“Starchild. That’s the dude with the sunglasses, man, hung out with your uncle Julius? Old dude, live with his mama. Brain all fucked up from drinkin. Starchild flew back and hit the wall like the wind was blowin him, Mortrice. I ain’t lyin. Shit. I was layin there all gaffled up in the parkin lot—that’s where they put us. Hog-facedown. Starchild come round the corner, try and zip up his pants. Po-lice was hollerin and then boo-yaa.” Chris rubbed his wristbones where the handcuffs had left purple dents. “You lucky you was out at your peoples, man, in the woods.”
Chris and Teddy and Lorenzo had been splayed out on the asphalt for hours, but eventually they’d been let go. No guns, no drugs. Mortrice had them in the trailer. And last night, whoever the gaunt-faced man had been, the one trying to get into the trailer, his eyes wild and hair braided like a kid did it, he hadn’t been a cop. The fool had run when he saw the .9. Mortrice got into the backseat of the car.
“Boo-yaa,” Chris said again, staring at the yellow police tape around the rock house. They turned the corner and stopped at the place where Malinda stayed now.
But when they knocked on the plywood in the doorway, and the woman slid it aside, she was older than Malinda. Short hair, baggy pants, long silver earrings. Chris said, “Yo, Malinda in there?” and the woman’s face grew as hard as wood.
“Do you little fools see this?” she said, pulling open the makeshift door. “Do you?” She pointed to the blue splinters as long as spears littering the yard. “That’s my door. Cause the cops were lookin for little fools like you and big fools like some other people. You got all of us raided!”
Mortrice heard someone call, “SaRonn?” The woman still blocked the doorway and she shouted, “Like Malinda gon trade one hoodlum for another?” Then he heard crying, and she said, “Look what you done got me—that’s what she does now when somebody knocks, okay?” The woman moved aside, pointing at a little girl huddled in the corner of the room. “Look at the cuts on her leg! That’s from where they busted the door down! Get out my face.” She pushed the plywood back into place, and Mortrice heard a hook slide into an eye.
Marcus walked into Natalie Larchwood’s office, nodding at the secretary, his fingers touching the tight, twisted eyebrow before he realized it.
“Marcus,” she said, her huge round glasses making her blue eyes look like jewels in clear puddles. “I hoped you’d be patient until now. A new year, right? Look, I had faith in you, I knew the arrest had to be a mistake, and Val and Judy both came in to tell me how much the students would miss out on with you gone.”
He wasn’t sure she was finished, as usual. But she looked down at her desk as if sometimes the tumbling sheets of words surprised her, too, and Marcus ventured, “I missed this place, too.”
“Well. The board thinks…” She stopped. “Look, I know you’re a good teacher. Mr. Whalen’s out for surgery, for at least two weeks, and after that, I think we can find more sub work.” She shook her head so vehemently that her short steel hair bristled. “Whether anyone else likes it or not, I want you back.”
“Thanks,” Marcus said, and she lowered her eyes to her paperwork.
“You’ve got Whalen’s classes for two weeks?” Val sat down next to Marcus in the teachers’ lounge. Marcus sipped his coffee, keeping his eyes only on his papers until he heard their voices.
“He’s out for surgery, but no one knows what kind,” Judy said cheerfully.
Val leaned closer, lifting his brows. “Hey, when you keep the specifics unclear, and you’re his age, and your face always looks that grim, must be prostate.”
“That’s awful,” Judy said.
“That’s awful cold,” Marcus said.
Val stood up. “Hey, this is Sonia Martínez. She—uh, she got your classes.” Marcus nodded at the woman Judy’s age, with a fall of black hair. “Sonia loved our little motivational seminar last week, huh?” Marcus could tell Val wanted everyone to be comfortable. “These kids are just bombarded by MTV and materialistic imagery!” he chirped in a singsong imitation. “Let’s help them channel their tremendous energy into positive, empowering outlets!”
“You’re hard, man.” Marcus smiled.
“But that guy doesn’t have to sit here all day with sleepy kids,” Sonia said, quiet.
“He’s off to another seminar. We’re off to kids who really tremendously want to sleep because they were up all night partying in much better clothing than I’m wearing,” Val said, waving.
Marcus walked to Whalen’s classroom. First Period. Honors History. Kids the others called Brainiacs, dressed in black Goth clothes or Guess. They were working independently on research papers about the Cold War, according to the thin folder Natalie Larchwood had given him. “You know Herb doesn’t leave much of a lesson plan for subs. Pretty much standard procedure in his classroom.” Marcus nodded to a few students he’d had in world history last year. Standard. Read the book. Answer the questions. Just like Mortrice had said. He felt useless, looking at the bent heads working or napping or writing love letters. These students didn’t need anything special. Maybe Mortrice’s class would.
At lunch, he stayed in the room, reading the newspaper. He was surprised to see a photo of the overpass near the Kozy Komfort, and under that, an article with Bent Carson’s byline.
