Three-Fifths

by John Vercher

  “I’m fucking starving,” he said. “Oh, shit. Let’s hit the dirty ‘O’.”

  Bobby groaned. Aaron knew he hated the Original Hot Dog Shop. It was the only place open after the bars let out. Drunken college kids and the gangbangers from the nearby neighborhoods swarmed for forties, five-dollar pizzas, and bags of greasy fries as big as a grown man’s head. But the streets of Oakland were near empty. The college kids had gone home for spring break. It was the last place he wanted to go, but Aaron seemed so excited. He had always lived for their food, especially drunk, which he was, and Bobby imagined how good it might taste for him tonight of all nights.

  “Fuck. Okay.”

  “Really?” Aaron asked.

  “I know I’m going to regret it, but yeah, let’s do it. You said it yourself, how many times is my best friend going to get out of prison? Those fries are going to mess up your new girlish figure, though.”

  “Fucking A,” he said. The smile now big, his eyes tight and bright.

  Bobby parked on Bouquet less than a half block back from the corner where the “O” sat. Light from the neon sign filled the truck and bathed them both in red. Aaron opened his door, but Bobby stayed put.

  “What are you doing?” Aaron asked.

  “It’s freezing,” Bobby said. “Get what you want, I’ll keep the truck running.”

  “Okay. While I’m in there, I’ll see if they have pads in the bathroom for your vagina.”

  “Oh, fuck you, man,” Bobby forced another laugh and turned off the engine.

  “Atta boy.”

  The air inside tasted like the bathrooms looked to Bobby. As much as he wanted to do this for Aaron, his Spider-sense tingled and he wanted to go back to the truck even more. Then he saw why.

  Two young black men sat at a table near the counter. One had his head down and looked passed out, an almost empty forty at his elbow. He wore a blue stocking cap, and a thick blue flannel coat. A uniform Bobby knew far too well in Homewood, and the inside of his mouth went dry. The other heaped fries into his mouth and sucked down pop from a plastic 32-ounce cup. No colors on him. Only a tan sweatshirt with a lined hood and dark blue jeans. He looked younger than both Bobby and Aaron, but he eyed the two of them hard as soon as they walked in. Under the fluorescent lights Bobby saw clearly for the first time that night what doubtless the kid did as well.

  Aaron’s tattoos.

  Double lightning bolts on his shoulders. An Iron Eagle where his collar bones met.

  Spiderwebs on both elbows.

  “Jesus,” Bobby whispered to himself.

  Bobby stood behind Aaron as he ordered at the register. He heard the kid at the table suck his teeth in disgust.

  “Some mark-ass busters up in this piece tonight,” he said. Bobby pretended not to hear and stole what he thought was a surreptitious look over his shoulder. The kid met his eyes before Bobby spun his head forward again. “Yeah, you hear me talking,” he said.

  Bobby stared at Aaron’s wide back. Aaron either didn’t hear or didn’t care and continued to place their order.

  “Where you get them spiderwebs, huh?” the kid asked Aaron. “In the joint, right? Guess you a hard rock.”

  Aaron turned around to look at Bobby and smiled.

  Don’t smile, please don’t smile. Why the fuck are you smiling?

  He slapped Bobby on the stomach with the back of his hand.

  “Got to piss,” he said. “Be right back.”

  “What? No,” he said. “Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave—" but Aaron walked off. The old man behind the counter scooped floppy fries into a white bag until it wouldn’t close, dotting it with translucent grease spots. Bobby darted quick glances over his shoulder to see if the kid was still watching.

  He was. His boy next to him remained half-conscious, but stirred. Aaron came back from the bathroom as the old man slid the pizza and fries across the counter.

  “We good? Can we go now?” Bobby said.

  “What, we’re not gonna eat here?”

  “What?”

  “Relax,” Aaron said. “Pay and let’s go.”

  “Very funny,” Bobby said as he slid his money across the counter.

  “Bitch ass motherfucker,” the kid said to Aaron.

  Aaron laughed. A chair scraped against the floor. The kid was right behind them. He was taller than Aaron, but slender. His face was lean, the skin pulled tight on the bone beneath.

  Bobby’s heart pounded and he felt the familiar pressure of an approaching asthma attack filling up the spaces in his chest.

