King James White had spent his entire life on the west side of Indianapolis. Despite being funneled through Child Protective Services, in and out of homes – more out that in by his teenage years – he'd attended schools #109, and #107 (transferred to be a part of their advance placement curriculum because his high intelligence was noted despite his efforts) for his elementary years, #108 for Junior High School, and then Northwest High School for the couple years he could stand being in high school.

  The rhythms of this side of town were as familiar as the constellation of razor bumps along his neck. Exiting on the 38th Street ramp from I-465 – the highway loop that circled Indianapolis proper – he expected the same rotating cast of panhandlers. The homeless vets who couldn't quite pinpoint what war they were veterans of. The folks who needed money in order to get home, who turned down rides to said home. They swapped time with a woman whose sign told the tale of her being pregnant and homeless. The weather faded backpack and mottled teddy bear wrapped in a blanket were nice touches, but she'd been "pregnant" for over two years now. When off shift, her or the vet or the lost couple were picked up by a van. Begging was just another way of life in the hustle.

  Turning east off the ramp took one to the corner of 38th and High School Road. Three of the corners of the intersection had gas stations on them. The fourth – the north-west corner – was a collection of store fronts. The Great Wok of China's kitchen caught on fire a few months back, the timing of which worked out well for the lingerie and marital aids store next door. The owner had been embezzling money and the new ownership was in place and was planning on relaunching the store with basically the same name with the letters jumbled, familiar yet different. The adjoining Karma record store would be down for a month or so. Folks would have to get their drug paraphernalia somewhere else for a time. The lot behind the store fronts was a deserted concrete slab built on a hill nicknamed Agned for reasons no one any longer remembered; enclosed by a Dairy Queen and a Shrimp Hut, thus free from casual prying eyes, especially so early on a Sunday morning.

  Though it was still Saturday night as far as Caul was concerned.

  In a North Carolina Tar Heels jacket, Caul stood a bulky 7' 5", towering over both King and his best friend, Lott Carey. Under a thicket of dirty hair, his eyes gleamed red in feral madness. A jagged keloid ran down his left cheek. His thick lips drew back to reveal teeth painted black within his wide mouth. Curiously, he had neatly trimmed fingers, except for the nail on his pinky which jutted out an inch and a half.

  "It's over, Caul." King cold-eyed the giant. Tall, though still easily a half-foot shorter than Caul, King wasn't overly muscled like one of those swollen brothers just out of prison. The sides of King's head was shaved clean. The top of his head in short twists, almost reminiscent of a crown. King let the wind catch his leather coat, allowing the handle of his golden Caliburn to be seen. A portrait of Marcus Garvey peeked from his black T-shirt. Skin the complexion of burnt cocoa. His eyes burned with a stern glint, both decisive and sure. His lips pursed, locked in a mission, as he focused on the task at hand. He stepped defiant and sure, confident without issuing a challenge. Though prepared to meet one if need be.

  "It ain't over, you Morpheus-looking motherfucker. You ain't po-po. You can't arrest no body."

  Lott had told King he thought the sunglasses were too much. The weather was getting too warm to justify the leather coat. Still, King liked the look. Lott lowered his head to conceal and "I told you so" smirk.

  "I'm telling you to go." King put both his hands up, signing for everyone to just calm the hell down. He pitied the thugs he ran across more than anything else. Social outcasts masquerading as the definition of loner cool, no one would have them, not school, not family, not friends, not relationships. They didn't know how to connect and in their loneliness, they turned angry, little more than sullen children destroying what they couldn't have. In Caul's case, he terrorized the elderly during their grocery store runs, jacked people at ATMs, and harassed women going about their business. The final straw, he threatened King's girl, Lady G. King and Lott took a personal interest then.

  "You telling me something now? Don't think I didn't notice that you brought your boy."

  "Boy? I'll climb all over you like a spider monkey." Lott checked his watch to mark the time before his shift was due to start at FedEx. He hated to wear himself out before going to work, but when King asked, explaining the threats made to Lady G, his face went hot and he knew he'd call in sick if he had to.

  "Don't think that I can't snap your back over my knee and fuck the stump of you right here," Caul snarled. The keloid arched upward as if waving at King.

  "What is it with you people? Always talking about 'fucking' other dudes then say how they ain't gay," Lott said. "How player is that?"

  "It ain't gay if your eyes are closed," Caul said.

  "Is that how it works?"

  "A hole's a hole."

  "We don't want any more trouble. We just need you to move on–" King began.

  "Or what? You think I'm scared of you? Or your little gun? I've had guns pointed at me before. Been shot more times than I can count."

  "I'm thinking there's not too hard to get to," Lott said.

  Caul's world turned red. The heavy-lidded gaze of the fiend snapped to full fury. He hated when people assumed he was stupid. That just because he was large, he was also slow. His teachers had always treated him like the large simpleton taking up precious classroom space until the jails caught up with him. At some point, he bought into their beliefs about him and it angered him. But he stuffed that anger back onto itself, allowing indo smoke to chill him out most days. Today he needed to wipe that "better than you" grin off the tan-skinned one's face. With his FedEx uniform as if that made him someone. Caul snarled and charged Lott without further comment.

