Mortrice was at his door after school. Marcus let him in, saying, “Ain’t you kinda hot in all that, man?” Mortrice wore a huge Patagonia jacket, unlaced hiking boots, and jeans bagging like elephant legs. “Hikin boots?”
“It’s new school. And them boola-pocket kids wear this for skiin.”
“We old school over here,” Marcus said. “Remember what you guys called me in class? The eight-track brotha.” Marcus looked at the jacket. Yeah, Treetown kids never saw the average white guy wearing Dockers. They saw TV and GQ. Moola-boola. Go straight for upscale leisure wear. He smiled. “Just don’t let the baggy pants get mixed up with the ones I used to see—the guys who didn’t have belts when they did time, and they came out in ass-draggin jeans cause they were tryin to tell us somethin.”
“That’s for gangsta rappers,” Mortrice said. “I ain’t a rapper.”
“Speakin of rappers, how’s B-Real? How come you didn’t ride with him?”
Mortrice shrugged. “He’s trippin. He ain’t down.” He picked up the article about the fairy shrimp and sand moths that Marcus had cut out. “You gon send all these papers to the lawyer?”
“How do you know what’s goin on?”
He shrugged again. “I ain’t deaf. This dude Matheson want to buy Grampa place. He work up there in them blue towers, right?” Mortrice pointed to the fairy shrimp. “Science class talked about this today. Fairy shrimp. Sandy somethin moth. Whatever.” He stood up. “You gon give me a ride?”
“I’m walkin to the gym,” Marcus said, pulling on his sweats. “I like to walk in Funkytown.”
Mortrice followed him out the doorway. They walked in silence for a minute, and then Mortrice said, “You see how people check out the jacket?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “That why you wear it?”
“I wear it cause I want to,” Mortrice said. After another block, he said, “See, you ain’t a bad nigga. You invisible. Don’t nobody see you, man. I see them check you out—just bip, bap, move they eyes—they sayin he ain’t no problem for me. And then bam. You gone. You think you walkin round Funkytown, but you ain’t.”
“You hella talkative today,” Marcus said. “So I ain’t here?”
“You here for yourself. For your friends. Just like me.” Mortrice turned down the street.
“And you a bad nigga, so you stand out?” Marcus called softly.
“Uh-uh. Don’t nobody see me neither. They try not to look.”
Marcus was on the StairMaster thinking about what Mortrice had said when Bent came in. “Hey,” Marcus said. “You want to cruise by my uncle’s? Should be quieter this time.” Bent grinned. Marcus didn’t mind taking him to The Blue Q, pay him back for something he didn’t have to know about; Bent wasn’t part of the trouble. Uncle Oscar would probably say a few funny, bluesy things. SaRonn had told him she was going to L.A. with Bennie, to the beauty shop.
But when they pulled into the parking lot, Rock was raking trash from the dirt. “Your uncle gone to French Oaks with Mr. Lanier, lookin at a place for them pigs. They ain’t comin back till late.”
“We can just cruise in general,” Bent said.
They drove down Grove, along the riverbottom. Samana had told Marcus that the foliage looked like Cambodia; Marcus saw a homeless man with a military duffle trudge into the cane, and he thought, That would be too dangerous, to be a vet and run into a kid like Samana sleepin in the bamboo. Wherever he sleeps.
“Let’s stop at that little store,” Bent said. “Abby loved that tamarind.”
Shawnette was behind the counter. Marcus said, “You still starin at B-Real?” But instead of grinning, she shot Bent a look of pure hatred and slammed down his change.
“I got something on my face?” Bent asked in the car, and Marcus shrugged. They cruised slowly up Olive Avenue, near the Gardens. Bent peered out his side at the parking lot, where people were milling around. “I wish we could talk to some young rappers,” he said. “Are those firecrackers right there?”
Marcus slowed, bending his head to see small flames. Flowers, a photo. “No, that’s a memorial. For somebody who got killed.” Starchild, he thought, wondering if Finis knew yet.
“Sounds like somebody’s calling you,” Bent said. Marcus stopped the car.
“Fuck you, white boy, take your ass outta here,” someone shouted, and someone else threw a rock at his car. It landed in the dirt, raising a thread of dust.
“What the hell?” Marcus pulled away, looking in the rearview. “Somebody drivin a blue Bug musta messed up big-time over here.” He saw two brothers walking down Olive; from the long, loping step of the tall one, he knew it was Stridin Mojo. Mojo came up hard on the car, leaning on the hood. Marcus looked out the window and said, “Hey, man, what up?”
“Sissy?” Mojo squinted at the car. “How long you had a Bug?”
