Black Buck(55)

Satisfied, she cracked a smirk and pointed to the house. “Go.”

“Damn, boy. You lookin’ more naked than a jaybird,” Mr. Rawlings said from his window. “Put some clothes on ’fore the po-lice arrest you for prostitution. Yeesh!”

“Aight, aight,” I said. “Mornin’ to you too, Mr. Rawlings.”

“Also, your momma feelin’ better?”

“I think so,” I said, running up the stairs before the police actually did stop and ask what the hell I was doing. “She went to work, so probably.”

“Mm-hmm. You better keep outta trouble now,” he said, shutting his window.

Minutes later, I was dressed and jumping down the stairs. We walked toward the corner. No Jason. Just Wally Cat sitting on his crate.

“Aye, come here!” he shouted.

“Hang here for a second,” I told Soraya. “Let me see what he wants.”

“Wassup, Wally Cat?”

“Wassup? Nigga, you almost killed someone yesterday, tha’s wassup. If it wasn’ for me, he would’ve bled out on the street right there. I seen that shit too many times on this corner to be seein’ it again. What got into you?”

“I know. My bad, man. We jus’ had some trouble and I lost it. You know tha’s not me.”

“I do know, which is why I’m not beatin’ your ass right now. Servin’ up some street justice like we used to do back in the day. All those reporters runnin’ ’round yesterday. I heard what he said, but you kids can’t always be throwin’ hands like that. It’s what they want,” he said. “You hearin’ me?”

“Yeah, man. I’m listenin’.”

“I didn’ ask if you was listenin’ to me, nigga, I asked if you was hearin’ me. The media feeds off of black blood like vampires. They want more of it, and they’ll pit us against each other jus’ to see it fly like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And you know what? You gave it to ’em. You played into their hands. And now that boy is in the hospital, messed up as a duck.”

“Which hospital?”

“Woodhull, whatchu think?”

“Bet,” I said. “I’ll check you later, Wally Cat.”

“The devil finds work for idle hands, Darren!” he shouted. “Don’ forget that!”



* * *





“You can come in now,” a nurse said, scanning her clipboard.

“I’ll wait here,” Soraya said. She kissed me on the lips and grabbed a magazine in the waiting room.

I followed the nurse down a series of mazelike hallways and arrived at a closed door. “Bed closest to the window,” she said. “But try to keep it down. He’s not the only one in there and he just woke up.”

I placed my hand on the doorknob, trembling. Damn, Jason. Of course something like this would happen.

I turned the knob and walked past beds with curtains wrapped around them, various machines beeping and buzzing like insects in the night. I arrived at his bed and gripped the side rails and just stood there, watching him rest. His lips were busted and swollen like halves of a tomato, and his eyes straight up resembled a raccoon’s: thick black circles that almost looked like they were painted on his face. A thick piece of white tape stretched across his nose.

“Yo,” I said. He opened his eyes slowly. When he saw me, he just stared, then looked away.

“Yo, Jason,” I repeated, louder. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, nigga,” he said through a clenched jaw. “I ain’ deaf.”

Thin strips of metal crisscrossed his teeth like telephone wires. “Damn, son. They got your jaw wired shut like fuckin’ Kanye. You ’bout to spit a verse?”

“Fuck you, nigga,” he said, exhausted. “Whatchu want?”

I tapped on his guard rail, internalizing the question. I knew what Soraya wanted and why I felt forced to go there, but what did I want?

I watched green lines rise and fall like the Dow Jones on a monitor next to his head. “I dunno.”

“Then why you here?”

“I dunno.”

“Then leave before I fuck you up,” he said, wincing.

“Listen, man. You shouldn’ have gotten up on television and said that shit about me.”

“It was true though, wasn’ it?” he said, staring at me. Through me, really. “That you been walkin’ all over these streets like you suddenly own them, lookin’ down on me like I wasn’ the same nigga who used to protect you from older niggas tryna steal your bike or makin’ fun of your light skin, that fancy-ass school, and havin’ a Spanish daddy. Nigga, I was even the one who introduced you to Soraya.”

He squeezed his eyes tightly as he sat up, then eased his lips around a thin straw sticking out of a Styrofoam cup.

“But you don’ remember any of that, right? So you get a little tight when I speak the truth. Think you big comin’ on the block and sucker punchin’ me? You ain’ even had enough respect to square up like a fuckin’ man. You lucky I don’ fuck you up right now, with all these wires and shit.”

I grabbed a chair and looked out the windows at cars going by in every direction; doctors on smoke breaks, laughing, puffing, and smiling; trains rumbling over the elevated tracks across Brooklyn and Queens. We used to ride that shit like it was a roller coaster, racing from one end to the other, pushing people out the way, jumping all over like it was a jungle gym to try to earn a few bucks.