Where the Line Bleeds (32 page)

Christophe drove his brother to work that morning with his left hand
at the apex of the wheel. He fondled the blunt in his pocket until he
couldn't restrain himself any longer. At the next red light, he pulled the
blunt out and lit it.

"What are you doing?" Joshua said.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"You never smoke in the morning. You don't never smoke at all
no more."

Christophe pulled deeply on the blunt and let the smoke out in little
puffs from his nose. Already the driving was easier. Christophe tried to
blow the smoke in his brother's direction, maliciously. It was the first
jollity he'd felt toward his brother since their fight on Sunday. He parked
the car.

"They accepting applications today. Same time," Joshua said.

Christophe didn't bother to nod, and Joshua slammed the door.
Joshua slogged his way through the ascending heat from the sun glittering
out over the gulf. Christophe drove in slow arcs through Germaine while
he considered skipping the application hour. He knew his eyes were red,
but he turned around at the edge of Germaine and drove back toward the
dock. He watched the men moving about, jerking against the weight of
the salt and heat, and smoked another blunt. He fell asleep, then woke
hungry and disoriented in time to see Joshua at the car door, who slid
into the passenger seat and unwrapped his sandwich without speaking
and began to chew. His hair was fraying from the weave of his braids, and
he let his hands fall heavily to his lap after taking a bite. He was tired.

Christophe left the car before Joshua finished eating. The same
woman was sitting at the desk. This time, her hair was redder than he
remembered, and she did not smell so strongly of perfume. Men with salt
dried to powder on their faces ambled about the hallways of the building,
and Christophe sat in the waiting area and filled out his application on a
copy of A Hunter's Guide: there were no clipboards available, the woman
told him. He shrugged at her, smiled a closemouthed smile when he
handed it back to her, and thought of the weed in the glove compartment
as he walked to the car. Christophe rolled another blunt. Joshua sat with
him until the hour was over, and then let his head fall back on the seat,
and breathed out a long, loud sigh. He blinked hard, and directed his
comment at no one.

"I can't wait to get paid."

He pulled at the latch of the door and was gone. Christophe drove
back toward the country, parked in his usual spot behind Javon's house,
and opened the door after knocking once. Javon ushered Tilda from the
house.

"You missed some money this morning."

"I had some shit I had to do."

"Won't be nothing you can't make back tonight. If you want-I told
them to come back by."

Christophe tossed a joystick up with his left hand and caught it with
his right. He waited for the next knock on the door. He measured his
words.

"Way I'm going, I'm going to sell all that Dunny done gave me soon.
I go back too early, and he might wonder why."

"I got you."

Javon plucked the black cigar he'd been smoking from his mouth and
appraised the twisted, desiccated tip. He threw it across the room in a
perfect arc and it plopped like a drop of heavy rain in the garbage can. He
pulled another from his pocket.

"Come back tonight, I'll have a QP for you. Whatever you pay
Dunny for it."

Christophe sat on his hands. He wanted to roll another blunt. The
weight kept them still.

"Why?"

Javon hesitated in lighting the black. Javon eyed him and opened his
mouth, his gold front reflecting against all the pink like a candy wrapper.

"Because I feel like it."

Someone knocked at the door and two figures entered the living
room: one he knew, but the other he didn't-and the other he didn't
know was white. Blackjack, the junkie he knew, was so dark his skin
looked like newly poured asphalt. He walked with his hands in his pant
pockets, his arms lost in the loose folds of his T-shirt. His chest curved
inward like a bowl. The white had a day's growth of beard on his face, all
brown, his hair and his beard blending into each other. He was too clean.
Christophe stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Who you bringing in my house, Blackjack?"

"He from upcountry," Blackjack said. He smiled and nodded at the
man. "Called-"

"What makes you think I got what you or white boy want?" Javon
said, his voice shrinking. Christophe stepped back further into the
kitchen. "Get out of here."

"But Javon-"

Javon was so quick; one minute he was reclining on the sofa, the
next he was upright, his open hand sounding like the snap of a leather
belt against Blackjack's face. Blackjack stumbled into the white man, who
fell backward into the wall and barely caught himself. He looked as if he
were trying to sink into the woodwork. Javon's long nails had etched red,
bleeding lines in the dark mask of Blackjack's face. "Get out my house,"
Javon said. "And Blackjack, don't come here no more."

