Bang! (11 page)

“WE GOTTA GO.”

“I know.”

“Now,” Kee-lee tells me.

“I know. But I can’t. Not yet.”

I’m standing next to an apple tree with my pants pulled down. I got the runs. Been going for forty-five minutes and I ain’t got no more toilet paper—just leaves that itch and burn me. Only I can’t scratch because I can’t stop going, and going is making my insides bubbly and that’s making me fart and it’s stinking out here real bad. “Kee-lee. I need some water.” My lips are cracked and dry.

“I ain’t coming over there,” Kee-lee says, squeezing his nose. “You stink.”

I’m rocking, rubbing my stomach. “I think something was in them apples.”

He says he ate them and he’s not sick. He digs in his bag and pulls out his last reefer. Things been so crazy, he forgot about getting high. “Smoke this. You’ll feel better.”

I tell him no. He lights up. Lies back on the hill. Looks at the sky and listens to me fart and poop and “Aaaahhhhh.” I hold my stomach. Feel my insides twist and knot and squeeze. I’m thinking that maybe the farmer put something bad on ’em so kids wouldn’t steal ’em.

Kee-lee’s opening his backpack, pulling out paper and paints. “I’m gonna paint you. Right under that tree.”

“Don’t you . . .”

“Gonna call it,
Boy Crapping Under Apple Tree
.”

“You ain’t got—you ain’t got . . . aaaaaah. Keelee. Kee-lee. It hurts, man.”

Kee-lee thinks it’s funny. He’s sitting on the hill with the sun behind him. Using water from the creek to wet his brushes and water the paints. He’s smoking weed, leaning his head sideways. Telling me he’s gonna get this just right.

My stomach starts up again. Kee-lee says for me to stop crying. “Babies get the runs all the time and they don’t die from it.” He walks over and hands me a bottle of water he filled at the creek. “Wash your hands when you done. They got stuff on ’em.”

I look at my fingers, at the leaves and crap on the ground. I pour the water over my head and lick it off my lips. I wash my hands, then drink the rest. But that just makes my stomach cramp more. But a few minutes later I’m better, so I walk over and lie down by Kee-lee.

“I need real food,” he says. “Apples ain’t roast beef, you know.”

I hear him talking, but my eyes are closing. And when I wake up two hours later, the sun’s almost down.

“Mann,” he says, pushing me. “Look what I done.”

I push him away.

“Look.”

“I don’t wanna see me under no tree with my pants pulled down.”

“Look.”

I turn his way. There’s a zillion bushy green trees covered with apples. “You like apple trees?”

“I don’t know. I never saw all that many before, until now.”

His apple trees ain’t exactly like the ones here. They’re softer. Like watery-red teardrops. His trees are taller; stronger. And they ain’t sitting on a farm, they growing outta concrete right next to my house and his. They sitting on rooftops. Pushing right through people’s ceilings and growing in stores that sell sweet potatoes and chewing gum, Mary Jane candies and forties. It sounds funny. But it looks kinda nice. “What you call it?”

He holds the painting up to the sun and stares. “
Stone Apples
.”

“What?”

Kee-lee points to the cracked pavement, then to a boy sitting on the steps playing with a gun.

“Oh. I missed him.”

The boy’s smoking weed and sitting under an apple tree that’s got long skinny branches hanging so low he can pick one of them juicy red apples off and eat it, if he wants.

“Nice,” I say, feeling my stomach bubble. “What you gonna paint next?”

His fingers are green. His T-shirt’s got brown and red stains on it. We’re running outta paper. He picks up the last piece and looks at me.

I say, “Go ahead.”

Kee-lee’s brush moves across the paper and a lake shows up. Red birds fly and bluebirds stick their beaks down their kids’ throats, feeding ’em worms. His brush shakes and raindrops fall. It scratches the paper and dips in the water and the sky turns dark blue and the moon gets as yellow as a lemon iced cookie. He’s quiet a long time. And when he’s done, I sit straight up. It’s his best picture ever. “Save it. Show Mr. Titchner when school starts back up.” Titchner’s our art teacher. He said that Keelee’s the fastest painter he knows. “And when you’re done,“ he said once, “you leave mini masterpieces behind.”

Kee-lee must be tired, ’cause for a while he lets that one slide. Or maybe he just can’t talk, like me, only watch the sun setting and the whole sky burning reddish orange, making the apples look like they on fire.

Kee-lee sticks the picture on a branch. “Naw. I’m done with school.” He sits down. “When I get back home, I’m gonna draw a bunch of these and sell ’em.” He lies back in the grass. “Keisha’s gonna like me then, when she sees all that dough.”

I look at his teeth and think about Keisha.
She don’t want you no more than my father wants me,
I almost say.

