9

They did not talk about it until the day before the fourth of July, three days later; Joshua had been dismissed early from work, and they were at the fireworks tent next to the interstate perusing the all-in-one prewrapped kits. They had been debating whether to get a bunch of individual bottle rockets and Roman candles and rocket bombs; Joshua thought they’d save money if they picked and chose what they wanted, and Christophe wanted one of the kits because it contained a special super-bomb. In the picture pasted to the front, the bomb looked as if it burst into a rose: a glittering, deep blue rose. Christophe had never seen anything like that, and part of him wanted to buy it because he just wanted to see if it was possible. He wanted to know if someone could make something explode into such a beautiful shape, or if the small, inky drawing on the advertisement was a sham. At the end of their small argument over fireworks, he told Joshua this, and Joshua bent over the case silently and squinted at the base of the bomb. He was trying to read the small print.

“I wasn’t going to hit him.”

Joshua nodded. “I know.”

“I thought I could, but once I saw him …”

“Yeah.”

“I know he ain’t nothing—but it was like looking at you. His face.”

Joshua had lost the tiny print. He skimmed it like a crossword puzzle for a word, and found the small script. Christophe squatted next to him and leaned in to peer at the writing. His shoulders brushed his brother’s. Joshua sniffed. They had gone with Paul to a farm further up in the country to pick out a goat to barbecue for the fourth. The goat had small, intelligent black eyes, white and black spotted fur, and four marbled horns. Christophe had been freaked out by it; he had said it looked like the devil and Uncle Paul had laughed. They had watched the man slaughter it; he had done it the old way and brought a sharp knife quickly across the bottom of the throat, thrusting upward. Joshua thought he could have done it a better way, because he saw the goat toss his head and jerk after the blood started to cascade from his neck to splatter the muddy ground. Its mouth had moved soundlessly as if it was trying to breathe and it had kicked as if it was wiping at a tuft of grass in the earth with its foot, and then it had stilled. Christophe had asked the man why he hadn’t shot the thing in the head. The man, who was thin and red-skinned at the neck and forearms and had a head full of thick, bushy white hair, had laughed. He said something about fried brains. Christophe said he was going to throw up. Joshua could smell the musty odor of goat hair and he remembered the rich, heavy, offal scent of the blood now. Uncle Paul was at his house; he was smoking and basting the goat. He would tend it all night. The print was too small to read.

“I think we should get it.”

Christophe needed to get a QP from Dunny, and he needed to dump Joshua. The Fourth would be a good day for making money—everybody wanted to get high on a holiday. Christophe told Joshua he needed to see Dunny after they left the fireworks stand, and asked Joshua if he wanted him to drop him off at the house or at Laila’s or by Uncle Paul’s. He paused a long time. Joshua spoke against the fist on his cheek and asserted that he was all right, he wanted to ride. Christophe resigned himself to Joshua’s company. They watched the headlights cut through the darkness before them and Joshua began to search through the CD for a song he wanted to hear. For the first time in a long time, the thought of waking up the next morning to the summer didn’t depress him. When he was younger, Christmas had been his favorite holiday, but as he’d gotten older, he’d developed a new appreciation for the Fourth. Everything about the day was an indulgence: the new outfit he’d treated himself to, the barbecue, crawfish, and shrimp, the largesse of his extended family, the liquor, the weed, the fireworks, the girls in short skirts and halter tops. On that day, the heat was more than bearable; it was welcome. As Christophe turned into Dunny’s driveway and switched off the lights and the car, he prayed it would not rain the next day.

For all the bluster of the air conditioner in the trailer, the living room was hot. Aunt Rita was sitting at the table slicing boiled eggs into slivers. On the stove, a large pot of potatoes was boiling. Christophe smelled cheese; he bet macaroni and cheese was in the oven. Aunt Rita was sweating lightly around her hairline, and as Christophe bent to kiss her, he saw it beading in little droplets on her nose. When his cheek came away from hers, he felt the cool touch of moisture on it. She laughed at him and wiped his face. Joshua walked in behind him.

“My favorite nephews.”

“We your only nephews,” Joshua grumbled as he hugged her. She poked him in the stomach with the wooden handle of her knife.

“Same difference.” Aunt Rita sniffed and brushed her hand underneath her nose and waved them away from her. “Y’all smell like animal. Joshua, you got that money you said you was putting in on the food?”

Aunt Rita glanced at Christophe, and Joshua studied his feet as he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Joshua hadn’t told Christophe that they were contributing money to the family pot. Joshua placed the bills on the table one by one, and he did not look at Christophe as he did so. Aunt Rita’s earrings, red, white, and blue plastic flags, shook as she turned to Christophe. “Dunny in the back. He probably trying on outfits like a girl. He bought around three today.” She covered her mouth and sneezed.

“Bless you. We went with Uncle Paul to pick out the goat this morning.” Christophe wanted to surreptitiously lower his face to smell his shirt. He balled his fists in his pockets. Everything was dirty about him: his body, his money. In the dim house, even Joshua’s shirt seemed brighter than his.

“Thank you. Go ahead, now. Y’all making the kitchen stink like hot animal.”

“You making potato salad and macaroni and cheese?” Christophe called out.

“Yeah.”

“Where Uncle Eze at?” Christophe heard Joshua ask this behind him.

“I don’t know. I think he went down the way by Ozene’s house.”

“Oh.”

