Dodgers (9 page)

“I ain't trying to take it. But you should let me know.”

Ty dialed madly with his thumbs, and his game trilled. “Shit be crazy, ain't it?” he murmured.

Shit be crazy.
Between the two of them, it was a refrain, an old one. It meant nothing and everything at the same time, unreadable and obvious. Like a glance, like a wave in the street. It stood in lieu of ever being in their mother's house at the same time or knowing where the other slept. It stood in lieu of East having the slightest control over his little brother, or of his owning up to losing Ty. For Ty belonged to nobody now, an unknowable child, indolent as bees in autumn, until he rose up and moved in a spasm of energy and force.

Where Ty had come from, where Ty was now: these things East knew. What had made Ty what he'd become: that was the unseeable, the midair coil the whip made between handle and crack. That was anybody's guess.

Big brother taking the little, they called it babysitting. But it was not that. Nothing like it.

Deep in his game, Ty smiled. His thumbs drummed out a sprint. Then he relaxed his gaze. “You made me lose,” he said.

East liked driving here—the flat, unruffled fields with no one in sight, blind stubble mown down into splinters, maybe a tractor, maybe an irrigation rig like a long line of silver stitches across the fabric of earth. The flatness. There was more in the flatness than he'd expected. The van's shadow lay long, and the fields traded colors. The boys slept in intervals or complained. Riding in a car for more than a few hours, he thought, was like suspended animation—somewhere under the layers of frost, your heart beat. To the left, a thunderstorm hovered, prowling its own road.

They crossed under the front end of a line of storms, everything wet and alight in the slanting sun, and then they were out the other side but in the cloud's dark. The tank was low again, and East angled in for gas and stepped out. Little park of pumps under long white storm shelters and a steak-and-eggs place with a shop under a bright yellow plastic roof. Pickup trucks moved in the low, narrow roads on either side and climbed onto the highway, high and chromed or capped and rattling or stuffed with tools or crops or white bags of dirt. Men and women in their windows looked at him, eyed him with interest.

“You boys the only niggers they ever seen in real life,” drawled Michael Wilson, “except Kobe.”

“That was Colorado,” said Walter. “We're in Nebraska now.”

“Don't tell me Kobe ain't got some girls in Nebraska too.”

East waited while Michael Wilson paid. Then he filled the tank and parked the van. Ty was sleeping, a reptile: East locked the doors around him and went in to sit in a bathroom stall. The farther east they got, the dirtier the toilets. Like every toilet in the country had been cleaned the moment they left LA and none of them since.

East shook his head. Sleepless. The person in the next stall wore his music through headphones and moaned along under his breath. Straining, suffering, only one word audible, at the end of the lines:
You. You.
He smelled like rotten eggs, like rot inside, and then he was gone. East grimaced and stopped breathing. Trying to press his gut out like a toothpaste tube. His thinking was frayed, sleepless: he had to think straight. They were close to getting there. He had to make sure everyone slept tonight. And walked around, cleaned out their heads.

He zipped up and left, no lighter.

Outside, the storm was about to catch them. It rose flat-faced, a gray curtain, sweeping loose trash along. Walter had taken the wheel and was idling at the curb. East swung himself up and in on the shotgun side. Then he noticed the smell. Like the mall, the kiosks where Arab girls tried to spray you:
Sample, sample? You like it.
That fruit-sweet smell.

The second thing he noticed was the shoe. A golden shoe, like a wedge of foil, with a girl's foot in it. It hovered brightly between the front seats.

The rest of the girl sat in the center of the van. Michael Wilson was beside her, all sideways and charming. In the back, Ty sat straight in his seat like an exclamation point. For once aroused but not sure what to do. Walter, steering the van away, was trying not to even look.

She was white. Sixteen, seventeen, red hair in curls and loop-the-loops. Bravely she looked at East, or curiously, as if she were nervous. But she was used to courage seeing her through.

No one else was saying anything, so East said it: “Girl, who the fuck are you?”

Michael Wilson made a crackling with his tongue. “E, this is Maggie. She just might ride for a while, over to Omaha. We can drop her off at the airport.”

East said, “No. She ain't.”

Michael let out a grin and a sigh.

“E,” he began. “This girl needs help. She was just lost up in this rest stop.” He had a hand snaked across the girl's belt, which, East saw, matched the golden shoes. “Wasn't nobody going her way. But we
are
going her way. Right?”

The girl put her hand down on Michael Wilson's black track pants. Put it right on his dick.

A cold wave rolled up East's spine. The yellow-outlined parking space in Vegas. He made dead eyes at the girl.

