Sprinter2000: Scrawny, huh? I will punish you for that! Word! What’s so important? Something happened? You heard something?
Im>U: Nothing happened!!! What? Was I supposed to hear something? About what?
Sprinter 2000: Just saying.
Im>U: Never mind. I need to talk to you. When I get there, I’ll make you some food. You cool with that?
Sprinter2000: Okay, if u really are going to hook up some eats. Otherwise, I’ll just go to the Chicken Shack with Les.
Im>U: Yeah, I’ll hook you up, no worries. Don’t have me come back there for nothing. Okay? C U at 2.
Sprinter2000: I’m here.
It had been five days since the killing.
Tim sat on the floor in his room. His mind couldn’t rest. Not even the five beers he’d thrown back real fast could help him. Seeing the word scrawny on the screen simply blew him away. Maybe his sister had heard something? She was good at keeping secrets, the sneaky bitch, he thought and then regretted it. But she had never called him scrawny before. He had always thought of the skinny dude Chucky like that but hardly ever talked about it—’cept for maybe to Les. He wondered if he had ever mentioned his pet name for Chucky to Sheila?
That morning at the library, Tim had used a lot of energy trying to ignore the furtive glances of the librarian. He had a lot to catch up on before his study drill with Darryl, but couldn’t help wondering if it was his imagination that Mrs. Shepard had been staring at him. What could she know? Yes, she was around that night when Chucky threatened him, but she hadn’t come out into the parking lot—she hadn’t seen a thing. However, when he’d moved to an upholstered chair to wait for Darryl, he couldn’t deny that she took regular checks on his whereabouts.
Then he thought of the surprise visitors who appeared. Maybe Mrs. Shepard knew they were coming. They tried to appear casual, but it was obvious that they had been waiting for him. It impressed him that they were detectives and not just regular beat cops. They asked a lot of questions. Recounting the exchange made him feel suddenly weak. He stretched out on the throw rug and covered his face with a comic book.
Yeah, I’m Timothy Thorton. I’m seventeen.
78 S. Eighth Street, First Floor.
Me, my mom, my sister and my uncle. Nope, my dad died yesterday.
Heart attack. Thanks.
Barringer High School.
Sophomore this fall, if I don’t pass the proficiency in September. Yeah, I’m behind a couple years.
Yes, that’s why I’m here. I’m studying for it. Yeah, almost every day.
Darryl Campbell.
He’s my tutor.
No, I don’t pay him.
A friend?
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah, I was here that night.
Yeah, I know Chucky.
Uh-huh…he was here. I talked to him, yeah.
About? Uhm…nothing. They were just into teasing people. You know!
No, I didn’t know he hadn’t been home for three nights.
What? Nah, nah…we didn’t get mad or nothing.
Oh? That’s what Mrs. Shepard said? Well, it wasn’t like that.
It was like we kicked it back and forth some ’till Chucky and his boy left.
The other dude?
No, I didn’t know him. Never saw him before.
Parking lot? Man, do I look like I drive?
N-no, I didn’t meet nobody in the parking lot afterwards. I stayed ’till 9:30, closing time, left, got a burger and went to my dad’s place on Central.
About one o’clock in the morning.
Everybody was asleep in their rooms when I got home. I went to bed.
Nah, I didn’t see nobody ’till the next morning.
Yeah, you too, officer, have a nice day.
It puzzled Tim that the cops hadn’t asked about the third guy. Then he answered his own question—they probably didn’t know he existed. No doubt, Chucky’s goofy friend hadn’t mentioned the other boy. From the sound of their questions, the guy hadn’t done much talking at all.
The vibration of the cell in his pocket surprised Tim. He felt as if every molecule of his breath threatened to leave his lungs at once. Lurching to his feet, he stuck his head out of the window where he found the alley spinning, his head its axis. Pushing back into the room, he turned and sprinted to the bathroom. As he held onto the bowl with both hands, he filled the air with gasps and moans until the inevitable relief came.
On the way back to his room, the walls of the narrow hallway appeared to collapse upon him as if he were in a funhouse.