"Just a bump, Javon," Blackjack said as he slid along the wall.

"I'm about to go get my mothafucking gun." Javon yelled. "Y'all
trespassing."

Javon disappeared. Blackjack and the white man slammed the door
and scuttled out into the yard. Christophe thought about leaving while
Javon was rustling around in his room. Javon reappeared at his side in the
dim hallway.

"You think he was the police?" Christophe asked.

"I don't know him, and I ain't taking no chances. They probably got
Blackjack on something, so he trying to sell somebody else out." Javon
was lax and limber where seconds before he had been taut. "I forgot I
moved my gun-couldn't even find the gotdamn thing until they was
already out the door."

Christophe wondered if they were watching the house, if they had
noted his car here every day, if they had run the tag. Dunny had told
him it was about chance in the beginning, about luck, about being smart
and collected. Had he been stupid in coming here? Javon noticed him
standing. He blushed, and it was as if the stain of the blush bled from his
ears to pool in his face; it was like a wound inking water red.

"My house too far back in the woods for them to come running up
in here and me not know about it," Javon said. Christophe was angry. He
didn't want to sit, to nervously glance at the door every thirty minutes or
so, waiting for a flurry of knocks and policemen with red faces and hard
forearms to kick down the door.

"I don't feel like doing no business today. I'ma go."

"Alright then."

Christophe fingered the sacks in his pocket, thought about the money,
Ma-mee, Cille, Joshua, the money. "I'll be back tomorrow." Javon sat and
ignored him.

Christophe spent the rest of the day at the river, floating in the
shallows, with a six-pack he'd bought at one of the up-country stores
where they never checked for I.D. He let the beers bake in the sand in the
sun, and then balanced them on his chest and sucked them down hot.

By the middle of the week, Christophe's morning smoke was
anticipated. He half-heartedly waited fora call from the dock during dinner
with Cille, Ma-mee, and Joshua. He concentrated hard on eating quickly
and ignoring the sting of their newly born family dinner discussion. He
left walking as soon as possible after he'd washed the dinner dishes. On
Thursday, he hurried past Cille and Ma-mee talking in the living room on
his way out the door while Joshua was in the shower.

"I'm going down the street, Ma-mee."

"You want me to tell your brother where you going?" Ma-mee
asked.

Her voice stopped him in the doorway, and he brushed one foot back
and across the warped doorjamb. She was waiting for him, Cille suddenly
alert as a terrier at her side.

"I don't know where I'll end up."

Christophe released the door so that it tapped softly against the
frame; he leapt from the steps. He felt badly about lying to her: he knew
where he was going. He could not stand seeing her by the phone, waiting
like the first time: he could not wait as he had the first time. He could
not stand Cille's constant questions about where he had applied. The
food-laden refrigerator shamed him; Joshua drank and ate the food their
money bought and every time Christophe sat down to a meal, he felt
like choking. Javon had taken to making Sandman leave out of the back
door off the kitchen. Christophe knew that Javon was doing him a favor,
one in turn for another, and that they were accomplices. He'd only been
selling at Javon's house for a week and already he was worrying about the
money bulging in green, rubber-banded balls in the toolbox in the shed.
He hid it carefully from his brother. He decided to walk to Javon's house.
He smoked and stripped off his shirt and thought of how the night made it feel as if he hadn't even taken it off. The haphazard streetlights were too
bright: he wanted the insect-ridden dark all around him. He threw rocks
at the bulbs as he passed them; they bounced off the wooden posts. The
weed skewed his aim.

Christophe was surprised to see Dunny's car in Javon's driveway. He
knocked and let himself in the house without waiting for Javon's voice,
to find Dunny, Javon, Bone, and Marquise around the domino-littered
kitchen table. Dunny was scribbling on the back of a shoebox top they
were using as a score sheet.

"Lock the door," Javon called.

Christophe turned the lock behind him and pulled a chair from the
hallway and sat with his back to the front door.

"What's up, cuz?" asked Dunny.

"Nothing."

"Why you ain't come get a QP from me? I know it's that time."

