Young God: A Novel (9 page)

Nikki shrieks, too, much louder than the little girl until the little girl is silent and staring.

Nikki looks up. The bed sheet is open. The girl’s father is standing in the doorway to the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest.

THERE ARE NO TOYS IN THE KITCHEN.
There is a table with a lace cloth and two wooden chairs. The man sits in one and Nikki sits in the other.

“Where’s your father?” he says.

“He couldn’t come,” she says.

“Why not?”

“He’s busy.”

“So he sent you?”

Nikki shrugs. The man has his chin in his hand. He’s studying her. She studies him, too. His face is moonlike. She’s holding the book bag in her lap with her arms through the straps.

“What’s your father busy doing?”

“Busting holes in our walls with a bat.”

The man’s eyes laugh.

“I want a ki,” Nikki says.

He crosses his legs.

“How old are you?” he says.

“Sixteen,” she says.

The man smirks. Nikki shifts in her chair. It creaks.

“I was twelve when I started. But I was a boy.”

“Oh,” Nikki says.

She tries smiling at him. There is a long silence.

She feels queasy. She cuts her eyes to the bed sheet. She thinks she has fucked up. At the very least he’s going to rob her, she thinks.

He tilts his head.

“The element of surprise is a powerful thing.”

“What?” Nikki says.

The man stands in his chair. He pushes up a tile and reaches into the ceiling. A black lump of heroin falls onto the lace and Nikki nearly jumps out of her skin.

They keep coming. Some of them thud onto the floor. They keep coming until there are forty of them.

The man climbs down.

“What’s your name?” he says.

She stares at him. She thinks about what Coy Hawkins said.

“Nikki.”

“Nikki, I’m gonna tell you what I tell that crackhead father of yours. If he fucks me I’m gonna fuck you in front of him. Then I’m gonna cut him so his insides fall out. Then I’m gonna cut you so your insides fall out next to him.”

The man touches his chest.

“I’m Junior,” he says.

Junior leans back in his chair. He rubs his neck.

“Don’t speak to my daughter again.”

Nikki looks at the table. She chins at the kilo.

“How much?” she says.

SHE HARDLY NOTICES THE INTERSTATE.
She happens to glance at the gas gauge and the black arrow’s dangling below the red E like it’s broken.

“Fuck,” Nikki says.

She takes the next exit. As soon as the ramp curves she sees it’s the service road.

“Fuck,” Nikki says.

It’s so bright. She pulls into the first gas station. She walks fast through the lot and looks in every direction. It’s a different store and a different register man but still her heart’s beating out of her chest.

“What pump?”

“What?” Nikki says.

The man taps his fingers on the counter. Nikki sees her. She’s by the coffee machine. Nikki just stares.

“Angel?” Nikki says.

She feels giddy and like she might vomit. The girl tucks her hair behind her ear and her neck screams. The black letters are like a stamp on her pale skin. They look like they’re choking her.

“Angel?”

Nikki goes to her. Nikki grabs her arm. But it’s not Angel’s face that turns to her. It’s somebody else’s. Nikki lurches from it.

“What?” the girl says.

THERE’S A DEAD RAT
hanging from the trailer when she gets back. It’s strung up by a foot and tied to the doorknob. It’s skinny. It’s silky gray. Nikki rips it down.

Levi is not in the yard. He did not escort her up the hill either. She marches to the other trailer and slams the rat against the front door. Its head explodes.

“Levi,” Nikki yells.

“Nikki,” Coy Hawkins says.

She flips to him. He’s standing on their top step. He has their door wide open. He snaps at her.

“Now,” he says.

Inside the pink hole is bigger than she remembers. She stands in the middle of the living room staring at it.

“What’s that?” Coy Hawkins says.

Nikki’s holding a grocery bag. She looks at it.

“A ki,” she says.

“A ki.”

Coy Hawkins is standing in front of her.

“I went to Junior’s,” she says.

“Junior’s,” he says.

“Yeah.”

He’s really close to her face.

“Junior let you in the kitchen?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did you have to do for him?”

Nikki purses her lips. She looks at him. He looks coiled up. He looks cracked out.

“Nothing,” she says.