His head hurt bad. He needed to sleep.
He’s yelling at what looks like a big tattooed scarecrow lying on the ground. He’s kicking it now, first on the soles of the sneakers, the calves, the knees, in the side, then a final nudge on the shoulder. He sees now what he didn’t want to see, smells what he didn’t want to smell: blood oozing out of the side of the head, the rock—an island in a red sea, sitting next to it. A crow cries at the full moon from which the boy’s cheap jewelry is throwing off wild asterisms in every direction. He sees himself pulling the body by the leg under a large bush. He watches himself pick up the cell phone that falls from the body, put it on silent mode and stick it in his own pocket. He looks around, pulls it out again and takes a picture of the corpse. Now, except for his shoes, you can’t see Chucky. Now he’s kicking loose dirt over the scrawny motherfucker—he removes the sneakers and places them on his chest.
Chucky’s so fucking dead.
Tim skulks out of the park, expecting at any moment to see the other two boys, but no one is around. He walks quickly, he doesn’t care where he is. He only wants to get far away from that thing in the bushes…there’s an underpass—more like a tunnel with a deep echo. He enters it. He’s alone. It’s humid and completely dark. He stops, braces himself against the curved wall and screams long and hard. Finally a drop of bile, when it comes up and then down the wrong way, sends him into a coughing fit. In the middle of it, Chucky’s smirking face comes to mind.
Curiously it calms him. Finally, as the last sonic reflection of his hacking dissolves into silence, he waits to catch his breath.
He’s not so sad.
SHEILA AND TIM TALK FAMILY
“Timmy! Are you in there? Come on and eat,” Sheila said, standing just outside of his bedroom door.
Aroused from a deep sleep, Tim could barely make out what his sister was saying. His own voice cracked as sweat poured out of him into the stuffy room. He supposed his body was still adjusting to carrying the big lie around. “So—what’s up? Is Mom alright?”
Sheila gave a single loud knock on the door. “Come on, boy! I went to a lot of trouble. See you in the kitchen.”
He found his sister dressed in a big loose yellow blouse over shorts and sandals. As they talked, he watched her bite her lip like their father. She had her tells for sure, but there was no lie to come, which could have meant that something buried was about to come to the surface.
Sheila’s hair was pinned up away from her neck to show off a fake tattoo of a heart. He couldn’t be sure but it looked like the name Darryl was written in the middle of the thing. Tim wondered what that was about.
“I went to see Daddy a week or so before he died.”
“Oh yeah? How was he?”
“He was drinking again,” she said, fussing with her hair.
Tim played with his sandwich, taking out the pickles. “Yeah, I know—been drinking for a while too. B-but day before yesterday, in the morning, he was sober. You know? Uh…so, t-that’s what you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked.
When it came to something important, Sheila usually had trouble getting started. Tim knew he couldn’t push her because she was perfectly capable of dropping the whole thing if he pissed her off. Instead he decided to stay cool and listen. Which was easier said than done. He could barely sit still in his chair. At any minute it felt as if his legs would—on their own—break into a sprint and carry him through the door at
full speed.
His sister eyed him. It’s too early for her to know something. The cops didn’t even know anything. They only asked about Chucky because he hadn’t been home for three days. It has to be something else.
Sheila took a deep breath and paused as if something had caught in her throat. “Do you know why Daddy and Uncle Gentrale didn’t speak? I mean, what was behind it all?”
Tim, relieved by her question, scratched the side of his head and leaned back in his chair. “Some idea, yeah. S-so, that’s what you and Dad talked about?”
“When I was leaving, he said that I should talk to you about what happened if I really wanted to know. Well, Timmy, I see the surprise in your face. So, don’t mess around. Give it up, boy!”
Pulling together the pieces of the sad family story for his sister made the events all the more real for Tim. It was like looking at an old dusty puzzle that no one had been willing to put together before.