"Business been a little slow." Christophe tried not to glance at Javon,
but he did. Javon was studying the dominos in his hand. He had not told
Dunny, then. "I'll be to see you in a couple of days."

"How's having Aunt Cille back?"

"Temporary and fine."

Dunny laughed in response. Christophe had not spent any real time
with Dunny since the fourth of July. He assumed his cousin was here
because he had come to get powder from Javon, so he was not shocked
when Javon pulled a packet of white powder from his pocket and placed
it on the table. Dunny did not grab the pack, and Christophe wondered
why Javon was letting the pack sit there, grimy and small, next to him
at the table. Were they using it as a wager? Dunny wiped a shoebox top
clean and handed it to Javon. The inside of the top was a smooth, dull
black. Javon untied the plastic bag and dumped half the contents of the
bag out on the inside of the top, and then pulled a razor from his pocket
and began chopping at the clumpy powder. Christophe felt the pull of the
door at his back, but his eyes were riveted on Javon, to his careful dividing
of the cocaine into thin, delicate lines on the cardboard. He noticed
the way everyone's faces at the table hadn't changed, as if they had been
expecting this. Christophe had not known. Javon laid the razor down and
bent to the table with the rolled-up dollar bill in his hand. He sniffed. He pushed the top across the table to Bone. Dunny began washing the
dominoes, swishing them back and forth with his large, thick hands. The
air conditioning was cold on Christophe's neck: he felt as if someone was
running a cube of ice back and forth across it. Bone passed the dollar and
board to Marquise. Dunny was looking at his hands. Christophe watched
Marquise straighten and make as if to shove the top across the table to
Dunny. Dunny's hands stilled.

"You know I don't fuck with that shit."

"What about you, Chris?" Javon spoke, and his voice was raspy.
Christophe looked at him and his eyes were wide and white. Javon
smiled.

"You ever did it?"

Naw.

"This some good shit. Clean." Javon's pupils seemed to spread like the
gulping hole of a drain. "Here."

He held out the razor that he'd used to cut the cocaine. Christophe
saw a faint sheen of powder on it; it dulled the blade.

"Taste," he said.

The weed had calmed Christophe: the jittery unease that he woke
to every morning before dawn, that prevented him from sleeping, had
receded with the smoke. Javon smiled at him wider and the black seemed
to eclipse the white and he thought, I've seen the movies, it will only numb
my tongue a little, and he took the razor in his hand and placed it like
a communion wafer on his tongue. It was bitter. The razor slipped and
his mouth was wetter than it had been and when he plucked it from his
mouth, it was red.

"You cut yourself," Javon said.

Javon picked up his dominoes and began slapping them down on
the table. He was talking very fast. Bone and Marquise were laughing
and blinking quickly and Christophe thought perhaps he should rinse his
mouth, perhaps there was too much blood. He was leaning over the sink
spitting pink water onto the ceramic bowl when he saw Dunny behind
him.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"There wasn't even hardly nothing on there."

"Your tongue numb, ain't it?"

"That's from the cut."

"Right, stupid."

"Look, nigga, don't act like you ain't done this shit before. For all I
know, he probably do that shit to everybody."

Dunny slumped in the doorway.

"What the fuck is going on, cuz?" He braced himself on the frame.
"Time for both of us to jump out of the game."

The bathroom smelled like stale, standing piss. The air-conditioned
air from the living room failed to penetrate the back rooms. Christophe
ignored Dunny.

"I feel sick," Christophe said.

"You do that shit again, and me and Joshua going to beat the shit
out of you."

"Fuck you, Dunny." Christophe squeezed out of the bathroom. "I'm
not the fucking crackhead in the family."

Christophe played dominoes with the others until the buzzing in
his brain abated, and the dregs of the weed lapped at him and made him
tired. Dunny sipped on a forty. By the time Javon won, it was drizzling
outside. Christophe did not want to walk home in it, so he accepted
Dunny's offer of a ride. He did not speak around his throbbing tongue.
Back at Ma-mee's, he heard Dunny drive away after he turned off the
kitchen light over the sink. The door to Cille's empty room was closed.
Christophe fell asleep on the sofa with his shoes on.