Black Buck(111)

Ma. I remembered hearing her laugh, right in the kitchen, as if she were sitting there before work, making coffee, and waiting to greet me.

“Where’s Trey?” I asked, extinguishing their smiles.

“He—” Rose took a breath, squeezing her eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

“What do you mean ‘He didn’t make it’? Where is he?”

Soraya grabbed my hand and rubbed it. “The house collapsed, D. And once the firefighters found him, the body was”—she brought the back of her hand to her mouth—“they could only identify it by bits of Trey’s sneakers.”

No. There was no way. My lungs burned again. I pulled the tubes out of my nose, pulled the taped IV needle out of my hand, and tried to get out of the bed, but Jason restrained me.

“Don’t,” he said. “Jus’ don’, bro. Can’t do nothin’ ’bout it now except move on.”

“Move on? How the fuck can we jus’ ‘move on’? What was he even doin’ in there? Why didn’ one of you stop him?”

“After the fire started,” Brian said, hugging himself, “he was outside, where you saw us. But then he said he had to get something and ran back in. A few seconds later, the whole fire got crazier and they wouldn’t let us inside.”

“What did he run in to get?”

The six of them looked at one another. The fire inside of me spread even further. “Someone,” I said, coughing up a storm, “better talk now or I’m kicking you all out.”

Jason nodded at Rose. She took something, a little burnt piece of paper, out of her jacket and handed it to me. The edges were burnt to a crisp and flaked all over the bed, but part of it was still intact. When I turned it over, I saw what it was. A photograph.

“He was probably looking for something else, but the firefighters found this in the backyard,” Rose said.

It was a photo of Trey and me, taken a month after he showed up, on the day I asked him to be my assistant. He was so scared that we were going to kick him out of the Happy Campers because he stuttered too much to ever be on the phones. When I told him I still had a place for him, he hugged me harder than anyone ever had in my life. Later, we took the photo I held in my hands: he was smiling like someone graduating from high school, and I, like a proud big brother, had my arm around him.

Salty tears singed the burns on my cheeks. All of the anger I had, all of the destruction I wanted to inflict on Clyde, dissipated like steam rising off a cup of coffee.

“Whatchu tryna do?” Jason asked, revenge already burning in his eyes.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Rose replied. “Fight fire with fire.”

“No,” I said, staring at the photo in my hands. “No more.”

“But, Buck,” Brian said. “They can’t get away with this. It’s like when—”

I lifted my head and looked at them. “No more violence. We’ve had enough. And we’ve worried too much about other people instead of focusing on why we started the Happy Campers in the first place.”

They looked at me as if I was joking, as if Trey’s death could only be met with more death. But we weren’t a gang, and we weren’t killers.

Reader: A good salesperson knows who they are, but that’s only half of the equation. A great salesperson knows who they are and who they’re not. Corny but true.



“Jake, how much cash do we have?” I asked, my strength slowly returning.

“?’Bout four hundred K.”

“Good.” I sat up. “Start looking for a new building. And put out a press release saying that the war is over, that we have no plans to find out who did this or retaliate in any way. That we’re focusing on growing our organization and helping as many people as possible.”

“Done,” he said.

“Ellen. No more crazy, illegal homework. Think of other ways to teach new recruits. It draws too much heat and we can’t afford any of us going to jail.”

“Sure, Buck. Understood.”

“Jason and Rose. If you do anything, or if any of you do anything”—I scanned the room—“you’re out. No questions asked. Do you understand?”

“Aight,” Jason said, looking at Rose.

“Fine, Buckaroo. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Thank you. Now can all of you get out? I need to rest.” I laid my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes, trying to understand what happened, what Trey actually went back inside for.

“Not you,” I said, calling to Soraya. “Can you stay? Please?”

“Of course.”

She looked down. “We’re gonna have to call a nurse to put all those tubes back in, D. Can’t have you dyin’ out here.”

“Okay,” I said. “But not yet. I wanna tell you somethin’.”

“What?”

“What Jake said before? About me callin’ out for Ma? It’s because I heard her laughin’ in the kitchen, like she was sittin’ there, forreal, as if it were a normal day and she was gettin’ ready for work. You think tha’s crazy?”

She sat on the bed and took my hand in hers. “No, D. I don’t. Maybe she was there, protectin’ you.”