Where the Line Bleeds (18 page)

"Sold anything?"

CC
Naw.

Dunny pulled at him then, away from the empty court and bench
hard as a tomb, back across the park to the dirt lot to his car and the other
boys. Christophe followed to Javon's car where the boys stood in a cluster.
Skeetah and Marquise had jogged from the street to the park, and they
stood by the bumper of Javon's car with their dogs. Skeetah's was a bitch,
stocky and so white that it hurt Christophe's eyes to look at her. Marquise
knelt behind his black dog and smoothed its haunches, whispering into
its clipped ears, which he had pierced with silver bars. The dog turned and
licked his face. Javon, tall and lanky, leaned against his car, a '65 Impala
he'd had painted a variety of blues and black; it reminded Christophe of a waning sunset when the sky faded from a deeper blue to darker. Javon
laughed at Marquise's dog as Dunny walked closer. Javon was a couple
years older than Dunny; Dunny had followed him through elementary,
through junior high, and on to high school. When Christophe saw him
on his first day of first grade on the bus, he'd been shocked at Javon's pale
skin, the freckles like splattered grease across his face, and his coarse, fiery
red hair. Christophe could not understand how someone who looked
black could have such white coloring. His eyes were most unsettling: his
iris blended into his pupil so that it was all black, fathomless. He had
stared at Christophe that first day on the bus and Christophe had turned
back around in his seat and scooted closer to Joshua. Later, as Christophe
grew up and played with Javon and the other older boys in Bois Sauvage,
he stopped noticing Javon's color; now it mostly occurred to him only
when he looked in Javon's eyes.

Javon was funny, always laughing or joking about something, the
center of attention. He had a strange, predatory temper, though. Once, in
a varsity basketball game, Christophe sawJavon take offense at a whispered
comment by a white boy; Christophe had heard Javon tell Dunny later
that the boy had called him a "red-haired wigger." Christophe and Joshua
had been on the junior varsity team, but during varsity games, the coach
would let them sit on the bench with the varsity players, fetch water, and
learn plays by osmosis. Christophe had been close enough to see the white
boy lean into Javon, smack him with his chest. Javon had dropped the
ball and rushed the boy, punched him in the jaw and then fell with him to
the floor, where he straddled him and started choking him. It took both
referees to pull him off the boy. Later, they found Javon had cracked the
boy's jaw. Javon had used his intelligence, his charm, and his legendary
temper to work his way up from a petty dealer to a supplier; he was the
main carrier of cocaine in Bois Sauvage.

"I don't know why he went and did that-piercing his ears like that
and putting them bells in there. Ain't shit but a waste of money. What
if another dog rip them out in a fight? And look at him licking all over
Marquise. Damn dog look gay." Javon laughed. Next to him, Bone passed
Remy a black and mild cigar. Remy put the cigar in his mouth and inhaled
as he pulled his long, bleached dreadlocks away and tied them into a knot
at the back of his neck. The smoke curled around his face like a veil.

"Guess he thought it was cute."

Bone coughed a laugh of smoke. Christophe twitched a nervous
smile.

"Y'all better stop talking about my dog." Marquise stood. He was as
short and small as his dog was large and wide, and skinnier than Skeetah,
which Christophe thought was hardly possible. Marquise loved fighting
dogs. He worked at Wal-Mart as a stock boy and had saved up to get his
canines capped in gold. He grinned wide and they showed. "He love dark
meat."

"I guess he won't be coming over here and fucking with me, then."
Javon laughed again, and the gold fronts across his upper teeth gleamed.
Marquise pulled at his dog's leash and began to call commands to the dog.
It began to do tricks; it jumped as high as Marquise's collarbone and spun
like a top in the air.

"Christophe the boy with that fire now. If anybody come to you for
dimes and dubs, he got it," Dunny whispered.

"You putting him on?" Javon asked.

"Gotta take care of my cousin."

"For sure."

Christophe felt those black eyes on him, and he stared studiously at
the dog and fingered the bags in his pockets. "I heard the other one got a
job down at the pier. Joshua. They make good money down there."

"Yeah." Dunny replied.

Christophe glanced at Javon, at the sunlight glancing off his face: his
stubble glittered.

