Wayne hated navigating the steep incline, especially at night. Concrete slabs jutted out at irregular intervals forming a make-shift stairwell down the embankment. The thick growth of trees hindered easy movement. He stayed at the top shining his flashlight so that the volunteer could go first then he proceeded down largely in the dark. Funny, he always felt stronger at mid-day; now his movements seemed clumsy. The tall bonfire by the riverside, surrounded on all sides by trees: the scene looked picturesque.
"Nine o'clock in the morning ain't no booty call," Rhianna's rasp strained.
"I ain't gonna trip," Lady G retorted. "Believe what you want to believe. Don't matter what time of day it is, some fool call and all he has is sex on the mind, it's a booty call."
"You just jealous cause Prez don't call you," Rhianna said behind her G-funk nose and slightly bucked teeth. She nursed the pus pocket on her finger from where she got stabbed. They could've stayed with Rhianna's people, but this close to rent day, tensions boiled over, toilet paper sheets counted, and food carefully guarded. Sometimes the drama just wasn't worth it. She'd been couch-surfing with friends who lived over in the Phoenix when she met Trevant. But it was Prez who stepped to her.
Lady G clucked under her breath. "Girl… boo. You stand by yourself, you stay by yourself."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, G," Wayne interrupted.
"What you doing down here?" Lady G gave Wayne a hug.
"Looking for you."
"How you been?" Lady G turned to hug the volunteer. She was awful with names, but the volunteer had been present enough to warrant a hug. Trust wasn't a commodity easily given. Even Rhianna would more easily trade her body than risk trusting someone.
"Better now." The volunteer squeezed an additional time before releasing her. Rhianna moved in for her hug.
"You ladies need anything?" Wayne huffed as he stumbled down the last few steps of the hillside.
"Rhianna needs better taste in men," Lady G offered.
"Oh?"
"She's trippin'," Rhianna said.
"Don't show out cause you hanging around that retarded boy," Lady G said. "He up there, topside, him and his boy, Trevant. Surprised you didn't see 'em. Wannabe dope dealers."
"Rhianna…" Wayne thickly laid on the sound of disappointment in his voice.
"They ain't real drug dealers. They just playing."
"Call themselves ESG," Lady G said.
"What's that stand for?" Wayne asked.
"Eggs, Sausage, and Grits."
"Ain't that some shit?" The words flew out of Wayne's mouth before he received a scolding glance from the volunteer. They tried not to use profanities in front of the clients, trying to walk the line of being real yet being an example. Wayne bristled at the idea of being an example, uncomfortable with the idea of being a role model.
"That ain't the worst. They up there selling burn bags to folks." Lady G still had her "I'm gonna tell" air about her.
"You can get a beat down behind that mess," Wayne said.
"You telling me? That's why I keep telling Rhianna to drop his sorry behind."
A car screeched to a halt above them. The quartet froze where they stood. Slamming doors were soon followed by raised voices. Wayne moved to shield them, as if protecting them from anything that might fall from above. The shouts, the trumpeting of machismo attempting to get the other party to back down, curdled into abrupt screams. Lady G stifled her own scream, then pointed to the trestle above them. Wayne ushered the girls up there, and they scrambled into one of the holes in the bottom of a support structure. The small alcoves formed a series of tiny compartments with the holes acting as the entrance, though it reminded Wayne too much of sticking his head through an attic door into unknowable darkness. Knowing that he stood no chance in hell of squeezing through the hole, Wayne signaled that he was going topside to investigate. The volunteer shot him eyes pleading for him to stay, but realized he was too exposed to whatever was out there. Rhianna thrust her thumb into her mouth and put her other hand against an ear as she began to rock back and forth. Her mother had warned her to quit sucking her thumb before it bucked her teeth.
Wayne slowly lumbered up the hill.
Prez didn't care what you called him as long as he got called. Though Green had brought him on, he felt it was on an interim basis until he proved himself. In the meantime, until he saw some real money, he still had to make ends so he financed what he termed "independent entrepreneurial enterprises": burn bags. Dried-out baking soda passed for crack and stepped-on oregano for weed – the pair had an assortment of burn bags they sold to newbies. After every sale they set up somewhere new should anyone decide to come back on them. Unfortunately, their current location didn't have much by way of foot traffic, but Prez was more interested in hooking up with his girl. Rhianna was all right enough, not as fine as her girl, Lady G, but she had a fat ass and threw her back into her work.
"I wish some fool would try to come up on us." Trevant, all of thirteen years old, still retained much of his baby fat, especially about the neck. Prez thought it apropos to start calling him Turkey because of all of his would-be gangsta gobbling. "I'd tell him, 'It's Li'l Nam, shortie. It's how we do this bitch.'"
Li'l Nam was the nom-de-guerre of the area just south of the Phoenix Apartments. Trevant was an east side nigga who'd come to truck with Prez and some of Night's boys on the west side because no one else would have his dusty ass. Well, Prez's either, which was why they were left dealing burn bags and calling themselves ESG.
"Damn, fool, you can't keep going off on every fiend we deal with," Prez said.