He told her that Victor, as weak as he may have appeared to them, was actually a principal source of strength in the family back on the farm. He explained to her as Gentrale had explained to him that they were sharecroppers and that their dad could never make peace with the near-slavery conditions they had to endure. Always quick to point out the injustices and indignities of their everyday lives, their father’s griping provided a respite from the crippling monotony and physical strife of their work. His constant complaints and sense of humor focused and allowed all nine of them to dream and have hope for something better. He described what he’d understood about an unexplained shortage in cottonseed and, as a result, how the landowner had dogged their grandfather in the barn with some kind of leather strap. He watched Sheila’s eyes widen when he told her that their dad had witnessed the whole fucking thing. Other than Victor and Gentrale, only an Auntie Naomi, now pushing a hundred years on earth, survived the brutal toil of their lives on the farm—or so they’d heard. The others—Auntie Sister, Aunt Sedona, Uncle James, Uncle John and Jessie—had suffered early deaths from various causes.
But the one that stood out was the murder of their uncle Booker. Over time, the family had come to the understanding that their youngest knew what he was doing when he went into that bar in town where mostly white dudes drank. All it took was for him to look at somebody the wrong way. The elders called it suicide by mob, born out of pure despair after Victor had abandoned them.
Tim and Sheila sat quiet for a while listening to the squeal of tires from the front side of the house followed by the siren of a police cruiser careening by.
“There was something else,” Tim said hesitantly.
Sheila had been sitting there twisting her fingers as she listened. Tim’s sudden hushed tone scared her. Her first impulse was to cover her ears. She had heard enough. Instead, through what sounded like a whimper, she said, “Okay, okay—hurry up, get it over with.”
“Now…don’t get mad at me but—I’m pretty sure Dad stole that seed. The shortage was discovered just before he ran away. He would’ve needed money.”
Sheila jerked rigid. “But, uh–no, Tim, no! I was gonna tell you to shut up before, now it’s time for you to stop, I mean…how would you know that? It couldn’t have—”
“I don’t know. I’m just guessing. Unk only talks about Daddy abandoning the family and the loss of respect between them. Shit…aw, man, I’m sorry I brought it up.”
When Tim finished talking, Sheila, looking as if the blood had drained out of her face, got up and moved to the fridge for ice. “I’m sure there’s even more to it. But Mom clams up pretty good when I ask her about it. I don’t think she has a clue.”
Tim, slowly nodding his head, played with his food and muttered, “Probably not.”
There was a pause and then it finally surfaced. “I saw that girl Maria. She told me about Mr. Jones, big brother,” Sheila blurted out.
Hearing Jones’ name, Tim turned over his soda in his lap. As he jumped up, Chucky’s phone beeped and vibrated in his back pocket. The surprise sent him ass down, feet up onto the floor in the middle of the mess. “Fuck!” he yelled.
Sheila handed over paper towels to her brother, but she couldn’t stop laughing “Timmy, you klutz! Watch your mouth. What’s the matter with you?”
Tim lifted himself up from the floor. His jeans were soaked and his mind was spinning. He didn’t know what to do except go in the bathroom and clean up.
After five minutes, Sheila approached the door and spoke through it. “Tim? You alright?”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah,” he said, staring at the screen of Chucky’s phone. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed the texts that had come in:
Where are u? Fidel
What up Chucky? U hiding out? LOL. Spank
Chucky Sweetie, text me okay? Maria
Charles, don’t worry your sister and me okay? Let us hear from you today. Mom
“What are you doing?” Sheila said, knocking again.
Tim had been standing in the middle of the bathroom reading the messages over and over, especially the one from the boy’s mother. “Uh-yeah…coming out in a minute. What else did Maria say?”
“She told me how you got into Mr. Jones’ face, that he kept you after school on the last day! Is that true?” she said suppressing a giggle.
Tim opened the door and walked past her. “Yeah, it’s true,” he said, totally resigned now. “But that’s all I’m going to say about it. Okay? Don’t ask me nothin’ else about Jones. I’ll see that dude soon enough.” The next thing he said sounded like a plea. “Yo, Sheila?”
She’d followed him back to the kitchen. “Yeah?” she uttered softly, feeling a little sorry for laughing at him.
