Where the Line Bleeds (7 page)

Christophe was rolling a blunt. He'd spread a napkin across his lap.
On his left knee, he'd placed the weed, rolled up in a small corner of a
Ziploc bag. On his right knee, he balanced the cigarillo: a strawberry
Swisher Sweet. He sliced the cigar down the middle with his pointer
fingernail: he kept his fingernails long for a reason. The strawberry smell
of the cigar's skin sifted through the car. Christophe opened the plastic
bag and began to break it down in smaller pieces that would fit in the
wrapper, and to cull the buds from the stems. He sprinkled the leaves
evenly down the center of the skin. He licked the Swisher, and then
folded the edges together, sealing it. The weed was strong; the smell of
it had been thick and musky, and the buds had been damp and hard to
break down. It would be good to smoke.

He lit the blunt by inhaling sharply on the end of it while he fired up
the other end with his most recent lighter, which was a dull purple color.
Joshua was surprised Christophe hadn't lost it yet: he'd had it for a few
weeks now. He'd bought it the day after graduation. The day was overcast;
the clouds clustered in a dense blanket in the sky, low and light gray,
for as far as Joshua could see, out over the gulf and into the distance. It
made the docks seem even more forlorn. The men moved slowly in their
blue and black overalls, their T-shirts rolled up over their biceps to show
their pining muscles as they bent and lifted and threw sack after sack of
what looked like feed onto platforms that the forklift operator loaded
onto a crane. They were unloading a trucker's trailer, and transferring the cargo to the hold of the ship sitting in the harbor. Joshua winced at the
seeming endless line of workers, the endless quantity of pallets and bags.
It was more than tedium: it was hard, backbreaking work. But he knew
they could take care of Ma-mee with this money, fix up the house a bit,
fix some leaks in the roof; they wouldn't have to decide between planting
buckets and buying shoes. They could finally save and spend and earn and
have something of their own, something that hadn't been given to them
by their mother.

"I feel like we fixing to go play a game or something," Christophe said.
He inhaled again, pulling the sweet, sticky smoke into his lungs. Joshua
noticed he wasn't fidgeting anymore: the weed was calming him. He
began to speak, and Joshua listened. Christophe could see it in his head:
he'd pass this car to Joshua and buy his own car. A Cutlass. He'd paint it
navy blue with a silver pearl, and put it on some dubs, some twenty-inch
six-stars. He'd put a system in it. He would take the corners slow by the
church and the convenience station and into the driveway so he wouldn't
dent the dubs, and he'd play Pastor Troy so loud his trunk would rattle.
Dunny would be jealous. He waved the blunt vaguely toward Joshua, his
eyes half lidded, concentrating on relaying the vision of him riding up to
the house, parking the car, of he and Joshua and Uncle Paul redoing the
porch on the house, replacing the small sagging one with a larger, deluxe
version that had room for a swing, and plants, and two ceiling fans.
Ma-mee would like that.

Joshua didn't smoke too often; he hoped the blunt would stop his
legs from shaking. He knew Christophe had some Febreze spray stashed
underneath the seat, so they could mask the smell. As for the eventual
job piss tests, he was sure they could sneak in one of their little cousins'
urine when the time came for those interviews. Dunny had done it when
he'd gone to interview for his job at the local Wal-Mart, and he'd passed.
He'd taped a small plastic vial of it to the inside of his thigh: he said the
worst part was ripping the tape off. Joshua puffed and held the smoke
in his lungs before letting it out and breathing through his nose so that
the smoke seemed to flow like water over a stone over his upper lip and
into his nostrils. He loved that trick. Christophe could never manage it.
Christophe grinned. Joshua took another quick puff, and then handed
the blunt back to his brother.

"How long you think we'll have to work here before we can start doing
big shit? Like fixing the porch? Before we get some benefits?" Christophe
choked out around the smoke he was holding in his chest.

"Probably around six months. I think that's how long they usually
make you wait."

