Get Some (19 page)

Ray Ray ran to the Volkswagen but couldn't get past the fire. He looked down the highway and saw a trail of approaching lights. The ambulance roared. The police sirens grew louder.

You could see Lil Steve struggling wildly with the driver's door. He was screaming and mouthing the word “help.” Ray Ray ran into the fire. Ran straight through the flames but he couldn't open the Bug's smashed-in door. Lil Steve was frantic. He couldn't get out. His horrible screams didn't sound human. He was trying to open the door with one hand. The other clutched the cocaine and money.

Trudy yelled out, “Hurry up, Ray Ray! The police are almost here!”

The sirens grew louder. You could see the cars now. In a moment they would be at the scene.

Ray Ray struggled and pulled, but the front door was stuck. He ran from the flames. His clothing was scorched. He bent down and put both his hands on his knees. He struggled to catch his own breath. When he darted through the flames again he just came back choking.

“Ray Ray, come on!” Trudy said, worried about the fire. “Get away from there. It could explode!”

But he couldn't leave his friend burning up like that. He ran back but this time went to the passenger's side and pulled the door open wide.

Ray Ray noticed an oily trail leaking out from the tank. It was headed for the hungry red flames. Ray Ray was coughing hysterically now. The smoke fumes had ripped through his lungs. Lil Steve was passed out. The carbon monoxide got him. But Ray Ray was determined. He wanted to save his friend. So as the fire burned his skin, Ray Ray went all the way in and yanked Lil Steve away from the car.

He dragged Lil Steve away from the flames. Lil Steve's left leg was smoking and charred. One shoe was gone. His foot was burnt black. His pants leg had melted into his skin. Ray Ray started to drag Lil Steve farther out, but Lil Steve screamed out in pain.

“Leave him,” Trudy said.

Ray Ray flashed her cold eyes.

“No, Ray Ray, look, you don't understand. If we take him with us he'll never survive the trip. We got two solid hours before we hit Vegas. If the ambulance takes him he still has a chance. But we gotta go now!”

Ray Ray and Trudy raced to Tony's black Caddy. Ray Ray revved the V8 and floored the gas pedal hard. In a second the cops had circled the scene. Trudy and Ray Ray were less than eighty feet away. But Ray Ray kept the lights off. Luckily the Caddy was black and there was a whole lot of smoke. It was easy to fade into the night.

Ray Ray looked in his rearviews at the wild flaming sky. The paramedics put Lil Steve on a stretcher.

Suddenly the Volkswagen blew up like a bomb. Shards of hot metal shot toward the sky. A fireball rose from the ground.

“Dayam,” Ray Ray said looking at the flames. Trudy looked back and then fell against his shoulder. She felt like a wet sack of dirt.

Trudy's eyes followed the smoke to the sky.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This whole thing's my fault.”

Ray Ray touched her cheek. He gently rubbed her back.

Trudy wept in her hands. She couldn't look again. Hot tears raced down from her eyes. That life was over. She couldn't go home again. But now she had no reason to keep going ahead.

Ray Ray wiped her face with the hem of his shirt.

His own eyes trailed down the dark two-way road. His brain went a million miles per hour.

They drove in cold silence for over two hours. Trudy couldn't look at Ray Ray. She just felt too bad, so she kept her head tilted toward her window instead. She only looked at Ray Ray in her peripheral vision. He was gripping the steering wheel tight.

Trudy couldn't take the silence and finally faced him full on. She wrung both her hands in her lap. “Ray Ray, I swear, I was telling the truth.”

Ray Ray didn't speak. He kept looking straight ahead. Then he swerved the car over into the right lane and rolled into a rest area. He kept holding the wheel, staring straight at the trees. Finally Ray Ray turned to her and spoke.

“Listen. Prison gave me a whole lot of time to reflect. I knew Lil Steve worked something but I never was sure. That's what made doing my time seem so hard. Lil Steve was my boy. Me and him always been friends. We been hanging out in the streets since day one. When my brother died, Lil Steve was the only one I had left. I didn't want to fuck that shit up.”

“I'm the one who fucked everything up,” Trudy said. “I created all this mess and we still don't have jack.” Trudy covered her face and just bawled.

Ray Ray pulled a stuffed pillowcase out from the backseat. He placed the large sack in her lap. There was stack after stack of thick wads of hundreds, wad after wad of fifties and twenties, all held by fat rubber bands.