IT AIN’T RIGHT what my father did. It’s been more than a week since he left us, and we’re nowhere near home. I’m thinking that even before I wake up. So when my eyes do open and it’s pitch-black out, I get even madder. I feel around for Kee-lee. He’s snoring. Lying right next to me. Scared like me, I bet. I blink. I listen to traffic and to my stomach growling. “Kee-lee.” I push him. “I wanna go home.”

“Stop touching me.”

I push him again. Let him know that the law don’t allow parents to make kids do nothing like this. I sit up and look around. “It’s not right.”

“You just figuring that out?” He sits up too. Says that maybe we should find us a telephone. He stands and stretches. Holds his arms to the sky and yawns. “We learned our lesson. Let’s tell your dad that.”

I follow him up the hill to the road. We jump over the guardrail and sit on it while trucks fly by. We walk in the dark for a good long time, using passing headlights to show us the way, hoping we don’t end up roadkill. By the time we see restaurant signs and gas station lights, my feet are burning and Kee-lee’s talking about suing my dad for abuse.

Things look closer than they really are. So it takes us another forty-five minutes to get to a town. When we get there, most everything’s shut down. It’s just lots of neon signs, closed buildings, and people driving by fast in cars that ain’t stopping for two black boys.

Me and Kee-lee sit down on the ground in front of pumps at a gas station. We’re breathing so hard you can hear us sucking in air loud as them machines that breathe for people in the hospital. “Kee-lee . . . We . . .” I ain’t got air enough to say nothing more.

We keep still and quiet for a while. Then we stand up and start walking. The restaurant over there is open. It’s got trucks pulled up to the back and a sign that says OPEN 24/7.

“How we gonna pay?” Kee-lee asks.

I lick my lips. “We ain’t gonna eat. We just gonna ask to use the phone.”

He takes off his backpack. Pulls out the brown bag and holds up the gun.

I step back.

He rubs the pistol on his leg. “I’m hungry. And I’m gonna eat.”

“If you planning on doing that, I’m not going in.”

He’s smiling. Looking at the gun like it’s a whole lot of money or a watch with big diamonds on it. “I ain’t eat in too long. And I’m hungry. And if they don’t feed us, or they call the cops ’cause we can’t pay . . .”

Bang!

I think about Jason, dead on the porch for no real reason.

Kee-lee sees the sweat on my nose and the way I can’t hardly stand up good, and the gun goes back into the bag and the bag goes into the backpack and we head for the restaurant.

The woman at the counter frowns. “Y’all want something?”

Everybody stares.

“Ma’am, can we use your phone?”

She points to the wall by the men’s room. “Cost is two quarters.” She turns around. Picks up two plates and takes ’em to a table where six men can’t stop staring at us.

Kee-lee steps on the back of my sneakers and makes me trip. “What you gonna tell him?”

“To come get us.”

“What if he don’t come?”

I slide my last quarters in the slot. “He’s gonna.”

I’m facing away from the men, but I can feel their eyes staring through my back, hear ’em saying stuff too.

“Dad,” I say, turning their way. “Come . . .”

My father hangs up the phone.

I keep talking because I don’t want Kee-lee to know. “We wanna come home.”

The men have lots of food: french fries and burgers, drinks big as buckets, mashed potatoes with gravy, and pie.

“We don’t have any more money, and we’re hungry,” I say into the phone.

Kee-lee’s licking his lips. Next thing I know he’s got the phone. “Ain’t nobody on this!” he yells.

That’s when one of the men asks what we’re up to.

Kee-lee steps back and asks him why he needs to know.

I speak up. “We’re just talking to our dad.”

The man with the long black hair and the gray beard sits his napkin down. “You hungry?”

Kee-lee tells him yes. He tells us to sit down and give the waitress our order. We run to his table. The man’s fingernails are black and he smells. But he’s got money to pay for supper, so that’s all we care about.

Kee-lee starts ordering fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, ice cream, apple pie, and fish. The man says we can have what we want. I order chicken, fries, juice, grits and gravy, only the food never comes. For a whole half hour we just watch him eat. The men at the other tables laugh and ask the guy at our table about black spots and nappy hair. He looks at us and laughs too.

This man eats real slow: one fry at a time. One bite of sandwich and he sets it down. One sip of soda and it’s back on the table. When forty-five minutes have gone by, I ask how come the waitress keeps going to the kitchen and not bringing out our food.

Kee-lee looks over my shoulders. “She’s just reading the paper.” He shouts, “Where’s our food?”

Someone says it’s in the trash out back. The man across from me smiles. His teeth are yellow and broken, with one gold tooth on the side. “I’d say you could have some of mine, but ain’t none left.” He pushes a plate full of nothing our way.

We get up to leave, but someone says we have to pay for the food we ordered. Otherwise, they’re calling the sheriff. “Go ahead and call,” Kee-lee says, “so we can tell ’em how you treating us.”

A trucker walks over to him. “What’s your name, boy? What you got in that bag, boy?”

Kee-lee never could hold his tongue. “A gun. That’s what I got in this bag. Gonna use it too.”

