CHAPTER SIX
Lott Carey woke from strange dreams every
hour. That was when fatigue got to him so much as to allow him to
drift off into the fitful thing he called sleep. He dreamt of blood
and battles, of swords and death, of love and pain. It was his
calling, his destiny, and his gift. He knew he'd never know peace.
So he flipped through the motel cable channels as if on this third
time through there might be something on worth watching. Better the
perils of late-night television than the visions that tormented him
whenever he closed his eyes lately. A baleful glare over a
reptilian spread of teeth, no more than a glimpse, but the familiar
sensation sent terror spreading through his soul like embalming
fluid poured into a corpse.
On the outskirts of Speedway, the
Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, cost just over a
hundred a week to stay. Just off the Crawfordsville Road
thoroughfare that led to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the
stretch was tourist-friendly year-round; but if there wasn't a race
going on, the motel was largely deserted. And worse, it offered few
amenities to alleviate boredom. Lott couldn't even distract himself
with his cell phone as it had been cut off earlier that day. He had
let his cousin talk him into sharing a plan with him because his
cousin couldn't get a plan on his own. Ignoring the voice warning
him not to do business with family, Lott agreed. The first bill
arrived and his cousin had run up over three hundred dollars in
texting charges alone and offered to pay him fifty bucks on it out
of his next check. Lott never even received the fifty. Another in
the long list of reasons for him to stay away from
family.
His mother was a fiend. Always
working an angle, she named him for a missionary in hopes of
impressing some deacons at the church. It worked until they caught
her breaking into the office to steal the petty cash. They moved
into Section 8 housing, his moms little more than an industrious
junkie who knew how to work the system. Even now, Lott suspected
that her head bobbed up and down in the lap of a neighbor so that
she could score enough to get back to sucking on a glass dick. Of
his two brothers, one was barely functional and the other in the
ground. He was staying with his sister, but she abruptly kicked him
out. He couldn't tell if she was bipolar or simply back on
drugs.
Turning off the television, Lott
decided to indulge his one vice and went out for a smoke. It was
needless, too, because he wasn't addicted. There was no physical
urge, his brain didn't get the rush others did. He smoked… just
cause. It was something to do and gave him time to think. The
outside view didn't offer much by way of distraction. His neighbors
mostly paid for their rooms by the hour. One glance of his concrete
dour expression and they let him be, though he took no joy in
appearing hard. At the thought of having to adopt that affectation,
he spat on the sidewalk. However, the role of being hard was a
community expectation, a fixed mask, though he had no heart for
death, his or anyone else's. Occasionally, he forced a smile for
one of the regular pros whose faces he'd come to recognize,
otherwise he continued the pantomime of armor needed for survival.
Thus he rose up quickly on the streets with a reputation for being
a loner until he hooked up with King. They had been boys for a
minute, though, truth be told, while Lott was tougher and a better
fighter, King had greater heart and will. He'd told King to stop
through, but the parking lot remained empty and bleak.
His evening's boredom
sufficiently broken up, Lott flopped on his bed and opened one of
the six books he picked up from the library. Tom Wolfe's
A Man in Full. Walter Mosley's
Futureland. Machiavelli's The Prince. Sun Tzu's The Art
of War. Gary Braunbeck's Destinations
Unknown. And the book which caught his attention this
evening, Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a
Thousand Faces. He remembered his fifthgrade teacher who
rarely spoke to him and never called on him in class. She had
already written him off as another street tough and had no
expectations of him beyond, hopefully, him not disrupting class so
that the other students could learn. Public school became a death
by discouragement with him, the memory of which often had him
wondering how many boys she'd derailed by not believing in them, by
teaching them that they had already been written off. College was a
dream he clung to as he struggled to pull together ends. Once he
passed his GED. After he got his license. After he paid off the
tickets from driving his sister's car without a license. There was
always some roadblock in his map of plans.
At the moment he was trapped in
that cycle: needed money for a car, needed a car for a job, and
needed a job for money. He accomplished the first goal and he got a
job. The blue FedEx uniform was like a second skin at this point.
