CHAPTER EIGHT

 
The sun rose a violet and orange backdrop to his lakeside perch. Lott slept soundly beneath an apple tree, bone-weary, with the gentle laps of the lake providing all the lullaby he needed. He'd always found comfort at lakes. The heavy footfalls of an approaching brigade stirred him from slumber. A staggered caravan of four figures on horseback coalesced into view. Though quite a distance away, it became readily apparent that the parade consisted solely of women. Each wore a red cap, a beret of sorts, and slowed as she neared as if beckoning him to follow her. Few women crossed him. Fewer still drew his attention.

  The first had a familiar bearing as if she'd always been around the way, a presence in the neighborhood he'd taken for granted. She drew back her long black hair from her Asian-looking eyes. Her horse, black as death and hate. Eyes reflecting ambition and power. Glaring at him, she found him wanting. The horse snorted in disapproval, and she rode on.

  A commanding dark-skinned beauty if one could see past the layers of clothes with which she wrapped herself, Lady G rode second. Her horse a wild-eyed, wildfire-red stallion, untamed and unfettered yet she rode him with a practiced, graceful aplomb. An inviting flutter of her eyelashes framed the sidelong glances of her slow-moving eyes. Her lips curled with understanding. Romantic and ridiculous, she took peace from him, her vicinity smashed right into his nature. His eyes couldn't help but to follow her. Despite other horses coming into view, he always went back to her.

  The third horsewoman was Omarosa astride an ashen horse with a grey, mottled mane. She carried a great sword. Drawing up, she paused at the far side of the lake. She dismounted from her horse and let it drink while she crouched beside it to scoop water into her mouth. Her vanity held out for conquest.

  Lott wondered where Lady G had ridden off to.

  The fourth rider was unknown to him. Atop a white horse, a bow slung around her and a crown atop her head. She rode with the confidence of a conqueror. His heart leapt at her approach, yet he allowed her to pass by also, too preoccupied with tracking the movements of Lady G.

  "The thing about women is that we don't share. It's not in our nature," Omarosa said, her voice as clear and close as though she stood next to him. Its waters clear and deep, she glided across the surface of the lake. "I've spent a lifetime listening to men who seek prostitutes. Some blamed their wives for making them choose to spend their money to be with another. Others wept with guilt and shame, though that didn't stop them from having a head bob in their laps in car seat trysts. Others, in fits of machismo to mask their childishness, spoke in grandiose terms about their lives, bragged about themselves, wanting to be praised. Or they even turned violent. All to satisfy the demands of an ego to show they didn't actually need to pay for it."

  "I–"

  "A fierce battle, a war, wages within you. Greatness must be earned and not just by leaping to rescue every queen that comes along your path. This queen rescues herself." Omarosa turned on her heel, reducing the lake to little more than her personal catwalk. "Be careful when you help the women. Not all of them are damsels in distress. Most will take advantage of a young handsome knight."

  "What about you?"

  "I'll devour you." Her skin, slightly blue and puffy as if she'd been drowned, and long greenish hair, damp and drawn like seaweed. "I'll drag you straight into my underwater palace where my most prized knights await. And you, above all knights, should lead them."

  Lott sprang up from his pillow. Disoriented, it took him a few minutes to recognize the confines of his room. Then he fell back onto his pillow, knowing he wouldn't be drifting back to sleep. So began Lott's daily work of beating back the past, haunted by dreams. He'd managed to work out an arrangement with the manager of the Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, where he stayed, offering onsite security now that he worked second shift at FedEx. This filled his nights and left the early hours of the morning for him to sleep. Or run around with King. All the better knowing what waited for him in his dreams.

  The 1950s-era lampshades cast the room with an orange pallor. All of his belongings fit into his backpack or a drawer so he could pick up to leave with no notice should life carry him elsewhere. His rootlessness matched his restless spirit. The dream stirred up something else. Or perhaps the fact that he slept in his brother's shirt stirred the dream.