We’re going to jail. That’s what I’m thinking. And my father ain’t gonna know where we are and they gonna do us like they did Martin Luther King Jr. and not tell nobody for days we here and maybe even kill us. I tell him that Kee-lee’s drawers are in the bag. That he wets hisself so that’s how come he’s not wearing ’em.

Knuckles press against my chin. “You lying to me, boy?”

Kee-lee knows this guy means business, so he plays along. “Ever since my brother got shot I can’t hold myself.”

The man sniffs. “You do smell.”

Kee-lee farts. He used to do it all the time in school when people got on his nerves.

The guy from our table stands. “Oh, man. You people just nasty, ain’t ya?” He kicks Kee-lee’s foot. “Lazy. Dirty. Nasty.” He shakes his head. “Walking round with underwear that got . . .”

Another fart smells up the room. It whistles on the way out. The waitress points to the door. “Get out, you black, nasty . . .”

Kee-lee’s on his feet pulling his backpack off. Only he’s so mad or scared, he can’t get to the straps like he wants. I get up and start dragging him over to the door. His lips are shaking. “They gonna pay for what they did.”

Before we can get out, another man steps in front of us. “You got something to say, boy?” He’s big and tall. He looks like he could whip us with his bottom lip.

I’m trying to push past him. “No, sir.”

His arm blocks me. He wants to know if we’re hungry. My answer is no, but Kee-lee says, “What you think? We still ain’t ate.”

The whole place gets quiet. Then the door opens wide. The man drags Kee-lee out the restaurant by the neck and the top of his jeans.

I got a sugar bowl in my hand and I’m ready to throw it. “Let him go.” The bowl flies by the guy’s forehead. He ducks. The dish hits the door.

Kee-lee’s yelling how he ain’t scared of them. How his dad’s gonna come blow them away. A man bends my arm behind my back and drags me out the place. Another man pins Kee-lee’s arms and pushes him into the parking lot. Their friend opens the Dumpster and reaches inside, holding his wet, drippy finger in Kee-lee’s face. “Eat it.”

“I ain’t eating garbage.”

“You stink like garbage. So you must be garbage.” The man’s smashing rotten food into his mouth.

“Kee-lee!”

“Shut up.”

“Kee-lee!”

“If you don’t shut up . . . ouch!”

I stick my fingers in his eyes. Take my elbow and shove it hard as I can into another man’s chin.

“You black . . .”

Kee-lee’s on the ground with some guy’s knees pushed in his back, stuffing food in his mouth. Two men stand over him. One is holding a baseball bat. The other’s got his fist pulled back. Every time Keelee says he ain’t gonna eat none, he punches him. I hear the punches. They sound like a broom knocking dust out a rug hung up on a line.

“You like garbage, don’t you?”

Kee-lee says no.

Boof!
They punch him in the back.

“You garbage, ain’t you, maggot boy?”

“No.”

Boof. Boof. Boof.
Fists hit Kee-lee on his side, legs, and ribs.

Another man picks up a handful of dirt swept in a pile on the ground. “You dirt, right?” He throws it in Kee-lee’s face.

Kee-lee’s on his hands and knees now, like a dog. They got his head pulled back and his face pointing up to the streetlight. “Eat it.” They kick him in the butt.

His hands crawl up to his mouth. His lips shake open, and black, drippy food goes down his throat.

“Good, ain’t it?”

Kee-lee blinks back tears.

“You want some more, don’t you?”’

If Kee-lee’s eyes were guns, nobody would be alive right now.

“Taste like your momma’s cooking, don’t it?”

It takes a while, but then his head goes up and down. His lips open wide, and in a few minutes the garbage dripping from that man’s fingers is all gone.

“Spit it out, Kee-lee!”

A foot stomps down on my foot. Someone drags me over to Kee-lee. “You like garbage too, don’t you, boy?”

Kee-lee’s got tomato sauce on his eyebrows and mustard in his hair. His mouth opens wide and he tells them men if they don’t leave us alone, he’ll kill ’em. They laugh, and somehow Kee-lee gets up and pulls the backpack off. He tells them he’s gonna shoot them. They still laughing. “Don’t do it.” I run over to him and whisper, “They’ll shoot us with it.”

My legs get kicked out from under me, and a man standing over me smashes cold eggs and oatmeal into my mouth. I spit it out. He holds my neck way back and squirts spicy-hot ketchup down my throat. I cough. Choke. Burn down inside. The waitress is the one who makes ’em stop. She says the sheriff’s coming by to pick up an order. “He sees them here, and y’all headed for jail.”

They laugh. But they do like she says. Only they don’t leave us in the back on the ground. They drag us over to a truck.

“What y’all gonna do to them boys?” she says.
“Mind your business.”
“Don’t kill ’em. You do that and I gotta tell.”
The man laughs.
“We ain’t killing nobody. Just gonna do what you do to garbage, Ernestine.”