It was around the hour when the sun began to sink into the James River and the lights of downtown Richmond came on and made the city look as big and grand as it wished it could be. The air was warm and thick. It made me think of maple syrup. There was a small breeze that picked up when I pushed my good foot on the accelerator. One arm hung out the window, the other with a hand on the wheel and a smoke between the knuckles. I was driving into Oregon Hill and I wasn’t happy about it.
Denby and Reggie Baker had just moved into the neighborhood. Cheaper rent, they told me. If you happened to be meandering through on a shiny afternoon you might see why. Oregon Hill was a dirty place and it was a nasty place. It was a place where stray cats could raise families. The gaunt houses were packed together and looked like the trees out in front of them: old, tired, and resentful. The porches sagged into themselves like wet cardboard, and Confederate flags hung with no wind to give them false glory. The lawns, if they had anything growing in them at all, grew wild and unkempt. Random objects stuck out from these yards, rusted machinery that had long since ceased to operate, children’s toys. There were families here, white families, that hadn’t yet moved out into the depressing alcoholic counties beyond Richmond, and they had a hell of a chip on their shoulders. The nights were deathly quiet but there was always something moving, shadow-to-shadow, and whatever it was knew when there was someone in the neighborhood who didn’t belong. It was the feeling I had every time I paid a visit. And every time it felt like I was sneaking in.
I made a right onto China Street and parked a half a block down from where the brothers lived. I got out of my beat-up burgundy Dodge slowly, with my wrapped left foot in the air. I pulled out a pair of aluminum crutches, stood up, also very slowly, locked the door, and moved onto the sidewalk.
Many of the red dusty bricks that made the sidewalk were broken or missing and in between them grass sprouted. I tried to step quickly on my crutches without looking like I was in a hurry. Denby and Reggie might have been all right in the neighborhood initially because they were white. But it was their visitors who were going to end up getting them in trouble.
As I was coming up to the brothers’ house, I could make out two people sitting on the porch of the place next door. No light illuminated the porch and I couldn’t see their faces. Two men, from the looks of them. They sat in their chairs, smoking cigarettes, as silent as the neighborhood around them. I could tell by the direction of their heads that they were staring at me. I didn’t stare back. This wasn’t anything new. My skin couldn’t help but get that crawling feeling, a feeling that made me very aware of that same skin’s color. The two men could have been a part of the house if not for the smoke twisting into the air and the rising and falling red dots of cigarettes held by invisible hands. Behind their screen door, past the darkness, I thought I could hear something growl. It was a low growl that sounded like it came from something big. Maybe it was the house. I kept going and got to the place I meant to get to.
Denby and Reggie’s house didn’t put on much of a front. A pair of beat-up sneakers sat next to the door that had no screen and the address was missing one of its golden digits. I was coming up the three steps of the porch when the door flung open, smacking against the rail of the porch. A girl came stomping out.
It was dark so I couldn’t quite make out the hue of her eye shadow but I could tell it was Ebone and she wasn’t happy. It was all the swearing that gave it away. I’d always found it amusing to hear people with British accents swear.
Her hair was short and sleek and a golden bird shook violently under each earlobe. She wore a zebra-print tank top and black hot pants, all of this showing a lot of the dark smooth skin I had found myself admiring the one night we had gone out for drinks with some mutual friends. That night, she’d been dancing on top of a bar with a drink in each hand. Now, her heels ground into the porch wood and she came down the stairs and went right past me without any word I took as directed to myself. She headed on down the block and didn’t trip once.
When I turned back to the door, Denby Baker was standing there.
“Hey, bo.” His voice was raspy, as if it’d been rubbed raw with a Brillo Pad. It matched the beard on his face and the Newport hanging from his bottom lip. He readjusted his Yankees cap, adorned with the brothers’ trademark golden fish hook on the bill, and showed a perfect row of teeth while he held the door open for me to come through.
“Hey, Derb,” I said, and passed him on the way to the kitchen. I leaned against the counter in the middle of the room next to an empty sink and a large microwave. The only thing on top of the counter was a set of jade dice. “Thought you were done with her.”