  Lott stripped off the shirt, letting it catch on his shoulders, not admitting to not wanting to let him go. His brother, Morris. The shirt was a connection, though it had long lost any scent of him. It wasn't as if he had grown up laying awake at night one day hoping to work for FedEx (though he knew he couldn't be a UPS man in their shit-colored uniforms). In another life, Lott dreamt of being a rapper. Music filled his head and songs played in color. Rhythms and beats formed his skin, and spat lyrics formed his palette. Pouring out his soul in his music, it was easy to notice the laughter, if not the pain behind the song; easy to be caught up in the dance, behind the beat, with the anger which could be marketed. Exploited.

  "Your brother, now he was the smart one," Lott's mother said, her voice as clear in his head now as it had ever been any of the times she tore into him. The pain of his mother's indifference lashed out in desperate ways; undealt with, it ripped into those closest to him before turning inward like a metastacized cancer. "Such a beautiful child."

  "All the neighbors said so." Lott knew her soliloquy by heart and filled in the next bit, even matching the cadence of her voice.

  Her eyes narrowed to slits, the only warning, before she sprang up and slapped him for the disrespect. If he knew what was good for him, he would allow her her time, her story, and her way of telling and he'd listen to every word of it at her pace. The imprint of her hand stung his cheek.

  "He had potential. Those fools he ran with… not two nickels' worth of sense between the lot of them. But they were drawn to my baby. My baby boy."

  Morris was fourteen months younger than him.

  Lott touched his face where the memory of pain lingered. He braced himself for his mother's next words. "You and your music are a complete waste of time, effort, energy, and resources. What good did it do your brother? You let him down. You let the whole family down. You had one simple job. One damn thing I wanted you to do: look out for you brother. Guard that spark. But… damn."

  Now was that precarious time. She either found her way into a bottle of something cheap to get her head up, or she'd lash out, grabbing whatever was handy – broom, bottle, one time the cast-iron frying pan – and slam it into Lott. It wasn't his fault. He tried, he'd once tried to defend himself. That was the last time he attempted to mount a defense. The frying pan slammed into him with the force of a hurled brick. Though maybe she'd spend the worst of this attack in her slap, perhaps taking enough of the edge off so she wouldn't explode. Knowing how not to catch the predator's attention, Lott stirred from his seated position, on the love seat – the threadbare material allowed the sharp corners of the couch to scrape him – arms and legs untangling not too quickly to draw undue attention, but with furious intent.

  Not that he could point this out to his mother, but Morris was always half a fool himself. Always running around playing gangsta. At the ripe age of eleven…

  … talking shit about jacking fools up and giving paybacks. On one shoulder, a six-pointed star with the letters B, G, D, and N in four of the points; on the other, two crossed three-pronged pitchforks drawn in permanent marker. They strolled through the parking garage next to Market Square Arena. The lot mostly deserted, they trolled about for hood ornaments to take off. The parking lot wound about, serpentine concrete walls little more than waist high. They often spit on those coming up the lower levels when more people were around.

  "I'm straight up Black Gangsta Disciple." The words echoed with a boom with the strange acoustics of the concrete structure. He didn't notice the hard-faced diesel brothers up the way behind him. Lott elbowed him in the side and ticked his chin toward them, warning him to be easy. But he would have none of it and didn't care that, too late, he had their full attention.

  "Da fuck? Say that shit again," a brickhouse of a brother said. Wide as he was tall, a poorly grown goatee outlined lips, his mouth as big as Lott's fist.

  "He didn't say nothing," Lott stepped between them and his brother.

  "Wha? Nah, for real, what did he say?" the second one said in a measured tone meant to convey calm and complete reasonableness. Lott heard the echo of a snake's rattle in the timbre of his voice.

  "I ain't scared," Morris said. "My boys got my back. Black Gangsta Disciples."

  "Oh yeah? Spit your lit."

  "What?" Morris asked.

  "A prayer better come off your lips real soon, boy." The first man crowded Morris, the other barring him from Lott.

  "I don't…"

  The two men caught each other's eyes and upended Morris over the side of the parking garage. They each held fast to a foot.

  "Say that shit again," the first man demanded.

  "Say it again and I will end you," the second man dared.

  Morris thrashed about, the street loomed beneath him. Lott punched at the two men. "Let him go!"

  "Say that shit again. What set you claim?" the first asked again, ignoring Lott's swats.

  "Black Gangsta Disciple."

  Moments.