"I ain't seen him around much."

"He started working today."

"Seen they daddy, though."

Christophe tried to look disinterested. It was as if someone had dusted
Javon's cheeks with chili powder.

"Sandman?"

"Yeah."

"So... ?"

"Yeah, just so he know." Javon turned to the group. "Y'all niggas want
to play a game? It's cool, I understand if y'all don't. I'd be scared if I had
to play against me, too."

"All you do is talk shit. Ain't nobody scared of you, Mutumbo,"
Marquise said.

"Alright, Minute Bowl."

The other boys laughed. Christophe spit and scraped his shoe
and spread it into a silvery smear. It looked like a long, glittery,
serpentine fish.

"I got a ball in my car," said Dunny.

"Let's go," Javon said.

The boys set off across the grassy field to the court. Christophe waited
at Dunny's car while Dunny rooted in the trunk for the ball, which he
tucked under his arm like a football. He motioned to Christophe with
his head and they followed in Javon, Marquise, Remy, Skeetah, and
Bone's wake.

"I heard...."

"I know he's back."

"Javon say...."

"Doing the same old shit."

Christophe punched the back of the ball so it flew from Dunny's
grasp. It sailed into the golden afternoon air and landed in the weedy
grass. Christophe scooped up the ball and dribbled it so hard that it
actually bounced back into his hand. He sprinted toward the court and
slid onto the concrete. He dribbled through his legs once, spun like a
tornado, leapt, and dunked the ball with a loud clang. The rim rang like
a tuning fork, and quivered.

Joshua woke and was disoriented, and only the sound of Ma-mee
laughing and the absence of the rooster crowing confirmed that the sun
was setting instead of rising. Ma-mee's voice rang from the living room; at
first he thought she was talking to someone, that some older man was in
the house, but then he shook his head and realized it was the TV. He rose
and brushed his teeth again, and slipped on some old basketball shorts.
He hadn't seen Christophe since the car ride home, but the evening was
cooler than the previous one had been, and he could guess where his
brother was. He set out walking towards the court. Light dabbled through
the trees, fading and dull; the touch of it on his skin through the leaves was a weak, half-hearted thing, but still it stung, and made him realize
that he was sunburned from his first day of work. He heard voices at the
basketball court.

It looked as if Christophe was winning. Joshua stopped at the aging,
wood-curled bleachers and sat down. They were empty. Remy sat on the
other side of the court on one of the stone benches, a blunt in his mouth.
Christophe was tearing across the court, using all the advantage of his
smaller build, his short, wiry muscles, his athleticism, to punish the other
boys. His voice rang out as he threw a perfect jumper. It flew in a short,
quick arc, faster and more clipped than his usual shot, and rebounded off
the backboard and through the net.

"Nineteen."

They were playing to twenty-one. Joshua wanted to speak to his
brother in their own language.

"I got next."

Joshua saw Dunny nod, so he rose and took off his T-shirt. His
muscles groaned in his arms. He ignored them. Christophe scored his last
three points while Joshua stretched his back and walked off the ache in his
thighs. His brother's winning shots were violent; they ripped through the
air with more speed and power than usual. Christophe called endgame
and stood there with his hands on his waist and his head down, breathing
hard through his nose and his mouth; sweat rolled down his forehead
and flew from his lips to hit the ground like spittle. The other boys ran to
the water spigot the church had installed at the edge of the bleachers and
drank. Joshua walked toward his brother as the others wandered back to
the court slowly.

"Three on three. Me, Joshua, and Dunny against Marquise, Javon,
and Bone. We play to twenty-one," said Christophe.

"Take the ball out, nigga." Dunny threw the ball at Christophe and
Christophe caught it with the tips of his fingers.

"Alright." Christophe stepped off the court into the grass and eyed
the boys. Marquise jumped and waved his hands in front of him, looking
like an overexcited, anxious squirrel. Bone hit Joshua hard with his
shoulder. Joshua glanced over to see Dunny almost wrestling with Javon
to get in position. Christophe slapped the ball with one hand and raised it over his head and Joshua looked at his brother. Christophe was staring
at him, really seeing him for the first time since the phone call, it seemed,
and Joshua felt his stomach lurch. They were talking again. Christophe
bought the ball cleanly across his chest, looked to Dunny, and then let
the ball fly to Joshua. Bone stumbled; Joshua knew he had forgotten such
a big boy could move so quickly. Joshua went in for a lay-up and scored.
Bone grabbed the rebound and passed it to Christophe and mumbled,
"Your ball."