“I am. That’s why she was all in a huff. I can’t even stand to listen to her talk. The accent lost its charm probably around the third time she scammed me. Ain’t no way I’ma hook her up with nothing. Told her to beat it. It’s nothing. Hey, how’s life on the crutch though, Levy?”
“Hell on the armpits. But at least now I can grow out my beard like you two bozos seeing as how I can’t work. I try to be a glass-half-full kinda guy.”
“Speaking of glasses half full, how about a beverage?”
“Night’s getting better already.”
He stepped past me and opened the fridge. All that was inside of it was a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best, a jar of mayo, a loaf of bread, and a very large plastic bag full of marijuana. He grabbed two cans of beer, opened one, and handed it to me.
I took a healthy sip out of the can and said, “Your neighbors aren’t creepy at all, by the way.”
“Yeah. They’re backwards as hell. But they’re all right. Just sit on the porch and drink. See some dogs in the backyard here and there. Big boys.” He took down practically half of his beer in one extended gulp. “Crazy thing is though,” he continued, “me and Regg see girls come over there every now and again. Half decent too—I mean, no peg leg or hook at the wrist. It’s suspect, real suspect.”
“Kiddin’ me?”
“Nope. Ain’t no gun to their heads neither.”
I gave him an unconvinced, “Huh.”
Reggie came running down the stairs. He looked almost identical to his brother except his hair came down to his shoulders, he was taller, and he was lighter in the paunch. He entered the living room wearing a ridiculous outdoorsman vest and no shirt underneath, long jean shorts, and sneakers with socks pulled up right under his knees. In his hand he had a plastic container with what looked like dirt in it.
“Let’s go fishin’, boys!”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Docks on the James.”
“I’m with it,” I shrugged and looked at Denby.
“Lemme grab the kush.” He took a small plastic bag out of a drawer and went to the fridge, filling it with marijuana from the larger bag. He stuffed that in his pocket, grabbed his beer, and we were out the door. The neighbors were no longer on the porch smoking.
We took their car. I kept my beer can low in my seat as we made a left onto Belvidere. In five blocks only six police cars passed us. We made a right onto Cary and slid down hills that brought us downtown. The streets and buildings looked like a world inside a lightbulb, all yellow and empty. Further down, past all the buildings occupied by suits in the daytime, the road became cobblestone.
Hotels and restaurants provided a different kind of light in Shockoe Slip. A group of brightly dressed young people stood outside of Tobacco Company contemplating where to get their next cocktail.
We made a left onto 14th and then a right on Main. The train tracks were raised into the sky above us, along with I-95. They created a dark ceiling, illuminated dimly by streetlights to give everything the grainy look that always made people from the West End reluctant to visit. When they did, they had to get drunk, and fast. The droves weren’t parading the streets this night, however. It wasn’t yet the weekend. But the traffic was still heavy.
We went past downtown, riding east on Main Street, past Church Hill, away from the city. Everything became very dark and the night lost the sounds that people made. There were more train tracks down this way and the James River became visible as we passed through or under a large building that must have served as a kind of gateway at some point in history. Now, it was only a shell. Richmond had a lot of that kind of history.
A large white yacht was harbored on the docks. During the week it gave tours. Tables with white cloth draped over them could be seen inside the yacht through the windows. We parked the car a little ways down from where the boat was docked and unpacked the fishing rods, tackle box, bait, and booze. In the daytime it was fine to fish next to the yacht. People from all walks of life came out, set up chairs, and spent long hours fishing amiably. We wouldn’t fish there though. Several lights set next to the boat and in the parking lot made the whole area very bright. There weren’t any other cars out there, which wasn’t any surprise, considering the hour. Still, it was too out in the open for what we had in mind.
Reggie took us away from the yacht toward where the trees came in and the river narrowed. We could hear the current rushing past in the dark. There was just enough light from the moon to make out a path. It wasn’t a long walk before we got through the trees and had to work down a thin path that took me awhile to navigate on crutches. The path led to a smaller dock with no one else in sight.
We set everything down on the dock and I started on a new beer. The brothers began to rig the rods. They used a Carolina rig, which had a weight on the line that would sink to the bottom of the river. There would be enough line after the weight that the bait we put on the hook would float up several inches. The moon was bright over the moving river, causing the rocks that protruded from it to glow. It seemed like the arrangement of the rocks changed every summer
We could see to the other side of the riverbank almost clearly, but where we were, with the trees hanging over us, shielding us from the moonlight, we were practically invisible. I guessed I could hurl a potato across the river and reach the other side. Maybe.