Approaching the small, recently annexed area of Rio Seco called Treetown, commuters and residents alike can see numerous graffiti markings on the overpass of the 42 freeway; some of the markings are names, others resemble telephone poles. But all signal the entry into one of the city’s most troubled areas.
Treetown, an area plagued by poverty, drugs, and recent gang violence, has been the scene of six homicides this year. For the community, which has approximately 1,000 residents, this translates into a murder rate more than double that of the city at large.
Most recently, Vernon Howard, 21, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Olive Street two weeks ago. Homicide investigators have no leads in the shooting, which also saw stray bullets puncture a parked U.S. Mail Jeep. Mail delivery to the beleaguered area was halted for ten days, an unprecedented action by the Postal Service, but a spokesman said that the safety of letter carriers could not be compromised. Some elderly residents missed government checks.
In the past few months, Lorenzo Proudfoot, 16, was shot and killed in the parking lot of Olive Gardens, a low-income apartment complex that has been the site of much recent gunfire. And a still-unidentified John Doe was bludgeoned to death at a run-down motel on the edge of the area.
The most puzzling and gruesome murders took place in September, involving three nonresidents of the area. Pamela Sawicky and Marissa Kent, both downtown residents, were found dead in a burning car at a Treetown towing yard. Despite intensive and ongoing investigation, no suspects have been arrested. And at the same address, a French national was bludgeoned to death. He, too, was a nonresident.
The towing yard was also the site of a drug raid that netted stolen property. Drugs have been a persistent problem in the mostly black community. The few streets are lined with modest homes and junked cars, no sidewalks or streetlights, and some unkempt yards. Longtime residents shake their heads over this new wave of violence stalking their area.
Marcus laid down the newspaper. A whole lot of bad niggers in that old Niggertown. He was one of them. Stolen property. Drug raid. And what the hell was Bent doing covering this? He was arts and music, he’d said. Not crime. Crime was some guy with a long name. Marcus looked at the story accompanying Bent’s. Rick Kolavic—that was him. His story was under another photo—this one of several young men lying facedown and anonymous in the Olive Gardens parking lot.
Rio Seco police conducted a dawn raid in areas of Treetown over the weekend, searching for suspected gang members, parole violators, drugs, and weapons, in an effort to stem rising crime in the small enclave between the 42 Freeway and the river. Five men were taken into custody at various locations, for parole violations and outstanding traffic warrants. The police action was praised by Ray Sawicky and other members of the City Council, who had recommended cleaning up the community in ways ranging from police sweeps to aggressive enforcement of city housing codes at many rundown residences.
While police were canvasing the crime-ridden Olive Gardens apartment complex, a man identified as Fredrick Prince stepped out from behind a building in what officers characterized as a threatening stance. Prince, who had served time in jail for drunk driving, ignored police orders to lie down and instead reached for his waistband, causing officers to fire. He was found to be carrying only a cigarette lighter; apparently, Prince had been urinating against the building when the raid began, and was fastening his pants. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The two officers who fired their weapons will be placed on administrative leave until the shooting has been reviewed.
Marcus saw the hovering blue trails they’d watched the other night. That was what had been going on. He’d gone home, and he hadn’t been back to his father’s place. Fredrick Prince? The students began to file in, and he was still puzzling over the name when he turned on the video Whalen had left for today.
The Depression. Marcus stood in the back, looking at his nephew’s shoulders, rigid under the huge black jacket he never took off. He’d only nodded when Mortrice had come in, not wanting to put him off. American history. This was a nearly remedial-level class. Marcus recognized more faces when he circled the room. Samana—Som’s nephew, without any bruises. The two white kids who liked rap, with baggy jeans and T-shirts, their hair shaved except for braided tails from the crowns. Josh and William? The kids from Agua Dulce—Araceli, Stella, Maria, Bebos, and Frankie Ortíz, he read from the roll in the window light. Mortrice and Chris and the kid who liked to be called B-Real. B-Real’s burgeoning Afro was what brought back the name for him.
Starchild. Fredrick Prince. One of Finis and Julius’s friends who’d been left behind twice and ended up in Marcus’s history class.
He and the others from Treetown, walking up Pepper Avenue and under the new freeway and through downtown to the high school in the winter dark. Crowding into one or two cars with dragging mufflers, or a truck. And Whalen sitting at this desk, or one like it, his bland, round face and light-brown crewcut, looking out over them after Christmas break. “Well,” he’d said. “A bunch of mushrooms seem to have sprung up in my classroom. A forest of mushrooms from Treetown. Heh, heh.”
Marcus had stared at the heads in front of him, his ears hot. The downtown kids had trails of long hair in thin rivulets along their spines or flowing as thick as lava to their shoulders—but through the falls of hair falling uniformly from pale scarlike parts down the centers of their skulls, Whalen saw eyes and quirks and names.
Under Usher’s cloud of hair as soft as dandelion puffs, or Bennie’s too light hair that already drooped limp into wide drifts, under Starchild’s most impressive natural, big as Sugarfoot’s of the Ohio Players, he saw nothing. Like the school nurse, who sprayed her table with antiseptic before you were at the door, and then wiped furiously.