Christophe waited for Joshua to catch up with him and punched him hard in the arm, joking to release the worm of spite, and ran to Dunny’s door. Why hadn’t he told him? He yanked it open without knocking. Dunny was on his knees on the floor in front of his dresser, and the bottom drawer sat next to him. Dunny’s back was to the twins and two large QP bags of weed lay at his feet. Christophe saw him throw a small sandwich bag into the empty maw of the drawer. It had been white. Dunny turned to face them and Joshua reminded Christophe that he needed to step into the room with a loud “That’s how you want to play, huh?” and a stiff punch to his back. Christophe tripped through the door and caught himself on the bed, and Joshua slammed it shut behind him. Christophe felt Joshua’s arm grabbing him around the waist and lifting him up to body-slam him on the mattress. Christophe’s spine and back stiffened; he wasn’t laughing. Joshua must’ve felt this, because he let him go. Dunny threw one of the QPs back into the slot, and then picked up the other one and held it out toward Christophe.

“Here you go.” Dunny was still wet from his shower. Christophe didn’t move, so Dunny threw the bag on the bed. It landed between Christophe and Joshua, and Dunny began pulling on his clothes. He pulled his shorts over his boxers so quickly that the fabric at the back ballooned over the waist of his pants like the skin of a frog’s croaking throat. He stubbed his toe on the misplaced drawer. He knelt down and began shoving the drawer into the slot; the rail was misaligned so he banged it with the heel of his hand. It stuck.

“You should pull it back out. You keep banging on it, it’s going to jam.” Joshua lay back in Dunny’s bed and fanned himself with the front of his shirt. Christophe sat dully, still.

“What you threw up in there?” Christophe asked.

Dunny stopped his shoving. The drawer shifted and squeaked in relief. Dunny pulled a pair of socks from his top drawer and pulled one on; he took his time smoothing the cotton fabric up and over his heel and ankle. His hair was freshly braided. Christophe knew perhaps that he should let it go, that he should imagine that he imagined it, but he couldn’t.

“You hitting the pack?” Christophe asked.

“Fuck no, I’m not hitting the pack!” Dunny glared.

“So you selling”—Joshua jackknifed up in the bed—“and now Dunny snorting powder?”

“You got me fucked up!” Dunny frowned at Joshua and waved toward Christophe. “I don’t know what he saw.”

“Stop lying, nigga. Either you holding or you selling. Which one?” Christophe said.

“You didn’t see shit.” Dunny snatched the lotion from the top of his dresser and pumped the head of the bottle.

“You lying to me like I’m one of these niggas out here that ain’t family. I ain’t crazy, nigga. I know what I saw,” Christophe said. He stood.

“What the hell?” Joshua said.

“Come on, Joshua. This motherfucker lying.”

“I’m lying now?” Dunny threw his towel across the room. It landed on the bed in a sodden heap. Joshua stood. Christophe turned from the door and walked over to point his finger in Dunny’s face.

“Fuck yeah. You put me on, you take care of me, and then you act like you don’t know me when I ask you a simple-ass question. Fuck you, Dunny. If you ain’t going to be real with me, why should I fuck with you? Why not fuck with any of these shady niggas out here? Blood, remember?” Christophe hit Joshua with his shoulder as he passed him. “Let’s go, Joshua.”

“Damn, Chris. Calm down.” Dunny sat on the chair next to his dresser. He crossed his arms and rubbed his foot over the carpet as if it itched. Christophe turned back to the room and walked past Joshua again, who watched both of them, his mouth puckered.

“It’s like being a little kid. Sometimes you just lie cuz it’s the easiest thing to do,” Dunny said as he rolled his eyes at them. “It’s not like I’m proud of the shit.” He knelt and began pulling at the drawer. Between small grunts that sounded like he was hurting himself, he huffed. “Y’all niggas sit the fuck down.” He wrenched the drawer free. Christophe flinched at the noise. Dunny reached into the bottom of the dresser and fumbled; Christophe heard plastic bags sliding and rustling against each other. Dunny had never told Christophe to get the weed for himself even though he knew Christophe knew where the stash was. Christophe had thought Dunny simply had control issues. Could he be snorting? It didn’t look like he’d lost any weight. Dunny threw a small plastic bag to the bed between the brothers. It barely made a sound as it landed next to the QP. It lay on its side on the bed next to the large, green QP like a small, dirty yellow moon. Joshua picked it up. Christophe’s jaw eased. It wasn’t powder. He saw four bits of opaque crack in the corner of the bag; they looked like teeth.

“I told you I wasn’t snorting powder,” Dunny joked weakly as he sat. Christophe stared at him dryly, and Dunny grimaced.

“So you ain’t smoking it.” Joshua threw the bag back to Dunny across the room. Dunny snatched it from the air with one hand, and it disappeared in his fat, large fist.

“Funny, Joshua.”

“When you start selling that?” Christophe’s voice sliced neatly through the dry banter. He suddenly felt claustrophobic. Discarded clothes lined the floor like wood shavings in a cage. Dunny folded his arms again.

“I told you I been thinking about leaving the game. I was just trying to stack some more paper … I mean, I know this house mine when my mama go, but damn, I’m grown and Eze here and I know they just want to be alone sometime.” Dunny opened his arms to them and the bag of crack glinted in his hand like a ring. “They got a piece of land, a couple of acres, an acre over that way.” Dunny pointed to his left. “My mama hooked it up so I was paying the property taxes on it. It’s going to be mine if the owner don’t come up with the taxes this year. I just need enough to put a down payment on my own trailer … my mama said she’d cosign for it.” He threw the bag in the mouth of the dresser with a small tap. “I wasn’t making the money fast enough. Javon put me on for a little bit.” He felt for the drawer’s grooves; the muted muscles in his shoulders jumped as he patiently adjusted it by centimeters, feeling out the mouth. The drawer slid smoothly into the metal tracks this time. “Think about it. I know y’all won’t leave Ma-mee, and y’all shouldn’t, but we could have our own spot. To chill. To get fucked up. All our own. Y’all know what’s mine is y’all’s.”