Reggie pulled out the plastic container of dirt and began to pick through it. When his hand came out he had a squirming night crawler.
“I got a feeling about it tonight, bo,” Reggie said to me.
“Yeah. A big catfish maybe?” I said between sips, watching Denby pack a bowl with what I could already smell was strong weed.
“That’d be great. Reel one of those big boys in. Yep.” Reggie stood up, his rod set and the worm dangling from the hook. He swung back gently, one finger holding the line, and then cast. It went out very far and made a good-sounding splash. Denby and I both commented that it was a nice cast.
“So what happened with your foot, Lev? Derb told me you jumped off a balcony or something?” Reggie asked, looking over his shoulder in my direction.
“Derb, damn, man. No. I didn’t jump off any balcony.”
He grinned, though I couldn’t see it. I could just tell by how the words came out of his mouth. “Who were you running from?”
“I didn’t jump off any damn balcony!”
“Whoa! Easy there, buddy. Just inquiring, just inquiring. What is it, Sensitive Tuesday?”
“It’s Wednesday, you idiot,” Denby said.
“What is it, Sensitive Wednesday?”
We laughed and the freshly packed bowl began to circulate. After I’d taken my first turn, each proceeding cast I made into the river became worse. I didn’t care very much. We were laughing and I forgot about my foot and the other things that troubled me and became comfortable on the dock in the dark. Several times I lost my bait, either in a terrible cast or getting snagged by the brush on the bottom of the riverbed. I slowly became more concerned with drinking, if only to balance myself out. I felt the rig finally pull loose from a failed cast and was reeling it in when we heard a single scream. It came from the other side of the river. It came from a girl.
The rod almost fell from my hands. Across the river we could see a girl skidding in the leaves and dirt down to the bank. She got back on her feet and started running along the bank. She wasn’t wearing much of anything. Her dark hair was long and looked wild in the moonlight.
Seconds behind her something came crashing down from the trees and almost rolled itself into the river. It was a dog and it was the size of a small bear. It got back on its four feet quickly and started chasing the girl. It didn’t take long for it to catch up to her. The girl’s screams were cut short but the few that she got out were the most terrible sounds I’d ever heard. Sounds that would stay with me for many years and echo inside my deepest darkest dreams. It was at that moment that I dropped my rod.
First it fell on the dock with a thud that shook all of us back to life. The metal of the reel clattered. The rod tipped over the edge and since I hadn’t reeled it in completely, the current took the weight and pulled the rod in as quickly as a vacuum sucking up a dust bunny. The splash shouldn’t have been so loud.
I looked back across the river and saw two men standing on the bank. We couldn’t make out their faces but we could tell they were facing our direction. Lights were suddenly beaming toward us where we stood on the dock. They had flashlights. Then the dog jumped into the river with a splash that told us exactly how big it was.
“Go! Go! Go!” Denby was half yelling, half whispering. The brothers were grabbing everything they could. The tackle box wasn’t latched and half of the lures and hooks and weights came spilling out when Denby tried to scoop it up. He left the spilled items there and put the box under his arm, with his rod in the other hand, and started running up the path into the woods. I was in front of Reggie and tried following Denby when I realized that was impossible, my heel was still broken. My leg twisted on the path and I went down. An incredible pain lanced up my leg. I grabbed at it and tried my best to be a tough guy.
Then Reggie was pulling me up and had his arm around my waist and we were moving. We couldn’t exactly run but I was skipping furiously. It didn’t make any sense that the dog had jumped into the water. I couldn’t believe it would make it across the river, and even if it were strong enough, the current would take it much further down than where we’d been spotted. It would never catch us in time. All that logic did little to ease the incredible measure of fear pounding inside of me.
We stayed on the path through the forest, more or less. I felt my legs being ripped by shrubs and branches as we stumbled along, made blind by terror and adrenaline. I couldn’t hear anything; I was breathing too hard.