He used to work down by the airport, trying to save up enough money
to get a car and full get on his feet, but his kin were bleeding
him dry for ride money, charging twenty-five bucks for a ten-minute
trip. Another reason to add to that list. Life would be easier if
he could walk to work or if he worked along a bus line, so he had
hopes of transferring to a closer branch. Soon he'd be able to
apply to school, maybe IUPUI or Ivy Tech, something to get
started.
The room lights flickered,
interrupting his reading. Briefly he wondered if rats chewed on the
wiring, as such was the natural order of things. Finding his place
in his book again, he found comfort in the slightly chilly room by
curling up and covering himself with a blanket. Fully dressed and
it being the waning days of summer, Lott found himself pulling the
comforter further around him. A creeping numbness settled into his
feet so slowly he didn't realize the deep ache of cold in his bones
at first. Movement skittered on the edge of his vision. Against the
contrast of the dark blanket he realized he could see his breath.
He was ready to adjust the thermostat or call the super when he
noticed something else. Smoke billowed in from under the
door.
Lott rolled out of his bed. The
heavy fog had a measured creep to it, its movement contrary to the
laws governing mists. Cloudy torrents seeped under the door and
through the slits of the window with nary a smoke detector going
off. Rushing to the bathroom, he scooped up several towels,
returning to find that the wisps had formed a hand with a raised
finger, wagging at him for having any thoughts of stemming
it.
With that, the mist dispersed in
a puff then coalesced into a screen of sorts. The picture of a
woman formed, one unfamiliar to Lott though her beauty – despite
the smoky portrait – was quite evident. Tall and proud, hair pulled
back into a ponytail, she had a fragility and strength all at the
same time. His heart filled with an ecstatic longing. Soon, another
shape entered the scene. Clearly it was Lott, the two recognizing
each other. They moved like guilty people not wanting to be caught,
yet desiring the other all the more. They embraced, cloudy fingers
fumbling over each other, probing, undressing. Lott stepped nearer,
his hand raised in front of him as if to touch the entwined
pair.
Suddenly, the tendrils of mist
took hold of him, whip-like cords wrapping around his hands,
squeezing him with such force he winced despite his surprise. The
fog rope lifted him from the ground, his arms pulled over his head.
Lott kicked at the fallen cloud, each kick dispersing it briefly
only to have it re-form. It formed a teeth-filled maw, opening and
closing, with dark indentations giving it the appearance of eyes as
it drew Lott toward it. A tongue lolled out, snaking its way to
him, its serpentine undulations writhing up his body until it
arrived at his face. It licked about him, its ephemeral touch both
cold and light. Lott pulled away from it, straining from its touch
as much as its tight embrace allowed. The coil reared up, a cloud
cobra, then it rammed itself into his mouth. The coldness seeped
into Lott. Its essence pushed down his throat. He gagged as it
forced itself into him, filling him. Growing light-headed, unable
to breathe, his eyes fluttered as they sank back into his
head.
The door buckled as something
with a lot of force behind it slammed into it. The crash roused
Lott back to near lucidity. He turned his head to see what manner
of beast would follow next. Interminable seconds passed as the mist
both drained and filled him. With the next blow, the door flew off
its hinges followed by King and Merle tumbling in.
King came to a stuttering halt as
it took him a moment to get his head around the sight of his
longtime friend suspended on tendrils of smoke. Gathering himself,
he swung madly to break the beast's grip. Merle stood, near
motionless, as if a patron at an art exhibit taking in the beauty
and scale of the machinations as only a true connoisseur such as he
could appreciate.
"What is this thing?" King cried
out as he punched in vain. "Merle?"
Merle arced his hand as if
throwing up a mystical gang sign, and an arc of green light struck
the room. The tentacles of vapor collapsed, their tethers cut,
dispersing like fog under morning rays. Merle's complexion turned
suddenly pallid and gray. He reached out to a lampstand for
purchase, but missed it, instead falling from sheer
exhaustion.