“Can you fit through the door, sir?” Whalen would call to Starchild.
Starchild stopped coming. So did Usher and Bennie and most of the others. They said nothing; no confrontation, that was the Treetown way. Silence. Marcus used to stare into the tiny mirror at home, combing out his thick, wavy, too straight stuff. From his Mexican blood. Poking his forefinger hard at his skull, he saw his natural extend only to the first knuckle.
The video droned on, the heads before him bobbing and weaving in sleep or whispers. Marcus wedged his back squarely against the wall, feeling the bulletin boards behind his neck, and he felt tears flooding the spaces under his eyes and behind his nose. He swallowed over and over, squinting, until his face felt like it would melt.
He met Bent at the restaurant that night. “I didn’t know you were covering Treetown,” Marcus began quickly at the back table. “So that’s why you want to see The Blue Q, huh, to write about crime and shit?”
Bent frowned, but he didn’t look away. “Hey, you’ve been stalling me on the visit to the hood, and I happened to be hanging out with Rick Kolavic that day when he got the call. Since I’m interested in the area, I did that sidebar. I used to cover city stuff in Boston sometimes.”
“Yeah?” Marcus pressed his knuckles hard over his lip, waiting until he could think.
But Bent went on. “You didn’t tell me you got arrested for stolen goods. That must have felt fucked-up. I heard the charges got dropped.”
Marcus was silent. What the hell did you say to that? Bent said, “So, were you just there to pick up a car? All Rick said was he recognized your face.”
So Bent didn’t know anything about his father’s place. Marcus nodded. “Yeah. But you want to check out the place next to it. The Blue Q. My uncle said cool. This weekend.”
“Great.” Bent finished his beer. “Hey, maybe we can cruise around the area before, you know, so I could get a better feel for the community.”
“So you can see some more murders?” Marcus said, standing up.
Bent’s face didn’t soften. “Look, man, that story was just something the editor asked me to do. I’m not an asshole, okay? I can see that Treetown isn’t just projects. That’s what I’m talking about. I want to see the good parts, too. The parts that fascinate me, from the South, how they got transplanted. Like the blues.”
“You’ll see the blues,” Marcus said. “I gotta get to work.”
“We’re gonna do something else today,” Marcus told Mortrice’s class. The faces angled up to his, wary and squinted. “Oh, you want to keep sleepin. I know. But I’m kinda bored, guys. I like history. We’re gonna start a new project while I’m here.”
“We got a book,” Bebos said.
“We’re supposed to read,” B-Real said.
“We’re gonna talk,” Marcus said. “And we’re gonna write. Start somethin fresh for the new year.”
“For the nine-deuce,” Chris muttered.
“I like that, cause we’ll get to language, too,” Marcus said, and they groaned. “Get into groups of three or four, get out some paper. I want you to write down what you think people in the distant future might find important as American history if they looked back to 1992. Let’s get it on.”
They worked on the assignment until the weekend, because Marcus went from group to group, talking about everything from music to clothes to newspapers. He kept thinking of Bent’s story, what Rio Seco read about Treetown. By Friday night, he sat in his apartment reading the papers.
Mortrice had worked with B-Real, Chris, and a Proudfoot kid. Their paper, penned elaborately, read:
What the future people probly won’t know unless the hood tell them is it was a war in the 90s. The war of the cops and brothers. Every time a brother turn around it’s a police in his face. Or like Rodney King, stomping him. What we would say is this was a big battle and everybody armed. But most people now don’t know this any way. So do that make it history?
There was turfs and battlegrounds and positions in every city, but nobody pay attention. There was soldiers and generals on both sides, too. History is right now, if you think about it.
Marcus stared at the open doorway, watching the downtown lights sparkle. He wondered what Mortrice had seen in L.A., in his Gardens. What had Sofelia witnessed? He stared at the lined paper. Soldiers.
Another group, with Samana and the two braided white kids and a blond girl from downtown, had written in blocky capital letters,
If life’s a bitch and then you die, what could people tell somebody from the future. Who would care. What we could say is as soon as something was cool it wasn’t cool no more. Music like rap was cool, and then it was in commercials. Clothes were cool, and then old people would wear them so hell no. And the best times people had was when they were high, and they can’t record that, so how will anybody from the future know what was best. Floating is best. You can’t write tweaking.
History is a bunch of people did stuff and then they died. We do stuff and then we die. So why should it be different then.
They had a point. They don’t care; why should future teenagers care? He thought it was interesting that they wrote about drugs. They could tell he wanted them to think for themselves, and he could tell that they might not be afraid to write what they wanted. Maybe they’d actually get something done.
Bent and Abby were drinking murky-green liquid from tiny glasses in the bar at Chile when he came in. Abby waved brightly and said, “Have a good time, babe! Esquire’s gonna love it!”
Marcus didn’t say anything. They drove his Bug since he didn’t want anyone to damage the Montero in The Blue Q parking lot, where people played craps and came to blows between vehicles. Bent rubbed two fingers into the corners of his mouth and said, “Abby loves those weird drinks. Grappa, Pernod. And she shouldn’t be drinking at all, but she says they’re medicinal.”