  “I say something funny?” the kid said to the back of Aaron’s head. Aaron turned, food in hand and looked up at the kid. “What?” the kid said. “Yeah, I know what those tattoos mean, and no, I’m not scared of you. Y’all lucky my boy sleeping.” He popped his shoulders at Aaron.

  Aaron didn’t flinch and smiled at him.

  “Excuse us, please,” Aaron said. He sidestepped the kid and Bobby followed close behind. Thank Christ. They headed for the door.

  “That’s what I thought,” the kid said. “Get the hell up out of here.”

  So close. They were almost out.

  Aaron’s hand was on the handle. He let go and turned back to the dining room. He put his tongue inside his upper lip and made monkey noises while he gave the kid the finger. Bobby pushed him out, but he already heard the footsteps behind them.

  Aaron walked and Bobby pushed him again to rush him towards the truck. He took a few running steps then slowed again while he pushed a handful of fries into his mouth. The door of the “O” flung open and slammed off the wall.

  “You got jokes, huh?” the kid shouted. He ran at them. Bobby tried to take off but the sidewalk was slippery and he nearly fell. The kid caught up to him and grabbed the collar of

  Bobby’s jacket. Bobby yelled for Aaron, who now was running for the truck. Bobby panicked at Aaron’s sudden cowardice, frightened that he’d leave him to get pummeled or worse. Bobby pulled free of the kid’s grasp and bolted for the driver’s side of the truck. He jumped in and swung the door shut. The kid pounded on his window. Bobby started the truck, ready to floor it when he turned and saw Aaron wasn’t there, just the pizza box and fries spilled out across the seat. He looked up to see Aaron cross in front of the headlights, heading for the kid. The kid backed away from Bobby’s window, and he saw him motion for Aaron to bring it on. Bobby yelled for Aaron to stop. To come back and get in the truck. Then he saw the brick in his hand.

  Brick cracked bone and the kid collapsed, a marionette with cut strings. He heard his head smack against the sidewalk. Bobby grasped the door, breath fogging the window. He pulled back to wipe away the haze.

  Deep lines cleaved the flesh of the boy’s face, bloodless, until his mouth opened, gaping and silent. Then blood poured out of every cut. His boots churned the snow to dirty slush as he writhed. He moaned, quietly at first, then louder like an approaching siren. His arms trembled as he tried desperately to push himself up from the pavement. Bobby went to open his door, but he had locked it in his panic. As he found the switch and pulled on the handle, Aaron threw open the passenger door. Bobby jumped. Aaron dropped his brick on the floor in front of him.

  “Go, go, go,” he said.

  Aaron was breathing hard, but his voice was calm. His breath stunk of beer. Bobby forgot he’d already started the truck and the engine’s insides scraped when he turned the key again.

  The tires screeched as he took the corner onto Forbes Avenue. Aaron squeezed Bobby’s knee. “Slow down.”

  Aaron craned to look out the rear window while Bobby watched the rearview. The police station across the street often kept an empty patrol car parked outside as a deterrent. As they passed, the car didn’t move. No lights. No sirens. Bobby took a last look back and saw the door of the Original open before the neon lights disappeared from view.

  “Jesus, Aaron what the fuck did you do?” Bobby said. His breaths got shorter and his chest tingled, his asthma forming an iro
n lung around his airways, the spikes poking at his lungs. The deeper he tried to inhale, the harder it got to take another breath. He wheezed, reached inside his front jacket pocket and grabbed his inhaler, but dropped it on the floor. Aaron picked it up and held it out to him. The blood on his fingers smeared on the plastic case and Bobby wondered if it was Aaron’s or the kid’s. He stared at the inhaler in Aaron’s outstretched hand. Aaron saw the blood and wiped it off with the hem of his white ribbed tank top.

  “Shit,” he said. “Sorry. Fuck, I got it on your pants, too.”

  When he handed it back, the periphery of Bobby’s vision had already begun to blacken. He snatched it and took a deep puff. Aaron popped open the glove compartment and grabbed a pack of smokes. He held one out for Bobby while he pushed the lighter in on the console. Bobby reached for it and pinched it between his dried lips.

  “Fuck, man,” Bobby said. “What did you do? What did you do?”