"Merle, are you all right?" King
caught Lott as best he could, propping him up until his legs
steadied themselves enough for him to bear his own weight. "What
was that?"
"Each action costs." Merle gulped
air between words. "Someone called the dragon's breath."
"The what? Why attack
Lott?"
"Someone wishes to cut off your
support before you can assemble it. Nice."
"You can marvel at it later.
Let's get out of here before it comes back."
Loaded with hundreds of songs from his
father's childhood, doo-wop mostly, but a mix of tunes through the
'70s, the music on King's iPod was the last connection to the
father he barely remembered. He had no distant memory of his
father, only the idea of him. His mother treasured a few items he'd
left with her between visits. Of the few records left at her place,
her favourite was Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered
Soul. She played it over and over, often saying how the
record reminded her of him and how out of his own time he seemed to
be. An old soul. Only in these moments, between battles and with
his music, did he feel like his father's son.
Lott slept, exhausted but
otherwise none the worse for wear after being attacked. As if
around a campfire taking the first watch, King plopped down on his
couch. Merle laid on the floor, head propped up in his hands, and
stared at the dancing lights of the iPod with childlike
fascination.
"What the hell was that?" King
had been waiting to ask but had decided not to open the topic until
he had a chance to digest what he'd seen.
"The dragon's breath," Merle said
with a matterof-factness.
"Oh. Well, now that you've laid
it out for me, that explains everything."
"It's the same for every hero's
journey. You're only told as much as you're ready to
accept."
"And what couldn't I accept?"
King poured himself a glass of water, tilting the pitcher to Merle
who waved off the offer.
"That magic is real. That mystery
has power and truth."
"Uh huh."
"This would be you still being
not quite ready." Merle rolled over, a mad light in his eyes.
Clearing the countertop that doubled as a table, he spread a few
coasters along it. "The city, like many places, is swathed by ley
lines, what some might call fairy chains. Think of them as lines of
force that connect places of power."
"This better not be some Satanic
shit."
"No, no. This is older than that.
Think of the magic that I describe as energy." Merle traced a line
from one coaster to the next. "A natural energy that runs along
power lines."
"These ley lines…"
"Exactly. And they connect places
of power."
"Like power stations."
"Some people, or elementals, can
naturally harness that energy better."
"Like you?"
"Me? I'm an old man in a tinfoil
hat. Barely capable of a glamour here or there, though I've got a
few tricks left in me."
"I'm having a hard time getting
my mind around this."
"We live in precarious times. No
room for magic. Or dragons. For the line of the serpent to
continue, it must adapt to the age. For now I have it on good
authority that we need to wait."
"On whose authority?"
"Sir Rupert's, of
course."
"Great." King stared at his empty
glass he didn't remember draining and refilled it. It was going to
be a long evening.
• • •
A couple of nights a week, volunteers from
Outreach Inc. did what they called a street night. Patrolling the
streets, they searched for teens who might be at risk in order to
inform them about Outreach's services. Tonight, Wayne and a female
volunteer wore the vests emblazoned with the Outreach logo and
toted the flashlights that doubled as batons if they got into a
scrape. As her case manager, he wanted an excuse to check up on
Lady G. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was in
trouble.
There was a perception that the
poor want to live the way they did, victims of their laziness or
poor life choices. As was usually the case, the truth was a little
more complex, the stark shades of such black and white judgment
tempered by the reality of a system that often erected walls
against folks when it didn't abandon them outright, and allowed
them to fall through the cracks. To fall into that other world of
shadow and societal malice, the forgotten places in the shadow of
downtown. The survivors – and truly they survived more than lived –
made use of any abandoned space to stay warm and carve out the
semblance of an existence. It hadn't been so long since Wayne
transitioned out of the streets. Other family members pitched in,
one, because when they saw someone working so hard to make it they
had to help when they could; and two, his charitable spirit put
them to shame. Once he graduated from college, he strove to help as
many over the wall as he could.