“A while, brothaman, you just ain’t seen me,” Marcus said easily, but both men were staring mad-dog at Bent. “This is my partner Bent, man.”
“I don’t care if he fuckin Casper the Friendly Ghost, man, you better take his ass on outta here,” Mojo said, and Bent’s lips went thin.
“What’s goin on?” Marcus said, feeling the familiar dread finger across his back.
“You ain’t heard about the verdict? They walked, man. All four.” Mojo’s voice rasped sharply at Bent. “This ain’t no time for sight-seein. You ain’t no anthropologist, and this ain’t no damn Gorillas in the Mist, all right?”
Near the restaurant, Bent finally said, “Mojo?” in a shaky voice. “Like the mojo hand in the blues?”
Marcus’s neck tingled, and he blinked hard. “No.” Stridin Mojo had money, but he wouldn’t buy a car; he said his head didn’t work unless he gave Moe and Joe their time on the road.
“No,” Marcus said again. “His feet.” He leaned his whole body over the wheel. “They fuckin walked. All four. Goddamnit.”
“I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry it’s so fucked up,” Bent said, following him into Chile. “It’s wrong. Way beyond wrong.”
The bar TV was on. A minister’s broad, brown face and upraised arms. A crowd throwing rocks and bottles. A line of courtroom faces crumpling in relief when the verdicts were read. Clenched fists raised at traffic.
Marcus threw back his head and stared at the rough-plastered ceiling. A dog. A fuckin dog’s worth more than me. You get six months for cruelty to animals. Beat my ass and you won’t do a weekend.
He heard Bent’s friend Kolavic shouting suddenly. “Look at this guy! He’s innocently driving through the fucking intersection and these thugs are trying to kill him! This is savage shit, now!”
“It’s all savage shit!” Bent said. “None of it’s right!”
“Oh, but this is justified revenge, right? His ancestors had slaves, so he gets it now? Bullshit.”
Marcus held his hands on the counter to keep from hitting Kolavic in the mouth.
“Come on, Marcus,” Bent said, taking his arm cautiously.
“Add up the fuckin ashes, man, you don’t even have the bodies!” He leaned on the bar, hearing his father’s words.
Kolavic walked away. Marcus thought tears would slide down to embarrass him, but the heat stayed swimming behind his eyes, and when he looked up at the TV and saw the blows, he swallowed his own blood where he’d bitten his lip. He went out to his car. He’d drive to his father’s place, to the yard where at least they could holler and shout some of the blood away, let it fall into the gravel.
Mortrice saw B-Real stalking toward the parking lot, and he said, “What you flamin about, man? I seen you yangin with your redhead Rasta friend.”
B-Real spun to face him near the VW van. “Yeah—the asshole said Rodney King shoulda just pulled over early on. Said maybe the cops thought he had jacked somebody.” B-Real’s pale forehead was a glowing, dark red, and Mortrice saw his little goatee shaking. “Fool pointed at my Malcolm hat and said somethin about cops don’t like how young guys are all revolutionary now.” B-Real started shouting. “Shit! I tried to tell him yeah, white people get jacked for they dollars sometimes! Black people get jacked just as much! But goddamn, we don’t take the X and turn it into a cross and burn it on your damn grass in front of your fuckin house! We don’t paint ‘Caspers Go Back to England’ on the fuckin garage door! Sometimes fools jack you! It’s money! Dollar signs! Somebody just want your car, they ain’t gon stand in a fuckin circle and stomp your ass and then some damn jury says, ‘Cool, I guess that white boy was obviously on PCP and extremely dangerous while he was eatin asphalt.’ ”
“Shit, man, what you hollerin about?” Mortrice frowned.
“You ain’t heard yet?” B-Real opened the van door. “You ain’t seen it?”
In the darkened apartment, Chris and Teddy lay on the floor watching the TV. Mortrice saw the people gathering on corners, moving like ants when the helicopter swung away. Cops cruised past and parked in store lots.
Chris mumbled, “They fucked that dude up, and it ain’t about shit.”
Teddy snorted. “Big surprise, nigga. Like ain’t nobody knew?”
B-Real sat in the corner, his knees drawn up. Mortrice saw him wipe at his cheeks. “You sweatin, man?” he said, hard, to B-Real.
The razor lines of light around the plywood went from gold to red, and the first flames ate up the TV screen. Mortrice heard B-Real’s ragged breath. The helicopter circled outside; Mortrice thought it would be like seeing through a fly’s eyes, all the fools looking a lot smaller from up there, no matter who they were. The hogicopter over Olive Gardens; the TV copter following toy cars and tiny plastic people.