The trees cleared away once again and there was still another hundred or so yards to the car. We could see Derby already at the car with the trunk open, throwing whatever he’d managed to grab inside. He slammed the trunk and then jumped behind the wheel. Instead of bringing the car to us, he sat inside and screamed from the window, “Come on! Hurry up!” I really didn’t want to keep him waiting.
Reggie got me to the door, opened it, and all but threw me in. Then he jumped in next to me, not even bothering to run around the car to sit shotgun. The vehicle started moving before Reggie got the door closed.
“Roll up the fucking windows!” Denby was screaming.
Reggie and I both looked toward the trees. If we could have rolled up the windows with a handle we would have. But all any of us could do was put our finger on a button and wait for it to come up at its own pace. The monster of a dog was moving full speed from the black of the trees. It had a savage way of running. I could see dirt hiking up from where its claws were tearing the earth. The lights in the parking lot showed us that the animal’s thick fur was reddish-brown and, even with the water it had just swam through matting down most of it, already beginning to puff back out. Its tail had a peculiar way of curling. Its face, which I could barely see, was stretched back across its teeth. We couldn’t see its eyes.
Denby put the car in reverse and we swung back wildly. By the time he shifted gears again we heard the dog smash into the back of us and felt the car dip with its weight. It clawed against the metal and started crawling forward. We screamed at Denby to start driving. He did. The dog was on the roof of the car then. The tires made a horrible sound as they went over the train tracks we’d passed to get to the docks. Then Denby came to a sharp stop. Reggie and I almost kissed the windshield with our foreheads. The dog didn’t have any windshield. It went flying in front of the car. Denby stomped on the pedal. We heard a piercing whine and felt the car thud viciously over something much larger than a speed bump. I turned in my seat and looked back out the window. The dog lay very still in the street. It still looked huge.
“What the hell just happened? Does someone want to tell me?” Denby was yelling from behind the wheel.
The brothers began talking over one another heatedly, each with his own theories. I sat quietly for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I felt like I had asthma. I needed a bellows shoved down my throat. We didn’t realize we could put the windows down until we were halfway to the brothers’ house. My shirt was soaked in sweat. It dawned on me I only had one of my crutches.
I wasn’t very vocal during the ride home. The brothers were doing enough talking. I was trying to wrap my head around what we’d just witnessed. A girl running around in her underwear next to the river. Sure, it was warm enough. So what about Cujo? More importantly, what about the guys who’d sicced him on the girl? The thought put a miserable taste in my mouth and I didn’t know how many drinks it would take to get it out. I wanted to take my throbbing foot and throw it out the window.
“Sorry about the fishing rod, guys.”
“Did the dog rip the throat out of that chick? What the hell do we do now?” Reggie was leaning forward, clutching the seat.
“I don’t know what all we can do. Call the cops, I guess.”
Maybe the body would still be there. Maybe both bodies.
“Do you think they got a good look at us?” Reggie asked.
“No shot in hell. No way. Not from all the way over there,” Denby said.
I thought briefly about how easy it was to run into somebody you didn’t want to see in Richmond. An asshole, an ex-girlfriend, a murderer. The city could be awfully small.
We turned into Oregon Hill. We’d been driving very fast up until then, but when we came to where the neighborhood started, Denby pulled it back to a crawl. I couldn’t make up my mind about whether this was the adrenaline leaving him or because he realized we were coming back into Oregon Hill. I would’ve felt safer driving around Richmond in the car or, even better, out of the city altogether, but I kept my mouth shut. It was very late by then. A few kids passed us on bicycles as we got out of the car. The bars were closed. We stood still until they rode off the block.
The living room held a large collection of DVDs and a flat screen on the wall. The television was a gift from their mother. Several framed posters of horror flicks hung on the walls. I sat on the leather sofa and took out a cigarette and lit it. It didn’t taste right in my mouth. I put it out in one of the empty beer cans on their glass coffee table. The room was cold, even in the summertime. Denby sat next to me on the sofa and Reggie took a seat in the corner of the room. We all stared at the floor or the wall or our shoelaces but avoided looking at each other. No one had anything to say, so we just sat there in the silence. Then we heard the kitchen door open. Reggie and I looked at Denby, as if it were his responsibility to lock the door. My eyes were all but bulging out.
