Where the Line Bleeds (19 page)

The crickets were waking in the woods rimming the park, seeking
each other out. Joshua did not know how to continue, so he paused.

"What about last night?" Christophe began ripping up small bunches
of grass and throwing them in the puddle. He watched his hands.

"About what you said... or what you didn't ...I mean, what you
meant." Joshua trailed off. "What you said you was going to do."

Christophe crossed his arms over his legs and looked off into the
distance. "I done started already."

Joshua pushed his fingers into the earth. He tried to think of something
to say, but his mind was a blank. The question, "What do I say?" echoed
through his skull.

"It's just weed, Joshua. Not crack." Christophe said. "I'm not selling
crack, Joshua." Christophe whispered this.

"You going to keep looking." Joshua said it like a statement, but both
he and his brother knew it was a question.

"Yeah." Christophe gripped his calves. "I shouldn't've done that; now
I'm going to be itching."

"I can keep a eye out down at the dock." Joshua said. He didn't
want to rub his job in his brother's face, but there was always the chance
that something else would open up. According to Leo, people got into
accidents all the time. Anything was possible. He watched Christophe
nod slowly and rest his chin on his forearms.

"I'll find something," he muttered.

On the bench across the court, Remy passed the blunt to Dunny.
Marquise was scissoring his arms back and forth in the air as if he was
weaving on an invisible loom; he was telling them a story, maniacally.
Javon and Bone rubbed shoulders and laughed. Above Joshua's head,
something buzzed and popped, and he looked up to see the court lights
had switched on. The wind pushed at Joshua. Christophe had buried his
face in his knees; he was curled into a damp ball. Joshua wanted to brush
away the conversation like a gnat.

"So, what's up for tonight?"

"Ain't shit as far as I know." Christophe's voice was muffled. "You
know how we do, though." A grasshopper sounded loudly behind Joshua,
seemingly from underneath him, and Christophe raised his head in
slow alarm.

"We'll find something," Joshua said quietly.

Christophe blinked, and Joshua bared his teeth.

Skeetah was standing in front of Christophe, and he was asking him
for something. Dunny had handed Christophe a beer around fifteen
minutes ago. Christophe had been thirsty and the beer had been cold and
biting; he had downed it in gulps. Now, the beer was lapping at him with
many tongues and he was sitting in the passenger seat of Dunny's car and
his twin was sitting on the hood of the car looking at him through the
front windshield and Skeetah was before him asking for a dime sack with
a handful of crumpled bills held out in his hand. Yes, they had found
something to get into. Christophe set the can on the ground and kicked
it so hard it skidded away and rolled along like a bowling ball pin. The
cicadas were all in heat, all screaming it seemed, all buzzing along with
the beer through his veins.

"You got it, right? A dime sack. Dunny told me to come to you."

Cigarette lighters and interior lights and lightning bugs lit the dark;
they were on one of the many dead-end roads in Bois Sauvage. This one,
like many of the others, had no streetlights, and wasn't ringed by houses
or yards, but by pines and undergrowth and was unpaved. Christophe
swore he could see the Milky Way.

"Yeah, I have it."

Christophe looked at his brother. Joshua was trying not to stare at
him. He could tell by the way Joshua sat slumped over the hood of the
car, by the way he was half turned, as if he was on the verge of sliding
off and walking around the door to his brother. Christophe glanced at
Skeetah and away again to his Joshua, and had the sure feeling that when
he looked at his brother, his brother would look away. Skeetah wanted
his dope.

"Well, here; here it is." Skeetah held out a handful of bills to
Christophe. Even in the weak light coming from the ceiling bulb in the Cutlass, Christophe could see they were torn at the edges and fuzzy with
wear; worn from hoarding. Christophe put both hands in his pockets,
one lined with lint, and the other bulging with a green egg. He worked
his finger around the tie in the bag and pulled out one of the dime sacks;
the weed felt like a nest in his palm. He pulled it out and held it in front
of him inches away from Skeetah's hand.

