Robert reached up to touch his cheek. Emotions curdled inside him, anger mixing with shock and disbelief.
"The hell you just did?"
"Slap back if you can," Green-O said. "Raise your hand. I won't draw down. We'll just go, you and me here. You were always strong, I'd like to try that. You may even win, but how many fingers are you going to break on the way through? Your ribs, sprain an ankle, bust your ACL, you know?"
A churn of emotions sank in Robert's gut like a bag of cold milk. He wouldn't be able to dive. Colorado Springs would be gone. It knocked the wind out of him more than the slap.
Green-O nodded. "What I thought. Shit, I've got the internet too, Bobby; I keep track of you and your diving. We're all real proud, but you've got to do it right, you know? We're proud if you're one of us. If you're not one of us, then what is any of this but a big F-you, to me in particular?"
"It's got nothing to do with you."
Green-O laughed. "That's a lie and you know it. This is reality, Bobby, where the shit you do is remembered and matters. Every year this time I start taking flak about you and it looks like I'm the bitch. I can't allow that. Are we clear?"
Anger stung at Robert's pride, urging him to knock this fat punk down once and for all, like he should have done years ago. He was a professional-level athlete and Green-O was a fat slob used to relying on a gun. But...
"I see the rage," Green-O said. "The same as that night, ready to pop. You think I've not faced this shit down before? You're just a civilian to me. Go ahead and lay me out, give me an excuse to burn you to the ground. I've been waiting since Zane."
"I've been waiting since Zane too," Robert said through gritted teeth.
Green-O took a step closer, pressing his parka against Robert's chest. "You always thought you were so special. What are you now? Pissing your superhero panties."
"I would knock you flat out."
Green-O's grin widened. "But you won't."
The tension drew out.
"Will you?"
Robert trembled. He longed to lash out, but he'd lose everything.
"You come by mine tomorrow after five," he said through gritted teeth. "When the dive's over. Pick me up then. And I'm not shooting anyone."
Green-O laughed. "I'm not a idiot. We're coming at dawn, before you dive. We better find you there. Or else, well, you've given me an excuse."
A wave of heat flushed through Robert's face. This wasn't remotely his friend anymore. This was another piece of gangbanger shit, acting like supremacy in Frayser was the whole of the goddamn world.
"I like it," Green-O said. "Smoldering eyes; you're making me hard. Dawn tomorrow, Bobby, or you're done."
* * *
Focus came on the bus ride home.
He sat at the back of the number 9; a forty-minute ride across the city to Frayser, then a ten-minute walk to his mother's crappy duplex through the leafy suburban ganglands.
He looked out of the bus window without seeing anything. His cheek still burned and the bag of milk hung heavy on his belly, quickly going stale. Outside another bus went by, a park, the high-rises of downtown Memphis.
He didn't remember leaving the sports hall. He felt drunk.
Zane came into his thoughts, forever trapped in the body of a fifteen-year old. He'd been their leader in so many things; the handsome one, the charming one, the best with the girls. He'd touched tits before grade school even began; by twelve he'd scored a home run with an older girl on his block; by thirteen he was pimping out his exes to Green-O and Robert if they'd wanted a kiss or to cop a feel; and at fourteen he was actually making money from it. The crazy thing was that the girls seemed happy to do it, because Zane was special.
Being around him made people feel lifted. He was strong and smart, played football JV at fourteen. He was the youngest on the team but the fastest at tailback, forcing rushing plays that found gaps through the defensive line that nobody else could see.
"You just got to feel it," he told Robert once, who'd always been a strong athlete too, but didn't have Zane's skill with the ball. "You focus and the world opens up to you."
Until diving he'd never felt that way. It was the one thing in his life he'd ever done better than Zane.
Then Zane got shot.
It was simple and stupid. They'd been out in a gang, ten or so girls and guys of fifteen and up with a crate of Colt 45s, high on a weekend after a big game, headed for the park behind Denver Elementary.
There they stumbled on an execution. They were all already half-drunk and groping on each other, and none of them spotted the warning signs of the headlights glowing through the scrubby trees until they were upon them. The first Robert knew was Zane's steadying hand on his shoulder.
