to her bed. A tattoo of a dragon on the base of her back on full display within the flimsy hospital robe. The fabric of the sheets scraped against her thin skin and she winced. Tristan flinched in her seat, ready to boun
d to help, but Iz waved her off.

  "Just anxious is all."

  "It'll be all right. I'll be all right."

  "Look at you. A good breeze could bowl you over."

  "Doctors said I'd be fitten to get out of here in a day."

  "Shouldn't have been here in the first place."

  "I said I was sorry."

  "Shit. No, baby," Tristan slipped onto the edge of Iz's bed with a tenderness that belied her stocky frame, more built for fighting than nursing. "I wasn't blaming you. I was thinking of Mulysa. He did this to you."

  He did other things, too. Maybe. It was all such a haze to Iz. Her head pounded and her vision blurred.

  Though always on the scrawny side, Iz's body had shrunk down to a prisoner-of-war thinness. Her sunken cheekbones framed her face, a long nose embedded with a stud appeared more so against the hollow pits of her eyes. The dye of her black hair slowly faded revealing her natural brown hair. Picking at her skin, she caught sight of Tristan's disapproving gaze and tried to find something else to do with her hands. And not think about the terrible burrowing beneath her skin. She wondered if Tristan understood her shame, as she spent so much time in the bathroom picking pellets out of her ass because her body was no longer producing stool.

  The first time she smoked pot, she was nine. In the fugue state of her relapse into drug use, she accidently shot up the piece of cotton drawn into her needle. The ride felt like she'd fallen head first onto the sidewalk from five stories up. She remembered throwing up until she blacked out. And Mulysa's hands exploring her. The room spun.

  Without warning, Iz sprang out of bed with no trace of recognition in her eyes, and she lunged at Tristan. The first swipe caught the meat of Tristan's cheek, the scratch drawing blood. Tristan cocked a ready fist to defend herself, a survival reflex, but caught herself. This wasn't the first time Iz had flipped out, a kind of psychotic break. Tristan backed away, hands held out as non-threatening as possible.

  "Iz, baby, this isn't you. It's me, Trys. I love you, baby."

  Iz chased after her, a glare somewhere between fury and pain, biting at her and arms flailing. Tristan grabbed her arms and wrapped around her as best she could.

  "Come back to me. It's okay."

  Exhausting her spindly frame rapidly, Iz heard her, the light of familiarity filling her eyes again, and they collapsed onto the floor.

  "What'd you do to yourself, girl?" Tristan whispered, closing her eyes to press back the tears.

  Her dad had died from years of alcohol abuse when his liver gave out. Or maybe it was the pills. Iz was too little to remember, and her mother never had a good memory to share of him. Destruction was in Iz's nature. She once took a pair of scissors and tore up all the clothes in her babysitter's closet. This made it hard to find babysitters, not that it stopped her mother from going out. Her mother once abandoned her for two days. It was the first time Child Protective Services was called for her. Mother always left her to go somewhere to cop the best drugs, and she was only about the best. She strung together boyfriends based on who dealt the best stuff. When the school needed to get a hold of her, Iz gave them the cell phone number of her mother's dealer. And when she was out of money and her body was used up, she sold one of her other daughters. That was the last time CPS was called on her mother.

  Iz remembered her first stint at rehab. She wasn't ready yet but the court mandated a stint at the Beacon House. When they found her, she had a spray can pressed to her face as she huffed in the janitorial closet. She ran away soon after. When Tristan found her in the alley, a prostitute beaten and left for dead, but still dragging herself along the gravel by her fingers toward her dealer, then she had bottomed out. Tristan sat beside her during the worst of it then. Tristan sent her to school and kept anyone who might distract her from her dreams at bay. And it was Tristan whose anger burned so hot her embrace was like a cauldron. "Someone has to give Mulysa what he deserves."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Not one for existential considerations, Lee McCarrell hated the vague ache in his chest, as if he'd been hollowed out, as he pulled into the abandoned bank parking lot. A piece of hot tail reduced him to his high school days of bad poetry and rubbing his joint by moonlight, pining away for cheerleaders who didn't notice him. Every fiber in him called him the damned fool, the played-out simp, obsessing over a girl. A girl. An errant piece of pussy had him all twisted up inside and chasing after even the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Though, truth be told, it was a fine line between being led by his heart and being led by his dick. For the last few nights he'd made it part of his routine to pass the empty building as often as possible, no better than going by the cheerleader's locker after every class. If a body dropped or he had a run, if he had a lunch break or simply took lost time, he drove by. Across from the Phoenix Apartments, it was a known haunt for prostitutes, but there was only one working girl he was interested in.