They made a strange pair, Wayne
and the volunteer: he with his broad, muscular frame and
unforgiving face, a scar on the back of his neck and a tattoo of a
pentacle on the front. She, a head and a half shorter than him,
with her bookish glasses and chin stud. A study in contradictions.
Wayne thought she was the type who had to try out the streets for a
minute, long enough to make herself feel better about her place in
the greater scheme of things. Young, pretty, and privileged, a
typical white girl, ready to get back into her daddy-bought BMW or
something parked around the corner. At least she didn't drop her
"g"s and put on a slang affectation. That level of condescension
would have just pissed him off.
A scree of rocks led up to the
railroad tracks used to get to the black-tarped rooftops of the
abandoned warehouses. Each measured step tested for soft spots,
with Wayne treading first, though in an anxious sweat about whether
the roof would support his, much less their combined, weight.
Dubbed the Hispanic railroad because of the high Hispanic
population typically found there, rotted cherry tomatoes, discarded
beer cans, and free floating trash mined the rooftop. Moldy
sleeping bags, rugs, and crocheted blankets doubled as doors to
block the biting wind, from the smashed-in roof compartments
squatters now called home.
A group of Hispanic men sang
along to Tom Petty's "Free Falling," their accents delighting in
the chorus as they held what they called a "dance contest". The
contest amounted to them smoking while drinking beer, bouncing as
the music blared from a duct-taped radio. They accepted Wayne's
offer of water, but one man fixated on the female volunteer and
began proclaiming how "I hate me some Jesus." A couple of the man's
friends pulled him away, chastising him for saying such things.
Wayne fixed his hard stare on the man, putting himself between her
and the homeless man, allowing her to make her way back to the
tracks before he backed away.
They next went to West Street and
Kentucky Avenue to what was known as "The Tubes". The buildings
across from the water station had been tagged. ESG. Treize.
MerkyWater. HeadCase. ICU (the letters written within a circle).
Torn-up quarry remains littered a field that led from a sanitation
workstation to a path down the bank of the White River. Concrete
tubes normally used in sewer work had sheets of plastic draped
across their ends. A man with dirty blond hair and a week's worth
of facial growth sat in front of a small fire. His USA sweatshirt
and blue jeans looked nearly new, but he had neither shoes nor
socks.
"How you doing, sir?" Wayne asked
after having announced that Outreach had arrived with food and
water. With a head nod, he sent the volunteer back to the van to
grab a few pairs of socks.
"Good, good." The man studied the
small dancing flames, his hands absently scouring for more
brush.
"How long you been out
here?"
"A couple weeks. I'm in the Army
and I'm due to be shipped out in a few days. Then me and my wife
will be straight." A feminine mumble asking who was there was met
with harsh whispers about Outreach and water. The volunteer
returned with some socks.
"Have you seen any teenagers
around?" She handed the man the socks. "We're especially on the
lookout for teenage girls."
"I hear there's some under the
bridge. A group of them. We came up here to have some
quiet."
"Thank you." Wayne left the man
an additional bottle of water and a few snacks.
Downtown was the medium of rats
and lies. A parade of headlights scurried to nowhere, slowed by the
occasional horse-drawn carriage, a quaint throwback to an earlier
age's gentility. The steam from the downtown grates, shallow graves
for the beasts that lived within the bowels of the city. The Bridge
meant either the McCarty Street bridge or the Washington Street and
they got lucky on their first try with the Washington Street
bridge. Not too far from one of the downtown strolls, the tresses
under the bridge were used as small apartments: quiet places where
folks could stay warm. Not so quiet if Rhianna had her voice
raised.
Wayne hated navigating the steep
incline, especially at night. Concrete slabs jutted out at
irregular intervals forming a make-shift stairwell down the
embankment. The thick growth of trees hindered easy movement. He
stayed at the top shining his flashlight so that the volunteer
could go first then he proceeded down largely in the dark. Funny,
he always felt stronger at mid-day; now his movements seemed
clumsy. The tall bonfire by the riverside, surrounded on all sides
by trees: the scene looked picturesque.