Heels were clicking on the wood, followed by heavy boots. Ebone walked into the room. Her legs looked very nice in heels. Behind her was a black guy with a shaved head, a low-hanging gold chain, and wrists about as thick as my neck. He was only about seven feet tall.
“You really should lock your door, boys. I wouldn’t exactly rate this as a safe neighborhood,” she said. Her smile had as much venom as a King Cobra.
“This isn’t really the time, Ebone,” Denby started.
“I’m here to get that bag off of you, Denby. That’s why I brought Maurice here. I hate to get nasty but you know how I am when I don’t get what I want. I guess I’m spoiled.”
I stood up. “Now listen here, you crazy—”
Maurice took a step toward me. I sat back down. Ebone laughed.
“What the hell are you going to do? You don’t even have two crutches,” she sneered. “Tough guy on one foot.” She turned back to Denby. “So? Where is it?”
“Ebone, we already had this talk. I got nothing for you. If anybody should have anything for another body, it oughta be you. You swindled me, remember? Where do you get off?” I could tell he wanted to sound hard, but with the recent course of events and the present size of Maurice, his voice was strained and borderline soft. Though I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge.
She came up close to Denby and played with his ear. “You’re really gonna hold that against me, Denby? I thought we were friends?” she purred.
“Maybe if you make right.”
“I tried to do that earlier tonight. You didn’t seem to like my deal then.”
“Discounts are out, Eb.”
“Well …” She started walking away from him then. “I guess you and Maurice are going to have to play. I really think you’d have liked playing with me better though, Denby. We had fun once.”
Maurice walked further into the room. I grabbed my crutch, almost holding it as if it were a bat. It’s what I had a mind to use it as.
From behind Ebone we heard the door open again. Everyone froze and turned, looking toward the hallway leading into the kitchen.
Ebone started to back into the living room with us and came to stand next to Maurice. Two men walked into the room. One of them was very thin with a flat ugly nose and a trucker hat. The other was taller but had a beer belly that stuck out from under his white T-shirt and a full reddish beard. The thin one held a crutch he didn’t need that looked very familiar to me. The tall one had a gun in his hand.
“We havin’ us a party?” the thin one asked. He smiled and showed us his bad teeth. He raised the crutch. “I think you lost something.”
“Hey, neighbor, now isn’t exactly the best time …” Denby said.
No one seemed to care about Denby’s schedule.
“Normally, we don’t like to meddle, even if we do see folks we don’t particularly like to see in our neck of the woods, ain’t that right, Greg?”
“What, you mean niggers, Walt?” Greg, the taller one, replied.
“Precisely precise. And hell, we can even respect most anybody who enjoys the sport of fishing. I guess you boys just happened on a bad spot.”
“A little further up by the bridge ain’t bad fishin’,” Greg said.
“Who the hell are you hillbillies?” Ebone demanded. The sound of her voice made me wince. The timing was off too.
Greg motioned the gun at her and Walt barely had time to grab his wrist before it fired. It didn’t stop the shot but it did save her life. Instead, the bullet caught Maurice in the belly. His shirt began to show red quickly and he took a step forward. He made an awful sound. Greg fired two more times at the big man. Neither of these shots missed.
Maurice fell on his face and he was as heavy as he looked. The crash made almost as much noise as the gunshots.
“Jesus H, Greg! What’d you shoot for?”
“I didn’t mean to, but he looked like he was making a move, man!”
“Yeah, cause you shot him!”
“I thought we was gonna to shoot ’em anyway!”
“Yeah, but you was aimin’at her! Be a waste to pop her here. We can play the game with her. She ain’t a bad piece, even she is a nigger.”
I had a bad habit of talking before I thought better of it. Maybe two people getting murdered right in front of me made me act stupid. “Is that what you were doing down there? Playing a game? Siccing a dog on steroids to rip a girl apart? What kind of fucked-up country bastards are you?”
Greg’s face twisted up at that, but Walt just started showing us his teeth again.
“We love our dogs. They get bored just like we do. ‘Cept they can’t drink no beer. Or at least they don’t like it all too much. And I do love to see a girl go for a run. Now, on your feet, gimpy. We gon’ take us a field trip.”