“No she ain't.
Stop
, man.” He whacked Walter. “Drive back in there. Back where you were.” Walter exhaled a shaky breath and swung the van back around the apron.

The girl kept her hand on Michael Wilson, and he rolled underneath it.

“E,” Michael Wilson drawled. “Girl needs a ride. That's factual. May be something in it for all of us. Something in it for me, I
know
. So why don't we drive now so I don't have to fuck you up.” The girl blushed uneasily and Michael laughed his little, trailing laugh. Something had happened to his face. His mouth crooked open as if dangling an invisible cigar. “Drive, Walt,” Michael Wilson added. “Don't listen to this boy.”

Walter rubbed his cheek, wasn't sure. “Right there,” East insisted. He pointed out a space. “Right by the door.”

“East, I'm gonna hurt you, man,” Michael Wilson warned.

East dimmed his eyes, stared a cold hole through the girl. Her green eyes bright, but she stared back; she was used to sizing people up. For an instant he was looking at the black girl outside the house, the Jackson girl. The same: defiant. And curious.

“Get out, girl,” East said. “It's nothing good for you here.”

She did a little hitch with her lips, a smile. Then she leaned forward, her hair swinging like a fragrant bough. Her fingers climbed his left hip.

East uttered a strangled cry and slapped her hand, like a snake lunging. The girl drew her fingers back. He tried to go dead-faced again, but he was shaking.

“I'm sorry,” said the girl, Maggie. Her voice was higher than East had imagined. “Maybe I shouldn't—”

“Aw, Maggie,” Michael Wilson begged. “This boy, this little boy—Maggie, don't be listening.”

He put his hands on her and she squirmed. “I better go.”

East reset himself. He knew: the way she glanced back at the station. Like now it held things she'd forgotten: people, stuffed animals. She longed for it. Her nerve had fled.

“Maggie, aw,” moaned Michael Wilson, sticky with desire.

Girls had sense. You could back them down. Girls saw bluster, knew its purpose. Boys, they just flew into the air over nothing, rose up with their dicks all hard, and then people got killed. Like at the house.

Michael Wilson was going to fly up now. Had to.

He pled with her first, grabbed at her. “But I
can't
,” she said, and then the gold shoes were on the pavement. The glass door—
WELCOME, THESE CARDS ACCEPTED HERE
—
opened for her.

Michael Wilson made a little click in his mouth. “Damn,” he said. “There she goes.”

He clenched the hand he'd been grabbing at Maggie with and fired it at East's head.

East ducked and sheltered down. “Drive,” he muttered, and Walter did. Michael rose up under the low blue ceiling, but he couldn't throw a right, not with East balled down in the shotgun seat. Between the seats, he came with two lefts, the second hard enough to light East's eyes with salt.

“Go!” East gasped. “Drive!”

The sliding door hung open, cool air rushing in. Again East ducked and the turn around the lot rocked Michael Wilson. He recovered and swung again, and East deflected it—another hard turn made Michael brace.

Walter sped the van up the ramp hard, as if he could stop this fight with gas. “Careful, Mike,” he complained. “You gonna make me crash.”

“Pull off, then,” Michael steamed. “Because I'm gonna whup this bitch.” He sat back, fists clenched. “Fuck you up,” he promised East.

As soon as an
EXIT 1 MILE
sign came up, Walter hit the turn signal. East touched his face. His blood was in his ears and head now, the black string yawning, almost audible. He knew he had to play his cards now.

“What's up with you, Walt?” he appealed. “You just, ‘Cool, we with this girl now'?”

Walter whined something indistinct. Hunkered down with his steering wheel. Behind him Michael Wilson sat and laughed, stretching his shoulders, limbering.

East turned on him. “Oh, now you're a muscleman. Just do your job.”

In a high, public voice Michael Wilson declaimed: “Easy. I know where you're at. You just a little street faggot, ain't ever seen a girl. But I
have
. That girl was pussy for
everyone
.”

Trying to line the boys up.

Walter braked the van down from eighty, seventy, fifty-five. The exit was a dead one, disused fields, one cracked concrete lot where someone had built once to make money. Across the highway, one lone gas station still hoisted its sign.

Nobody in sight. Here is where it was going to happen.

“Boy, you do not do to fuck with me,” Michael Wilson boomed, “and now you will know.”

Walter put the van in Park, and East just held on.
This is it,
he thought. Didn't know when it would come, but he knew that it would.

If all there was was a fistfight, he was going to get beat. Maybe worse than beat. But if there was a vote, maybe he'd win it. East had Walter. Walter had wanted that girl, but he'd dropped her off too. Walter wanted what was right. Maybe he would help.