"Why not? It's not like they're going to quit buying."
"Customer service, nigga. Ain't you ever heard of it? It's not like we the only ones selling." Prez might as well have been speaking in Mandarin judging from the vacant stare Trevant returned.
After chewing on his words, and with them spit out his other ear, Trevant continued. "I seen niggas get smoked right in front of me."
"Yeah, you hard, brotha." Prez eyed the street. Knowing he'd been dismissed, Trevant slipped on a set of headphones to listen to the new Nas.
A Ford Focus screeched to a halt. Prez tapped Trevant on his jacket and nodded toward the idling vehicle. They prepared their wares but also checked their escape route should things go bad. Two people, a man and a woman, stepped out the car, the suspension on the Focus squawking in relief at their exit. They couldn't be dissatisfied customers. They'd have remembered selling to these two.
"They must be part-Samoan," Prez whispered.
"Some ugly-ass Samoans, then," Trevant said, not nearly quietly enough. "Nice suits though."
"What you need, money? ESG can set you up with whatever," Prez said.
"ESG? What weak-ass shit you selling?" the woman asked. Well, Prez presumed her to be a woman.
"Don't matter none. Dred don't like it, so the shit's got to stop," the man's voice boomed.
"Free country. Live and let live," Trevant said.
She whirled and grabbed Trevant by the throat and lifted him into the air like so much a sack of leaves. "Move, or worse, make me have to chase you and you'll get what your friend's about to get. We've got a message for Night and you're just the man to deliver it."
"Wha-what's that?" Prez asked.
The woman grabbed Trevant's arm and pulled. The skin around his shoulder stretched, the bones shifted at odd angles until a dull pop freed the joint. The flesh ripped, the last bits of frayed tendons tearing free amidst a spray of blood. The boy screamed over the cries of "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit" repeated by Prez. She waved the bloody stump at him, trying to refocus his attention on her.
"You with me? Good." Blood gurgled out the arm, ribbons of veins and shorn flesh dangled. She fixed her eyes on him and raised the arm to her mouth. Not blinking, she took a huge bite from it and chewed slowly. The smell of piss from Prez let her know she had his full attention. "Tell your folks what you saw. Let them know the Durham Brothers are in town and D
red's done fucking around with them. And just so you don't forget…"
With her nod, her brother upended Trevant and the two of them each took a leg in a hand. Being around bridges always had the Durham Brothers especially enervated. Trevant's next scream scored itself into Prez's mind, even as the image of his flesh unzipping before him would forever scar his psyche. Trevant's insides splayed out in spools as he was ripped from ass to sternum.
"Go." The woman licked her lips.
Prez ran off into the night, forgetting all about Rhianna.
"Fe, fi, fo, fum," the man said and sniffed in the direction of Wayne, who thought himself well hidden by the foliage lining the bridge.
"Leave him, we've made our point," Michaela said. "Besides, the tale will spread faster with more witnesses."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Only the desire remained.
Tavon Little didn't care that he killed himself a bit at a time. Squatting to eye level with the table, he carefully doled out the powdered heroin; his works spread out like instruments in an operating theater. He sprayed water from the syringe (Evian – he was particular). He loved this part of it, when he wasn't too sick, the dick-hard anticipation of the ever briefly sated hunger. The match's flame caught the bottom of the bottle cap. Slowly he loaded his syringe, the puff of pink in the bottom of his spike confirmed entry. He shut his eyes and slammed it all home, indifferent to the possibility of an overdose. So what if he did? It'd be a rush all the way. A high to end all highs.
He leaned against the rotted drywall and let the first wave of the blast crash into his skull. A slight moan escaped his cracked lips. He pulled one side of his old Army jacket over his dirty tank top to try and keep in some heat. Except for the grime and the worn cuffs, it was in pretty good shape. With his red sweatpants he considered himself the height of fashion. Yeah, he was set for tonight. Tomorrow he'd have to come up with a new hustle to set them up, but he wasn't worried. He still had a good head on him – he couldn't survive the game long if he didn't – but he also suffered from a good heart. Anywhere except here and that was probably a good thing. He simply wasn't wired to do what it took to survive, to prey on his own. Hell, he could barely lie to people he knew, so no stick-ups and no moves that might hurt someone. And it meant that he often suffered bad luck, like yesterday, the C-Devils weren't shit.
"You feelin' it?" Miss Jane asked, ever skeptical.
"Mm-hmm," Loose Tooth mumbled.
"I ain't feelin' shit. What about you?"
"I'm feelin' somethin', but it ain't like it was yesterday."
"Product been stepped on so many times, tryin' to make it last till that new package comes through," Miss Jane said.
"Heard they was gonna re-up in the mornin'. Damn, look at Tae. He's gone f'real."
"I swear that nigga could shoot water into his veins an' get high."
