Hold Me Down

by Calvin Slater

  Un-freakin’-believable, Xavier thought. This had to be a sign from the Lord, Xavier figured. He was on probation and if the cops had been called out, more than likely he would’ve been in violation and sentenced to do a stretch in juvie. Heather had to go. He was a junior with not much longer to go before graduation. He had come too far to be stopped by a cute mental case with gorgeous hair and a banging body.

  Heather was off the chain, and at the rate Xavier was going he wouldn’t have to worry about Slick Eddie’s hitters popping him out. He was sure to get that if he’d stayed around her craziness any longer.

  “Would you like me to drive you to emergency?” Heather asked sadly, still sniffling.

  Xavier didn’t have to drop any thought into his reply. “Hell nah!” He gently touched the golf-ball-size lump on the side of his noggin. “Drop me off where you picked me up. You’ve done enough for—I mean to me for one day.”

  Heather made a right turn onto the service drive.

  She instantly started apologizing. “I’m sorry for my behavior this evening.”

  “I don’t know what is going on inside of that head of yours, baby girl. But it’s too much for me. I have my own problems.”

  Heather successfully merged into the middle lane of the Southfield Freeway. “Please, don’t leave me. You’re all I have.”

  Yeah. This chick is bonkers, all right. “You sound crazy. Like you been smoking something. You do know that this was just a smash thing.”

  “Was—what do you mean was, Hunter?” She almost sounded possessed. The tears were gone but the intensity on her face was back.

  “See how you can just switch back and forth like that? It’s not normal.”

  Heather was angry now and the car behind them couldn’t have found a worse time to tailgate. Looking in the rearview, she gently applied pressure on her brake pedal, forcing the tailgater to slam on his breaks to avoid rear-ending the Ford Edge. Xavier looked on in terror as the vehicle got around Heather and pulled up on Xavier’s side. As if she hadn’t just got him beat down back at the poolroom, she was now about to get him shot by one of these road-raging, pistol-packing motorists in Detroit. Thank God it was an elderly white man who flipped a wrinkled bird instead of pulling a gat. Heather and grandpa were riding alongside one another and flipping each other off.

  “Heather, fall back. The man is old enough to be your grandfather. Chill out and drive this damn car.”

  He simply shook his head. The girl was loonier than any Looney Tune ever created by Warner Bros. At this point Xavier was through talking, but she wasn’t.

  “So you don’t love me?” Heather asked in a low and creepy voice.

  All he was trying to do was get home. Xavier would rather face the wrath of Noah before he dealt with any more of the insane people inside of her head.

  She gradually rotated the steering wheel to the left, moving into the far left lane and across the solid yellow lines to the sound of loud honking from the motorist behind her. The loud sound of the tires running over the warning strip was horrifying. She rode the warning strip to make her point.

  “Do you know I can kill us both by slamming into the median wall?”

  Xavier was wearing a What the hell did I get myself involved in? look on his face. Homeboy had forgotten all about the pain and bump on his head. Skip crazy, this chick was berserk.

  The tension eased in her face. That gorgeous smile of hers was back. Heather straightened up the wheel and slid back into the lane.

  Laughing, she said, “I was just playing. Look at how scared you look, Hunter.”

  To Xavier, Heather was a done deal. He had watched far too many flicks dealing with psycho, stalking lunatics not to know one when he saw one. She had gotten him knocked out tonight. Something that nobody else had ever been able to accomplish in a straight-up, one-on-one tussle with him.

  Heather sat behind him in English and that was going to be a problem. There was nothing he could do about it, though. But after today, homegirl was a wrap—her and that tight body of hers.

  11

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

  10:00 A.M.

  After what happened to him last night there was no way Xavier was attending school today. A terrible headache was whooping on his butt and the lump on his lemon was still visibly noticeable. Xavier could’ve worn a baseball hat to try and cover the thing, but it would’ve been stupid to place a fitted cap over the tender area. Plus his pride was bleeding from several different holes of humiliation at having his teeth rattled by one of the biker goons.