"Nine o'clock in the morning
ain't no booty call," Rhianna's rasp strained.
"I ain't gonna trip," Lady G
retorted. "Believe what you want to believe. Don't matter what time
of day it is, some fool call and all he has is sex on the mind,
it's a booty call."
"You just jealous cause Prez
don't call you," Rhianna said behind her G-funk nose and slightly
bucked teeth. She nursed the pus pocket on her finger from where
she got stabbed. They could've stayed with Rhianna's people, but
this close to rent day, tensions boiled over, toilet paper sheets
counted, and food carefully guarded. Sometimes the drama just
wasn't worth it. She'd been couch-surfing with friends who lived
over in the Phoenix when she met Trevant. But it was Prez who
stepped to her.
Lady G clucked under her breath.
"Girl… boo. You stand by yourself, you stay by yourself."
"I'm glad to hear you say that,
G," Wayne interrupted.
"What you doing down here?" Lady
G gave Wayne a hug.
"Looking for you."
"How you been?" Lady G turned to
hug the volunteer. She was awful with names, but the volunteer had
been present enough to warrant a hug. Trust wasn't a commodity
easily given. Even Rhianna would more easily trade her body than
risk trusting someone.
"Better now." The volunteer
squeezed an additional time before releasing her. Rhianna moved in
for her hug.
"You ladies need anything?" Wayne
huffed as he stumbled down the last few steps of the
hillside.
"Rhianna needs better taste in
men," Lady G offered.
"Oh?"
"She's trippin'," Rhianna
said.
"Don't show out cause you hanging
around that retarded boy," Lady G said. "He up there, topside, him
and his boy, Trevant. Surprised you didn't see 'em. Wannabe dope
dealers."
"Rhianna…" Wayne thickly laid on
the sound of disappointment in his voice.
"They ain't real drug dealers.
They just playing."
"Call themselves ESG," Lady G
said.
"What's that stand for?" Wayne
asked.
"Eggs, Sausage, and
Grits."
"Ain't that some shit?" The words
flew out of Wayne's mouth before he received a scolding glance from
the volunteer. They tried not to use profanities in front of the
clients, trying to walk the line of being real yet being an
example. Wayne bristled at the idea of being an example,
uncomfortable with the idea of being a role model.
"That ain't the worst. They up
there selling burn bags to folks." Lady G still had her "I'm gonna
tell" air about her.
"You can get a beat down behind
that mess," Wayne said.
"You telling me? That's why I
keep telling Rhianna to drop his sorry behind."
A car screeched to a halt above
them. The quartet froze where they stood. Slamming doors were soon
followed by raised voices. Wayne moved to shield them, as if
protecting them from anything that might fall from above. The
shouts, the trumpeting of machismo attempting to get the other
party to back down, curdled into abrupt screams. Lady G stifled her
own scream, then pointed to the trestle above them. Wayne ushered
the girls up there, and they scrambled into one of the holes in the
bottom of a support structure. The small alcoves formed a series of
tiny compartments with the holes acting as the entrance, though it
reminded Wayne too much of sticking his head through an attic door
into unknowable darkness. Knowing that he stood no chance in hell
of squeezing through the hole, Wayne signaled that he was going
topside to investigate. The volunteer shot him eyes pleading for
him to stay, but realized he was too exposed to whatever was out
there. Rhianna thrust her thumb into her mouth and put her other
hand against an ear as she began to rock back and forth. Her mother
had warned her to quit sucking her thumb before it bucked her
teeth.
Wayne slowly lumbered up the
hill.
Prez didn't care what you called him as long
as he got called. Though Green had brought him on, he felt it was
on an interim basis until he proved himself. In the meantime, until
he saw some real money, he still had to make ends so he financed
what he termed "independent entrepreneurial enterprises": burn
bags. Dried-out baking soda passed for crack and stepped-on oregano
for weed – the pair had an assortment of burn bags they sold to
newbies. After every sale they set up somewhere new should anyone
decide to come back on them. Unfortunately, their current location
didn't have much by way of foot traffic, but Prez was more
interested in hooking up with his girl. Rhianna was all right
enough, not as fine as her girl, Lady G, but she had a fat ass and
threw her back into her work.
