Wearing their blue work shirts, their names sewn onto the breast pockets, Lewis and Freddy painted the basement window frames of a twelve-unit apartment building Freddy’s uncle managed.
Freddy had been quiet for the better part of the day.
The words that Kia’s father had said had been constantly ringing in Freddy’s skull since his meeting with the man. He had repeated the insults almost verbatim to Kia last night as they lay in each other’s arms.
“Don’t ever listen to a word he says, okay?” Kia said, her soft hand caressing the side of Freddy’s face.
“But is he wrong?”
“You’re doing things, baby. You are.”
“Enough to be with someone like you?”
“Yes,” Kia said.
Freddy didn’t believe her. But oddly enough, Freddy found himself both thankful to and resentful of the man. The negative things Dr. James had said to him would only make Freddy work harder to prove that fool wrong. But the way he’d looked at Freddy, the way he spoke down to him, reminded Freddy of the way his own father used to treat him. He should have grabbed the man in his office, squeezed him around the throat till he took back every negative word he had said. But Freddy shook that idea out of his head.
Violent thoughts were not good. They only triggered more violent thoughts. The image of Notty’s bloody face flashed through Freddy’s mind.
Even though he had beaten the addict down days ago, the image still haunted Freddy. Now, when Freddy looked down, he had to tell himself the splotches of white paint on his hands and arms weren’t red, weren’t blood from the man he had almost killed.
“Why you so quiet over there?”
Freddy glanced at Lewis, then turned back to the up and down motions of his paintbrush. “I’m just not saying nothing.”
“Naw. It’s more than that. What’s up?”
Freddy set his brush on the edge of the can of paint, stood from his knees. “I’m thinking you should rethink this beating you planning on giving, ol’ boy.”
Lewis stopped painting, set his brush on the rim of the same can. “You ain’t punkin’ out on me, are you? That ain’t like you, man.”
“Naw, I ain’t punkin’ out. But what did the man do? Make a phone call ’cause he interested in your woman. He deserve a beat down for that?”
“Yeah,” Lewis said, walking over to Freddy. “Hell yeah. And payback for when he got me.”
“And what if it get out of hand? What if you climb on that fool, whuppin’ him so good that you can’t stop yourself, and you look down and find you almost killed him?”
“That’s why you gonna be there. To pull me off before that happens.”
“And what if it goes the other way? Say he whuppin’ on you?”
Lewis smiled, laughed a little. “Guarantee that won’t happen. But again, that’s why you gonna be there.”
Freddy shook his head, looked down at his hands again, attempted to rub the white spots from his wrists. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know what good gonna come from this. Maybe you should give this a little more thought, not do it today.”
Lewis shook his head, seeming disgusted with Freddy. “I tell you what. Today, after I get off work, I’m going to this man’s house. I’m going to hang in the bushes, just like he did me. And when he comes home, I’m gonna jump his ass and beat him down till all he can do is crawl to his phone and dial nine one one, just like he did me. Now you either gonna be with me, or you ain’t.”
“Lewis, you don’t know what you could be starting by doing this. Something tells me you ain’t just gonna whup his ass and he gonna just go away.”
“Freddy—either you with me, or you ain’t.”
Freddy paused, and then said, “Yeah. I’m with you.”