No one had been paying much attention to Reggie. It was a mistake not to pay attention to a man in an outdoorsman vest. No one had seen him unsheathe a machete in the corner of the room. Without a word, he swung it into Walt’s arm. There was a shrill scream, like an elementary school fire alarm. Greg pointed the gun at Reggie but I’d already consented to their previous command and gotten to my feet. I swung my remaining crutch into Greg’s face with all the muscle I had. The bolt I used to adjust the height of the crutch must have hit him right between the eyes. Blood spurted out everywhere and he fell to the floor, clutching his face, dropping his gun.
Ebone started screaming. She ran out of the room as fast as her heels could carry her. Denby scooped the gun up and pointed it at the bleeding men lying on his floor. The two who were still alive.
“Where the hell did you get a fucking machete from?” I yelled. I didn’t mean to yell. It just seemed like the only way anyone could talk at a time like this.
“I dressed as Rambo this past Halloween,” he said.
I got my cell phone out and called the police. My asthma was back.
In minutes there were enough cops at the house to have a parade. They took Greg and Walt to get bandaged up so they wouldn’t stain the backseats of their squad cars. We told our stories so many times it felt as if it were one of the movies in Reggie’s DVD collection. The officers radioed someone to check if the body of a girl or a dog could be found down by the docks. In an hour they got a negative on both accounts but found a lot of blood in the location we’d described. They found all the stuff we’d left behind on the docks as well. They only mentioned the beer. To be cute. They guessed the body of the girl would be found in the river.
The cops gave Reggie some trouble about the machete but relented some when they saw he owned every Rambo on DVD and had a life-sized poster hanging in the upstairs hallway. In any event, they took the machete with them. The entire time the police were in the house, Denby was constantly talking and moving around. It wasn’t surprising at first, since that was Denby’s way. Then suddenly it seemed like something more.
“Does Derb seem nervous to you, Regg?” I whispered discreetly to him.
“Could have something to do with all the tree we got in the fridge,” Reggie said under his breath.
I lit a cigarette and began massaging my scalp furiously.
They raided the neighbors’ house and didn’t find anything too peculiar, for an Oregon Hill residence, until they went into the basement. There they found three more dogs in cages, all different breeds, each about as eager to get its jaws on someone’s throat as the one we’d run over. They searched the truck the neighbors owned and found the body of the dog underneath a tarp. Of course, they wouldn’t leave their beloved pet behind. It was identified as a Chow but of considerably greater size than normal. So far the police had everything except the body of the girl. That would turn up. All we could do was wonder who she was.
When asked about the big black guy lying on the living room floor, we just said he was a newly made acquaintance we didn’t know all too well, which was kind of true. That didn’t sit well with them but there wasn’t much they could do about it right then. They found identification on him, took him out of the house, and told us to skip any foreseeable trips.
No one said a word about Ebone. Denby was doing most if not all of the talking by then, which Reggie and I were happy to let him do. I didn’t know why Ebone didn’t come up, but neither did I care very much to add anything else that would keep the police around any longer. I wanted them out almost as bad as the brothers did.
The sun was well upon its ascent by the time they all left. I sat on the leather sofa, leaning forward on my two crutches. My foot hurt, my shoulders hurt, my eyes hurt. But I couldn’t keep my good foot from tapping and my palms from sweating.
“So … why didn’t we mention Ebone? Besides the irritation it would cause?”
“She did me a favor,” Denby answered.
“How?”
“Before she left she must’ve took the kush out of the fridge. If the cops had found it, I’d be sitting between those redneck fucks for distribution.”
“Wow. Ebone comes through in the clutch. By scamming you. Again.” I leaned back, letting myself sink into the sofa as I closed my eyes.
“That bitch,” Denby grunted.
“Who do you think she was?” Reggie asked.
“Who?”
“The girl. That got killed.”
“Who were any of them? They probably all bought it. All the ones we’ve seen. All the same way. We’ve been living next to these guys for almost two months now. I’m getting sick thinking about it. What are we doing living here?” Denby said, smoking a Newport rapidly.
“The rent’s cheap,” I replied. The Baker brothers didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t go to sleep. I just kept my eyes closed. I was picturing myself walking out of the house and into my car and driving out of Oregon Hill. It was early so it wouldn’t be too hot outside yet.