“You re-really think Mom never worried herself much about Dad’s and Unk’s history?” Tim said, voice catching again.
“Well, I wouldn’t say she never thought about them. But, eh-hem, Mom’s got enough secrets of her own.”
Sheila’s tone of voice made Tim turn around and sit again at the table. “What you talking about?” he said through a sneer.
Now it was time for Tim to listen as she told him how their mom got into trouble for embezzlement, something Uncle Gentrale described once as some kind of stealing. Having deliberately ignored the details as they leaked out over time, Tim struggled to imagine his mom gullible enough to be taken in by some guy at work. But, by the time she was arrested, there were a lot of unresolved questions regarding her partner, a man who’d since been charged and sentenced. What Tim did know was that by the end of the case, she couldn’t find a decent job. Only low-paid-below-the-tax-radar-kind-of-gigs were available to her. Their dad, with his drinking, couldn’t support them on his salary alone and their lives went to pieces.
Somewhere along the way their mom got religion and joined a storefront church. Sheila cracked him up with her impersonation of the holy testimonials she’d witnessed in the run-down joint. For a minute, they were both prancing around the kitchen, pumping their hands to the heavens and chanting hallelujah to a double time gospel beat.
Then Sheila got serious again. “Tim, you know Daddy was jealous. Don’t you?”
The question caught him off guard. He could only hang his head in agreement. Sheila reminded him of the big fight in which their dad referred to their mom’s professed lord and savior as her new boyfriend. However, it became clear that religion wasn’t all that was bothering him. In that argument, Victor shut down the whole conversation by bringing up the mystery behind the co-worker who’d gotten her in trouble. Humph, so now you think this one’s gonna save ya, huh? Tim couldn’t be sure if his dad saw the embarrassment that had settled on their mother’s face, but he and his sister did.
For a long time after that argument, a shroud of sadness had descended on his mom’s every word and gesture. She never fell into complete despondency though. He and his sister were always able to reach her, make her laugh, no matter how impossible the details of the case or how long it dragged on. It wasn’t said outwardly, but he knew they still mattered
in her life. Unconsciously, he later understood, they were fighting for their mom while being resigned to losing their father to alcohol. Two years later, the charges were expunged, enabling her to apply for proper jobs. However, with his dad drinking more of his paycheck each month, things didn’t change much.
All of this reminded Tim of the separation and how his mother looked when their father walked out on them. For seven days the only sounds that came from her were when she was asleep or in the bathroom. Otherwise, she spoke to them with her eyes or simple hand gestures. He and his sister, without even talking about it, didn’t question it. In his heart, he was afraid she’d never speak again.
Sheila sported a little pout as she spoke now. “You know, nobody ever heard anything about that guy who went to jail because of that case.”
“Well, he was a criminal, a con man! Mom was just working there,” Tim said. His anger soothed him.
His sister leaned on the sink and moved her head side to side as if to refute whatever he was thinking. “Sorry, Timmy, mom knew that guy. She even knows that he’ll be getting out of jail this year. I think that they were lov…”
“Shut the fuck up, Sheila,” Tim screamed in her face. “That guy was a no-nothing to Mom. She wouldn’t do no shit li-like that. She wasn’t cheating on Dad!”
“Okay, okay Timmy…I hear you. But…”
“No b-buts. You ma-may be hearing me,” he yelled, jumping up from the table, “but I’m not hearing you and I ain’t le-letting you sit there and say somethin’ like that. You got it?”
Sheila moved to the other side of the kitchen. “Yeah, I got it, Timmy. Now will you sit down. You’re scaring me. What’s wrong? What? Where are you going?”
The screen door met the frame with a crack like gunfire.
THE KNIFE
Without a word, Les stepped aside to let Tim into the apartment. A thick funk of BO hung like a wet tarp in the air. “Yo man, I heard. Sorry,” he said holding out a hand. Tim took it. They touched shoulders. “I texted your sister when you didn’t answer your cell. She told me about your pops. That’s craaazy, man! Don’t know what I’d do if it was mine. Hey, why you not at home? I’m sure your mom wants you to hang close these days.”
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