  “You’re going to miss the turn. Up here.”

  The lighter popped. Aaron and Bobby reached for it at the same time but Aaron let him take it. Maybe if he jammed it into Aaron’s cheek, or better yet his eye, something soft and painful, whatever would give him enough time to get away, he’d jump out of the truck and let it swerve into a pole while he ran off into the night. He could hide out in St. Paul’s Cathedral and call the police.

  And tell them what?

  Tell them he took off and left some kid for dead, and by the way, the maniac that did it, he was too drunk to drive himself away from the scene of the crime, so guess who took care of that for him? They’d lock him up, too and he’d end up looking like Aaron did the day he went to visit him or worse yet, he’d get his skull smashed to shit like that kid he just left back there squirming on the sidewalk.

  That kid. Jesus, that was someone’s kid. Eighteen. Nineteen, maybe? Wouldn’t see his next birthday. Probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.

  Bobby imagined the boy’s mother. The police knocking on her door to tell her someone had caved her son’s head in with a brick and left him to die on the street. He thought of his own mother, Isabel, imagined her wails of grief, but all he could hear were the boy’s moans. Both her imagined cries and the boy’s real ones sounded like “why.”

  “You missed it,” Aaron said. Bobby blinked back a tear. “Take the next left.”

  The lighter wobbled as Bobby brought it to the tip of his cigarette. Aaron wrapped his fingers around Bobby’s hand to hold it still. Bobby felt the heat of the orange coil on his lips, breathed in the toasted tobacco as the end sizzled. His lungs felt stiff from the asthma attack and he hacked until he nearly gagged. He was grateful. It provided an excuse for the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Aaron wiped one away with a calloused thumb. Bobby smacked his hand.

  “Get the fuck off me,” he said.

  Aaron held his hands up in surrender, then gently took the lighter from Bobby’s hand. He lit up and cracked his window. Cold air leaked in as the smoke sucked out. He slid down in the seat and thumped a boot up on the dash. Aaron might have killed the kid, yet he reclined in his seat in a near post-coital glow. The Aaron Bobby knew, or rather the one he thought he knew, couldn’t have gotten laid if he paid for it. Buzzard-necked Aaron, a buck-thirty if he was a pound. Aaron, Bobby’s fellow comic-book nerd. His best friend, Aaron the wannabe. Aaron the wigger.

  Something had taken his place. His name. A pale imitation of his personality. Not him. A shaved head and combat boots with red laces replaced the baggy jeans and shell-top Adidas tennis shoes. The once-scrawny neck disappeared into his mountainous shoulders. Each time Bobby glanced at Aaron he tried to picture the boy he knew before he got locked up, hoped every blink would bring him out of some fever dream, sweating under the comforter, huddled up on his couch, but all he saw was that black kid’s face smashed to hell and his stomach turned.

  “Hang a right,” Aaron said.

  “Why?” Bobby asked.

  Aaron looked at Bobby with genuine confusion. “Because it’s the way to get to the apartment?” he asked.

  “You’re joking right now? You know what I mean! Why the fuck did you do that to that kid?”

  “Why? That kid grabbed you, and you’re asking me why? How many times, Bobby?” he asked. His upper lip pulled back from his teeth. “How many times did you have to save my ass from those fucking monkeys in high school? In the bathroom? In the parking lot? You remember that? Did you think I’d let that happen to you? Because it was about to.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But nothing. Jesus, dude, you told me yourself, over and over again. You remember that? I didn’t listen then, but I learned my lesson.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and leaned on the console next to Bobby, almost daring him to make eye contact. He cocked his head back towards the rear of the truck, gesturing to where they’d left the kid. “They’re animals, Bobby. And some animals need to be put down.”

  Bobby felt his face go flush. As he pulled on the wheel to make the turn, he remembered a different street.

  An alleyway, the one behind his Grandpap’s.

  His first fight, one he’d never forget, a story he’d never shared with Aaron, or anyone else. His face recalled the sting in his cheek, the way his own blood tasted like a penny in his mouth.

  He had been eleven years old.

  It was the first time he’d ever said the word “nigger.”

  The same day his mother had told him he was one.