Robert turned from the girl he was canoodling and saw a clearing lit by the roof-lights of a yellow Humvee. Two guys were kneeling and three guys were standing over them holding guns.
A gangland execution.
He'd recognized the men on their knees at once; one of them was Green-O's father, the other was Tolerance Big, one of the Sons of the Harp generals. Their red caps, bandannas and jackets had been stripped and lay on the dirt before them. Their faces were bloody and bruised.
Somewhere at the back of the group Green-O was laughing loudly. He hadn't seen yet. His father winced visibly.
"We get the hell out of here," Robert said quietly to Zane.
Zane squeezed his shoulder. "That's Green-O's pops."
"What's all this?" one of the gunmen asked. He wore a yellow do-rag hovering atop a tall afro, with bright yellow high-top shoes. "I don't recall inviting the Brady bunch."
A second man laughed, wearing a yellow cap and yellow belt over a tucked in black T-shirt. Yellow meant the Memphis chapter of the Orandelles, one of the biggest gangs in the state.
Just then Green-O burst through the middle of the group, emerged into the light, and saw his father.
"Shit!" he shouted. A second passed, then he fumbled drunkenly for the revolver in his paunchy waistband.
The third Orandelle fired. It hit Green-O in the gut and dropped him to the floor. At the same time Zane squeezed Robert's shoulder and called out the play.
"Eleven twenty-two."
Without waiting he sprinted to the side, cutting an evasive line that took him round the cover of a tree. Robert charged too, without thinking, directly toward the middle guy with the high-tops. Shots fired and a bullet zinged off his ribs, then he leaped over a bush and hit. The guy went down hard across tree roots and Robert fell with him, smacking the dirt and rolling.
"Keep driving!" Zane shouted from behind, and as Robert found his feet he glimpsed Green-O's pops and Furious rising up. Zane was straddling his guy and thumping his face, while the girls behind them were screaming and hurling bottles.
The third Orandelle was leveling his gun on Robert when a bottle struck his wrist and knocked it loose, a second before Green-O's dad thumped into him. Robert dived for the weapon as his first guy was getting up and drawing a second pistol from a calf holster. Robert snatched up the fallen gun and fired, hitting the second guy in the belly. He fell back with surprise on his face and blood welling out through his yellow jacket, like a burst ketchup bottle.
Robert swiveled to fire again but the gun was cracked out of his hand by the third Orandelle's boot. Green-O's pops was down, two of the Orandelles were down, and now the third was about to stab a knife into Robert's chest.
Zane, bloody and pale-faced, rose up and took the knife through the throat. Blood gushed out, and he wore a faint look of surprise on his face as he fell into the brown dirt. The Orandelle lurched for the gun but Robert snatched it up first, holding it in the Orandelle's face.
The man sneered. "Goddamn-"
Robert fired. The bullet blew through his face and out the back of his head.
He dropped. Robert dropped too, to his knees. His shoulder was throbbing and Zane was dead. He turned him over and looked into his still and staring eyes.
"I think Green-O's dead!" somebody shouted.
He peered through the thin mist of gun smoke, lit strangely by the headlights of two yellow Humvees parked amongst the trees. Green-O was lying in the dirt with his hands on his belly. He looked dead. There was blood all over him. Robert turned. The others had run off, and bloody bodies lay everywhere. A minute, maybe less, and everyone was dead.
What had he just done?
He dropped to his knees by Zane's side and tried to staunch the wound in his neck and another in his belly, but Zane was already dead. Feeling numb, Robert moved to the next body. Green-O's father and Furious were dead too, the Orandelles were dead, everyone was dead.
He dialed 911, called in the police and an ambulance, then checked Green-O. He was unconscious, but a whisper of breath leaked from his mouth. Robert lifted him to his shoulder and ran through the woods to the road in front of Denver Elementary to meet the ambulance.
Hero, they'd called him. He hadn't felt like a hero.