  "It wasn't my fault," Caul said as he swung, to the ghosts only he knew.

  Skin the color of burnt butter, and with the delicate features of a male model playing at being thug, Lott danced out of the way of Caul's lumbering charge. True to his word, Lott skittered up Caul's back, wrapping his legs around the brute's chest while attempting to subdue him with a choke hold. Caul cantered backwards, slamming Lott into the wall of the China Wok. The air escaped from Lott with a sudden gasp.

  King's vision blurred the scene before him shifting, merging, with another scene as familiar as memory. Caul lumbered toward him, stumbling from the shadows of a massive cave. Past two great fires he strode toward King. The giant gnawed on the bone of a human clutched in one hairy hand. Blood smeared about his lips like barbecue sauce after a ribs repast. The dreamy déjà vu sensation annoyed King, like weed getting his head up at the most inopportune times. King shook his head to clear it, then jumped back barely avoiding Caul's thrown punch.

  King ducked under the clumsy attack, cursing himself for an ill thought-out strategy with no end game in mind. The fact that he and Lott's blood got so roiled at the idea of someone menacing Lady G was all but dismissed by the pair. The threat of the Caliburn was just that: an empty threat. King was loathe to draw the weapon if the situation didn't warrant it. Ever since the Glein River incident. The weapon called when it demanded to be used. On its terms, any time else was an abuse. King threw a couple of quick jabs into the man's kidneys which seemed to annoy him more than anything else. What did he hope to accomplish? His only plan was to beat this man's ass under the guise of asking him to move on.

  The mistake most people made – it occurred to King as he stepped out of range of Caul's massive swipes while leading him away from a shaken Lott – was to use the same weapons against all enemies. There was nothing to be hoped for going toe-to-toe with Caul. That was fighting a superior foe on his terms. No, the only weapon against strength and size was smallness, stealth, and speed.

  As if reading from the same battle manual, Lott charged Caul, tackling him at the knees. The giant collapsed to his knees catching himself before his head hit the concrete. Scrabbling for purchase, he hoped to wrench Lott into his grasp.

  King withdrew his Caliburn. The gold glistened in the early morning light. Lott's eyes widened. Caul turned, following Lott's gaze, his sight landing on the gun. Shifting his grip, King swung the weapon in a low arc, clocking Caul just above the temple.

  "So what do we do now?" Lott asked.

  "Call the police?" King examined the unconscious giant.

  "And say what? Where I come from, snitches get stitches."

  "Self-defense."

  "Trouble just seems to keep finding you."

  The morning had barely dawned.

 

A pair of New Balance tennis shoes – gray and mottled with mold – dangled from the overhead phone line. A schoolyard prank gone awry to the casual passer-by; an advertisement, or ominous warning and cause for alarm, to those more in the know. King sucked his teeth in disgust and wondered how long they had been there and if it were too late to stave off the attempted infection of his neighborhood. His philosophy was simple: if a community didn't take control of itself and one guy entered who could think, the community would have a problem. If people in the neighborhood took control, however, that guy knew he had opposition. Most times before he stood against opposition, he would leave for an unprepared, less resistant neighborhood. Now, in LA or Gary, they might go toe-to-toe with opposition. Not here. Not in Indianapolis. Not yet.

  "Back it up." King waved the Outreach Inc. van back a few more feet then held his palms up for it to stop. Armed with a broom, he jogged around to the front and hopped up along the hood to the roof in a limber movement.

  "This is stupid," Wayne said. Brushing back a few of his long braids which had fallen into his face, he turned all the way around, revealing a scar on the back of his neck. A tight knit shirt stretched across him, showing off the stocky build of a football player, with the light gait of someone who knew how to use their size should the necessity warrant. A quick smile broke up what otherwise would have been a hard face. "You better not leave any shoe prints up there."

  "A little work now prevents a huge, pain-in-thebehind worth of work down the road."

  Breton Drive separated the assemblage of townhouses of Breton Court from Jonathan Jennings Public School #109. The school was designated a zero tolerance zone and once Night's drug crew had been dismantled, it was one in deed as well as word. King stared at the shoes as if they personally mocked him.

  "It's a pair of shoes."

  "It's a declaration," King said. "Says someone intends on dealing out of here soon. It's a set-up notice. Well, message received. Now we're sending one back."

  "Yeah, throw up a pair of tennis shoes and see how many brothers it takes to take them down."

  "Two. One to do the work and another to wear his ass out with complaining about it." King waved the broom handle about, a blind conductor directing an unseen orchestra. Eventually one of his haphazard swings connected with the shoes and they tumbled free. "There. Now they know. You try to set up shop in this neighborhood, there are folks around here who care enough to stop it."

  "Uh huh. If you close your eyes, you can hear your applause."

  "Come on." King gathered the shoes, holding them with two fingers well away from him. "We going to be late."