“Dunny, you know what’s going to happen.” Christophe let the sentence dissolve in the air between them like smoke.

“Nigga, I’m the one that put you on. Big Cuz. Of course I know what might happen. But that ain’t going to happen. These assholes ain’t catching me with shit. That’s why I keep it in the bag. If I get pulled over, I’m going to swallow that shit.” He frowned. “’Sides, I only been doing this for about a month and a half. I started about when you did. I give this shit another month, tops, and then I’m done. By then I’ll have enough saved up to make up the rest of the money for the down payment and then that’s it. I’m done.”

“With everything?” Joshua asked. Christophe thought he sounded hopeful.

“Shit, you can’t expect me to stop cold turkey.” Dunny laughed and the sound of it dropped like stones from his mouth. He rubbed at his sole before he pulled the other sock over his naked foot. “Really though, I’m giving it up. Weed, too, by the end of the summer.” He hesitated. “I’m in the game until my nigga’s out.” Dunny looked at Christophe meaningfully as he picked up his shoe. “I make enough money so that I don’t need this shit. Want, yeah—need, no. I mean, I might still get a couple of QPs to smoke every once in a while, and sell a couple of dime sacks out my smoking sack, but fuck all this moving QPs. I’m tired of riding around shitting on myself whenever I see a cop car in St. Catherine’s. Shit, I can’t get no pussy if I’m always ducking and dodging the police whenever shit getting good.”

Joshua surprised Christophe with a high-pitched laugh. “You can’t get no pussy noway.” Christophe looked down at his pockets. Dunny had given him a deadline. The weight of Dunny’s words bore down on the curve of his skull, the angled slope of his shoulders, to rest in the dry, veiny skin of his dark hands. It rested in them like something palpable, something material: like the heavy, sawdust-filled medicine ball they’d thrown to each other in basketball practice.

“Y’all want to go by Javon’s house?” asked Dunny.

“What for?” Joshua said. Christophe pocketed the QP and flexed his hand over the bag; it crunched and gave in his fist.

“I ain’t got time to go out to Germaine tonight and wait around on Lean. I need another QP, and Javon got some.” Dunny pocketed a roll of cash bound with a rubber band.

“Man,” Joshua hesitated, “I told Laila I would stop by and see her tonight before I went home.”

“Shit, we can pick her up, too.” Dunny shrugged. “We just going by Javon house. He always got a gang of niggas over there anyway.”

“You drive,” Christophe said.

“Fine.” Dunny led the way out of the door. Christophe barely resisted the urge to crush the bag of weed in his pocket, to flatten it into a pancake, a disc that he could sling across the room like a Frisbee. He wondered if it would fly far, and if the drawer on Dunny’s dresser was open, if he could sail it into the hiding spot from the bed. After Christophe watched Joshua walk out the door, he rose and felt his way along the wall until his hand hit the light switch. The room went dark, and Christophe pulled the door shut behind him.

Joshua stood on his toes before Laila’s window and reached up and knocked. The side of the house her room was on was shadowed, and the woods leaned in so close that he felt the touch of underbrush at his back. A leaf caressed his ear. The light clicked on in the room, and he prepared to duck as he saw the curtain flutter: Laila’s face shone at the window and she smiled at him. She disappeared. Dunny had parked on the curve. Joshua waited for her at the ditch. Surreptitiously, he lowered his head to sniff at his shirt, to gauge his funk. Yeah, he stunk like goat and musk. She had called often after the kiss. He had waited until Christophe left the house and called her back because he wanted to see her again, wanted to pull her into his lap and feel her weight, soft and sure, wanted to feel her mouth opening, wet and warm beneath his, wanted to cup the back of her head and pull her to him by her soft, curly hair. He didn’t want to do any of this in front of Christophe, muted and solitary as he was these days. It was why he hadn’t mentioned the money; he hadn’t wanted to shame him. Joshua watched her run to him across the lawn on her toes. She ran like a girl, her legs kicking out to the side, and it made him want to pick her up when she stopped before him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You want to come with us by Javon house? Or you going to get in trouble?”

“Naw, my mama don’t care. Y’all ain’t going to be over there all night, is y’all?”

“Naw.” He wanted to touch her. Joshua crawled in the backseat. Laila followed him. Joshua glanced at Christophe as they pulled away from the ditch. Christophe was slouched down in the seat so far Joshua could only see his hair, blowsy as a jellyfish in a current. He was ignoring them. Dunny tossed a cigar and a small sack to Joshua over the backseat, and Joshua began to cut at the cigar with his fingernail over an empty shoebox top he picked up off the floor. Laila had scooted over so her leg was against his own. The moon was high in the sky: it lit her thigh. He could barely see her face as the stereo boomed and dropped the rhythm, but he could feel her, dense and small next to him. Joshua realized he was leaning into her, pulled by her gravity, so he hunched over the platter of weed on his lap and tried to concentrate. He could smell honeysuckle coming in through the window, and he immediately associated it with her, as if she were blooming.

