King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 (13 page)

  
"Aw man." "That was garbage."
Rejoinders from the crowd dissipated, their evening's entertainment coming to a disappointing end. They returned to their spaces.

  
"What's this all about?" Wayne asked.

  
"It's just… word on the street was that someone was looking to hurt Michelle." Lott directed his comments to Wayne, but kept a wary eye on King.

  
"The Pall?" Wayne asked.

  
"No. None of the usual pimp suspects. A dealer is all I know. I still don't know what she did…"

  
"I told you, I didn't do nothing," Michelle protested.

  
"But someone's pissed enough at her to put a bounty on her."

  
"Not if I have anything to say about it." King puffed his chest and put an arm around Michelle. Futile declarations, macho preening in front of Lott and Michelle as much as anything else. The words rang with iron and determination. Both King and Lott stood ready to die in her cause for all the good it did her.

 

  
A trace scent of a familiar cologne clung to the air.

  
King remembered the words he said to Lott when he found his voice again. "Every man wants to be larger than himself. He can only be if he is part of something bigger than himself."

 

Guilt had a way of gnawing at Baylon during his quiet moments. He had hurt a lot of people in the past. Not that he intentionally set out to hurt them, but just in the course of him doing his thing. Concerned only about what he wanted and felt with little regard for the feelings of others and the consequences of what he considered to be "my business". How his sometimes stupid and selfish acts altered the courses of people's, too often his friends' lives. Relationships irreparably damaged often without the luxury of making things up to folks. Fixing matters wasn't always an option: what was done was done. Sometimes you just had to carry the weight of your bad decisions and selfishness and hopefully let them shape you into a better person. Though he hoped that some of the people he had hurt in the past might have the chance to see the person he had become.

  Though the memories had a way of becoming a part of him.

  Griff sat next to him on the couch, though he didn't react. He merely angled his body more toward Dred, hoping his body language didn't betray his burgeoning fear. Not of Griff, because the dead only knew things, but more of him losing his mind.

  "You still with me, Bay?" Dred asked. "Look like you faded on me there."

  "Stress," he said, as if that covered the answer to any question Dred might have asked.

  "You need to find a way to relax. I think I can help you out there." Dred positioned his chair directly across from him. Growing more solemn, as if overtook by a darker aspect, he began speaking. "Let me tell you a story told by the old people. Among his tribe there once lived a young man, prosperous in all he did. His fields flourished enough to feed his village. His cattle numbered enough for the wealth of ten tribes. All the people knew his name. The only thing missing from his life was a good woman, someone to share his life with and give him a family. Good women, though a rare treasure, presented themselves regularly enough for a man with his wealth. He had the daughters of prominent men and nearby tribal chiefs offered up to him frequently. But none caught his heart.

  "One day, a young woman caught his eye. Of course she sprang up from where he least suspected he would find a woman: from his own village. She had grown up alongside him yet never before had he noticed her. In both beauty and intellect, she pleased him and with that, they were married. His greatest fear in allowing himself to fully love another was that she would be taken from him. And in all too soon a course, their time together was cut short as she grew sick and death claimed her.

  "The young man became obsessed with her. He went to her house, but she was not there. He slept in their bed, but it ached with her empty space. He walked the banks of the river where she fetched water and washed their clothes, but the routine of their life together left a sour taste in his mouth.

  "His family spoke to him, begged him to find a new wife, but he was not to be consoled. Love, he believed, could only be caught once. To ask for it a second time was to be greedy. Nor did he wish to let go of the love he had. Sitting in his house refusing to come out, his heart was no longer among the living. His friends had another woman brought to his house. They pleaded with him to take her, to end his solitary and dreary existence. 'The past is done away with and you can't return to it. Let the dead stay with the dead and the living with the living. Love remains in the heart.'

  "There was truth in their words, the young man recognized, but the time to let go, to give up, had not yet arrived. He examined his fields and cattle and declared them worthless and left his world behind. He walked until he could walk no further, finding himself in a strange land among a strange people. There he built for himself a house. But still he was not ready to return to living.

  "After another sleepless night, he decided better to go to the Land of the Dead. Again he marched, this time until he reached a place of total darkness. The shadow chilled him to his very core. He forgot what the heat of the sun as he strode his fields felt like on his back. But he kept walking. Passing through it, he came to a river and stopped. No birds sang out. No voices of man whispered among the trees. No animal disturbed the grass. A crone of a woman sat on the bank, a straw hat low on her face.

  "'Why are you here?'

  "'I've come to see my wife. Life has nothing left to offer me without her.'

  "'You are not a soul. A living man cannot cross.'

  "'Then I will wait until I die.'

  "'Death won't come for you. You are cursed. All love that enters your life will die. However, because of your suffering, I will allow you to cross for a moment.'

  "The crone pointed to the water and it became shallow. The young man crossed without turning around. Whispers came to him like a gentle breeze, the spirit of her an unseen dancer. The brush of lips against his neck. The embrace of the wind. In his heart, he held a song, the song of her, and then fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, he was among his people once more. He reclaimed his cattle and his fields. He began to work because work was all he knew. And then he called upon his friends for he found a life again. That was the way the old people told the story."

