King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 (27 page)

  As he started toward them, he noticed Baylon beside the large bush that blocked the view from the side street. A skinny white girl with blonde hair – carrying a mixed baby wearing only a diaper – stood close to him pleading her case. Nodding toward Junie, he whistled to draw his attention, and pointed to her. She beamed with appreciation and headed toward them.

  "I expect to see you tomorrow," Baylon barked after her.

  "You're a real man of the people." Though he wore an open leather jacket over it, King filled out his black T-shirt allowing his muscles to coil and flex beneath it. The word "RESISTANCE" captioned a picture of the '68 Olympians with raised fists.

  "King."

  "Don't you ever give it a rest?" King asked.

  "Capitalism marches onward. A brotha's got to get his."

  They stared at each other in a tense silence. King hated this part of the show. The never backing down, never showing weakness, escalating sense of impending violence. It was such a waste. King wasn't sure how to react. Baylon and he had a history and it was clear that Baylon and Lady G had known each other. With Prez being gone, Lady G had been staying with Big Momma, but it wasn't as if she was his girl or anything. Then something else occurred to him. Both Baylon and Green were personally overseeing the corner, and their troops appeared thin. "No harm done. I'm just out here seeing what's what. Been hearing things."

  "I just didn't want there to be any… misunderstandings," Baylon said.

"Don't start none, won't be none."

  King walked toward the gathered throng as Baylon watched. Lady G slumped in her chair, a sweater slung around her. Any self-consciousness she might have felt under Baylon's gaze, she ignored with a cool aplomb. Big Momma sat between her spread legs, her hair half combed out, half with micro-braids. After a few minutes observing King and Lady G's awkward dance, Baylon moved back to his corner work. One of the neighborhood kids headed their way from the opposite direction of King. His T-shirt had the words "I LOVE ORAL SEX" emblazoned on the front.

  "Boy, where'd you get that shirt?" Big Momma asked, the way King's mother used to "ask" when she was really yelling at him.

  "It's my dad's. He said I could wear it."

  "Then you can wear it, but not around here. Go on back to your house and change shirts."

  "It's the only one that's clean."

  "Then turn it inside out or something, but you ain't wearing it around here."

  "OK." He took off his shirt, revealing his frail frame. He turned it inside out then joined the other kids who had stopped their game to watch the minishowdown.

  "Trifling-ass parents…" Big Momma muttered. "What kind of parents are gonna let their kid walk out of the house in a shirt like that?"

  Lady G mm-hmm-ed from behind her.

  "Girl, you just mad at the world." King sat down. "You up for some hair?"

  "Bout time. Your head's done got all raggedy," Big Momma said.

  It was true: for the last few weeks, King had been letting his hair grow out. His frazzled cornrows in need of tightening. It was time for a new look he had supposed. The fact that Lady G did hair in lieu of rent had nothing to do with it. Big Momma, however, had truly taken the girl in and now was every bit the gateway her real momma would have been. Lady G, though she never voiced it, loved it. Her fingertips, the sole part of her hands not covered by her black gloves, danced in Big Momma's hair.

  "Boy, what do you do to your hair?" Lady G asked.

  "Put water on it then push it back." She took her comb and pulled at a clutched stalk of hair. "Ow. Dag."

  "Beauty is pain," she said.

  "Who you trying to look good for?" Lady G asked coyly.

  "No one in particular," he lied poorly. "That's you women out here who like to act all diva-ish."

  "The grass is always greener and some women don't mind mowing someone else's lawn." Lady G parted another section of Big Momma's hair and then planted her comb in the remaining unbraided section while she worked.

  "That's what divas do, huh?"

  "All I'm saying is that I don't keep too many girl friends, especially around me and my man. One or two close ones I talk to–"

  "Like Rhianna," King slipped in.

  "A few I hang out with–"

  "Like that girl in the park from the other day."

  Lady G couldn't help but suppress a grin at the attention he paid to her life. She continued: "But none I tell everything to. They the ones that come back and stab you. You ain't in love or anything are you?"

  "I only ever fell in love once."

  "Oh, Lord," Big Momma said.