He handed her a flashlight he’d picked up from the floor that Dunny kept in his car for just this occasion and told her to hold it as he opened the baggie. The light jiggled and danced in her hand, and for a moment he forgot Dunny and Christophe in the front seat. It seemed that it was only the two of them in the dark, together. He swept the thought away from him with the seeds he brushed from the tray out of the window. This was a sentiment he had only felt for his brother. Laila switched off the flashlight.

By the time they pulled into the oyster shell driveway at Javon’s house, Joshua had lit the blunt and passed it to Dunny, who had passed it back to him. Laila had taken two hitching hits and expelled the smoke in jagged coughs. Christophe had refused it. The driveway was clogged with cars, and light from what Joshua supposed was the TV threw bright, electric shocks of colors through the filmy curtains along the living room’s front windows. The night was sticky and loud. The two houses Joshua could see from Javon’s yard were silent, their windows dark and closed like lidded eyes. They sat in the car until Joshua and Dunny finished the blunt. Joshua rubbed his hand along the top of Laila’s hair as they exited the car and followed his cousin and his brother into the house, and they all walked up the steeply sloped driveway lined with oyster shells. As he picked his way around the cars, the shells crunched and shifted under his feet and threw him off balance. Laila’s hair had been fine and smooth as running water. He grabbed her hand when they got to the carport, and lifted her arm and ducked his head so that her hand rested on his own fuzzy braids. Dunny knocked perfunctorily and entered the door. Christophe followed him. Joshua and Laila paused on the steps.

“You going to braid me and Chris’s hair tonight?” Joshua let her go and straightened, and her palm trailed down the side of his face to his shoulder. She pressed into his collarbone briefly.

“Yeah.” She smoothed the sheaf of her ponytail behind her head. “If Javon got some rubber bands and grease.” Half of Laila’s face was lit by the room, the other side was shadowed and washed black by the night. She was smiling tentatively: her lips were pursed as if she was waiting for a kiss. He closed the door and kissed her lightly and quickly. Joshua pushed her on the small of her back and made her enter the door before him just so he could touch her. The room was bright, and it was filled with people. Felicia was sitting on the sofa, leaning over the armrest and laughing at the TV set on top of a bigger, broken wooden TV that looked like it was manufactured during the seventies: a comedian in a leather suit was limping across the stage.

Dunny had hit a possum once, and when they stopped in the middle of the road and shined the headlights on it, it had looked like that as it died. Felicia laughed harder; her smile was so different from Laila’s—her teeth were brighter, sharper, less kind. Big Henry and Remy sat on the faux-velvet upholstered sofa with her. They had forties in paper bags in their laps. They drank at the same time, and Joshua watched the beer bubble and he was thirsty. He pushed the thirst away: he was already fucked up. Joshua sat on the floor in an open space as Laila disappeared to the back of the house where the bedrooms were. By the time he recognized the comedian was Eddie Murphy and began to chuckle, Laila was straddling his shoulders and taking down his braids with a comb in her hand. The carpet was grimy; everyone still had their shoes on. Flaps of plastic hung from the couch like forgotten clothes on a clothesline. The edges were sharp. Joshua saw movement and heard voices, loud and belligerent, in the kitchen where Christophe and Dunny had gone, and then he sank back into the sofa, into Laila’s legs and her probing, steady hands, and he let the high usher him away from his steady worry about the both of them.

In the kitchen, Christophe leaned against the wall just inside the doorway. Marquise and Skeetah were kneeling on the floor; Skeetah had his hands to his mouth like he was blowing in a conch shell. He whipped his hand back and opened his fist. Dice clattered along the cracked and peeling tile floor and stopped just short of a pile of dirty green money at Javon’s and Bone’s feet. The boys had pushed the kitchen table and chairs to a corner to clear the floor for craps. A bare lightbulb burned in the low ceiling. Marquise was giving a running commentary while he slapped Skeetah on the back.

“Ah, shit, Skeetah. Craps, nigga. You can’t roll dice for shit. You sorry. You should just go ahead and hand your money to me because the way you playing you just giving it away. Really though.”

“Shut up, Marquise.”

Christophe realized Franco was standing on the wall next to him, looking as if he was already wearing his Fourth of July outfit: he wore a velour short set, the baby blue of it was as deep as the summer sky after a hard rain. His mother worked as a nurse and his father worked at the power plant, so he was always clean, had always been pretty and well dressed ever since they were kids. He always had the newest shoes, the best baseball caps, the flyest fits. The lineup of Franco’s hair that was so sharp it looked as if it had been cut with a razor, and Christophe looked away as Dunny crossed the room to shake Javon’s hand. He remembered his own days of being fresh, of being clean, of smelling good—he sniffed the goat on his shirt and wanted to laugh at himself, but the urge died in the glare of the yellow fluorescent lights over the sink. He had ignored Felicia when he walked in the door; it was his way of imagining she couldn’t see him like this. Bone rolled the dice.

“Seven.” Bone called out, and knelt to scoop the dice. He gathered the pile of money from the floor and shoved it in his pocket. Skeetah stood. A hole the size of a quarter stretched at the neck of his navy T-shirt, and Christophe could see smudges of dirt smeared across his chest against the dark cloth.

“What you picked up the money for?” Skeetah asked.

“I won,” Bone said.

“You ain’t even going to roll again and give me a chance to win my money back?”

“Naw.” Bone grinned and pulled on the black and mild cigar in his mouth.

“That’s fucked up, Bone.” Marquise pointed at Bone. “You know tomorrow the Fourth and you know we just up in here playing for fun and you going to take the man money, anyway?”