Tavon heard them, but didn't care. He didn't want to even open his eyes, but he knew he'd have to eventually, or else Miss Jane might run off with the rest of the stash, convinced that he somehow had kept the good stuff for himself. Both Loose Tooth and Miss Jane had been in deep from when Tavon was a kid. Theirs was a makeshift DMZ. Their spot was on the corner, a bright lime-colored house from the Arts and Crafts era with brown doors and trim; clay-tiled roof, and a wrap-around porch made of stones. Probably a show home in its day, now a board-covered shadow of itself.
One street over, things were downright civilized. A KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut ("Kentacohut" they called it) recently opened. Twenty-fourth and North Penn, on the edge of what some called Li'l Nam, that part of Indianapolis that no one liked to talk about. Almost two hundred properties owned by the same slumlord. Funny, Tavon thought, how one man had the power to run down a whole neighborhood. Rumor had it that the slumlord was negotiating with the city to sell off a few streets' worth of homes and move to Florida. Especially the homes along the main city thoroughfares, like Meridian, Pennsylvania, and Delaware Streets so that rush-hour commuters wouldn't have to automatically check to see if their doors were locked every time they drove past the houses.
Tavon slipped his stash and works into his Crown Royal bag and stuffed it into a hole behind him, past the slats that kicked up a cloud of dust (hopefully not asbestos, he heard that shit was cancerous) every time he bumped against it. He could feel the toll of the hunger. Everything grew more difficult. Ideas. Words. Slower, fewer, simpler. A dope-fiend lucidity. He fell into a nod, not caring about the drool oozing out the side of his mouth.
Tavon's eyes fluttered open, squinting in the sunlight, taking in the familiar surroundings. The dirty mattress cushioned the floor of his room. He kicked his soiled sheets from him in disgust. Not at his condition, but at the fact that since he had help getting to bed, his stash that he'd saved to get started this morning had probably already launched Miss Jane. Only half-awake, he rested his head between his knees, hunched over in the dance of the dry heaves. He hated the nausea, even more than the pounding of his head.
The hunger called.
A bottle of lotion wouldn't have helped the dryness of the cratered alligator skin of his needle-scarred hands. Even his scabs had scabs. He soldiered on, another gaunt, dark-skinned fiend in service to the hunger. The hunger that squirmed its way through his intestines pulled at him in a relentless assault. He shuffled with his hunger down to the front porch, sitting on the steps and tamping out a Kool cigarette. Blankets nailed over closets; kung fu posed Power Rangers stood guard over their clothes. The landlord's fix-it guy had patched drywall by nailing a door to the ceiling. Opaque Plexiglas windows partly blocked the wind and might've done a better job if they hadn't been only stapled over the open frame. People actually lived here only a few months ago, but even Section 8 housing said enough was enough as even government housing could only sink so low.
"The hawk is out." Loose Tooth sauntered over toward him in an Izod T-shirt with holes in it.
"You know that's right. Winter'll soon be here."
"Why ain't you in school?" Loose Tooth asked, strictly to give him static.
"Half-day. Teacher conference," Tavon joked without missing a beat. So black he was practically blue, with his long arms and bowed legs, he looked like an awkward praying mantis. He attended – well, attended was a strong word, but he made a pretense of going to – Crispus Attucks High School as a heldback senior. He couldn't even get a social promotion. The system simply waited for him to drop out. School meant nothing to him, his future even less. Playing at being "gangsta" until he started fiending his own product, he fell to the lure, the allure, of the streets. Now he was half a tout, a one-man walking billboard for new product.
"Ain't this the third conference this week?" Loose Tooth joked. "You got another one o' those?"
"Nah, it's my last one," Tavon said, guiltily tucking the rest of his pack deeper into his pocket. Give away one, might as well give away the whole pack. If Tavon had been holding some candy, he wouldn't have bothered with the lame lie. Loose Tooth – born Earl Anderson, one-time prince of the streets who called himself CashMoney – would've sniffed it out. Though he probably knew that Tavon had some more squares, he didn't press the matter. He was a one man 411, old for the streets – well, over forty anyway – and quick to remind anyone "look here youngblood, I'm the last of these cats out here."
"Got a quarter?" Loose Tooth asked, obviously hoping to score a single cigarette down at the Korean's store.
"Please. I'm out here hustlin' just like you." Tavon put his cigarette out in the crumbling cement.
No one flinched at the reports of a few gunshots: too far away to be concerned about. Not as bad as New Year's Eve when that shit sounded like the 4th of July. The shots, however, drove a lightskinned and freckled young man down the street toward them. With a slight limp, his half-strut and Harlem Globetrotters gear was recognizable even without that pinched reserve the bow-tie-wearing set had.
"Ah, hell," Loose Tooth whispered when he saw him.
(120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah.
"Brothas."
"What's up, Knowledge?" Tavon asked.
"That's right, today's mathematics is knowledge. Let me break it down for you: know the ledge." Knowledge Allah was a fixture in the neighborhood even if no one knew much about him. When he first started coming around, all Loose Tooth offered was his theory that "Black folks always thinkin' they superheroes or somethin', needin' a secret identity."
"Here we go. Why you even got to say 'boo' to him?" Loose Tooth asked.
King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 Page 13