  "Your baby's momma?" Lady G asked.

  "I ain't talking about her. I forget that girl's name." King closed his eyes while Lady G picked at Big Momma's tangled braids.

  "Shameika," Big Momma answered for him. "He was really young, they had a really good relationship. But then she switched to another church, fell in with a new group of friends, and started hanging around with them. It wasn't that he was jealous of her new friends. He wasn't even mad that she had a life outside of him, but he wasn't the type of person to put up with being exiled. First he was in, and then he was completely out. So he turned around and told her it might be best if they chilled for a minute. The worst break-up he ever had."

  That was what he thought then.

  "That didn't sour you on women?" Lady G asked.

  Big Momma answered again. "It was the only time he fell in love. Other than that, all he had was 'girls' like his baby's momma: a girl for a jazz concert, a girl for a movie, a girl for prayer meeting. He didn't want them to get the wrong idea, so he always told them upfront."

  "A church boy at heart?" Lady G tugged at a knot causing Big Momma to grimace.

  "Nothing wrong with that."

  A clearing throat interrupted them. Big Momma, Lady G, and King all turned to find Merle standing there as if he'd been there the entire time.

  "What a pleasant scene," Merle said. "I hate to break up such an idyllic moment, but we have business to attend to."

 

Loose Tooth awaited Tavon on the steps of the porch. On post. Even at night, under the sodium glare, Tavon loved the house. For him, it was almost sacred ground.

  "What's up?"

  "Same old foolishness," Loose Tooth said with his gravelly voice and a sad, resigned smile. "Miss Jane an' 'em's inside."

  Only then did Tavon notice the racket coming from inside. He went around to the rear of the house, Loose Tooth faithfully following, to the basement entrance. He bent the plywood covering enough for them to slide through. If night had a texture, it felt like the black of the basement. Only after their eyes adjusted could they use the residual glow from the street lamps to discern the foreboding shapes around them. They made their way past the rusted-out furnace, an antique from forty years ago. A pile of old window frames, still useable, littered a storage room floor. He blithely slid past the ad-hoc floor joists that leveled the bending floorboards. The rotted stairs croaked in protest with each of their steps. Tavon put his shoulder into the nailed-shut door.

  Ship-wrecked lost souls lay about the living room floor. Too many times he came here to find out that Miss Jane had let a whole crew flop there, like a basement party that got smoked out. This time the sprawl of bodies used each other to stave off the cold. Miss Jane quickly explained that she charged each of them a few bucks – a take she was willing to split fifty-fifty with Tavon (which Tavon knew that he'd be lucky to see a tenth of the money) – to partake in the Black Zombie testing.

  "Who he?" Tavon asked, nodding toward the lone white guy.

  "He's my wigga."

  The scrawny burnout with a chest like a squirrel looked like a trailer park refugee. His bloodshot eyes danced like life was one big video game that he was desperately trying to follow. He rubbed his hand over his closely cropped hair. His shoes tied over bare feet and an unfinished tattoo of a dragon rearing to exhale flames glared from above his torn T-shirt. Tavon knew without asking where the money went that was supposed to finish the tattoo.

  "I'm just out here trying to school him," Miss Jane said of her latest dupe.

  "Yeah, he's my nigger," the burnout said.

  The din of the room screeched to an immediate and deafening silence. Fearfully he scanned the room.

  "What did I tell you?" Miss Jane asked sternly, stepping menacingly toward him.

  "Not too much 'r'?" the burnout answered weakly.

  "No 'r'. 'R' means business. 'R' means we obligated to kick your ass."

  "My n-nigga?"

  Miss Jane put her arm on Tavon to steady herself from laughing too hard. "We just shittin' you. Come on, fool."

  Tavon passed out the vials, and played big man and host. He enjoyed the moment of civility, a ghetto tea ceremony.

  "You want me to set you up?" Miss Jane asked politely.

  "Yeah, great," Tavon said, still attending to his guests. He sat down and Miss Jane snuggled next to him, offering the spike like some champagne toast. She searched out a good vein and with his nod, she pulled back a pinkish cloud then drove the load home. She quickly filled her own and injected it, her head down in a dope-fiend lean, waiting for the blast to hit.