Ty? East didn't know what he had.

Michael Wilson was getting up. East hollered, “Everybody out!” and jumped out first. Sweating already.

He made two fists, weighed them. His arms had never seemed skinnier.

This is it.

Then Michael Wilson was rushing across the cracked pavement.

They said that sometimes when you got your ass kicked, your mind sold out your body, stopped taking it personally, only crept back when the whupping was done. East's mind went nowhere. Calculating. Michael Wilson wasn't gonna kill him, not over this girl. But what did a fool do when he'd shown himself? He built up. He went pro on it. Became the hardest fool he could.

Michael Wilson stopped then, to strip off his meshy white Dodgers shirt and drape it on the van's side mirror. Gym muscles down his belly like puppies in a litter. The muscles were what broke the bottle of fear inside East.

“Listen, man,” he pleaded. “I'll spell it out for you.”

“Shut up,” said Michael Wilson. “Should have done this a thousand miles ago.” Some Chinese tattoo in the meat of his arm. He locked his fist and drove.

East ducked. But Michael was quick. He got an arm around and slugged East's kidneys: East felt that bitter spurt inside. “Come on, Easy,” Michael grunted, wrapping East with his long arms. East grappled for footing. Stay up, you had to: the pavement was not your friend.

Michael Wilson tried harder. He wrenched sideways, lifted East around the ribs, trying to slam him. East spread his feet wide to catch himself. Michael sucked air, swore, and spun again. Again East got a foot down, fought to stay upright. Walter bounced by, shouting wildly. Michael's arms cinched, and East smelled his lotion. One fist peeled off and shot up, off his eye this time. At once he felt it throb and swell. With hard nails, Michael probed East's head; he took the ear and started to twist, to tear at it, until East let go a shriek. Then everything stopped.

Silent: the silence of hard, wet breathing. Something black and cold teased East's face, like a dog's nose. Ty had a small gun leveled at him, lazy and straight.

“Quit it,” Ty said. Aiming the gun as if it didn't even hold his attention.

Michael Wilson cursed. He popped East free, right into Ty and the cold black barrel.

A big truck with a cartoon milkman on its side flew by.

“So, you got a gun,” Michael Wilson said.

Ty didn't answer. East tried to clear his eyes, get his voice back. He'd bitten himself inside his mouth. But now was his best chance.

“Give Ty the money,” he slurred, his mouth swelling around his teeth.

Ty kept the gun on
him
, though.

“Fuck no,” Michael Wilson said. He caressed one fist with the other. “Your boy gonna shoot? Don't look like he's decided who. So what you gonna do? Put me
out
?”

“Yes,” said East. He'd thought it before. But now that Michael had said it, it was the only way.

Michael Wilson surged from his toes and hooked East once more, side of the gut. Sucker punch. It crumpled East, and he heaved with the pain. “See?” Michael Wilson smirked. “You ain't shit.” He stepped and loaded up for another, when a hard crack like thunder hit them all, and East was untouched, backpedaling in the light.

Ty held the gun in the sky. Its hard gray pop echoed back from nothing.

Michael Wilson spat. “Oh, nigger, please.”

Ty aimed the gun at Michael for the first time.

“I'll take that money now,” he said.

Michael Wilson scowled a terrible scowl at Ty. From his hip pocket he threw a curve of twenties to the ground. They fluttered, and Ty put a foot on them.

“There you go.”

Walter spoke up. “That ain't all the money.”

Michael Wilson glanced across, measured the overpass to the station.

“Give up the rest of the money, Mike,” said Walter.

“Let him keep the rest. He'll need it,” East said. “Now you go.”

Michael Wilson chuckled. “Just right out here on the farm?”

“That's right,” East said. He grabbed the white mesh shirt off the mirror and tossed it at Michael Wilson. Michael shook it out and put it on. “Let me get my bag, then,” he said. East nodded, and Michael fetched it out of the back.

“Pretty bag,” East couldn't resist remarking.

“Let me tell you something,” Michael Wilson announced. “I ain't sorry to leave you. I'm glad. I get home with one phone call. And you are lost. You can't get guns without me. You can't find the man without me. Don't none of you even look old enough to drive a car.”

“We don't need you,” East said.

“Ain't talking to you,” Michael Wilson said. “I'm only talking to the youngster with the gun.” He turned his back on East. “You a neighborhood boy. You ain't in no neighborhood now. There is plenty you don't know, gangster. You don't know you can't go back, because when you fail, there's no place for you. Johnny and Sidney will kill you just for knowing what you know. Or somebody will—it don't matter.”