For the next thirty minutes, the twins talked to each other for the first
time in days, even if they only opened their mouths to grunt, to bare their
teeth, and to emit forceful breaths like expletives when they suddenly
stopped to shoot, to spin, to score. Joshua played with a small, tremulous
smile on his face. He set the picks for Christophe. Christophe fired
nasty, quick passes to him under the basket. This was their conversation.
Christophe's frown grew more severe as he played; it cut into his face,
pulled the edges of his mouth down. He played well. Christophe spoke
to Joshua in three pointers. Joshua answered with soft nods: brisk lay-ups
on the inside.

Christophe lobbed the ball at Joshua, who stepped to his right, shook
Bone, and scored. No one spoke. Joshua knew that he and his brother were
speaking over each other in the wordless speech of twins, that they were
talking so quickly their play was becoming blurry and indistinct, slippery
and unknowable: it was a foreign language. Javon pulled his shirt over his
head and threw it into the grass. He was good; he was almost as fast as
Christophe, and Dunny seemed too slow to guard him. He was scoring
most of the other team's points. Marquise stole the ball from Christophe
and made a hasty, high lay-up that verged on a dunk. He hung from
the rim slinky as a dangling bead. Still, Christophe led them, grim and
determined, and as Dunny yelled out the score, Joshua realized they were
leading by three: 19-16. The last two points were harder to make; Dunny
pulled something in his knee when he came down from making a shot, so
they had to wait for him to stretch it out. When Dunny walked back on
the court, he was even slower, but this just seemed to make Christophe
better. The ball ricocheted between the twins like a pinball. Christophe
faked a lay-up and passed the ball to Joshua, who scored. Christophe took the ball out and passed it to Joshua, who passed it back to his brother,
hard, and Christophe sank a fade-away. He called, "Game."

Joshua bent over, and he inhaled and it sounded like he was sobbing:
the breath dragging through his throat. Christophe was standing under
the goal, his head down, so all that Joshua could see was the intricate
line of his braids, his dark, slick neck. At the spigot, the others drank
and walked away in a joking clump back through the brothers, across the
court to Remy on his stone bench. Joshua heard Javon over the others.

"Shit, after that workout that little nigga gave us, I need to smoke."

Remy sent out a sputter of blue smoke in the air and coughed, "Good
game." Joshua joined his brother at the spigot. Christophe turned the
handle so it emitted a warm, sulfurous stream. He slurped at the water.
He was more winded and tired than Joshua thought. Christophe's back
undulated with his drinking. He dunked his head beneath the flow and
stood, and the water ran down his forehead and face in a deluge. Joshua
wanted to wipe it away; it bothered him, it reminded him of the veil of
blood on the big Jesus statue hanging from the cross in the St. Salvador
Catholic church that had always scared him when they were younger and
attended mass with Ma-mee. Joshua knelt to drink as his brother had;
Christophe sank down the fence. Joshua made himself stop drinking even
though he wanted to continue, and lowered himself into the grass next to
Christophe and looked over his head. Weed smoke wafted to him from
across the court.

"So, you seen him today?"

"Naw. I only came down here about an hour ago and ran into
Dunny."

"What you think you going to do when you see him?" Joshua was
tentatively pleased that the conversation was continuing beyond the court.
Even though he was angry about his brother leaving him in the car, the
way he made him feel responsible for the phone call he didn't get, it was
good to be sitting in the grass next to his brother. Christophe sighed.

"He ain't never been nothing to us, and he ain't never going to be
nothing to us." Christophe said. "Don't matter what he say. I'll ignore
him just like he been ignoring us all these years-say the least I gotta say,
I guess."

"You'll probably see him before I do."

"I know."

The water was running downhill from where Christophe sat and was
pooling around Joshua's shoes in the grass. "About last night..."