Joshua felt his sternum tingle and leaned his head somnolently on
the backseat. The back of his skull felt weighted by something leaden: in
his mind, he pictured a ton anchor like the one he imagined anchored
the ships in the dock dragging at the back of his brain. "This some good
green."

"bunny sold it to me. It was the last of that good batch he got from
Big Lean. Had to bug him to do that. He didn't want to sell it because he
wanted to smoke it all. Made me promise to save some so we could smoke
with him. Maybe tonight to celebrate putting all these applications in."

"How long you think it's going to be before people start calling us
back?" asked Joshua.

"Uncle Paul said by the end of next week. Dunny said two. He say
Wal-Mart always needing people-we know the boat need people-so
even if the grocery stores or Burger King'n'em don't call us back, at least
we know we have two pretty good chances, right? Uncle Paul say to wait
to go down to the shipyard where they build the barges... say we probably
got better chances here and the other places first, cause most people they
hire down there know a trade like welding or something." Christophe
passed the blunt.

Joshua hit it twice, and stared out the window. His tongue felt rough,
serrated: his taste buds slid against the roof of his palate as sharp and
crusty as barnacles. His mouth was dry with the taste of the weed. It was
the one thing he didn't like about smoking-weedmouth. He wanted
more to drink than that Coke; he wanted more than the trickle in the
bottom of the can. Then he remembered where they were, and why they
were here, and why he'd have to swallow more spit. He attempted to work
some up in the back of his throat. It had the texture of cobwebs.

"We need to start working soon. I got the feeling from Ma-mee that
Cille's done with sending us money," Joshua said. His tongue seemed twice
its normal size. "When you was in the shower, Ma-mee said something like Cille figure we grown and she must not feel responsible for us no
more." Joshua didn't add that Ma-mee had snorted when she said it, that
there had been an unspoken "as if she was ever responsible for you" tacked
on the end that had floated in the air between them and landed in front of
Joshua in his half-eaten plate of eggs.

Christophe sucked at the blunt and then ground it out in the
ashtray.

Christophe patted his pockets and muttered. "Where the hell is my
Clear Eyes?" He found it, and tipped his head back, easing it into the
corner of his lids. "Shit, I could've told you that." He threw the small
opaque plastic bottle into Joshua's lap. "Even though she said it, you had
to know it anyway."

Joshua didn't answer. He was glad he didn't smoke that often: while he
felt buoyed by water, streams of feeling licking his limbs, for Christophe,
who had smoked longer and more than he had, smoking a blunt was
almost like smoking a cigarette. Joshua applied the Visine and dropped
it on the seat between them, and if possible, sank further down into the
upholstery. He didn't want to think about Cille like that, think that she
could just pass them off like a job she'd completed. Even though she
hadn't come to their graduation, she had given them the car: surely she'd
still be in their lives some sort of way. The skin of his throat pulled as he
leaned his head on the door and glanced at the time on the dashboard.
It was 11:45. Christophe pulled out the bottle of Febreze from under his
seat and began spraying himself and Joshua with it. Joshua closed his eyes
and let him spray; he turned into the door, baring his back to his brother
so that he sprayed that as well. Joshua settled back and closed his eyes. He
felt as if he was floating, and by concentrating on the sensation, he was
able to let Cille slip from his mind. There was a river of static behind his
eyeballs. He sighed, and felt her visage and her voice peeling and falling
away from his brain like a loose flower petal.

Christophe led the way across the pier to the office as Joshua followed.
He danced across the concrete, weaving through the working men, who
were faceless in the sun's glare. Under the hot, salty wind, Joshua smelled
Febreze. He blew out his breath and smelled weed. In the office, the floor
was lined with faded dirty white and gray tile, and fluorescent lights shone in long, bright rows from the ceiling and cast everything in glassy
yellow. As he stepped up behind Christophe at the counter and flanked
his brother, Joshua thought about holding his breath. Christophe was
leaning into the counter. The clerk wore wide, red plastic-rimmed glasses
that covered half her face, and lipstick that matched her frames. Her short
hair had been hairsprayed into a gray-blonde mane. Joshua saw that the
lipstick had bled into the tiny creases at the corner of her mouth; her pale
face seemed to be leaching away the color from her lips. Joshua knew she
could smell the weed on Christophe, who had one elbow on the counter
in a nonchalant assertion.