  When Xavier had made it back home last night he expected to go a couple more rounds with Noah. But much to his delight, the lights were out in the house and nobody was up. It happened to be a good thing the old man had been sleeping. Throughout the night Xavier was able to lick his wounds by putting cold compresses on the lump. Popped a few Motrin to kill the pain.

  The drama with the bikers had given him insomnia. So he’d made it through the night lying in bed on his back with the bedroom lights out and staring into the darkness. Xavier had been tripping out, thinking about a lifetime of mistakes he’d managed to make over a couple years. Bad choices. Inability to see the big picture. No father at the crib to provide that around-the-clock leadership. The absence of his dad had left him trying to fill a man’s shoes with his itty-bitty teenage feet. Yeah, he was able to get in ’em, but they were far too big for walking, resulting in slips and falls. Learn as you go—a method that had proved costly. There was a price riding on his head because of it. Samantha was gone. And now a whack job was trying her very best to drag him into an early grave.

  Noah usually came to Xavier’s bedroom first thing in the morning to roust him awake. Today his father hadn’t bothered. Xavier had heard Noah getting Alfonso ready, but he never approached the bedroom belonging to his eldest. The old man still had an attitude.

  Other than providing basic necessities, Noah had been worthless to him up to this point. Xavier was in a terrible way with some really bad people and there was not one person he could run to for help.

  This was definitely not the way he had pictured a relationship with his father after the old dude had come home from prison. Xavier had had all of these fantasies in his head about their relationship being close and unbreakable. Just being able to relate to an older male other than Billy would’ve been tight, especially if that other male was his dad. But this was the ghetto, and dreams like that just didn’t happen for people like him. It was all good, though. Xavier was a rider for his, and definitely wasn’t about to waste time with the tears. The boy was sixteen going on grown and had been rudely introduced to that part of society that couldn’t care less if young black men destroyed each other.

  With Noah working day shift he wouldn’t have any idea that Xavier had elected to post up at the crib and not have his butt in school. Xavier could just chill and think things out without having to look over his shoulder. He got his lounge on for a few hours before deciding to catch up on his studies. The lab biology book made him remember the bullfrog that he wouldn’t be dissecting in class today. Can’t say he was all busted up about it. Frog guts weren’t working for him.

  He grabbed the Huck Finn book and tried to read but it wasn’t happening. Runt was heavily on his mind. Dude had gotten caught up in Xavier’s beef and was laid up in the hospital with all types of injuries. Later on he would take the bus down to the hospital and see how homeboy was progressing. Maybe even take the kid some flowers.

  At noon Xavier made a sandwich and had lunch in his bedroom. He wasn’t just going to lie around like a bum. This time would better serve him if he ate while he performed calculus problems.

  Some doubt started to creep into his mind. Was he being overly presumptuous in thinking that he would make it to graduation? The work he was now doing—was it all in vain? He was slipping and he knew it. Letting negative thinking smack him down. He’d learned a little while ago to control those things that he could and leave everything else to G
od, regardless of the obstacles standing in his way dressed in ski masks and wielding around bad intentions.

  From his calculus book he looked at the clock. Just about time for fourth period lunch. Samantha would be there, probably eating alone at a table. At least, that’s what he hoped. Even though she’d changed her phone number, Xavier had resources. He had her digits and was aching to dial them. Being with Heather had taught him a severe lesson: Samantha could be a snob at times, but after hanging around psycho Heather, Samantha was looking like the future Mrs. Hunter. He dearly missed his girl. It was why he was dialing *67 before calling her cell phone. As it rang, Xavier knew the number would show up anonymous on her caller ID screen but he didn’t care. If she picked up—cool; if not, he would have the pleasure of listening to Samantha’s sweet voice on her voice mail greeting.

  No dice. She didn’t pick up.

  Instead he got voice mail action.