  Omarosa.

  An atrophied brick husk of a building, the drivethrough an easy shelter from the rain, the alcove an easy place to ditch one's works, the overgrown bushes a place to store a change of clothes, and the front exposed to a full view of 38th Street and the Phoenix Apartments. The bank building fell into disrepair once the branch had been sold from one big-name bank to another. And the "another" decided a branch across from the Phoenix Apartments, in such a high-crime, high-risk, high-insurance area, wasn't very profitable.

  A lone woman paced the sidewalk like a panther trapped in a too-confining cage. Sleek, angry, muscles coiled and ready to pounce, only the slightest lock of her head betrayed that she knew he was near. He slammed the car into park and stepped out as coolly as his anxious heart allowed. He stopped to light a cigarette to force him to wait or at least not immediately dash over like a strungout school boy. Crossing the lot with a determined stride, he marched with a rapid pace undercutting his air of cool control. His gaze looked on hers, neither flush nor anxious, oblivious to being the only white boy out walking the streets, marking him as either cop, fiend, or fool.

  "Been a minute," Omarosa said with an aristocratic air despite her black halter top over a blue jean skirt, which had a set of handcuffs dangling between two loops. A blade clung to her inner thigh, a deucy deucy in her purse, and a shotgun in the bushes, all within easy reach. Lee's usefulness had about come to an end and she prepared to discard him the way this age discarded magic.

  "I ain't see you around, thought I'd chance swinging by one of your spots."

  "You were lucky I didn't mind being found." A nest of fine braids, not a hair out of place, lined her head. Skin the color of overcreamed coffee, she possessed high cheekbones and a long, Aquiline nose. Her eyes had a winsome slant to them. However, her pointed ears betrayed the fact that the blood of the fey ran through her veins. She brushed close to him, perfectly aware of the effect her presence had on him. Her musk intoxicated him and she stepped nearer to allow him to feel the heat of her proximity.

  "What are you up to?"

  "Hunting."

  "Hunting what?" Lee tired of her games, though not to the point where he would risk having her leave his bed. She was his ears and eyes to the streets. All gained through whispers between his sheets. She read things and had a view not even the most seasoned cop could. Her intel and insight made him a god in the gang task force. Too onpoint, he determined, to not be mixed up in it somehow. But he pursued a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as her info led to busts which kept him too useful to fire. Still, even the best runs came to an eventual end. As she lost interest in him, reading the streets became like him fumbling over Braille. And Omarosa could easily go too far.

  "Who."

  "Hunting who?"

  "The slayer of my brother, Colvin," Her voice was husky and feminine, sultry with a hint of threat.

  "You looking for Baylon?" It was the name she uttered the last time she'd spurned his advances. "Word has it that he's holed up with Dred. Ain't left the man's side like he's a newborn after some tit. Or else he knows you
out here waiting for him. So why not lay low" (with me) "and wait for him to pop his head up when he thinks it's safe?"

  "You don't understand our ways. My brother needed to be put down like the rabid beast he'd become. But honor demanded it be by someone whose hand was worthy."

  "Like King?"

  "As you say. Not the dog of a scoundrel."

  "Like Dred." Lee struggled to connect the players in this puzzle. Unlike Cantrell, he wasn't that kind of cop. He needed a door to crash through or a head to bust. "I don't know why you're so worked up. It's not like you had any love for him."

  "Love isn't the point. He was of the fey. That motherfucker Baylon needs to get got. The longer I have to wait, the worse it will be for him."

  "I don't give a fuck who he was of. You don't get to 'hunt' on my watch."

  Omarosa's eyes narrowed. That was the only warning Lee had, not that it did any good. Gone were the moments of a cat toying with a wounded bird, which was the normal thrill of her encounters with him. Gone were the ideas of using him to misdirect police attentions or gleaning information about police investigations. Gone was any of the cool numbness which passed for affection from her. All she had was rage. She stabbed her elbow into the side of his neck, then administered a double-palm heel blow to both ears. His arms lashed about, stunned and grabbing the air for purchase. Omarosa grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and drew him near.