“Why can’t she drink?” Marcus looked at the afternoon light on the overpass, smudging the graffiti.
“She’s pregnant,” Bent said. “Web’s wife’s pregnant, too. Maybe it’s a competition thing. But we’re really gonna have to save money for a place now.”
Marcus glanced at him. “So you’re lookin for some exotic Treetown stories to sell, huh? Or maybe you can poke around and sell some info?”
“Like what?” Bent said. “Drug information? What are you talking about?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Marcus said, tired. “You want to see Treetown. Here it is.”
He cruised down Grove, not turning on SaRonn’s street since it dead-ended, but he looked at her house. Something was different. Maybe she had a man putting in a new door. He sped up and stared at old Mrs. Price’s yard, where clothespins perched on the empty wires like tiny sparrows. “Some of these places look like the Delta,” Bent murmured. “But your uncle’s from Oklahoma, right?”
Marcus nodded. “Tulsa.” But he fell silent again, watching the yards. Yeah, people had made their yards like home. If home was Mississippi or Georgia, and the people had come to work the lemon groves, they kept home inside their fences. Pigs, chickens. Blue bottles hung from chinaberry trees. They’d moved from place to place, but they’d carried what they thought of as home. Africa. Even Africa. Pompey’s father was from Africa. And once, when he’d seen Alma and Abuela raking and sweeping the dirt and gravel in the Thompson lot, Brother Lobo had told Marcus that dirt yards were African. Grass was considered unclean. Bugs proliferated in grass, and damp and germs. Hard dirt could be swept clean and decorated.
Bent was staring intently at a tiny store in a stone building. Two older men sat in the shade of the pepper tree nearby, playing dominoes, and three young women in bike shorts and bra tops came out of the dusty screen door carrying grocery bags. They walked across the street to Olive Gardens. Bent said, “So this is…,” and an old Buick Electra drifted across the vacant lot and in front of the VW.
“Learn how to drive, Westside,” Marcus leaned out the window to say.
Snooter King stopped alongside the Bug and grinned. “Shoot, nigga, I drive Treetown rules,” he drawled.
Marcus shook his head. Why use signals and caution when you expect to get pulled over anyway? “I ain’t drivin like that, fool.”
“I bet your downtown ass ain’t,” Snooter said, “bringin your mama to the 502.” He leaned forward to see the passenger seat, and his face closed up as smooth as an empty palm.
“You tryin to think and motorvate at the same time?” Marcus said quickly. He knew Bent was listening hard, even though the pen was still.
“Lookin for that Feets woman, the one with big mantequilla.“ Marcus thought, Bennie. Her butt. I don’t want to attempt translation here. Snooter said, “I heard she was headin to The Q, but she was supposed to be cookin some necks and bullets for me.” Marcus nodded. “Later, Sissy.” Snooter pulled away.
Bent was nodding coolly. “I’ve been to the South, to New York, and L.A., but most of that lost me. Foreign language.”
Marcus looked at the swaying trees in the cold evening wind. This was Treetown. Tiny place. Tiny history. People stopped moving. They got Mississippi and Rio Seco and nowhere to go now.
“Sissy’s not rude?” Bent asked.
“Depends on who you are,” Marcus said, rubbing his forehead, thinking of Finis. “This little store’s the 502. California code for drunk driving. Like if you buy liquor here and try to make it home, your ass is sure to get stopped.”
He got out of the car. He wanted a soda and some watermelon-chili candy, things he could only get here. Bent was beside him, and Marcus knew he was hoping the old men would talk. Marcus knew they would.
“That one of them Thompson boys?” Mr. Gaskins said. “Y’all ain’t brang me no possums for months.” His fingers, the skin taut and old-man shined around the nails, held his dominos tight.
“No, sir,” Marcus said. For years, he thought. “Been a long time since any of us went huntin.”
“Oh, you the baby boy,” Mr. Gaskins said, peering up harder. “You ain’t never brang none noway.”
“No, sir,” Marcus said again, heading for the doorway, thinking, Most I can catch is those three negatives. All I’m trained for. Bent laughed softly beside him.
“Possums, huh? A man I met down in Mississippi told me that was the best meat he ever ate,” Bent said, and Marcus looked at him. He couldn’t see any sarcasm in Bent’s smile. But he didn’t want to do this now; he didn’t like being a tour guide.
Shawnette, the girl behind the tiny counter, was in one of his classes. “Hi, Mr. Thompson,” she said shyly. Marcus got a tamarind soda out of the cooler. “You drive a VW, like B-Real?”
“That’s your heart, huh?” Marcus teased her.
Bent said, “This soda looks like something Abby would love to try.” He grabbed three. On the way back to the car, Mr. Gaskins looked up again.
“Fittin to rain,” he called. “You bet not stay out too long.”
Marcus smelled the ozone mixing with the sharp scent of pepper berries: he paused near the car, his chest suddenly flooded with warmth, remembering all the times his mother had sent him here for eggs or chorizo, remembering the old men teasing him and the run back along the drainage ditches.