"Alright, then." Skeetah grabbed the sack and gave Christophe his
money. "Thanks, cuz." Where his hand touched Christophe's, Christophe
felt pads of thickened skin calloused from the constant rubbing of leather
dog leashes. The dollars were sturdier than they looked; they were hot
from Skeetah's pocket and coarse and durable and real in his hand and
he realized this was the first money he'd received in over a month. He
took the money The bulge of the weed and the bills, crumpled into a ball
as they were, scratched at him through the thin film of his pockets. He
crossed his arms and rocked back in the seat and laughed.

Joshua woke the next morning before his brother; his stomach was
hurting. He had watched Skeetah round the car, slip a cigarillo out of
his pocket, juggle a dimesack in his other hand, and bend over the hood.
Joshua had gripped the beer can in his hand and over the give of the
crackling metal, he had glanced over and saw his brother laughing with
his head thrown back and his eyes shut in the car. His face seemed frozen
in a grimace, and if Joshua hadn't heard the laugh, he would have thought
his brother was in pain. Joshua's beer was salty and warm as blood. He and
Christophe had stumbled into the house ringed by the rustling slithering
call of cicadas. They supported each other mutely, drunk. Christophe's
grip on Joshua's shoulder had hurt him. The way he'd laughed after he'd
sold the sack, like it was easy and good, hurt him.

They had kicked off their shoes, peeled off their T-shirts and shorts,
and fallen into bed. In the morning light, Joshua saw that Christophe had
kicked his sheet to the floor in the middle of the night. Joshua wanted to
go back to sleep, but he had to pee. He picked the sheet up from the floor
and laid it on the bed next to his brother, his face turned away from Joshua
and into the pillow. Joshua gathered dirty clothes from the floor. In the
bathroom, the hamper was overflowing. He could not hear Ma-mee in
the house. He sorted the clothes, making three mountains of them, and when he was done, he dumped the whites into the washing machine on
the back porch off the kitchen. Everything smelled of sweat and alcohol.
On the front of the magnet-freckled refrigerator, a note greeted him in
round, fat handwriting that he recognized as Aunt Rita's: Took Ma-mee
to the grocery store with me this morning. Will be back later this afternoon.
Love Aunt Rita. Joshua began to go through the pockets of the darker
clothes, picking out bits of forgotten items like ticks. He would check to
see if Ma-mee needed him to make more cornbread for the leftover red
beans; he'd eaten half the pan the day before. Joshua pulled a wadded
piece of paper from some of Christophe's shorts; it was an old, watersmeared receipt with an illegible name and a phone number scrawled
across the back. Joshua set it beside him on the sofa. He would probably
need to make more rice, too. Uncle Paul always ate all the rice. He reached
into another pair of pants and pulled out a small wad of bills; they were
Christophe's pants from the night before. From the other pocket, Joshua
pulled out a sandwich bag; it was a dub sack. Joshua wondered what
would happen if he didn't cover this time, didn't shove the money and
weed under Christophe's pillow, when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Joshua." The woman cleared her throat.

"Yeah?" He squeezed the sack.

"It's Cille." His recognition of her voice slammed into place in his
chest. How long had it been since he had talked to her?

"Hey, Cille."

"Is Ma-mee there?"

"Naw, she not here right now. She went with Aunt Rita to the grocery
store."

"Do you know when she'll be back?"

"I was 'sleep when she left this morning." The phone was slippery.

"Well ...I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your graduation. I couldn't
get the time off." Cille's voice was different from Aunt Rita's. Deeper. He
didn't know how to respond to her apology, so he gave her the answer he
thought she wanted.

"It's alright."

"No, it's not alright. I'm sorry."

"Okay." He felt like she was waiting for him to say more. What else
could he say? He accidentally kicked the pile of shirts and pants. Her
clothes always smelled of perfume. He remembered that.