"May I help you." It was not a question; it was a statement. Her
mouth cracked and Joshua thought he saw a flash of teeth. It almost
seemed dirty.

"We came to fill out applications. Two, please."

Christophe smiled at Joshua, seemingly pleased with himself for the
confidence in the declaration. Joshua let out a breath and immediately
regretted it. The woman slid two blurry sheets of white paper across
the counter. Christophe grabbed an application and pulled it across the
table towards him as the woman dropped two pencils on the counter
and pointed them to a row of chairs across the room against the wall.
Christophe smiled at the woman and walked away. Joshua slid the paper
across the cold countertop. The woman was watching him. He smiled at
her through his haze, grabbed the pen, turned away, and exhaled. He was
moving too slowly: every step took hours. Sweat ran from his hairline,
and he shivered; he felt cold. When he sat on the chair next to his brother,
he realized he had almost forgotten what he was here for.

Christophe was writing purposefully, quickly; his usually messy scrawl
scrawled across the paper in tightly wound lines. Christophe looked up
from his work and elbowed Joshua: Christophe jabbed the pencil toward
his brother and made a motion Joshua assumed Christophe thought
mimicked writing. To Joshua, it looked like his brother was carving
something in the air; he held the pencil like a knife. Joshua began writing.
The weed was churning him up inside; it was twisting him like a wet rag,
wringing sweat from him. He filled out the answers he'd memorized. He
plucked them formed whole from his head, and placed them slowly and succinctly on the paper. Christophe lounged next to him with his paper
in his hand, and Joshua saw that he was kneading the corner between
his thumb and forefinger as he leaned back in his seat and grinned to
himself.

Joshua stared at his paper, determined that it was done, and grabbed
his brother's from his hand and rose quickly. They walked back to the
counter side by side. The woman was at her desk, staring at a black and
green computer screen. She didn't move from her seat. Joshua placed
the applications on the table as he blinked against the fuzziness in his
eyes: his eyeballs seemed to have grown hair. Christophe set the pencil
down beside him and called out, "Thank you" to the woman. The blonde
head nodded at the screen. Christophe stopped in the blinding noise and
sunlight of the dock and waited for his brother. Joshua was silent; he
felt as if Christophe were pulling him along in a fine green fishing net
through the throngs of men, the leaning machines, and the crates.

"I'm hungry," Christophe said at the car." I wish we had a whole nother
blunt," he mumbled as he backed the car out of the parking space.

Joshua waved his fingers in front of his brother's face; he was trying
to draw patterns from the air. Christophe stared, and pressed the brakes.
His eyelids fluttered open wide as Joshua grinned. Christophe laughed
and slapped Joshua's hand away.

"Stop it," said Christophe as he put the car in drive.

Joshua turned on the radio. A blues singer's voice limped through the
air between them. Christophe shrugged and said, "Leave it on." Joshua
laid his head back against the headrest and stared at the gray blue water,
at the shrimp boats buoyed like pelicans, their nets flared like wings. The
car sailed across the barren, black sea of the parking lot away from the
commotion of the pier. Christophe pointed with one finger toward the
windshield, toward the west: homeward.

URING THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS, MA-MEE ORBITED THE PHONE LIKE
a moon. It was a rotary dial plastic blue phone; what she could
see of it was a vague blur the pale color of boy's baby clothes.
The boys went off to play basketball or lounged in their room listening
to the stereo and reading old, faded issues of Sports Illustrated and Low
Rider magazine or cut the grass or dozed on the couch or on the carpet
before the box fan. Ma-mee sat in the easy chair next to the side table with
the telephone on it and listened to the TV with the volume on low. The
twins called places to follow up, and every manager or employee told them
that they would call them back. Ma-mee took to picking up the receiver
surreptitiously throughout the day, listening for the dial tone to assure
herself that the damn thing was still working, that it hadn't short-circuited
or malfunctioned during the night.