The camera zoomed to a pawnshop, where brothers had shattered windows and were loading stuff into car trunks. Mortrice leaned forward. A dark green Monte Carlo, gun barrels dropping like blackened matchsticks into the trunk. Two men looked up and gave the copter the finger; another man paused in the doorway, suddenly pointing a rifle at the copter. “I can’t believe this!” the reporter’s voice said. “This is turning into a war zone!”
Mortrice stared at Kenneth, still laughing and swinging the AK-47 around, then lifting his chin for his boys.
“You see that shit!” Chris said, sitting up. “All them gats? AKs and everything! Man, we need to go get some a that! Come on—expedition to L.A.!”
“B-Real, check out all the Mexicans goin in that store.” Teddy laughed. “One World, man, everybody gettin TVs and diapers for free!”
Mortrice didn’t see the screen now. Kenneth’s broad, freckled face. His streets. His territory. His blood. Mortrice’s blood speckling the sidewalk there, right there where people were running now. His back itched fiercely. You in the country now. Who your peoples? He your peoples? Your cousins? Your blood? Paco’s white skull in the leaves—Sketch’s pale face in the branches. Sketch’s peoples was his daddy. He had the jobs. He looked now, at the fire blazing from the store, people running like roaches with their beer and meat and diapers. The flames filled the windows like the Kozy Komfort. The other place—Sketch and them hadn’t burned the other place. His grandpa’s. His uncle’s.
“We could get gats for free!” Chris was shouting. “Quit trippin, man, you like lost in space and shit! Let’s go!”
Mortrice stood up and faced the plywood for a long minute, breathing in the marker where Teddy had written AK-Rules everywhere. “We could finish Sketch and them job,” he said slowly, turning. “We could get paid, big paid, and buy what we want. Zach got the good gats, not pawnshop stuff.”
He didn’t want pawnshop guns. He wanted the money to pay the gunsmith for bullets. Bullets for the buffalo gun.
“What you talkin bout gettin paid? Sketch ain’t had no money. He had some speed. From his daddy.” Chris folded his arms, angry now. “Shit, I’m ready to go. Check em out! They hittin up Circuit City and shit!”
Mortrice stood in front of the TV. “Sketch and them didn’t do that shit out the blue, man. This dude paid em. Paid em to cap your daddy, man. I ain’t playin. I know the dude wanted your daddy capped. You want him or not?”
Hosea heard the helicopter moving through the darkness. The air was warm over the gravel, the last of Alma’s wisteria blossoms drying on the ground. Marcus’s VW crawled up the short slope like a blue tumbleweed. He got out, rubbing his forehead, and sat on a folding chair. “Shit, Daddy. It’s crazy.”
“Everybody’s blazin,” Demetrius said. “Too much, man.”
Hosea listened to their voices, deep in the shadowed barn doorway. Sofelia had just carried combs and oil down the path to the trailers. “I’ma braid Finis’s hair,” she said. “I missed him.”
He saw two thin figures loping up the drive now, and he stood up. “Time to lock the gate and go home,” he told Demetrius. “You ain’t goin on no jobs. I seen em firin on people in L.A., police and fire and maybe you.”
“I heard em shootin at the Gardens a while ago,” Octavious said. “Belisa worried cause Bennie and SaRonn ain’t came back from L.A.”
“Damn!” Marcus stood up. “I forgot she was goin to the beauty shop on Crenshaw!” He ran toward his car, and the two boys came into the light near the barn. Hosea saw Mortrice and the other one, the one he liked to call his cousin.
“Where you goin?” he called to them when they walked toward the path to the trailers.
“Hey, uh, Grampa,” Mortrice said. “I left somethin back there.”
“Don’t be foolin around back there, not tonight,” Hosea said. “I ain’t in the mood for hearin no strange noise.” They shook their heads and blended into the trees. He sat back down. The grandboy’s new .22 was locked up in the coldhouse, in a metal box under Hosea’s bed. He didn’t know what else the boy would have left in Finis’s place. Maybe some of the wild music.
A rattle of gunfire rose in tiny pops from far away. Maybe the Westside. He hoped Marcus wouldn’t drive around. His other sons leaned against the flatbed tow truck for a minute, Demetrius’s palm slapping the metal before he turned to go.
His sister’s fingers drew the oil through his hair. Braids. SaRonn braided his hair. Last year. Last dance. Last chance.
“Who out there?” his sister whispered. “Listen.”
Finis moved to the window. Two boys down by the wheels of Julius’s trailer. The love machine. The boys pulled out a bag. “The Blue Q,” one said.