Bent was staring across the street at Olive Gardens. “That’s where we’d find the real rappers,” he said to Marcus. “The real thing.” He pointed to a ring of tiny, flickering lights in the parking lot. “What’s that?”
Marcus looked at the people standing near the candles. He’d heard from someone that a shrine for Starchild was in the parking lot. “I don’t know,” he said, getting into the car.
Bent took a swallow of his soda. “So, what do people drink over at The Blue Q?” Marcus could hear the nervousness in his voice; he knew Bent heard the bitterness in his. He thought of Starchild, who’d gotten drunk at The Blue Q.
“Drink whatever you want, man,” he said, approaching his uncle’s place, seeing the taillights disappear down the narrow road into the trees. They glowed like intoxicated eyes, blinking between the trunks. Shit—he felt stupid bringing Bent here, having his uncle suspicious as hell, his father probably sitting in the back staring at this ponytail. “I don’t come here, man, I told you,” he added, half-angry now. “Not at night.”
Bent didn’t notice what he said. He was moving his head rapidly to take in the cars parked in the dirt lot, the people laughing near the door, the neon sign proclaiming MILLER HIGH LIFE. Marcus saw the tiny notebook still in his hand. “I’d be cool,” he said, nodding toward it. “Especially with people all suspicious of—” He wanted to say white folks, but that wasn’t fair. “Of anybody might be law enforcement. Since the raid.”
At the door, Joe lifted his chin at Marcus. “Two, huh, Sissy?” he said, holding out his hand.
“You countin good tonight, man,” Marcus said, his ears warm, and inside, where the smell of ribs and smoke and beer hit them like a moist tongue along the neck, he said to forestall Bent’s question, “Let’s eat.”
He was heading to the window in the back, but Bent touched his arm. “There he is,” Bent said. “Do those guys play, too?”
Marcus saw his father sitting in the back corner with Oscar and Mr. Lanier. “They don’t play at all,” he said, trying not to smile. “Come on—you better get you a plate before it starts.” At the tiny counter, instead of Aintielila, Bennie Proudfoot was ladling out portions of greens.
“A plate? Is that a whole meal?” Bent was whispering.
“It’s a plate,” Marcus said. Bennie pushed plates across the counter to waiting hands. “You workin?” Marcus asked her.
She folded her arms. “Do it look like I’m playin?”
“You cooked?”
“Do it look like I’m partyin?” She rubbed two fingers hard into her sweating hairline. “Your sister be comin to make pies, but she ain’t came all week. She takin Starchild pretty hard, I guess. Everybody mad.”
“Starchild?” Bent murmured. “Like in Funkadelic?”
Bennie trained her gaze on him, and Marcus quickly said, “Give us two plates—ribs, greens, rice and beans, huh?” She looked at him hard.
Bent handed her a twenty, saying, “I’ll get both of those, please.”
Sitting down, Marcus tried to think of how to do this the whole goddamn night. Nobody had jammed them up in the parking lot, at least. “Hey, boy,” he heard his uncle say. “Ain’t you thirsty?”
His uncle’s strong fingers set down two glasses. His gleamed black with choc, and Bent’s was a Miller. “You the one want to hear some music?”
“I’m honored to see you,” Bent said, and his voice was truly soft and respectful. “I’m a huge fan.”
Oscar nodded. He looked at Marcus. “Drank up, boy. You lookin peaked.” Marcus glanced at his father, watching him with his face as dark and hollowed as a mask. Oscar clamped his chitlin-tough fingers onto Marcus’s shoulder. “Y’all listen good, huh?”
Oscar and the two musicians went up onto the tiny stage, and the jukebox playing Denise LaSalle went off.
“I’ma play a few song for a—for the ears should be workin,” Oscar said into the microphone. “Y’all drank up, so you can hear me right. I’ma tell you the truth now.”
“What’s that you’ve got?” Bent whispered, leaning forward to look at Marcus’s drink.
Marcus stared at Bent’s small notebook, next to his glass, at the smooth fingers as pale as cigarettes lying beside the paper. Uncle Oscar only poured choc for voices he’d listened to and hands he’d studied for grease at the knuckles and pillowy calluses on the palms. Men from Muskogee and Idabel, he used to tell Marcus; men from the Westside and San Bernardino. Not from Boston. Not from downtown.
“Strong as blood,” Marcus murmured, and the guitar screamed under the knife.
“Some Muddy Water,” Oscar said. “Listen. For them think they slick.” “I am ready for you, I hope you ready for me…”
Marcus heard snatches of the song while he swallowed hard, “I’m smokin dynomite, I hope some downtown sherbert start a fight…”
The guitar pulsed and then roared, the knife sliding wild down the strings; the harmonica trembled behind it.
“Whoa,” Bent whispered when the song began to fade. “This is amazing. But isn’t it some screwball wanting to fight?”
Marcus didn’t look at Bent. Yeah, he thought. But Oscar thinks he’s sendin you a message. You and whoever else.