Skeetah held his white palms out toward Bone; Christophe marveled at the fact that while the rest of Skeetah was so dark, his palms were pale and chalky. Calluses from his pit bull’s leash sprouted across his palms like a constellation. “Man, c’mon, Bone. At least give me a chance to win my money back.”

Bone stepped toward Skeetah. He had a rag tied low over his head so that it sheathed his scalp; Christophe knew he was trying to pack his waves down for the next day. Bone narrowed his eyes: they reminded Christophe of a snake’s.

“Naw, nigga.” Bone had a small grin on his face as he said this, but by the set of his eyes and the way he advanced slowly toward Skeetah until his tall bulk towered over him, Christophe knew he wasn’t playing. “This what you two little niggas don’t understand. I won the game. I take the money. Game over.”

Dunny was shaking his head as he leaned on the counter next to Javon. He shrugged and whispered into Javon’s ear.

“That is sort of fucked up, Bone,” Franco said.

“You shut up, Franco. Ain’t nobody asked you.”

Marquise half sat against the wall and looked away back toward the living room. Skeetah stared at Bone’s chest with his eyes half-lidded as if he was sleepy, his arms on his waist. He was dangerously still. Christophe could tell Skeetah wanted to hit Bone, and suddenly, he hated Bone’s clean-cut goatee, his expensive cologne, the gold loop gleaming in his ear. Christophe stepped in the middle of the two.

“Why you got to be such a asshole, Bone?” He heard rather than saw Dunny move from the counter. “That’s some bullshit and you know it. You got a whole pocket full of money and you can’t let that nigga have a chance to get his money back?” Christophe stabbed his finger up toward Bone’s eye and saw him flinch as he spit the words out. “You just being a bitch, that’s all. Can’t never let no other nigga get ahead.”

“You better get your finger out my face,” Bone bit out, but Christophe didn’t care if he was the key that had turned in the lock to open the door to a confrontation. Joshua’s face flashed in his brain, and he wanted it, suddenly.

“I ain’t got to do shit. What you going to do if I don’t?”

“I’m going to whip your ass.”

Bone brought his hands up to shove Christophe and start the fight when Christophe saw a freckled arm whip out like a striking animal and push Bone backward, and suddenly Javon was standing before him. Christophe had forgotten he was in Javon’s house, that he was jabbing his finger into Javon’s best friend’s face, and that Javon had broken a white boy’s jaw. He could not understand why he was not afraid. He wondered if Javon’s face would turn another color if he hit him hard in the nose, if the cartilage and the bone would break under his knuckles, and if the blood would bloom red like a rose across his face.

“Chris. Chill out, nigga,” Javon said, and Christophe saw that the pores of his face were large and defined and blended in with the freckles. “Ain’t no need for all that.” Christophe saw Javon’s black eyes moving back and forth, saw that he was trying to gauge the play of emotions that confused even Christophe. Javon was looking at him. For some reason, this made Christophe rock back on his heels. He felt solid, tall. He nodded at Javon and stepped back and Dunny let him go. Javon turned to Bone.

“Pull the money out. Stop acting like you afraid to play,” Javon said.

“I ain’t afraid of shit.”

Javon stepped so close to Bone his nose almost touched Bone’s own.

“Well then play,” Javon said.

Javon stood like a statue before Bone. Bone’s nostrils flared. Javon let his head list to the side, and then he stepped past Bone to lean against the counter and pick up his pencil-thin cigar from where he had left it. He inhaled and let the smoke trail from his mouth so he could reinhale it in through his nose; the yellow smoke ran out of him and into him, and it was the same color as his face. Bone threw the bills from his pocket to the floor, where they scraped along the battered tile like crumbling brown leaves.

“I’m just going to win it back anyway,” he grumbled. Bone dropped the dice to the floor. “I’m going to ride to the store and get some more blacks. Anybody want to ride?” No one answered him.

Christophe heard the door open and shut. He leaned around the corner to check on his brother, to see why his twin hadn’t rushed into the kitchen when he heard them yelling, to find Joshua asleep on the floor between Laila’s legs. She was pulling and threading his hair into an intricate weave of braids. The others were laughing at the television. A shelf in the corner twinkled with dust-cloaked porcelain figures: Christophe saw that they were small porcelain clowns invoking multiple poses of hilarity. A few lay cracked or tumbled on their sides; they looked as if they had fallen stricken in a field of ash. Laila looked up from her work to catch him studying her and murmured, “He fell asleep.” Long, snakelike bangs had pulled free of her ponytail: the hair fell over her eyes. She was small and light next to Felicia, and as her hair waved before her eyes, he wondered if her hair would be as thick and slick as Felicia’s in his hands. Laila looked pointedly at Christophe and raised her eyebrows at him. “You next.”

Christophe suppressed the urge he had to walk over to his brother, to wake him, to pull him up and away from Laila and back two months into their world. His brother trusted her; his eyes were half-open in sleep, and he lay against her as if he were wounded. Christophe returned to the kitchen to find Javon standing before him with a blunt in his hand, and Dunny shaking the dice so quickly his fist began to blur like a hummingbird’s wings. Dunny was watching him. The smoke wafted in an amorous tendril up Christophe’s nose: he was so tired of that smell, of the harsh, biting burn of it. He hesitated in the act of shaking his head no, of refusing the blunt, and sniffed again. There was something sweet about the smell, something unfamiliar and dense; something that crystallized like sugar in his nose. Javon smiled at him and dangled the blunt closer to Christophe’s face.