  Aaron directed them to a dilapidated apartment building in North Oakland. He opened his door to get out, but Bobby stayed. He gripped the steering wheel and bounced his forehead against it. The smell of greasy fries and pizza filled the cab and made him more nauseated. When Aaron got out, he’d floor it, drive to the police station and turn himself and Aaron in.

  But it was Aaron’s truck, and he had driven away from the scene of a crime.

  I left that kid there to die.

  A tear spattered on his leg where Aaron’s hand had left a bloody fingerprint when he’d squeezed his knee. Aaron closed his door.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “I didn’t plan for that to happen.”

  “You killed him, Aaron. You fucking killed him.”

  “What did you want me to do? He was coming after you.”

  “Because of you.”

  “Oh, come on, man. That was nothing. He didn’t have to step to us like that.”

  Bobby turned, his forehead still pressed to the steering wheel, and squinted at Aaron through bleary eyes. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.

  “What if he’d had a gun, Bobby? You think of that?”

  “He was a kid, Aaron. Just a punk kid.”

  “And nobody’s going to give a shit. You know what, man. This is the same bullshit from high school. You don’t appreciate shit, and you’re starting to piss me off. Let’s go. Grab the food. I’m fucking starving.”

  Aaron jumped out of the truck slammed the door shut behind him. Bobby flinched, and peeled his forehead away from the steering wheel. He took measured breaths and rationalized. How would he explain his part in this? It wasn’t his truck, but Aaron was drunk. Aaron forced him into this. But he didn’t even have a gun, a knife, anything that would make the cops believe he’d threatened Bobby into cooperating. Aaron tapped on the glass and shouted a muffled “let’s go.” Bobby knew there had to be a way out of this, but not now. He’d provoked Aaron without even meaning to, and if he even began to suspect that Bobby might turn them in, who was to say he wouldn’t end up like the kid.

  Wait a minute. This is the same kid who barely broke one-hundred and fifteen pounds with his clothes soaking wet. I’m afraid of him?

  But he was. He was terrified. He grabbed the pizza and fries and followed.

  The third floor hallway of the building reeked of weed. A bass-heavy rap track bounced off the cracked plaster walls. The source of everything was a door at the end of the hall. Bobby tilted his head at Aaron, curious as to their destination. Aaron slapped at
the door with his open palm. Nothing. He cursed under his breath and pounded. The music quieted. The pinhole of light in the fisheye went black. A chain slid. The deadbolt clicked.

  A baby-faced white kid with close-cropped blond hair, no older than the one they’d left in the street, opened the door. He slapped hands with Aaron, then pulled him in for a half-hug. He had to go up on his toes to reach Aaron’s broad shoulders. He wore a long basketball jersey over camouflage pants tucked into a pair of Docs with red laces, just like Aaron’s. When he thumped Aaron on the back, Bobby saw a swastika on the back of his hand and felt what was becoming an all-too familiar lump in his throat return. The young skinhead eyed Bobby standing in the doorway holding the pizza and fries like some kind of lost delivery boy.

  “Who’s the guinea?” he asked Aaron.

  “Easy, Cort,” Aaron replied. “It’s Cort, right?” The kid nodded. “He’s cool.”

  Cort nodded toward the living room and signaled for Bobby to enter. He grabbed the pizza from Bobby and immediately helped himself to a limp slice, dangling it over his open mouth as he dropped down on the puke green couch. A .22 sat next to a four-footer on the glass coffee table in front of him. Aaron pointed at the gun.

  “That me?” he asked.

  Cort nodded and took a deep hit from the bong. Aaron picked up the gun and inspected it before he tucked it in the back of his waistband as if it was something he’d always done. He pulled back the blinds from a window and peered down into the street. Cort exhaled a cloud of smoke and coughed fitfully as he turned the volume back up on the episode of “Yo! MTV Raps.” Aaron turned and glared at him.

  “The fuck you looking at, yo?” Cort asked.

  “Yo?” Aaron said, then laughed, disgusted. “What do you think your uncle Hank would say if he heard you talking that nonsense? Caught you watching this garbage?”

  “Yeah, well, his dumb-ass is still locked up isn’t he? So he ain’t saying shit.”

  Aaron walked to the couch and stood over Cort.

  “Say something smart about him again.” Aaron reached behind his back and gripped the gun. “Go on.”