His uncle smiled viciously at the crowd and whispered, “Bet not mistake me now. Cause I don’t play.” He strummed hard again. “I’m a man—you know how that go? I spell M-A-N. Not no landless boy. Uh-uh.”
“Landless?” Bent whispered, writing on the pad. Marcus heard someone call his name from near the doorway.
SaRonn curled her fingers toward him. “I’ll be right back,” Marcus told Bent, not waiting for an answer.
He followed her out into the parking lot, ignoring Joe’s called “Y’all be good now, huh?” She wore a tank top that clung to her back, the faded jeans he’d seen before, and in the cold night air, she shrugged her jacket back on before she turned.
“Bennie called and told me you were here,” she said.
“I thought you wanted me off your doorstep and outta your face.”
She stopped to pry a stone from her shoe. “Listen—I was takin care of a girl who’d been beaten up.” Then she took his hand and walked toward the trees near his father’s stone wall. “I don’t want anybody to hear us.”
She leaned against one of the smooth trunks lit cold and lavender in the moonlight, holding both hands out like a carved goddess with offerings. A black stone lay in each palm; when Marcus took them, they were heated and smooth. Each had a perfect white ring in the center, a blank eye.
“Finis left them the other night. Said give them to you, cause he’s scared to come by your place. Cops. Cops everywhere the other night. He said he’s slippin into darkness. Lonely. Said you would know the rocks.” She watched his face.
Marcus touched the iris, raised like a blister inside the circle. “Finis know all the rocks,” he said. “Not me. I just know the songs.”
SaRonn shook her head. “He’s lookin for you. I know it.” She pushed both of his hands, with the rocks, into his pockets. “So is Larry. The police broke down my door in the raid, and I have to get a new one,” she said, tilting her head back against the bark and closing her eyes. Her tea-gold face was as bright as a coin in the stark winter light.
“Why’d they bust your door down?” Marcus asked, trying to keep his hands from going around her waist.
“Cause Larry used my address last time he got picked up for fighting in Olive Gardens.” SaRonn paused, eyes still closed. “After he saw you that night, he came over to Bennie’s and talked shit.”
Marcus touched her chin, and her eyes flew open. He slid his hands onto the bark skin behind her. “About me? Cause I didn’t kick his ass? I’m the wrong brother,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.
“About me.” SaRonn pulled his face closer to hers, her fingers cool on his cheeks. “You more worried about him than me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “What are we supposed to do while you brothers get yourselves together? Go through your changes? Marcus. Do you think about me? Do you want to come back or not?”
“I think about you all the time,” he said, and he couldn’t breathe. The trees—where he’d watched—the velvet bark and smell of meaty smoke and laughter. He was afraid to touch her; his palms pressed hard on the moist, breathing bark.
“Now you more worried about the tree than me,” she whispered. “We can trade. Okay.” She pushed herself against his side, moving him by his ribs until his back was to the trunk and he propped himself with legs wide. “Now you gonna have to get a handful of me. Right here.”
Her breasts just filled his fingers, and he kissed her until he could taste cloves and cinnamon. Her behind, in the jeans, overflowed his hands and moved against his wrists. Marcus pulled her closer and moved his own hips, and he felt dizzy with the throb of warmth along the front of his body and the chill at his back. The rustling branches overhead and the faint music behind them, the press of her skin, dropped a roar like cupped hands over his ears.
“You gon leave your friend in there?” she asked softly.
“Damn,” Marcus said, his mouth cold when the breeze pushed against them.
He led her back inside, where Bent sat stiffly, drinking from the same bottle. Oscar was just carrying his guitar off the platform while people were shouting, “Oh, man, don’t be so lazy, Oscar! Get on back up there!”
Inclining his head toward Marcus and Bent, his eyes narrow crescents in the smoke, Oscar said, “Come on back.”
Bent said, “Hey, you missed a great show, Marcus.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “It wasn’t for me. This is SaRonn. Bent.”
At the long back table, Marcus’s father raised his chin and eyebrows an inch in greeting. “You gon try some pigsfeet?” Oscar was asking Bent. “You ain’t never ate chitlins, right?” Marcus felt SaRonn tremble with silent laughter, but Bent nodded, to their surprise.
“Yeah, sure, they have something like that in France,” Bent said. “I’d love some.” Oscar nodded to Marcus, and he went back to the kitchen window.
Aintielila stood there now, frowning so hard her black-drawn brows wavered. “Who the hell you brought in here?” she whispered.
Marcus was surprised by the breathy anger he heard. “This dude writes for the paper,” he said. “He’s Web Matheson’s brother-in-law, and Uncle Oscar’s gon grill him, I think. He want some chitlins.” She slammed a bowl onto the small counter and turned her flowered shoulders away from him.
Oscar was saying, “When I was in France, they ate truffles—now, that’s a damn fungus they get pigs to root out the ground. And people think chitlins is nasty. What you been told, that’s what you see. Right?”
Marcus watched Bent pour Tabasco onto the chitlins and take a big bite. “Hey,” Bent said after a minute. “My fiancée has me eating snails and drinking these nasty European liqueurs when we eat out. I’d rather have this and a beer any day.”
