Long Division(40)

Two little steps led up to the door of the shed. When I stepped on the second one, I heard some rattling and then four slow thumps. I stepped down from the steps and looked back at Grandma’s house. The back door and all the windows were open.

The shed key turned and I was in.

On the floor of the shed, lying in fetal position, was Pot Belly, covered in dried blood, sweat, and sawdust. He smelled like rotten butt hole and piss, too. All he had on were white underwear and mismatching church socks. His legs were chained together from the knee to the ankle and his hands were handcuffed behind him. His hairy back had these softball-sized blue splotches on it.

“Aw, man,” I said to myself and closed the door behind me. I could see his back and belly heaving in and out so I knew he wasn’t dead. I touched his belly with my index finger and he started scooching away from me.

“Why are you in my granddaddy’s shed?” I asked him. “And why is your belly so hard, man?”

He didn’t respond, so I kicked him in the back really gently. “I said why is your belly so hard? I’ll kick a hole in your kidneys if you don’t turn around and answer me.”

Quick as a match, the man turned as best he could. His mouth was stuffed with a grimy sky-blue-and-white rag. Pot Belly looked different in the fetal position, with chains wrapped around his legs. He looked a lot smaller, and I don’t just mean smaller in size; I mean smaller in everything

I got on my knees and got closer to his face. Up close like that, I saw that his thin lips were long. They reached out further than Grandma’s lips and connected with these frown lines that didn’t really frown. And his eyebrows looked like some hyper five-year-old girl had gone HAM on him with one of those jumbo red crayons.

Without thinking, I grabbed a few hairs from his eyebrows and yanked as hard as I could. I figured he’d try to scream, but he just looked me right in the eye and started blinking slowly.

“What you do to my grandmother?” I asked him. “She wouldn’t have done this to you if you didn’t do something to her. You try to kick her in her back and call her a nigger, too?” I started flexing like I wanted to hit him in his mouth. “If I take that out of your mouth, what’s gonna happen?” I asked him. “Will you yell?”

He shook his head side to side.

“I thought you were dead,” I told him and touched the rag in his mouth. “And I hoped you were.” I took my hand off the rag and looked at him. “My name ain’t ‘nigger,’ you know, like you said it was. Nobody’s name is ‘nigger.’ My name is City. Really, it’s Citoyen. Folks down here call me City.” He still didn’t say anything. “But you probably knew that if you saw the contest, which I’m guessing you did since you made all those jokes and kicked me in my back. You know that if you had known my name is City in the first place, you wouldn’t be bleeding and stinking up this shed.” I took my pointy finger and pushed him right in the middle of his head.

It was so hard to look at his eyes ’cause neither one of them looked like it was looking at me.

He started using his eyes to direct me to his left side.

“What?” I asked. “What you want?”

He kept looking down toward his side. I pushed him over and looked beneath him. “What? Where’d this come from?”

There was a book beneath him with the cover facing down. I picked it up and turned it over. “Is this a joke?” I asked him. “How’d this get in here?” It was Long Division. “Is this my book? Or are there two copies?”

He looked at me and nodded his head up and down.

“Something about this ain’t right,” I said to him, and myself. I thumbed through the book to see if it was the same one I was reading in Grandma’s house. “You know where Baize Shephard is?”

He shook his head side to side, then rested it back on the sawdust.

I sat a few feet from Pot Belly and decided I’d read a few chapters of Long Division before I left. It seemed like the right thing to do.



…





Quarter Black…


After Mama Lara disappeared down the road for her morning walk, I went back and brought my new computer and book out onto the porch. I knew Mama Lara would know I’d stolen the computer if she saw it, and she’d think Long Division was something kids shouldn’t be reading since the word “nigga” was on the very first page. As cool as the book was, it still wasn’t as cool as the computer, and I wanted everybody who walked or rode down Old Ryle Road to see that I had something they could never have.

I’d been typing on the computer and waiting on the porch for Shalaya Crump for 30 minutes when I saw a person out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head toward the Night Time Woods and saw the person jump back into the woods. I was never scared of those woods, or of the Shephard Witch, to tell you the truth. I kinda didn’t believe in witches or magic. I figured it was just Shalaya Crump trying to play me for a fool.

When I got all the way into the woods, it felt like one of those dark dreams where you watch yourself get eaten by a bucktooth ghoul before waking up. I pulled my sweat rag out the small of my back, closed the laptop computer, threw the book on the ground, and got ready to pop a bucktooth ghoul in the forehead if one stepped to me.

Anyway, as soon as I took about three steps into the woods, I had to pee. One of the best things about coming down to Melahatchie for spring break was that I got to pee outside. I found a dusty area near the Shephard house where I could try to spell my name.