“You got the money from Wesley Harrell?”

Nikki shrugs. She kicks the coffee table and her boot rings.

“He’s got investors,” she says.

Coy Hawkins is rocking on his feet. He’s blocking her from the hallway. She tries to see around him. They’re the only ones here.

“Where is everybody?” she says.

“The feds give cash,” Coy Hawkins says.

Nikki looks at him.

“What?”

“They buy steak dinners, too,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“Who else you seen while you were out?”

“Nobody,” she says.

“You ain’t seen Lee Church?”

He’s trembling.

“No.”

“You ain’t seen my sister?”

“In prison?”

“You ain’t seen Robby Greer?”

“Who?”

“What do you mean who? The goddamn sheriff.”

Nikki takes a step back.

“Your story’s full of holes,” Coy Hawkins says.

She shakes her head.

“Everything’s there.”

Another step.

“You just ain’t listening,” she says.

He grabs her as soon as she starts to run. She sticks out her hand but he gets her by the hair until all she can see are his eyes, which are the blackest beads. It’s happening again, she thinks, wildly.

“You could have got yourself killed.”

“Daddy,” Nikki says.

Coy Hawkins yanks her arm the wrong way.

FOUR

SHE IS NOT DEAD.

She smells piss when she peels herself off the living room floor. Coy Hawkins is in his chair. He has a fist to his lips and he’s jittering his knee up and down.

It takes her a while to get to the door. It takes her forever to cross the yard. On the steps of the other trailer she has to squat down with the grocery bag. She sees rat brains. She pukes between her feet. Levi swings the door out.

“Look at your face,” Levi says.

“BILLIE,” Nikki says.

Levi’s grandmama is in the bedroom. She’s on the brass bed under the chintzy comforter. Nikki recognizes that. Nikki does not recognize her.

Her cheeks are hollow. Her hair is messy and white. She looks like an old woman. She’s swallowed by throw pillows.

Nikki shoves her.

“Billie.”

Her eyes are closed. They’re heavy hoods.

“She’s sick,” Levi says.

Nikki stares at her.

Back down the hall she holds on to the wall. In the living room she sees the stiff couch with the hump in its back. All this furniture is from the big house. Nikki climbs onto it on her knees. She tucks her head in a corner of it. She balls herself up.

THIS TRAILER
is a twin to the other one. Except nothing is the same. Here there are fake flowers on fake vines and branches. There are boxes, bowls, and pitchers of potpourri. There are yellow-looking doilies and frog-shaped ashtrays.

The dust sometimes looks like spiderwebs and sometimes looks like lace. It hangs from the ceiling. It trails down the walls.

Nikki reaches out and kicks Levi. He’s asleep in one of the stiff chairs that match the stiff couch. He wakes up with a terrified look on his face.

“What?” Levi says.

“Rat,” Nikki says.

“What?”

Levi rubs his eyes.

“Rat,” Nikki says.

“That wasn’t me.”

Levi gets up and changes the channel on the TV. It’s also rabbit-eared. It’s even smaller than Coy Hawkins’s.

Nikki tries to get up, too. Her face feels like it’s going to separate. She lets her head drop back on the couch.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she says.

“What?”

She closes her eyes.

“Your grandmama, she don’t go out no more?” Nikki says.

“Nope,” Levi says.

She looks at him. He’s in the chair again. He pulls his knees up to his chest.

“Who brings your food?”

“Some church.”

Nikki rolls her eyes.

“They think dinosaurs and men lived at the same time.”

“What?” Nikki says.

“They think we rode dinosaurs.”

Nikki smirks.

“They do,” he says.

Levi grins, too. He stares at her.

“She’s got pain pills, don’t she?” Nikki says.

Levi shrugs.

“She’s got lollipops,” he says.

“Do what?”

“Fentanyl or something. You suck on it.”

He sniffs the air.

“You stink,” he says.

SHE SCOWLS AT HER FACE.
One cheek is puffy. One eye is filled with blood. Her lip is split and her nails are ruined.

They’re in a box under the sink. They’re plastic sticks. They look like tiny barbells and they taste like blueberry.