Marcus held in his laughter. Bent was cooler than he’d thought. But Oscar started now. “Lanier here, he know pigs,” Oscar said. “He had a hundred pigs over there across the freeway before, but the city chased him out cause they wanted that land. Changed the zoning.”
Mr. Lanier nodded, his grimy khaki knees poking out from the end seat. “Them pigs ate good, too. Red Man Tucker give me a load a avocados once, and I’m seriest as a heart attack—them hogs eat the meat and spit out the pits like a natchal man.”
Oscar was watching Bent, and Marcus saw his father staring over folded arms. “Lanier puttin pigs on that pea field near the freeway,” Oscar said. “You know it, right, cause your brother-in-law, he wantin to buy it for some reason. And here you show up, all interest.”
Before Bent could answer, Lanier said mournfully, “Them fools sleep in the old packin house, they hungry. You see em in there like haints. But any fool mess with my hogs, he get a ass fulla lead.”
“Ain’t that right?” Oscar said. “Me and him—we got shotguns, and man right here had one, nice one, but it’s gone now.” Marcus’s father didn’t move. “You got a gun, Bent?”
“Nope,” Bent said, pushing away the bowl. “Pretty quiet downtown.”
“That’s right,” Oscar said. “So all you interested in is me.”
Bent leaned forward, and Marcus touched SaRonn’s hand. “Yeah,” Bent said. “The blues. The blues—it’s history, right? The truest form of music we’ve got. I wondered…” He sat back, looking embarrassed. “Since you’re still so great, why’d you quit touring and recording?”
Oscar drank a long swallow of choc, and Marcus glimpsed Aintielila pushing open the kitchen door to gesture at him. Oscar’s voice deepened when he stood up. “When I sang ‘My daddy died before I was born,’ you think that’s anybody’s song. History ain’t shit. Ax Marcus.” He went toward the kitchen.
Marcus nodded at his father and stood up, too. “Hey, Bent, it’s been a long night. Come on.”
When they stepped into the parking lot, Bent let out a breath. “Damn, he sure was cryptic. Pigs. History.” He grinned at Marcus. “Can’t wait to come back, man. Was that quiet guy a musician, too? With the big hands?”
“Nope,” Marcus said, seeing his father’s knuckles big as walnuts. “Mechanic.”
“Baby boy,” a voice said from near the stone trough, and Marcus turned. Larry Cotton stepped out and fanned his fingers wide in mock surprise. “Look like you think you the shit. Hangin out with SaRonn, bringin this dude down here. I seen you nosyin around the Gardens after they popped Starchild.” He stared at Bent. “You lookin for excitement, man?”
Marcus watched Cotton move toward the three of them. He gon snatch SaRonn or fuck with Bent, he thought. But he was standing in the rising dust near the pecan trunks, seeing the taunting face, remembering this time what he was supposed to say. “Let’s start with I’ma kick your ass,” he told Cotton. “And we can end with you all fucked up.”
When he stepped forward, knowing Cotton expected him to throw a blow toward the face, he let his shoulder drop down like he remembered Demetrius showing him, like they did in football practice. He rammed Cotton like the tackling sled Demetrius had kept in the yard, throwing his back into the stone trough, and when Cotton fell, he grabbed Marcus and brought him down, too. Something fell with a clang into the trough, and Marcus felt his ribs slam against the rock edge. Then he was rolling away from Cotton, crouching and waiting for the blows. But he saw five red toenails slide near him in the window-lit dust, and he heard Aintielila say, “I’ll shoot your evil mouth full, you don’t get off my place.”
She was pointing her derringer at Larry Cotton, who was crouched, too, rising now to edge past the trough. Marcus heard the music loud from inside, the slamming of more car doors, and he saw his uncle coming fast now. Cotton walked quick and defiant down the road toward the gate.
Marcus didn’t know what he expected SaRonn to do, but she only bit her lip and stared into the trees. His aunt said, “Baby, take Marcus’s guest on, now. I gotta patch him up.”
His cheekbone was burning, and his ribs felt like a stick was lodged between bones. Bent said, “Hey, Marcus, I’m sorry if…”
“Not your fault,” he said. “SaRonn, his ride’s downtown.”
“I’ll be back,” she said.
His aunt smeared salve on the abrasion near his eye, and then she fixed her long, narrow eyes on his. “Don’t be bringin no white man from downtown round here again,” she said, and left him in the kitchen, staring at the shuttered serving window.
His uncle came in from the back door, the smell of rain hitting the trampled dust outside. He saw the door to their living area creaking part open, and he said, “She didn’t like seein that face when she look out in the club.”
Marcus leaned against the sink. “Cause he’s Matheson’s relative?”
“Cause of how he look, too,” Oscar said. He stared at the big pot on the counter. “White man and his son wanted to buy Lila’s place in Idabel. Back there in Oklahoma. Lil joint she had with her aunt. See, Lila mama was gone. She worked the streets, and look like the daddy been as pale as your friend there.”
Marcus shook his head. “Everybody lost their family back then, too.”