“California. Some of my cousins brought it down.”

Christophe grabbed the blunt. Still smiling, Javon leaned on the wall next to Christophe. Dunny swept the dice from the floor and yelled out “point,” and then threw them back out. They rapped over the floor. Christophe held the smoke in his lungs and heard the dice like a knocking hand on a door: he inhaled again and a door opened inside him. He passed the blunt to Javon. Shaking his hand, Dunny pistoned his arm back and forth like he was trying to start an errant, rusted-over lawn mower. Christophe laughed, and Javon passed him the blunt.

Laila startled Christophe: she gripped his arm, and told him that she had been saying his name for a few moments but he must have not heard her. He followed her to the sofa; Joshua’s hair was done, and he had scooted over to make room for Christophe and had fallen back asleep. Laila pulled the elastic band out of Christophe’s hair and his head lolled back and he peered at her. She was as pretty as Felicia; her nose was smaller, but her lips weren’t as big. His eyes felt veiled by cotton. He was floating. She giggled and said, “You high,” and began braiding his hair. Someone got off the sofa and passed in front of the television like an eclipse of the moon. Christophe was not surprised when a red-dotted hand descended in front of his face.

“I rolled another one,” Javon intoned. Christophe giggled. The fact that he could not feel Laila’s hands yanking his hair was even funnier, since he knew from the way his eyes were jerking that she was doing so. Eddie Murphy guffawed: his laughter sounded like the bray of a donkey. Inhaling the smoke from the blunt was like breathing: as his chest shuddered he wondered if he had ever been able to take a breath without it burning, and if so, why? Something sounded like a shirt ripping, and Christophe saw that Joshua’s mouth had opened wider and he was snoring. Christophe was so high his eyelids felt swollen shut.

Dunny interrupted Joshua’s snoring by shoving him awake and telling him it was time to go. Skeetah and Marquise had wandered into the living room and were sitting on the floor, drinking beer, and everyone else was staring dully at the television, empty bottles in hand. Once in a while, Javon would make a joke and interrupt Eddie’s act, and everyone would laugh. Christophe guffawed and rocked back and forth. Joshua frowned, and wearily rose. Christophe noticed belatedly that Felicia had left while he’d been getting braided up, and that his hand had been cupping Laila’s foot. Laila wiped her hands on her shorts to clean them of hair grease, blushing. Christophe gave Javon a long handshake, and Javon insisted that he and Joshua stop by the next day: Javon had one hundred pounds of boiled, spicy shrimp and he was barbecuing, and he didn’t want to have any left over on July the fifth. Christophe said he felt like eating it all now, and Javon had snorted and said he wouldn’t pick them up until the next day.

Dunny drove to Laila’s house first. Christophe watched Joshua walk her up to her front door. He thought Joshua wasn’t going to kiss her because they stood in the light from the front porch and talked for so long. They seemed skittish around each other; while Joshua stood straight and solid as a bull, Laila leaned forward and away from him as gracefully as an egret. When they kissed, Christophe looked away. He could not remember the last time he had smoked so much; he knew it was before he began selling. Dunny pulled into his own driveway and parked; Christophe’s eyes opened a bit more when the car stopped and without prodding, he got out of the car and walked to the Caprice and sat in the passenger seat. As Joshua pulled away, Christophe yelled out the window, slurring, that they’d see Dunny the next day at the picnic at Ma-mee’s house. A fox darted out of the underbrush at the edge of a ditch and then disappeared again. Christophe looked at the tunnel of light preceding the car back to his brother and knew that when Joshua had awoken to see him holding himself and laughing soundlessly with his teeth bared, Joshua had believed his brother was in pain.

When Joshua drank his first beer on the morning of the Fourth, he was sitting on the picnic bench that he and Dunny and Christophe had just unloaded off the back of Uncle Paul’s truck. Three picnic tables formed a half-square in the fresh-cut lawn around the iron drum grill. It was ten o’clock: the air reminded Joshua of melting butter. He watched Uncle Paul spread a red, white, and blue tablecloth over the last picnic table, and then mumbling something about the goat not being finished, he drove off. Joshua heard Aunt Rita and Uncle Eze arguing about who was bringing cold drinks for the kids, and he followed Christophe and Dunny into the house. Christophe seemed quieter this morning; he woke and dressed slowly, and when Uncle Paul offered him a beer after they’d plopped the last table down, he’d refused one. After Joshua and Christophe dressed, they walked out into the yard, the colors of their outfits blinding and crisp. The twins sat at a table with Dunny and Ma-mee and Aunt Rita, while Uncle Paul drove into the dirt driveway and slammed the door with a beer-slurred whoop and proclaimed that the goat was ready. Julian, Maxwell, and David sat at the other tables with their girlfriends and wives and children, handing out plates and measuring out portions, complaining about each other’s grilling skills, and accusing each other of filching shots of moonshine from Paul’s bottle. Joshua lugged one of the roasting pans of goat to the table, and after Christophe ladled some of the meat onto Ma-mee’s plate, they began to eat. Joshua opened three bottles of beer. Each bottle sprayed small, icy geysers of mist as Joshua opened them to the heat. He passed one to Dunny on his left, and one past Ma-mee to Christophe on the right even though neither had asked him for one, and he took his first sip. He watched Ma-mee scoop a huge, barbecue-slathered bite of goat into her mouth, close her eyes, and chew.

