Young God: A Novel (3 page)

“You stay with your grandmama?” Nikki says.

“Yeah,” Levi says.

Levi’s grandmama is not Nikki’s grandmama. She is only Crystal’s mama, not Coy Hawkins’s. Nikki looks at the other trailer, the one in front of Crystal’s house, which is smaller than the big house, with no upstairs. In the living room window the blinds are flat. Nikki purses her lips.

“My mama’s in prison,” Levi says.

“I know,” Nikki says.

He is irritating her.

“Why you think my mama’s still in prison and your daddy ain’t?”

“I don’t care.”

Every time she comes outside he’s going to be lurking, she thinks. He’s digging a hole with his heel.

“Because your daddy’s a rat,” Levi says.

There are old bricks by her feet, what used to be the chimney. She picks one up and throws it at him and it thuds. Levi sits down. His chest pumps up and down with his breathing.

NIKKI TAKES A LONG PINK SHOWER.
Kool-Aid runs the crooks of her arms and the insides of her thighs. She bends bowlegged in the stall. She shaves off her pubic hair and it kinks to the drain. She goes into the bedroom. She stands bare in front of the mirrored closet and scrutinizes herself. She is so much prettier than Angel.

SHE HEARS SOMETHING.
A rumble. She runs to the kitchen and grabs a knife but it turns out to be nothing.

“SHE’S WEARING MY DRESS,”
Angel says.

Nikki pulls up the elastic top of one of them with leopard spots. Angel looks outraged. Coy Hawkins hardly looks at all. They just walked in. It’s morning.

“Will you tell her she can’t wear my clothes?” Angel says.

Coy Hawkins sits in his chair. He fiddles with the crank until the footrest shoots up.

“Jesus Christ,” Angel says.

She sits next to Nikki. She flicks the bikini bow at Nikki’s neck.

“You ain’t even supposed to wear a bra with it.”

“Don’t touch me,” Nikki says.

“Get up,” Coy Hawkins says.

They both look at him. He looks drunk.

“Angel, get up,” Coy Hawkins says.

“Why?” Angel says.

He snaps like ten times.

When Angel stands up Nikki smells something foul. Nikki looks at her. She is holding her high heels by the hooks of her fingers and they seriously reek.

Angel kicks Nikki climbing over her. She sits on the arm of Coy Hawkins’s chair.

“No,” Coy Hawkins says.

“What, I’m supposed to sit on the floor?”

Coy Hawkins tries to light the filter end of a cigarette.

“Hello?” Angel says.

“You hear something?”

Coy Hawkins says this only to Nikki. Nikki stares at them. Angel’s hair is back on top of her head. The tails of her cat’s eyes are sweated off and her lips are no longer red. They look puffy.

Angel bumps by Nikki’s knees. She sits down on the couch again.

“Get up,” Coy Hawkins says.

“No,” Angel says.

Nikki wonders if he took her to the steakhouse where you get to throw your peanut shells on the floor.

“Get up,” Coy Hawkins says.

Also he probably bought her breakfast. Nikki had potato chips.

“I stutter?” Coy Hawkins says.

“Yes.”

“Get up,” Nikki says.

“Do what?” Angel says.

Angel looks at her.

“Your feet stink,” Nikki says.

“What?”

“They’re rank.”

Angel stares at Nikki. Her face is red. Her mouth is open. Nikki waits. Angel’s eyes shift. She looks at Coy Hawkins.

“This is fucking bullshit,” Angel says.

She throws her high heels at the wall. She stands up and goes around to the far side of the coffee table and sits on the floor. When Nikki looks at Coy Hawkins he’s laughing so hard no sound comes out.

THEY ARE PRESSED
against the bathroom sink. Coy Hawkins is pulling Angel’s hair and Angel’s hand is down Coy Hawkins’s jeans. Nikki stands there a second too long. He turns his head and sees.

WHEN NIKKI TAKES OFF THE BIKINI TOP
her nipples pop like two buttons, too. She walks into the living room. She feels him watching. She fights the urge to cross her arms over her chest. After she sits down on the couch she waits awhile. Then she looks at him.

“What?” Nikki says.

Coy Hawkins shakes his head.

Nikki stares at the TV and pretends to care. Angel’s asleep beside her. She’s made herself into a tiny ball. She’s wearing one of his shirts again.

“You were just a little girl the last time I seen you,” Coy Hawkins says.