In the bathroom mirror Nikki shifts the lollipop from the right side of her mouth to the left.

HER SKIN IS LEAD.
Her eyelids are tombstones. Her lungs are so slow. Nikki falls asleep in the shower and wakes up freezing. She sees purple mold everywhere. Fuck, Nikki thinks.

SHE CRAWLS UP
on the brass bed.

“He did it again,” she says.

Billie says nothing.

“He hit me. He fucked up my face.”

Billie doesn’t answer. In the mirrored closet Nikki sees herself.

“He’s my daddy,” Nikki says.

She starts to disappear. She panics and turns away.

“There’s money buried up the deer cut,” she says.

Nikki struggles to look at Billie. Her eyes are open but she can’t see a thing. Now the whole world is black. She touches bone. An arm, she thinks. She tries to tunnel under it.

“Why did you keep him and not me? Why did Levi get to stay?”

Nikki’s hand drops into nothing.

THEY WEAR BANDANNAS
like bandits. Her and him. She is much smaller. She is five years old. They are sitting at either end of the table in the big-house kitchen and only their eyes show. On the floor in two pink piles are their insides.

Nikki jolts awake.

BILLIE MOVES HER MOUTH
like she’s chewing something and then she stops. Nikki glares. She throws off the chintzy comforter and sits up.

She stops in the hall and looks at a picture of Crystal hung on the wall. She’s holding a baby Levi on her knee. It’s one of those Walmart portraits and they’re both wearing white. She looks pissed off, Nikki thinks.

The kitchen has pots and pans nailed to the wall. Even the skillet’s hanging up like it never gets touched. Levi’s eating dry Ramen.

“You want some noodles?” he says.

“No,” Nikki says.

“Why you always carrying that bag around?”

Levi takes a bite of the squiggly block and nods at her hands. Nikki looks at the grocery bag.

“Because it’s a ki of heroin.”

He stares at her.

“You’re holding it for your daddy?”

“No,” Nikki says.

From where she stands she can see down the hallway to the bedroom. She can see across the living room to the front door. She stares at the blinds.

Before she leaves she goes in the bathroom and snags a few lollipops from the box under the sink.

“Where are you going?” Levi says.

She trudges through the yard.

COY HAWKINS
is a facedown
X
on the bed. She thinks he is only pretending to be asleep. He would have felt her watching by now.

But when he grabs Nikki’s leg she jumps.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

THEY’RE WATCHING TV TOGETHER.

“What day is it?” Coy Hawkins says.

“I have no idea,” Nikki says.

“Ain’t school start soon?”

“School?”

Nikki looks at him.

“I ain’t going back to school,” she says.

“Yes, you are,” Coy Hawkins says.

Nikki shakes her head.

“I got work to do.”

Coy Hawkins shakes his head.

“That’s over,” he says.

He chins at the kitchen.

“Run get me a beer.”

She stares at him in disbelief. He’s covered the hole behind him. He’s cut open a trash bag and taped it to the wall like she’s just supposed to forget. One of his legs is hung over the side of his chair. He lifts it slightly.

“Please,” he says.

She stands up from the couch and notices she is shaking.

IN THE SHED
behind the big house there’s a shovel.

She lugs it through the yard until the grass is waist-high. She swings it at giant weeds.

Up the deer cut, wherever there is dirt instead of rock, she slams it in. She gets down and digs with her hands. She finds earthworms and lighters and the broken-off necks of beer bottles.

At the very top of the hill all the smaller hills ripple out. They are green in the sun. They wink like they’re laughing at her. She looks down at the ledge. The bloodstain’s to the left. It hasn’t rained once, she thinks.

There’s that plywood loose on the back window of the big house. The glass is gone and she just climbs over the sill. She waits for eyes to adjust. She knows she’s in the kitchen. Her kitchen from back then.

It’s stripped. In the walls there are long gashes where the wiring was. Where the pipes were there are huge holes. She turns around in a circle and looks at it.

The hall creaks horribly. Her boots roll. She trips over bullet shells. The floor is covered in them. The whole place is stale with gunpowder. The stairs are gone. So is most of the second story’s floor. She looks up and where her bedroom used to be there is only air.