They ate until they had to shove their pants down over the extended globes of their bellies. They ate, drank beer, brushed away flies, wiped sweat from their slick, cologne-scented faces with napkins, and then ate again. Christophe sucked ribs and shrugged away the platter of goat. Joshua could not stop himself from scooping more goat on his plate: Paul had cooked it so long that the meat seemed to melt like hot, syrupy candy in his mouth. Joshua remembered goat as a stringy dark meat, but the red spicy mass before him was nothing like he recalled. Joshua opened beer after beer and passed them: as the sun slid from its zenith to lick the tops of the pines, the beer and the heat made the day golden and easy for them all. Christophe seemed more his old self, quick to humor. After he kidded Dunny about him sneaking one of Aunt Rita’s wine coolers, Christophe said that he wanted to go to Javon’s house.

“Javon say he got a whole cooler full of shrimp at his house: a hundred pounds. I’ma go get some for you,” Christophe told Ma-mee.

“Y’all going to be back to pop the fireworks? I don’t want them kids to be blowing up the big ones by theyself. They’ll put somebody’s eye out,” Ma-mee said. Her hair was slicked back and shone like a silver cap; her profile was soft and falling.

“Yeah.” Christophe nodded as he rose. “We going to pop the big ones when we get back.” Christophe grabbed a bag of bottle rockets and lighters and pumps that rested by his feet and pulled out a handful and shoved them into his cavernous shorts pockets. “We going to pop these on the way.”

“Hold on.” Dunny rubbed his stomach and put one hand on the table. “Why don’t we wait?”

“By the time we get there, all the shrimp going to be gone.”

Dunny tossed his plate into the garbage can. “I feel like going to sleep.” He rose and wove between the tables and islands of chairs and walked to the street. Joshua trailed Christophe as they skipped heavily across the lawn to catch up with Dunny. They hopped over the ditch and landed on the street in a swarm of gnats. As they walked, the gnats drifted along with them like a cloud of golden dust roused by the sonorous, beer-suffused sway of their bodies through the sunset. Joshua wished he’d grabbed another beer. Giggling children hid in the ditches and shot bottle rockets in front and behind them as they walked past; the sparks shot through the air like manic, fizzing fireflies. Dogs leapt in and out of the ditches and woods and barked. The yards they passed were packed with cars and lawn chairs and tables and people; the air suffused with charcoal and barbecue and sulfur. A caravan of go-carts swooped past them; pre-teen boys wearing wave caps and basketball jerseys drove with one hand while shooting Roman candles into the ditches with their other. Joshua felt as if they were walking with a demented, royal escort.

“One of y’all badasses shoot me and I’m a set y’all on fire,” Dunny yelled at the kids in the ditches.

Joshua wondered if the little girl with the clacking braids and the dark and light little boys were in the ditches right now, wiping blood from their legs where the blackberry vines had scratched them and giggling. He imagined them there in the mellowing dark, whispering. A bottle rocket shot past inches away from Dunny’s belly, and Joshua heard rustling and laughing from the undergrowth.

“Y’all keep on. I got a bomb at the house!” Dunny shouted. The bushes were still. Joshua waved his cousin on, and bottle rockets whizzed past where they had been standing.

“They just playing.”

“They going to make me go to war.”

“Against some eight-year-olds?”

“Shut up.”

“You need another beer.” Christophe broke into the conversation, and as Bobby Blue Bland crooned from a truck stereo, so loud and funky Joshua could almost smell the sweat and the cigarette smoke and see the faded pool tables and the big-hair eighties pinup girls on the Kool cigarette posters at the local hole-in-the-wall blues club, the Oaks. Christophe lit the bottle rocket and watched the fuse burn down to the paper, where it flared.

Christophe threw the rocket above his head into the air at the last moment, and the rocket hissed and shot into the darkening sky. It flew in a graceful arc and exploded in a burst of golden, showering sparks. Christophe handed Dunny an incense pump and a sheaf of red-and-blue bottle rockets, and he passed them to Joshua, who began to throw them into the air. Dunny ambled between them: for all his talk about shooting at the kids in the ditches, Dunny didn’t like to throw firecrackers. When the twins were eight and he was eleven, he had been teaching them how to throw bottle rockets in a game of war with Skeetah and Big Henry and Marquise, and the bottle rocket he threw in the air had shot Big Henry in the eye instead of harmlessly glancing off his pants or singeing his skin or even burning a hole in his T-shirt. Big Henry’s eye had been blistered shut for days after the Fourth, and now Dunny would only throw bottle rockets when he was very, very drunk, which would usually result in him throwing a bottle rocket into a moving car or into a yard full of sated partiers. Christophe tried to keep them away from him, but Joshua guessed he was too drunk or reckless to care who he’d passed them to. By the time they reached Javon’s yard, the sun had set. Joshua threw a bottle rocket back into the street and heard a loud, staticky explosion undercut by the squeal of go-cart wheels.

“Sorry!” he yelled. He heard laughter, and the go-cart sped away.

Javon had set out several white plastic lawn chairs in the balding yard; the grass grew tough and stringy, and had given way in several places to red, sandy earth. The yard was a field of people in crisp jean shorts and white shirts and short dresses lounging and smoking and eating and laughing with paper plates and plastic platters of boiled shrimp on their laps. A hundred-gallon cooler of shrimp sat open next to Javon. He flipped burgers and prodded hot dogs as coals hissed. Bone sat in a seat next to the cooler, alternately wiping at his face with a paper towel and shooing away flies circling the cooler of shrimp. Dunny shook hands with Bone and Javon, while Joshua grabbed a dark blue plastic platter. Javon set down his spatula and gripped Christophe’s hand and spoke to him.