  Xavier was one of the toughest guys he knew, but Samantha’s personal voice mail greeting almost brought tears. He hung up after listening. Suddenly he wanted to find Sean Desmond and wring his neck. Just picturing baseball boy playing on the same diamond he had once had the pleasure to play on was enough to almost send Xavier through the roof. Never had he been so jealous. The junk was simply ridiculous. This was the moment that he realized how jacked up his life was. And with no muscle of his own to help him get Slick Eddie’s dogs off of his back, Xavier didn’t have a clue as to how he could straighten everything out.

  Xavier returned to the kitchen to get something to drink. He was supposed to do something today . . . oh yeah, it hit him. While he poured himself a glass of grape soda, Xavier remembered that he’d promised Alfonso he would go up to Alex Haley Middle School today and pay Dog Boy a visit. The fat lump on the side of his noodle was telling Xavier there was no way in hell he was ready to scrap today. It would’ve been stupid for him to risk getting hit in that area of his head. Alfonso would have to wait because his big brother was on the injured reserve list. Noah would be there to pick him up anyway. The boy wouldn’t have to endure too much teasing from that pit bull-walking punk.

  Once Xavier finished the beverage it was world history time and he had every intention of studying, but when he walked by the door leading up to his father’s bedroom his feet started moving up the stairs without his permission. Noah had taken the upstairs bedroom when they’d moved in. Xavier had never been anywhere near his father’s lair, especially since his dad had started rolling tough with God’s posse.

  One step at a time he ascended into the old man’s domain. The air even felt different as he climbed the stairs. As soon as Xavier cleared the last step, immediately to his right was a huge picture hanging on the wall of white Jesus. Damn near scared Xavier out of his socks. Religious artifacts were everywhere. Crosses hanging, standing, or lying around. Praying hands were centered and mounted on every wall. The wall behind the headboard of his full-size bed featured an enormous colorful banner of the Last Supper. Little crystal angel figurines sat on the dresser next to a thirteen-inch flat screen. There was a bookshelf by one of the nightstands. Four thick hardback Bibles were housed on the first shelf, the second belonging to a bunch of biblical reference books. The last held dusty CDs of vintage gospel songs.

  After learning about some of the diabolical things that Noah had pulled as a kingpin on the street, Xavier couldn’t be too mad at him for trying to change his life. Sometimes his father could go overboard while trying to share his relationship with God. All the crosses around the room led Xavier to believe that Noah was trying to keep away those old demons. That was probably the reason why he went so hard.

  There were pictures of Xavier and Alfonso as babies on the nightstand near the window. Noah loved them, and Xavier knew that, but he just wished he could sit down and have a decent conversation with his father. It would probably never happen, though. Wishful thinking on his part.

  Xavier headed back downstairs with one thing on his mind: He hoped that his father was praying for him. He would need somebody to do that for him in order to stay above ground.

  12

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14

  2:00 P.M.

  Xavier was in class trying harder than concrete to keep his mind on his art appreciation teacher’s lecture. Nathan McGillicuddy was fairly tall, slender, white, middle-aged, wore a scraggly beard, and was slightly stooped at the waist with a hump in his back. Students often made fun of him because to them it looked like his everyday outfit consisted of tan corduroys, a burgundy sweater-vest pulled over a button-up, and some cheap suede shoes. Either he was in possession of a closet filled with tan corduroys and burgundy sweater-vests or he was guilty as charged of breaking all types of hygiene laws.

  McGillicuddy was animated, too, feeling whatever he lectured about. The nut was in front of the class and wildly waving his arms around explaining to his students how Vincent van Gogh was a tortured genius who sucked the paint from his paintbrushes while turning out masterpieces.

  Even the part in the lecture about van Gogh’s bipolar butt slicing off one of his ears and sending it to his girlfriend in a box wrapped in a pretty bow did little to keep Xavier’s attention. At the moment nothing could, because the boy was lovesick over his ex. Samantha had been in the lunchroom, gorgeously stunning, looking like she was about to go and have a photo shoot done for the cover of some teen magazine. Not once had she looked in Xavier’s direction. Her lips were full and beautiful, probably done up in her favorite lip gloss. Laughing and joking with her girls like her life was full of exciting new promise. While his was dark, shady, and dangerous with a questionable future. Xavier felt left behind. Falling out of touch with the one thing in his life that had made any sense.