On the bus Robert rubbed his temples. As a rule he tried not to think of any of that. Killing people wasn't heroic, and Zane's loss had been crushing. But every year Green-O made him go to the memorial, tying it to new attempts at killing, hoping some of Zane's glow would rub off on him. Every year he'd increased his role at the graveside to something nearing master of ceremonies. When Green-O retold the story now he elevated both his and his father's roles. The Orandelles were still their enemy, and every year they took another shot at revenge.
There would be blood tomorrow. If Green-O had his way, Robert would pull the trigger like a good little soldier.
He rubbed his tired, chlorine-reddened eyes. If it was only about pride he'd do it, he'd swallow it as the price of getting out. But it was more than that. It was people's lives, and his life and his mother's life.
It left only one decision. They were leaving Frayser tonight.
2. FRAYSER
He hurried through the lamp-lit streets of suburban Frayser, passing like a thief in and out of pools of shadow. Down the alley behind Walgreens there were scattered soda cans, beer crates and a single fly-tipped washing machine. On the corner of Frayser and North Watkins he turned left and made for the row of houses on Riney Street.
They were mean and largely ill kept. Many had overgrown front yards, some with rusted cars raised up on blocks with all the wheels missing, though a few had green lawns. Each one carried memories from his youth. Once Green-O had dared him and Zane to hump every bit of grass on the street and shout out, "Damn she's fine!" when they were done. They'd done it, racing each other along with tears of laughter in their eyes and lights flicking on in windows behind them.
At the end Green-O had solemnly awarded them a scrap of paper each which read:
Hand job
"Where do we cash this in?" Zane had asked.
Green-O just winked, looked between them, and nodded.
He turned to run but Zane caught him in seconds, dropped him on the floor, then he and Robert took turns humping him sideways, yelling, "Damn she's fine!" They'd laughed about that for years.
The streets were cool with the wind blowing down off the Mississippi river. This was his home, but it hadn't felt like home since Zane.
His mom's duplex sat near the corner of Riney and Frayser School drive. It looked nice enough, small but with some new aluminum siding he'd put up himself, a neat patch of grass with a cement walk-up, though that was all a façade. Inside the plumbing was haphazard, the air con was busted, the windowless basement was his bedroom, illegally, and there were rats. They'd never had the money to do it up or get out, what with his dive trips and training, his grandmother's cancer which had churned on for six long years, his two sisters both going through rehab with one of them now serving in Syria and the other in jail, and the landlord forever raising the rent.
He checked the street but there was no sign of Green-O's red Cadillac.
He slotted in the key and opened the door.
"Hey, Bobby," his mom called from the kitchen. She sounded fatigued, another double shift at the hospital. It was taking it out of her, had been sucking her dry for years, but a job was a job. It was just one of many factors that kept them both in a strange twilight state, between partners, between dreams, between lives really, just existing.
He squeezed down the narrow beige hall and into the pokey kitchen, where orange cracked tiles lined the floor and the white kitchen cabinets seemed more ingrained food stain than actual wood, despite long bouts of scrubbing. The small back window was cracked and beside it the air con ticked over halfheartedly, puffing gusts of cool through the swampy southern humidity.
On the table was a huge weight of spaghetti bolognese, with his mom sat in a plastic bucket next to it, weary like a smoked-down cigarette butt, but smiling still through the straight lines of her new brown weave.
He couldn't help but smile. She was the best thing in his life; she'd always pushed him to pursue his diving though it meant ultimately he couldn't go to college, as holding down a job at the Yangtze fulfillment center and diving had taken all his time, but she'd had faith.
He sat down. The spaghetti looked amazing, and sitting there with her weary smile glowing on him, it felt like the concerns of Green-O and his gang were figments from a different world.
But they weren't.
"I screwed up, mom," he said.
Her eyes woke up. Though he was twenty-three she wasn't above giving him a whupping.
"So tell me," she said.
* * *
They packed fast and light. His mom knew Green-O and what kind of man he'd turned into. She knew the law and that it would never protect them in advance, not on the strength of such a vague threat. One of them would have to die first, or get arrested. Then the cops might listen.
After he'd finished talking she made a show of studying his cheek, even moved to the medicine cabinet to get out antiseptic alcohol.