“I been betting everybody that I’ll give them a hundred dollars if they can sit here and finish off the cooler, but it’s only halfway empty.”

“Couldn’t nobody eat all that.” Bone swigged his beer.

“I hope you got some plastic bags. Ma-mee love shrimp,” Christophe said.

“They somewhere in there.” Javon turned back to the burgers. “Want a hamburger, Dunny?”

“I’m so full. I done ate so much goat I feel like a goat. Mean as shit.”

“You got some beer?” Joshua scooped shrimp onto his platter with his hands. He had torn his skin on the thin area just below his thumb fingernail; the shrimp were so spicy that the juice burned. The orange-and-cream rubbery bodies were a little warmer than the air. Bone handed him a beer. The bite of the beer inflamed the spice of the shrimp in his mouth, and he loved it.

“I told them to use two bags of shrimp boil with these … it cost extra, but they good,” Javon said.

“Tell me about it.” Bone burped and covered his mouth with his hand, too late.

In the house, Christophe looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw Sandman with a rake in his hands: he was raking pine needles in Javon’s backyard. Christophe stood and watched him stab at the ground with the rake until he paused and picked up a beer half-buried in the grass and drank. He closed his eyes; they popped open and he peered into the can. After shaking it, he set it down and reached into his pocket, fingering his pipe before drawing it halfway out. Sandman’s lips were moving. He talked to himself as he walked toward the door. The doorknob squeaked. Christophe turned hurriedly to the cabinets and began pulling them out and slamming them shut. The door opened and closed behind Sandman, and Christophe stopped in midpull and gripped the cabinet. What had he been looking for? Behind him, Sandman opened the refrigerator door, and Christophe heard the crack of a beer top opening.

“It’s hot out there,” Sandman said. He reeked of beer.

“What?” Christophe asked Sandman without turning.

“Just making conversation.”

Christophe heard Sandman sliding along the counter toward him. He could not take his eyes off the drawer.

“I thought I told you that I didn’t have no words for you.” Christophe’s hand was shaking.

“I ain’t asking you for nothing.” Christophe smelled Sandman, ripe with cut grass and rank, next to him. “I mean, I’m just trying to make a living—just like you,” Sandman said.

“Why don’t you go back where you came from?” Christophe asked.

“This my place just as much as it’s yourn, boy.” Sandman slurred his derision. “Would be nice to see your mama, though. I bet she still look as good as she used to.”

“Fuck you!” Christophe’s arm bunched and contracted and the drawer was flying from the counter and swinging freely in his hand, and the contents: empty, ink-stained envelopes and pens and bottle openers and spoons were flying through the air. They pelted Sandman’s legs and dropped, or missed him and slid across the floor. Felicia walked into the kitchen and stopped short of the mess on the floor.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where the sandwich bags at?” Christophe yelled.

“In here,” she said, and opened a cabinet over the sink. Christophe grabbed a handful of spoons and pens and dumped them into the drawer and handed it to her as she passed him the box of bags. Sandman had backed away to the refrigerator again: he looked especially small and dirty next to the cream front of the refrigerator door. Felicia was wearing something tight and red: she glittered in the small room like a ruby, shaming Sandman’s grimy clothing and face and the hungry beating of Christophe’s heart. He ran.

Christophe walked up to the group and stood with a gallon-size plastic Ziploc bag in his hand. Bone asked, “You want a beer?” His buzz, gone: his brother, drunk as his father and keeping things from him; and Felicia, hard and cold as a jewel as she resumed her seat, not even looking at him.

Javon handed Christophe a beer. When Christophe took it from him, Javon’s fingers were as cold as the beer bottle. Christophe peeled away the gold Michelob paper, dipped into the shrimp cooler, and dumped a spattering of shrimp onto his plate. He began to peel the shells away from the bodies and eat, and let the beer grow warm, untouched. At the nearest house, beyond a stand of woods, partiers were shooting firework cannons into the air. They shrieked into the navy sky and exploded in shapes: a red flower, a yellow sun. Javon was breaking down a cluster of purple-green weed for a blunt. Christophe pulled the tail away from the meat. He wondered if Sandman was still raking back there in the elongating shadows, and he imagined himself sneaking around the house, hitting him hard enough with a beer bottle to make him collapse. If Javon offered, Christophe planned to smoke. Another firework hurtled through the air, and Christophe watched it ascend and dropped the shrimp from his fingers when he saw it burst into a brilliant, sparkling blue flower. He watched the flower flare and fade like rain down the pane of a window. Another flower bloomed in the sky.

“Did you see that?” Christophe turned to Joshua to see him sucking the last foamy residue from a bottle of beer, his head tilted back. He was smiling around the bottle. Christophe wanted his attention. He kicked him.

“What!” The bottle shaded Joshua’s mouth so that all Christophe could see of his brother in the dark was his eyes, which were curved like machete blades at the corners. Joshua wiped at his shoe with his free hand. “I know you ain’t scuffed my shit.” Joshua lost his balance and the bottle moved with him as he slumped momentarily over. “I ain’t got it to burn,” he mumbled. Christophe could see his mouth now; he was serious, he wasn’t grinning.

“The flower,” Christophe said drunkenly, and looked up as another blue rose erupted there.

“Oh,” said Joshua. “I missed it.” Christophe looked down and knew his brother hadn’t even bothered to look because he was doubled over trying to peer at his foot in the dark. None of the others were looking at the sky: it was as if only Christophe could see the miracle of those blue flowers in that yard.