  "You know any white Washingtons?" Tavon asked lazily.

  "You thinkin' on what that wannabe Muslim be sayin'?" Loose Tooth said with a jaundiced glare from inside his heroin fog. "That fool never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like."

  "I'm just sayin', you heard about Thomas Jefferson an' all his kids. George had to be screwin', too. You know all them mugs had slaves. An' Martha wasn't much to look at."

  "I guess that makes you practically royalty."

  "Well, we don't know our true names," Tavon said with a wan plaintiveness.

  "So you want we should call you Tavon X now?" Loose Tooth asked.

  "An' give up the smoke? Them Muslims don't play," the disembodied voice of the burnout chimed in from the shadows.

  "Shit, he couldn't even give up pork, much less chasing the heroin." The way Miss Jane pronounced it, the word came out "hair ron".

  Too much thinking blew his high. Tavon fell silent, but an overwhelming sadness swept over him with the realization that he broke his mother's heart. All of his other siblings went on to college or the military and resented him for the life that he chose for himself. But he missed her, even though he didn't make it to the funeral because he took a charge and did an overnight in city jail. "Life was full of mystery," his mother often proffered as an explanation for their pain. "You can waste your time figuring out the why, or you can let it grow you." She absorbed suffering, especially his, like a sponge and he missed her most during times like this.

  He'd been watered.

  Why he trusted Miss Jane to be in the spirit of the occasion and not pocket his vial for later, he didn't know. He cursed himself for his stupidity. Turning to confront her, his movement knocked her to the floor. Her eyes rolled into her head. Foam bubbled from the corner of her mouth. Her breaths came in rasps and fits.

  "Miss Jane, wake up!" Tavon yelled.

  A moan escaped her lips.

  "Miss Jane! There's something wrong with Miss Jane!" he repeated to no one in particular. He studied his friends. The burnout had stopped breathing. Loose Tooth still convulsed, his old body dying in wracked spasms. Tavon panicked, flitting from body to body, splashing water on some, trying to get Miss Jane on her feet. Call 911, he thought, letting Miss Jane crumple into a pile. From where? No phones around here. He backed toward the front door. The police wouldn't come anyway. Maybe if he could phone from the KFC.

  So he ran.

  And kept running.

 

Wayne slammed the door of the Outreach Inc.'s minivan and tugged on it to make sure it was locked. Street nights were a series of rituals for him. Caffeine was his drug of choice these days. Even as he sucked down a venti caramel macchiato, he thought about the dark places addicts knew. The same sad, scared hole too many folks fell into. Some pushed there by drugs. Some stumbled there due to lack of love. There was always a hole they needed to fill with whatever they could; a need that overwhelmed them such that they pushed their jobs, their school, their friends, their family aside in order to have another attempt to fill it. Wayne knew about the holes and he knew he couldn't save anyone, much less everyone; but he knew what he was called to do. Someone had to step into the gap between the lost and the rest of the world which forgot them. Someone had to push the envelope and risk themselves to go where they were, to love them back to themselves. Someone had to intervene.

  That night they went to a wooded area behind the Eastgate Mall. A place he knew well. He knew the temporary tent community that sprung up between police sweeps. He knew the dumpsters that could be scavenged from. A backpack of water, snacks, and socks in one hand and a Maglite in the other didn't seem like much, but with the right team of folks, it was a start. It always came back to who he worked with. Some volunteers were good to mark the location and drop off water. Others truly connected with folks there. Learned their names. Heard their stories. Heard their stories.. Treated them like they were human. Weren't afraid to meet them where they were, in the muck of their lives. A good team, the right team, could venture to the darkest places.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the night always left him energized so he had an evening ending ritual to help him wind down: dinner at Mr Dan's, a twenty-four-hour burger joint with homestyle fries and greasy burgers like your momma would have made. Strains of Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad" squawked from his cell phone. Wayne sighed, his stomach already grumbling, fearing it would be some street emergency which would delay him sitting down to eat.