  The surreal passage of time, life-changing instants occur with Lott frozen or with things moving so fast he couldn't react. Lies clouded memories, all dark whispers unchecked as guilt and shame longed to take root. Perhaps he sensed his mother's favoritism and wished it extinguished. Perhaps the need to finally be seen was born from wanting to see his brother gone. Perhaps part of him resented his brother. Perhaps any of that held him to his spot.

  The two brutes released him then leaned over the concrete balcony further to better study the piece of street art they had just created. Morris's cry unfroze Lott. He tore ass down the main stairs. By the time he reached the ground level, a crowd had already gathered. Starlings bobbed around it like curious children, scattering at his approach. Morris's face was an agonal mask, lips drawn upward. A grotesque statue with his arms rested at unnatural angles to the body. His jaws hinged. The blood soaked his clothes black. Eyes open, fixed on…

  … him, filled with rage and resentment. Nothing close to the love one would expect from their move. Accusing, blame-riddled.

  Lott didn't know what or how to feel.

 

  Sadly, it wasn't even the worst thing he'd seen in gangsta life. He studied the scars on his hands. Remembering how Lady G held his hand, ran her hands along them, he thought about how they matched. All their scars, they were a patchwork.

 

Prez sought out craziness. His dreams were all fat rolls of dollar bills, girls on each arm, and respect accorded from the neighborhood when he came through. The drugs gave him purpose and focus: get money, get high. Life was a simple equation. Yet nothing fixed that torn-up sense within him, nothing stitched together the fragments of himself he hadn't realized had been rent asunder. The abandonment of his father. The shunning by teachers. His mother's misplaced rage. The low value he placed on himself. Knowing the whys didn't help.

  Reduced to a collection of emaciated bones shrinkwrapped with grayish skin, Prez writhed in silent panic on the couch, the sheets kicked off and around his ankles. Wide-eyed disorientation and mouth half-opened in an unvoiced scream, he looked absolutely lost. Like he didn't know who he was, where he was, or how he got there. His arms flailed in sudden panic, attack, or defense landing weak punches. Then he pissed himself. Lacking the strength to put his foot back under the sheets, he never imagined himself sinking to such a point. Bitter. Broken. Hurting, too bad to see who he was or how he could live.

  No different than King, really, if King were truly honest with himself. Most of his days were like this, even if he gave no indication of it on the outside. This was his daily internal war.

  Mouth twitching, eyes jumpy, hands shaking, Prez was a ghost of the boy King had moved into Big Momma's house so many months ago, barely recognizable. The boy's feet drew King's attention. Both were ashy, but one was ragged and raw as if it had been caught in a food processor. King felt compelled to wash them. Getting a towel from his bathroom, he wiped the excrement from Prez's feet. During the best of times, Prez slept a lot during his detox. King had brought him back to his place, explaining to Lady G that he owed it to Prez. He never quite found the words to explain how he blamed himself for failing Prez as a friend and as an example. As a leader. That perhaps he could find redemption for them both if he could see Prez through this dark time. Walk beside him through the worst of it, even if it meant wiping shit from the boy's feet.

  His sheets soaked through, his pillow smelling of thick sweat and the bite of body odor, Prez's lucid dreams bubbled up, little more than memory fragments.

 

  "How much you make on a package?" Prez asked, slouched against the couch with warm butter coursing through his brain.

  "Why? You lookin'?" Naptown Red asked. He had once waved a gun around in a misunderstanding with his live-in girlfriend not too long ago. By all rights, po-po should've shot him on the spot the way he was carrying on. Instead, the tale growing with each re-telling, he found a measure of a reputation as six officers wrestled him to the ground. He was out in less than a day.

  "Maybe."

  "So you want to get into dealing this nasty shit?" The two passed the pipe back and forth. "It's one thing to dabble in this shit on the side…"

  "Recreational use and shit," Prez repeated from previous schooling.

  "Exactly. It's a whole other deal getting in on the business side of things. You sure about it?"

  Prez took another hit from the pipe. "Yeah, money. Let's do this shit."

  With Night out of the picture, the crew dissolved into chaotic disarray, patches of crews working independently and sometimes at odds with one another. Prez was only the mildly ambitious sort. While he branched out with his ill-fated ESG – Eggs, Sausage, and Grits – venture with Trevant, he didn't feel comfortable striking out on his own. Security rested in working under someone like Night and Green. Or Red.