"I wish some fool would try to
come up on us." Trevant, all of thirteen years old, still retained
much of his baby fat, especially about the neck. Prez thought it
apropos to start calling him Turkey because of all of his would-be
gangsta gobbling. "I'd tell him, 'It's Li'l Nam, shortie. It's how
we do this bitch.'"
Li'l Nam was the nom-de-guerre of
the area just south of the Phoenix Apartments. Trevant was an east
side nigga who'd come to truck with Prez and some of Night's boys
on the west side because no one else would have his dusty ass.
Well, Prez's either, which was why they were left dealing burn bags
and calling themselves ESG.
"Damn, fool, you can't keep going
off on every fiend we deal with," Prez said.
"Why not? It's not like they're
going to quit buying."
"Customer service, nigga. Ain't
you ever heard of it? It's not like we the only ones selling." Prez
might as well have been speaking in Mandarin judging from the
vacant stare Trevant returned.
After chewing on his words, and
with them spit out his other ear, Trevant continued. "I seen niggas
get smoked right in front of me."
"Yeah, you hard, brotha." Prez
eyed the street. Knowing he'd been dismissed, Trevant slipped on a
set of headphones to listen to the new Nas.
A Ford Focus screeched to a halt.
Prez tapped Trevant on his jacket and nodded toward the idling
vehicle. They prepared their wares but also checked their escape
route should things go bad. Two people, a man and a woman, stepped
out the car, the suspension on the Focus squawking in relief at
their exit. They couldn't be dissatisfied customers. They'd have
remembered selling to these two.
"They must be part-Samoan," Prez
whispered.
"Some ugly-ass Samoans, then,"
Trevant said, not nearly quietly enough. "Nice suits
though."
"What you need, money? ESG can
set you up with whatever," Prez said.
"ESG? What weak-ass shit you
selling?" the woman asked. Well, Prez presumed her to be a
woman.
"Don't matter none. Dred don't
like it, so the shit's got to stop," the man's voice
boomed.
"Free country. Live and let
live," Trevant said.
She whirled and grabbed Trevant
by the throat and lifted him into the air like so much a sack of
leaves. "Move, or worse, make me have to chase you and you'll get
what your friend's about to get. We've got a message for Night and
you're just the man to deliver it."
"Wha-what's that?" Prez
asked.
The woman grabbed Trevant's arm
and pulled. The skin around his shoulder stretched, the bones
shifted at odd angles until a dull pop freed the joint. The flesh
ripped, the last bits of frayed tendons tearing free amidst a spray
of blood. The boy screamed over the cries of "holy shit, holy shit,
holy shit" repeated by Prez. She waved the bloody stump at him,
trying to refocus his attention on her.
"You with me? Good." Blood
gurgled out the arm, ribbons of veins and shorn flesh dangled. She
fixed her eyes on him and raised the arm to her mouth. Not
blinking, she took a huge bite from it and chewed slowly. The smell
of piss from Prez let her know she had his full attention. "Tell
your folks what you saw. Let them know the Durham Brothers are in
town and Dred's done fucking around with them. And just so you
don't forget…"
With her nod, her brother upended
Trevant and the two of them each took a leg in a hand. Being around
bridges always had the Durham Brothers especially enervated.
Trevant's next scream scored itself into Prez's mind, even as the
image of his flesh unzipping before him would forever scar his
psyche. Trevant's insides splayed out in spools as he was ripped
from ass to sternum.
"Go." The woman licked her
lips.
Prez ran off into the night,
forgetting all about Rhianna.
"Fe, fi, fo, fum," the man said
and sniffed in the direction of Wayne, who thought himself well
hidden by the foliage lining the bridge.
"Leave him, we've made our
point," Michaela said. "Besides, the tale will spread faster with
more witnesses."