  "I don't get what you're saying."

  "Life is hard, but this is all there is. Bitches die and sometimes you need your boys to see you through. Now you get your head straightened out, your mind back in the game, and then go back to work."

  Wheeling himself backward, not breaking his eyeline with Baylon, Dred stopped at his side door. He knocked three times and crossed his arms, waiting with a self-satisfied grin. A woman opened the door and posed in the entrance way, wrapped inside a long trenchcoat. From the judicious way she held the coat, she obviously wore nothing underneath it.

  "She's straight-up jump-off, ready whenever you call and has no problem with whatever freaky shit you can imagine. Ain't that right, baby?" Dred ran his hand down her leg.

  "You should know."

  Dred left the two of them alone in his office for some privacy. Baylon shoved everything from the desk. She spread herself on it obligingly. Determined to lose himself in her, he dropped his pants and climbed on top of her.

  And thought of Michelle.

 

  
"You vouch for him?" Dred was new on the scene. No one knew much about him. He had a way of being in the right place at the right time and assembled an efficient crew which allowed him to remain in the shadows. All anyone needed to know was that he had the right connect. His stuff was always on point. His cheap prices allowed him to carve out a huge swath of territory quickly, and no one questioned his main two enforcers, Night and Green.

  
"He's my boy." After the incident with Michelle, Griff was the only one who came around Baylon and he never forgot that. Not that his other friends set out to shun him; they just suddenly came up busy and involved in their own lives. Some afraid of what folks might say about them should they roll through. Griff didn't give a fuck about what anyone thought.

  
"He don't look like he played no football." Night was a hood rat through and through. He grew up in the Phoenix Apartments, from back when it was called the Meadows. It was all he knew. As soon as he got a little money, he moved his mom out to Allisonville, but he stayed at the Phoenix as if some invisible cord tethered him. Word on the vine told of Green practically raising the ambitious young thug before passing the crown onto him. Though no one understood why Green didn't simply rule himself.

  
"Did so. For Northwest," Griff said with the sting of injured pride.

  
"
Shit
. I thought you said he played high school ball. The only thing Northwest knows how to do is lose."

  
"Yeah, you won't hear him deny that. Other teams consider Northwest's homecoming game a home game." Baylon tried to keep the mood light. With so many brothers in a room all out to play hard, it wouldn't take but the wrong word, tone, or lingering stare to set someone off.

  
"What position you play?" Dred asked.

  
"Running back," Griff lied. He was a kicker, but they would have run him off the block for bragging about being a kicker. "What do I have to do? Shoot someone? Get beat up?"

  
"You run your mouth too much." Night's eyes bore a thousandyard stare into him.

  
"We work at a whole different level," Dred said. "You can put all that gangsta bullshit out of your head. We about real power."

  
"So he in?" Baylon asked.

  
"We'll see."

  
They walked toward Dred's black Escalade. It neared midnight, but the moon burned bright and full.

  
"What the–" A blindfold dropped over Griff's eyes. He swung his arms wildly, though Night smiled as he bucked. "Showed heart," he would say later.

  
"Be cool. You want to blow this?" Baylon whispered. Griff stopped struggling. "Once you in, you in. Ain't no backing out later."

  
The truck rumbled along, the four men riding without conversation. The sounds of traffic faded and soon the settling silence discomforted Griff enough for him to shift toward the door. His hand trailed along the hand rest to the door handle, assuring himself that he knew where it was. The car stopped. The other three doors opened and slammed shut. Furtive voices consulted one another, though Griff couldn't make out any words. Then nothing. Tense. Jackhammered heart. The sheen of uncomfortable sweat under his armpits. The door swung open and two sets of arms grabbed him and dragged him out.

  
They removed the blindfold.

  
They faced a ruined building, the stones of its wall remained as if a wrecking ball had been taken to it. At the center was a clearing where a fire raged, a series of snaps and sputters spat embers into the air. Shadowed figures took post, guarding against all intruders. Wearing a long black and purple robe, Dred threw powder into the flames. A cloud of smoke rose. The isolated puffs took form, morphing into a face which turned to Griff with a mocking gaze then dissipated.

  
Baylon escorted Griff to a small wall and sat next to Night. On the wall were scrawled a couple of names, only one of which wasn't crossed out. Rellik. Positioned in front of the wall, an oblation of food and drink on a table before a stone with a leopard pelt draped across it.

  
"The Etai Ngbe. The Leopard Stone," Baylon answered the unasked question.

  
"What is all this?" Griff asked.

  
"Call us the Egbo Society. We control the gangs, the drugs, the money. We've had our eye on you for a while and I vouched for you. We've invited you to join us."

  
"I don't remember asking."

  
"We don't ask." Baylon sounded strong and certain. Not to be questioned or denied.

  
Night wore a lowcut fade. He was one of them black brothers. Blue black. And as dark as he was, he had a darker knot above his left eyebrow in the shape of a crescent moon. Keloids ran along his big chest and huge arms, constantly itching. He rubbed lotion on them.