  Red wandered back in from the bedroom, closing his cell phone as he flopped back down. Prez offered him the pipe again, but Red waved him off.

  "Folks'll be by in a few." He took a tone of sudden seriousness. "I give you my connect, it's my ass on the line. I have to vouch for you."

  "I'm straight. No need to talk to me like I'm some fish."

  "School's in session now, boy. If we gonna do this, you need to be able to handle your business. Never let the other guy get up on you. Never trust anyone. Never do your own product. Never do anything out of charity. Out here, in life, it's all about business."

  "Are there any always?" Prez leaned forward to appear intent, but didn't know where to put his arms. He almost tottered over.

  "Always be strapped." Red snapped open a baggy and filled it about half an inch deep. "Typical customer, here's what you give them."

  "The baggy looks kinda pale."

  "The more on the hook they are, the smaller the baggies you give them."

  "That's cold, man."

  "That's business. It's all about that dollar, son."

 

  The dream memories churned in fits and spurts. First steps, twelfth steps, whatever step it was that put Prez on the path to this couch, trembling like an errant leaf in a fall breeze. Maybe the step came earlier, with his hollowed-out self. The hunger was pure, elemental, and he knew how to sate it. This he could control; fix the outside and the insides would take care of themselves. Stumbling through back alleys, searching for ground scores hoping that food, maybe a burger, might be found discarded but still edible. He missed the days when McDonald's had their Beanie Babies and whole meals went to waste in bags as patrons bought Happy Meals just for the toy prize.

  His head seemed too big for his gaunt frame, giving the illusion that his thin neck was unable to support its weight. His cheekbones stood out above washedout and cracked lips. Splotches dotted his skin. How much time had passed? Hours? Days? Weak and still shivering in bed, sleep eluded him. He clawed at his skin as if wanting to scrape it off. Nothing eased the suffering. It seemed cruel, a punishment too harsh for his crime. He was guilty of only wanting to feel better, of wanting to feel complete. Happy. Wanting the hurt to stop. Ashamed and terrified, King was the only person he could trust.

  "Let me out of here," Prez said to the shadowed form he glimpsed through tear-blurred, half-open eyes.

  "I can't do it, Prez. And you don't want me to."

  King daubed the perspiration sheen from the boy's forehead, a little too sternly, definitely lacking a mother's tender touch.

  Breathing through his open mouth, Prez's thrashes grew weaker. The smell of him filled the room, his sweat soaked through his shirt and sheets, a mildewed stink. Prez told himself over and over that he was going to leave all this behind him, all the thugging and gangsta posing. Even before that last deal went so wrong.

"What the fuck?" Red put fire to the blunt, drew in its smoke, closed his eyes to let it do its work, and blew out a thick stream of smoke.

  "What's up?" Prez turned from the television, a rerun of some cop show on TNT. Naptown Red hunched over a table, stacks of bills in front of him and a few scattered tester packets. More than a couple he had sampled himself.

  "We short. Nearly a G." The patches of his face seemed to swirl, a Rorschach in varying shades of brown. He ran his hand through his dry, straightened hair.

  "What you mean?"

  "You stupid, motherfucker? Fathead done shorted us. Trying to punk us out." Fathead Wallace was one of their new distributors. Red was uncertain about putting him on, but Prez vouched for him, saying they went back years, both having squat in the same places off and on.

  "Let's go talk to him. I bet we can straighten things out."

  "Talk? What did I tell you? 'Never let the other guy get up on you.' Anyone who tries, we got to fuck up or else we the ones who look weak."

  "But there might be a simple mistake."

  "You got a few hundred in your pockets you forgot to give me?" Red slipped his Taurus into his dip.

  "No."

  "You got a few more ounces have gone unsold?"

  "No." Yes. Actually, they got smoked up behind that old burned-out church. Violating Red's other rule, "never do your own product." But, as much as Fathead was his boy and all, he wasn't about to admit to stealing from Red. Might as well cut off his own hands.

  "You up for fucking someone up or are you one of them all-talk niggas?"