"So, what have y'all been up to?" What did she care? Did she care?

"I got a job down at the pier."

"So, the car coming in handy, huh?"

"Yeah." He should be more grateful. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. How you like your job?"

"It's alright. It's work."

"It's always work, no matter what kind of job you do."

"I didn't mean it that way." He breathed hard into the receiver. "I'm
just happy I got a job."

"Well, me too. What about Christophe?"

"He ain't got one yet." Joshua clenched the baggie of weed and cash.
"He working on it, though."

"Yeah, I'm sure he is. So, that mean y'all doing alright as far as money
go, right?"

"Yeah." His answer was automatic. He would never ask for it. They
had never asked for it.

"Well, that's good." He heard her pull the phone away from her
mouth to murmur to someone else. He wondered where she was; whether
she was at her apartment or on her cell phone out at the store or in her
car. It was a quiet whisper, and it seemed intimate. "So, I was calling to
talk to Ma-mee to tell her that I was thinking about coming down to visit
in a month or so. We got a three-day weekend coming up, and I thought
it would be nice to come down and see y'all."

"Okay." She sighed into the phone; it sounded like a hurricane in his
ear. He pulled the phone away and barely heard her voice when he pressed
the phone back.

"They got a blues festival that weekend, too, in New Orleans, and I
thought...."

"Oh." He almost wished he hadn't pressed it back so quickly.

"So, just let her know when she come home, okay? Tell her I'll call
her in about a week."

"No problem." She made a small noise in her throat; she wanted to
get off the phone. "Alright, then," Joshua said.

"Well, take care of yourself and I'll call back in about a week, okay?
Maybe I'll be able to talk to Christophe then."

"Alright." He would hang up the phone first. He didn't want to be
to slow, to hear her line click dead while he was still waiting for her to
say something else. He would hang up as soon as she said goodbye. He
waited. She was quiet.

"Did anybody take pictures?" It took him a moment to figure out
what she was talking about.

"Yeah. Aunt Rita took a lot of them."

"Good." Her tone was higher. He realized his grip on the phone was a
little painful, so he relaxed his fingers. "Bye, Joshua. I'll talk to you soon."
Click. He was too late. He eased the phone onto the cradle. From the wall
in the kitchen, he heard the clock then; the minute hand was tapping its
way around the face. A dark blue T-shirt slid down the slope of the pile
at his feet, a loose rope of wind wound its way through the screen and
against his leg, and a fly, fat and noisy, buzzed its way around his head
like a small airplane. Joshua let the fly land on his arm, and wondered
why he could not hear the ticking all the time; why did it jump out at
him during the oddest moments? He watched the fly wipe its face and
shuffle forward; he glared at it, willing it to be still. He wanted everything
to stop. The fly shook its wings and took flight from the damp, pitted,
pale-brown surface of his arm with a hiss. Joshua picked up the pile and
a pair of basketball shorts slid from his fingers and puddled on the floor.
He heard the fly buzzing sonorously as it circled the room. It probably
shitted on me, he thought.

A-MEE HADN'T BEEN ABLE TO START THE COLLARD GREENS. THE
most she'd accomplished was washing them in the sink, where
she felt the dirt of the garden at the back of the house give
underneath her fingers like the silt of a riverbank and wash down the
drain. Joshua had done the laundry while she was grocery shopping with
Rita, and when she walked in the door, the house smelled of comet and
fabric softener; he had cleaned the kitchen, too. She found a bushel of
greens in the sink. Joshua had picked them. He said the heat was wilting
them. The twins had jumped up from the floor to run outside and get
the groceries from Rita's trunk and when Joshua brushed her on his way
to the counter with a bag, her chest hurt. She did not want to tell them
about Samuel. The twins snorted laughter at the TV, and she could not
bring herself to take out the pot, to cut the seasoning, to begin cooking.
She sat down next to Joshua on the sofa. Lying on the floor, Christophe
rolled over to face her.