“Shit,” Oscar said. “You don’t know shit. I used to sing at they place, when I come through there. Came back one night after the show cause I want to see Lila, and the young one had her in the back. Talkin bout ‘You so pretty, I’m so pretty, and you rather be with ugly niggers like Thompson. I make you match ugly.’
“He been done… hurt her, you know. Scar her up inside, why she can’t have babies. I didn’t know then. What I seen, he had hit her, and then he start to shavin her eyebrows.” His uncle cocked his neck like he was shrugging off a hand. “I bust in there and got my knife, but when he turn for me, Lila go in a drawer and get a thirty-eight. Shot him in the eye.”
Marcus held his breath. “But I thought you…”
“We had to get outta there. I taken the shot for my name.”
“But it ain’t your story,” Aintielila said from the doorway. She stalked into the kitchen, grabbing a rag and wiping the counter with furious strokes. “Talkin all out your damn place. This one bring trouble over here, and you run your mouth.” Marcus looked away. Her mouth was tightly closed now, her eyes on the wall. She thought they were pitying her. He remembered Sofelia’s hair, like flowing ink over her shoulder, her voice meant only for her aunt. She must have told Sofelia the story sometime. When he turned to go out the back, he saw that under the black paint of his aunt’s brows, shallow crevices marked her skin.
He heard his VW coming up the road, and he walked out to meet SaRonn, his hands shaking, his lungs burning against the pain in his side.
The shadows were stark in the Las Palmas courtyard, and SaRonn paused, gazing back out at the archways. “Like blue shells,” she said. “I always liked these buildings. Always wanted to sit at one a those little round iron tables and have coffee. Like Spain. Like I wasn’t here in Rio Seco.”
“You downtown.” Marcus whispered, holding her around the shoulders. “Some people gon talk about you anyway.”
She stopped suddenly, sitting down at the cement bench set into the thick wall. The soft rain splintered off the railings. She shivered a little, huddled around herself. “Before we get inside, I want to tell you one thing. The other one is for inside.” Marcus sat down close beside her, smelling her sweet hairdress and the faint scent rising from her neck.
“When you called, when you came by, and I couldn’t talk?” she said. “The girl I’m keepin, Malinda, was hurt real bad. Her boyfriend was dealin, and beatin the hell out of her. She knew about me and Bennie, and she came to stay. But somebody shot him, her boyfriend. The mail and all that stopped, then we got the raid. I think it was this boy named Chris, from the Gardens. Zefi Perry’s boy. I saw him, and a boy I’ve never seen. Dark, thin, and I don’t know his face, don’t recognize any people in his face.” She was silent. Marcus tried to picture all the boys hanging out in the Gardens. But he kept seeing his aunt’s face with blood on it, seeing her eyebrows red.
His cheekbone throbbed like lit matches were dragging across it, and he said, “I’m cold, and I’m tired a waitin. Come on upstairs.”
And when she stood in the dim living room, touching the figurines with drawing-down fingertips, brushing the books with her thumb, he knew he was going to stop lying without even thinking about it because she could go between two places, three, or ten, without squinting at either one. His artwork, his books, his building. The fog-shrouded trees and hard laughter and Sissyfly. She dropped her jacket onto the couch, and Marcus ran his fingers up from her shoulders to the nape of her neck to touch the soft fringe of curls. SaRonn closed her eyes and let her head fall back. He ran his lips under her soft curve of her jaw, tasting smoke and salt and butterscotch.
“Candy?” he murmured, and SaRonn laughed.
“Willa had some candy and then she kissed me right there,” she whispered. “Hey.” She stood very still in the doorway of the bedroom. “I heard you and Larry out in the street. The first fight. I know what he told you. All of it. He tried to tell Finis the same thing—the only other guy who’s been in my house since I came back. Marcus—I heard you guys.”
“Yeah,” he said, backing away from her to lean hard against the wall. “What you want me to say?” I ain’t lyin, he thought.
“Nothin. I want you to listen.” Her collarbone rose like wings when she sighed hard. “All Larry owns is the days he screwed up for me. The months. He owns every hour of that past shit. The man does not own any physical or mental part of me. Okay? It’s all mine to give or take back. And I know how Thompson men are—you guys think about fightin all the time.”
“Not me,” Marcus said, fitting his fingers around her ribs, his thumbs at the edge of her breasts. “I’m a sissy. All I think about is love.”
“So why you runnin away?” he said when she began to dress in the wavering weak light.
“Cause Willa’s at Bennie’s, and she’s never woke up in a strange house yet,” she said. “Hey, I want to stay till morning because I want to see if you can cook.” She smiled and moved to the living room, calling, “It tells a lot about a man if he can cook. I know that now. I see it.”
“I’m not cookin at two in the mornin,” Marcus grumbled, sitting beside her to tie his shoes.
SaRonn touched the scrape on his face. “I don’t know if you can cook, but I see you don’t back down.” She let her face fall serious. “Can you put in a new front door and paint it blue?”
“Oh, baby,” Marcus said. “Blue is my specialty.”