“I know,” Nikki says.

“You don’t remember back then. Not really.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You remember what your mama told you to.”

She looks at him. He’s drinking a cup of coffee. He takes a sip.

Later they are all in the kitchen. Nikki and Angel are sitting in folding chairs and Coy Hawkins is pacing. He’s smoking a cigarette. He’s holding an ashtray. He stops and looks at Nikki.

“You got any better shoes?”

Nikki looks at her flip-flops.

“No,” she says.

He points his cigarette at Angel.

“Find her something,” he says.

Angel has his shirt stretched over her knees. She drops her feet to the floor. She smirks at Nikki.

“Are we going somewhere?” Nikki says.

“Out,” Coy Hawkins says.

“Out,” Angel says.

ANGEL SITS IN THE BITCH SEAT.
Around left bends they both slide across the pickup’s bench and bunch against Coy Hawkins. Nikki laughs. Coy Hawkins turns up the stereo, louder, louder, louder, until both Nikki and Angel scream.

AT THE OTHER END
of the bottom road is the highway. It’s a long-looping highway. It’s really just a road that’s always tar. It leads to town. It takes forever to get there: twenty minutes. The whole time is dropping down but gradually. Nikki hardly feels it.

Along the way it’s mostly churches. The old ones are brick. The ones that got pissed off and split off from them are in storefronts. The ones that got pissed off and split off from them are in abandoned gas stations.

Very close to town there’s the twenty-four-hour Coffee House and the Food Lion and the big cemetery. Otherwise it’s trees.

Right now it’s dark. The trees fly by as inky fringe. In Nikki’s mind there is a certain glittering blackness.

The town is cut by a river. Not the yellow one but what it flows into. The south side of the town is flatter. It’s where Walmart is and the people who just got money live. The north side of town is steeper. It’s where the people who’ve always had money live and also all the black people. There are Mexicans everywhere now.

On the north side of town, at the stoplight that turns for the group home, Nikki doesn’t breathe. Coy Hawkins gases it as soon as it goes green. Past an empty building where a gun-and-pawn used to be he makes a left onto another highway. He heads back into the county. The county is anywhere that’s not town. Nikki turns to look at them. Angel’s chewing gum.

“Where are we going?” she says.

The highway spits them out to the southeast, into a different county. Nikki clutches the door handle as the pickup merges, rattling, onto an interstate. Tractor-trailers whip by. Headlights spot her eyes. It is six lanes, stick-straight. Nikki stares at everything. Sometimes she flinches. The road signs say
CHARLOTTE
.

“Where are we going?” she says.

Seventy miles.

Sixty miles.

Fifty miles.

Forty miles to Charlotte Coy Hawkins takes an exit. He exits onto a road that is all gas stations, drive-thrus, and motels. They march along either side, on and on. It is super bright. Coy Hawkins pulls into a motel’s lot. It’s a two-floor motel with a balcony. He parks around back and gets out and walks around front. Nikki squints, watching him go.

“Where are we?” Nikki says.

“Where do you think?” Angel says.

COY HAWKINS
opens his fist. In his hand are chalky white pills like generic Oxy.

“What’s that?”

“Rolls,” Angel says.

“Oxy?” Nikki says.

“Ecstasy.”

Nikki looks at her.

“What’s it do?”

“It eats holes in your brain.”

“No, it don’t.”

Angel nods at Nikki.

“Let me get one,” Nikki says.

Ecstasy is a real drug like coke. Any person with a prescription can’t get it. Coy Hawkins gives Angel two of them. He eats two himself. Now his palm is empty.

“No,” Coy Hawkins says.

Angel laughs.

Nikki cuts her teeth. She slumps in the seat. Angel reaches over to throw her gum out the window and presses her hand against Nikki.

“Get off me,” Nikki says.

When Angel lets go a pill is stuck to Nikki’s thigh. Nikki drops her fingers over it. She stares at the back of the motel. Angel leans back. Nikki bends down as if to scratch her leg and swallows the roll instead.

Coy Hawkins gives Angel a key card.

“Six,” he says.

“Why can’t we go to the Super 8?” Angel says.

Coy Hawkins looks at his phone.

“I thought we were never coming back here,” Angel says.

“Run to the store, get me a pack of cigarettes,” Coy Hawkins says.

“Can I go, too?” Nikki says.

Coy Hawkins glances at her.