  Prez never wanted to be thought of as weak. Not that he wanted to be one of those hollow-eyed brothers, like Green or Junie, folks so ate up by the streets they had nothing left inside. He didn't need to be hard like that or have his name ring out like that. He was no gangsta by any means, but he was no punk neither. Played out as weak, he might as well not show his face around as everyone would be seeking to get over on him. So all the way over to Fathead's place, Prez talked about how he was going to fuck up Fathead. Punched his own hand in a pantomime of a beat-down. Made the noises of someone taking a punch then pleading for them to stop. Talking all kinds of shit about "naw nigga, you shouldn't have played us. You earned this. You better let everyone know not to cross us."

  Naptown Red listened patiently. He'd sparked up before they left, getting his head right before going off on a mission. Tooled up, his mind was definitely intent on getting either his money, his product, or someone's ass.

  "This the right place?" They stood in front of a white shotgun house, which stood out on the block from the other more Arts and Crafts era-inspired houses.

  "Yeah."

  Red tamped out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long pull. Leaving the cigarette dangling from his lip, he stepped back and kicked the door in.

  Two brothers reclined on a couch, jumping to attention at Red and Prez's entrance. A skinny white kid missing one eye, struggled to find his sea legs. He knocked over an opened pizza box with only a quarter of a pie left. A half-dozen empty soldiers of Blatz toppled along the table, which Prez remembered Fathead once calling "the Muskatel of beer."

  "Which one of you motherfuckers is Fathead?" Red asked, as if more than one of them was missing an eye. No one spoke up. Red glanced back at Prez, then traced his eye line to the skinny boy. Prez sheepishly turned away. Fathead curled up his slip at the sting of betrayal. "You got the rest of my money, bitch?"

  "What money? We straight," Fathead said. Fine scars framed his fake eye. He'd seen a movie where some dude kept having different glass eyes, like one was a yellow smiley face. Fathead wanted to draw a skull and crossbones on his. That would be some tripped out shit.

  "Naw, motherfucker, we far from straight. We about a grand from straight."

  "You better take that up with your boy," Fathead said, hands raised and in plain sight. "Came over here, I told him the package looked a little light. His eyes all fucked up, I knew he'd been hitting it. I ain't tryin' to rip nobody off. I'm just out to earn. And I can't earn if I burn my connect straight out the gate."

  Red calculated the P/F, profits to fiending, ratio. Fathead might have been up on pizza and cheap beer, maybe a blunt or two, but that was it. Prez itched his forearm, eyes swimming in his head. In a whirl, Red grabbed the neck of one of the bottles and smashed it against Prez's skull.

  "Ho shit!" Fathead skittered up the back of his couch, not taking his eyes from the scene.

  Prez clutched his head and called out to the Lord, apparently now on a first-name basis with him. Naptown Red snapped his knife to life, poised to carve out his missing money from Prez's narrow behind when the sound of a high grinding metal whine pierced the room.

  A seam of light split the air. Red and Fathead pushed past him, tumbling out the door. The poor fool, Prez, turned back and received a claw across his face for his troubles. Blood. So much blood. A small creature pulled its lips back to reveal teeth like a shark's. It removed its cap to daub the stain of blood left by Prez. That was the last image he remembered – the row of sharpened teeth – before King found him.

 

  Prez knew all about the twelve-step programs. He tried them as a condition of getting food from churches. He hated the fact that churches always made him listen to their spiel before doing anything for him. They couldn't just give him a free meal, couldn't just take one look at him and see that he was in need. He always got stuck on that third step of the program. They always talked about a higher power, but prayer struck him as rather desperate. Crying out to an invisible friend who obviously didn't give two shits about him because if He were any kind of friend, He'd have never let him get as low as He did.

  The image of Fathead's "what the fuck?" grimace as if betrayed flashed in his head.

  "I don't know what to say. Even if I believe in Him," Prez said.

  "Then tell Him that. And what you want," King said.

  "God, I don't believe in you, but I need help. I can't keep going like this. I need help." Broken, wondering when he'd feel whole again, faith was the only thread left to carry him through. And hopefully not unravel the tapestry of his life. He didn't think he'd have the strength to fight through the difficult moments without the faith that things would get better.

  King nodded for him to continue.

  "Dad, please." And he didn't know if he were talking to God or his own father. "Please help me. Why won't you talk to me?"