In spite of her social and academic success, she enjoyed hearing in only one ear, a condition that posed unique challenges when she was in environments where sounds came at her from all directions. That morning, they were taking her to a specialist in Marietta who would evaluate whether she was a good candidate for a bilateral implant: a cochlear implant in her other ear.
“Almost there, Daddy,” Jada said.
Corey squeezed in a few more cents and returned the nozzle to the pump. Jada handed the receipt to him.
“Can I go inside and get something to drink?” she asked.
“Actually, I could use some coffee myself.” He tapped on Simone’s window. “Want some coffee or juice, babe?”
Simone checked her watch; the doctor’s appointment was at nine fifteen, and she was a stickler about being on time. “If you can be quick about it, sure, orange juice would be great.”
“You heard your mother,” Corey said to Jada. “Let’s be quick about it.”
“Yeah!” Jada performed a happy dance.
Together, they went inside the minimart, Jada skipping beside him, her hand in his, swinging his arm around between them as if he were a piece of playground equipment. He directed Jada to the glass-fronted coolers at the back of the store, while he went to the hot beverage station adjacent to the cash register.
He filled a large Styrofoam cup with coffee and flavored it with cream and sugar. Checking his watch, he went to collect Jada.
Hands on her hips, she was examining the brands of orange juice inside the refrigerated display case.
“We’ve gotta go, Pumpkin,” he said.
“I don’t know what kind of orange juice Mom likes,” she said.
Corey started to reply that Simone liked Tropicana, when he noticed someone standing in an aisle a few feet away, observing them.
It was a colossus of a man. Corey stood about five-ten and weighed a hundred and seventy-five, and this guy had at least six or seven inches and a hundred pounds on him. Fair-skinned—what Grandma Louise liked to call “high yella”—he wore faded denim overalls over a white T-shirt, muddy work boots, and a tattered Atlanta Braves cap cocked on an unkempt, bushy Afro. A stubbly beard made his pudgy face look soiled.
The guy’s brown eyes were oddly flat, as if they were painted on his face. But Corey realized the guy wasn’t looking at him at all.
He was looking at Jada. Gawking at her.
Jada was a beautiful child, but this man’s intense attention was far from that of an innocently admiring adult. His was the naked leer of a pervert, a parent’s ultimate nightmare.
Oblivious to Corey standing there, concentrating solely on Jada, the man licked his lips, his tongue leaving a glistening trail of saliva.
Disgust and anger wrenched Corey’s gut. He sat his cup on a shelf, grabbed Jada’s hand and pulled her to his side, shielding her from the giant stranger.
The pervert blinked as if awakening from a reverie, and only then did he look at Corey.
His stare was as empty as a scarecrow’s. A chill trickled down Corey’s spine.
Something’s wrong with this guy, he thought. Dude’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top.
“Daddy, what is it?” Jada asked. She hadn’t noticed the man.
“We need to go, sweetheart.” He nudged his daughter along with a firm hand on her back.
“But I wanted apple juice.” She looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t look back there. We have to go. We’ll get your apple juice later.”
He ushered Jada outside. The hot air was thick as cotton, but refreshing compared to the bone-deep chill he’d felt inside the minimart.
A man called out: “Corey? Corey Webb? That you, man?”
In midstride, Corey stopped. He knew that voice, that piercing falsetto. He had not heard it in probably fifteen years or so, but he would never forget it.
Could that be who I think it is?
As other customers brushed past him, he stepped away from the entrance and turned. Sunlight lanced his eyes. He lifted his hand to his brow to block the glare.
When his vision adjusted, he saw a man leaning against a late-model, blue Ford F-150 parked in front of the store. Brown as a paper bag, he was about six feet tall, leanly muscular, with long arms webbed with tattoos. He had shoulder-length dreadlocks as thick as cables, a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, and deep-set, fiercely intelligent brown eyes. He wore paint-splattered denim overalls and faded leather work boots.
A cigarette dangled in his spindly fingers. He took a puff and exhaled a halo of smoke, and just the acrid scent of the tobacco stirred long-buried memories in Corey’s mind.
“Leon?” Corey asked. He was out of breath, as if he’d been slugged in the stomach.
The guy flashed a gap-toothed grin, an expression that made his elongated face appear wolflike.
“It’s moi, the one and only, the great man himself, live and in the flesh.”
Corey was speechless.
Leon Sharpe, his childhood friend from Detroit, was the last person he’d ever expected to see again.
And for so many reasons, the last person he’d ever wanted to see again, too.
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Compilation, Introduction and “Deadwoods” copyright © 2006 by Brandon Massey; “Harlem” copyright © 2006 by Eric Jerome Dickey; “Breath of Life” copyright © 2006 by Lawana Holland-Moore; “The Share” copyright © 2006 by Terence Taylor; “Sucker” copyright © 2006 by B. Gordon Doyle; “Wilson’s Pawn & Loan” copyright © 2006 by L. R. Giles; “The Light of Cree” copyright © 2006 by Chesya Burke; “Smoked Butt” copyright © 2006 by Brian Egeston; “Our Kind of People” copyright © 2006 by Michael Boatman; “Natural Instinct” copyright © 2006 by L. A. Banks; “Lord of All That Glitters” copyright © 2006 by Anthony Beal; “Leviathan” copyright © 2006 by Christopher Chambers; “The Arrangements” copyright © 2006 by Patricia E. Canterbury; “Good ’Nough to Eat” copyright © 2006 by Rickey Windell George; “Milez to Go” copyright © 2006 by Linda Addison; “Black Frontiers” copyright © 2006 by Maurice Broaddus; “Upstairs” copyright © 2006 by Tananarive Due
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Voices From The Other Side Page 33