“Where'd you get all this? This is not from the bank.” Trudy stared at the cash in complete disbelief.

Ray Ray didn't say this money came from Tony. He shifted the Caddy from Park and the tires ate the gravel. But he stopped before swinging the car back to the highway and pressing his foot on the gas.

“This is Ray Ray, remember. I still got skills, baby.” Ray Ray smiled, letting his eyes leave the road for a moment. He rubbed his cross and tooled the car toward the bright Vegas lights. “But I'm ready to go legit, if you let me.”

Ray Ray grabbed Trudy's body and squeezed her firm skin. He held her like he'd wanted to hold her for years. He kissed her long and hard, smothering her face and neck, tears brimming inside his eyes. His sincerity shocked her. She'd never felt so alive. She kissed Ray Ray like she had wanted to do that first night. Like there was nothing else she wanted more in life.

N
ow, most folks would have thought that after someone done shot ya, you'd never speak to their sorry ass ever in life. Not so with Charles and Flo. Soon as he got better he was back at the house. Screaming and fussing right where they left off. Cussing and saying stuff like “I never touched her.” And Flo screaming back that she saw him. Round and around. Over and over. Oh, those fools fussed, cried and carried on so. Breaking things. Ripping stuff up like old sheets. Taking some of them fights to the street! But they stayed together. Never busted up. Bandages, bad feeling and all. Charles spent most of his time looking out of the window, wondering if one day she might show.

People talked about Trudy like she was some kind of legend. Gangbangers tagged the city with Ray Ray's face and name. Nobody they knew ever robbed them a bank. Or ever left a drug dealer to die in the desert. Beauty shops yakked, men in bars wondered. Folks who never spoke kindly to Trudy in life said that she was their very dear friend. Vernita was the only one who knew the whole truth. But she didn't see many of those folks anymore since she opened her new salon in Oakland.

Lil Steve lied to anyone who gave him a listen. He lost the use of his leg and was in a wheelchair now. Told everyone he saw that he'd thought of it all. That the bank plan was his invention. But most folks shook their heads and kept walking past. Only crackheads and drunks paid him any attention. If he was the big mastermind of it all, why did he live in that smelly flophouse up the block? Pearl would watch him outside from Dee's Parlor sometimes, his one leg just as thin as a golf club. Sometimes he came in for a short stack or coffee and Pearl never charged him a dime. Dee's Parlor was a maple-smelling breakfast place now. Miss Dee lived there again and Pearl helped her run it, and at two ninety-nine for pancakes, grits and eggs, they were packed every day of the week. They even delivered food to shut-ins, like Ray Ray's mother, who now lived in a roomy apartment in View Park. Joan came once, turned her nose up at the place, then disappeared for a few weeks. She didn't answer her phone, didn't come out of the house and never told a soul that Mr. Hall left her. You just didn't see Joan around anymore. Pearl walked on over one day. Joan's Mercedes was there but when she called out her name, nobody came to the door, so she jimmied the lock and went in. She found Joan facedown with the oven turned on. Her bun was undone and her gray had grown out. She died with her face on the rack. She was clutching a tiny white sheet in her hand. It was a large Western Union check from Trudy.

See, a Western Union man showed up out of the blue once. He handed out checks to Pearl and Vernita. There was no return address or mention from whom.

Nobody, not one soul in the bucket of blood town ever heard from Trudy or Ray Ray again.

It's funny how you can want something so bad you can taste it. In your brain you can feel the thing touching your hand. Like if you don't get it now your whole arm might fall off. You can stretch but it always seems to keep out of reach. But wanting is like gnawing away at a flea or a howling dog scratching away at the screen. Sooner or later it just don't itch as much, or you just go someplace and lay down. And the next thing you know, a few months will go by and that feeling, that hot need, is a memory now and all of that wanting is gone.

Flo sat on the couch and quietly rolled up her hair, while their small baby napped on her thighs. Charles walked to the sink and drank his cold beer alone. It was March and already feeling like summer. Charles stared out the window a really long time. His eyes never left the hot scene beyond the screen. He scratched at his neck while swallowing slow. He licked his chapped lips and grinned toward the glass, as the big-legged girl across the street mowed her lawn.

The most lethal ride-or-die women in Memphis now run their gangs and the streets. But the aftermath of an all-out war means merciless new enemies, time-bomb secrets . . . and one chance to take it all . . .

Available September 2014 wherever books and ebooks are sold.