“The Blue Q, man, Sketch and them was gon burn that place or the place by the freeway. They the only buildins from here to the Kozy Komfort, right?” Mortrice glanced at the dull gold windows of his uncle’s trailer and saw him, the sprung dude with the empty face. He picked up the bag.
“This white dude ain’t gon tell you nothin,” Chris said.
Mortrice stared at the tarnished silver wall. Kenneth’s face, his silver tooth that hardly ever flashed cause he said keep your mouth shut and you find out. “If you shut up, he will,” Mortrice said. “Take him to the place by the freeway and shut up, he gon tell us.”
They heard the trailer door open, and they ran for the wall, racing down the black corridor under the branches to the canal road.
“Mortrice?” Finis heard Sofelia call someone. “Mortrice?”
More trees? Finis frowned, touching his braids. He followed her outside. She stood, looking into the trunks as if she wasn’t sure about the trees. Then she began to run toward the house.
He squinted at his keys, on the chain with the shining stone. In his pocket, he had the finger bones and his pocketknife. He went to the storage lot and opened the gate. Three police cars cruised down the riverbottom road. Walk slow. Walk on by. Walkin in rhythm.
Two stopped at the edge of the hills. No. Not SaRonn’s; Agua Dulce. He left the fence corner, his father’s land, and felt naked. More police. He walked into the riverbottom. Bamboo. Cane. He pushed into the leaves.
Demetrius’s house across the river—he could stay there. He fingered the bones in his pocket. The river was pink silver when he crossed the shallow.
The walls were pink, too. The roofs red. Red house over yonder. Which house? Crosstown traffic on the road. Which house? He walked along the walls, leaping to peer over into yards. Which yard? D’Junior got toys. Which yard? He saw a blue ball on the grass and clung to this part of the wall. Then he pulled up hard and dropped over.
The house was still too warm from being shut up all day. Enchantee lay on the couch. D’Junior and Dylan had whined; D’Junior had whined more when they’d got home and Enchantee had refused to turn on the TV. “No,” she’d shouted. “Go upstairs and play in your room.”
She’d seen the beginnings of the fists and fires at Abby’s, glanced at the TV and stopped cold, the chill of fear like liquid fanning her back. Not again. Fires, shooting, the National Guard. Abby had come into the living room behind her, and Enchantee had turned quickly to leave the room. She didn’t want to talk about it. She saw Web Matheson walking down the hallway, heard the same newscaster’s voice from the library TV. Enchantee heard him call, “I gotta run, Abby, I got something urgent. Tell Connie I’m working late, okay?”
Now she heard D’Junior calling from upstairs. “Mommy! Mommy!”
She wasn’t turning it on just to keep him quiet. She could switch from channel to channel, and he’d see it, either the fires or the damn video, Rodney King’s heavy head rising slowly like a just crawling baby unsure even of his knees. If she put in a video, D’Junior would pop it out to see the fires. He and Dylan had stood, fascinated by the flames, their mouths hanging wide.
“Mommy!” he called again. Her aunt would have slapped him, she thought drowsily, turning her cheek to the couch cushion.
Demetrius Junior stared out his bedroom window at the backyard next door. The Tin Man was out there, watering. Not really a Tin Man. The boys across the street said he was nice sometimes and mean sometimes. Their mama said he was old and lonely. But he had silver hair. Silver glasses. A big chest like the Tin Man. He went inside.
The ball was over there. Demetrius kept throwing it over by accident. He saw a man come over the back wall now. The bright lights by the wall came on. A man from Grampa’s? The man picked up the ball. Then the Tin Man came back out. He yelled, “What do you want? You want the VCR?” The other man dropped the ball. The Tin Man was yelling bad words. Cussing. He said, “You’re a fucking African warrior? You think this is a fucking store and you can loot me like a Korean?”
The other man didn’t move. The Tin Man had his silver gun. Demetrius Junior wanted a gun like that. Silver. His mama said no. Dylan’s mama said no. The other man had braids like a girl. He put his hands over his ears. The Tin Man shot his gun. The other man fell next to the wall.
Demetrius Junior heard his mother on the stairs. The Tin Man was crying. He said, “No, shit, no. Why’d you do that? I thought you…” He touched the other man’s back. The other man must be dead. His face was in the dirt. The Tin Man was crying. He reached in the other man’s pockets. Demetrius Junior saw a toy knife. The Tin Man opened the knife and put down his silver gun and scratched his hand with the knife. It wasn’t a toy. It made red blood. It was messy. The Tin Man dropped the knife next to the other man and turned around. He was crying.
When her son turned around, away from the window, he looked into the bedroom light, and Enchantee saw the spokes inside his irises, the dark lines spacing the translucent brown of his eyes.