  He thought about Heather too. Since the night she’d almost gotten him bodied, Heather had fallen off the earth, resurfacing today, sweating him and blowing up his cell phone with a barrage of voice and text messages. Got so bad that he simply powered his hitter down. He wasn’t trying to go there with her anymore. In his estimation, anybody who visited a rough-and-tumble, dangerous, biker-infested pool hall like Rack ’Em to get their thoughts together was a certifiable maniac.

  McGillicuddy was holding some art book up in his hands, with the pages open to one of van Gogh’s paintings—Starry Night. The teacher was explaining the technique that had gone into the piece when into the class walked a teenage guy Xavier had never seen before. He didn’t strike Xavier as a threat to him. The dude moved up to McGillicuddy and handed the teacher a piece of paper. McGillicuddy took it, pulled out a pen, and closed the book so that he could use the cover to put his signature on the paper.

  McGillicuddy then said something like, “Take any open seat, Mr. Kato Holloway. I’m lecturing about Vincent van Gogh. Feel free to take notes because you will be tested on the material. You’ve missed quite a few class assignments. Meet me after the hour and I will provide everything you will need.”

  The dude, Kato Holloway, was fairly dark and had sharp facial features. He was about six feet tall, 175 pounds, with a wiry, muscular frame. But his most attractive feature was his hair. His dreads were cleverly woven and interlocked in layers, freefalling and stopping at the bottom of his shoulder blades. The cat didn’t spend much money on his clothes. Nothing fancy, a funny color brown Detroit Lions sweatshirt and camouflage pants. Wheat-colored Timberland boots covered his feet. But Xavier had a sharp eye when it came down to spotting a G with fat pockets. Kato didn’t seem like he cared about gear that much, but his earlobes were a different story. The way that the classroom light picked up and reflected his diamond stud earrings left no doubt that the pieces were high quality. The Cartier glasses on his face gave him that young, rich rap star appearance.

  The boy copped a squat in the second seat of the second row from the door, every student looking at him like he was the hip-hop version of President Barack Obama. Xavier figured something serious had to have shaken up his world to be switching schools this late in the semester.
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  The rest of the hour found Xavier consistently picking up some type of thug vibe from Kato. Dude didn’t seem like he walked around with a chip on his shoulder, but Xavier could tell that the boy would be about handling his business if somebody stepped to him the wrong way. Was far from soft. He couldn’t be, with expensive glasses and earrings like those. Not with the predators at Coleman. The next month would be interesting. New guys got the treatment at Coleman. Those earrings and glasses, if homeboy kept on rocking ’em, would draw the wrong kind of attention. If Kato wasn’t about it, those rocks and frames would be on the earlobes and face of some stick-up fool.

  Right after Xavier’s last hour, he was with his boys in the back parking lot. The group was chilling around Linus Flip’s Pontiac Grand Prix.

  Students were loitering in groups, some were walking home, and others were waiting on rides.

  Bigstick asked the group, “I know y’all fools coming to the football game tomorrow. We’re gonna smash those nerds from Cass Tech.”

  Xavier gave Bigstick some dap. “You know it, homeboy. Gotta show love to the Coleman High Wolverines, you feel me?”

  Linus asked Bigstick, “What time is the game, anyways ?”

  “Kick-off is at eleven, so get your lazy bones up, fam. You ain’t doing nothing anyway, so come”—Bigstick pointed at himself—“see this middle linebacker, the next coming of Ray Lewis, get his swerve on. We’re gonna light some chumps up and break some fools off, you dig.”

  Xavier and Linus laughed.

  Linus sat, propped against the rear left fender of his whip. “That’s what’s up. I’m there,” he said.

  The back door of the south entrance opened. Out walked Dex, a big smile on his grill, holding hands with a bad, caramel-toned breezy named Marissa Steel. The little chick was compact—no more than five-two, probably 130 pounds, and busty. Short hairstyle. Cute Asian eyes. Nice backside in her Apple Bottoms jeans. Sneakers and fitted leather jacket.