“Hurry up,” he says.

Nikki teeters in the high heels. They’re not as shiny as Angel’s pair but they don’t stink either. Nikki has to bend her knees and cross her arms over her chest. Angel stops at the edge of the service road.

In a minute Nikki catches up. Tractor-trailers shudder their hair.

“Run when I say to,” Angel says.

Nikki looks at her.

“No,” Nikki says.

“Run.”

Nikki sprints behind Angel across two lanes of traffic. They pause in the middle. Then two more lanes. A few times Nikki closes her eyes. On the other side she almost pukes.

“Come on,” Angel says.

They walk through parking lots, one bleeding into the next. Some of the drivers honk and Nikki looks but Angel just ignores them.

“Where did you meet him?”

“What?”

“Coy Hawkins.”

Angel turns around. She walks backward into the gas station’s pool of light.

“Online,” Angel says.

Inside they turn the sunglasses display. Men watch them. Nikki crosses her arms over her chest. Then she flips her hair to one side. Angel doesn’t seem to care.

At the register Angel shows a strange girl’s license.

“Kool Kings in a hard box,” she says.

She puts a roll of bubble gum next to Coy Hawkins’s cigarettes.

“You’re fifty cents short,” the register man says.

Angel pats her dress like it could hide anything. She cocks one hip into the counter.

“I don’t got it,” she says.

“You don’t got fifty cents?”

Angel shrugs. The register man sighs. He has a ponytail. He chins at the door.

Nikki teeters after her. They go through parking lots chewing gum. They pull down stolen sunglasses from the tops of their heads.

“You used to be so quiet.”

“What?” Angel says.

“You never talked.”

“I’m like three years older than you.”

“Two years,” Nikki says.

At the edge of the service road Angel grabs Nikki’s hand. Angel’s hand is hot. Nikki is freezing.

“Run,” Angel says.

Tractor-trailer horns swoop their ears. Their sunglasses are streaked by flashing brights. Nikki feels giddy. She thinks the ecstasy has started.

Back in the motel lot Coy Hawkins gives Angel the key card again. He passes it through the pickup window.

“Six,” he says.

“Come on,” Angel says.

“Not her,” Coy Hawkins says.

“Why not?”

“Just you.”

Angel drops Nikki’s hand.

“You bitch,” Angel says.

“What?” Nikki says.

“I should have never gave you that roll.”

Coy Hawkins rips the sunglasses off Angel’s face. Angel dips from his hand. She stalks off across the parking lot. Nikki just stands there.

She watches Angel use the key card to open a motel room on the bottom floor. It has pleated curtains. It has a
6
painted on the cinder block wall outside the door. Nikki puts her hand on the windowsill.

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s got dates,” Coy Hawkins says.

“Dates?”

Nikki is startled when she looks at him. Coy Hawkins is wearing Angel’s sunglasses. They’re the same white plastic as hers.

“Dates?”

“Get in the truck, Nikki.”

“YOU’RE A PIMP?”

Coy Hawkins says nothing.

“Why?” Nikki says.

“I got shit to buy. Why you think anybody works?”

A man gets out of a car and knocks on Angel’s door. He’s plain looking. The room opens a sliver and he slips inside. Coy Hawkins taps his phone on the steering wheel. Nikki was not expecting this. She doesn’t know how to act.

Her knees don’t feel like they belong to her. She looks at her hands resting on them. She looks at the pickup bench between them. Something warm bursts inside her brain like it’s being eaten.

“Oh,” Nikki says.

ROLLING.
Before she didn’t get what that meant.

“IS IT BECAUSE OF THE ECONOMY?”

“What?”

“That you’re a pimp?”

Coy Hawkins laughs with his head thrown back.

“What?” Nikki says.

She laughs, too. Though she doesn’t think it’s funny.

“You used to be the biggest coke dealer in the county.”

Coy Hawkins rests his elbow on the bench seat. He looks at her.

“You were,” she says.

“Everybody’s on pills now,” Coy Hawkins says.

“So?”

“This is my new thing. This is the future.”

Nikki looks out at the motel parking lot. Her teeth are grinding.

“What?” she says.

WHEN COY HAWKINS’S PHONE VIBRATES
all of Nikki’s veins shake.

“YOU DON’T LOOK NOTHING LIKE HER.”

“Like who?”

“Your mama,” Coy Hawkins says.

“I know. I look like you.”