Where the Line Bleeds (8 page)

Joshua slipped money into Ma-mee's purse when they went shopping
with Uncle Paul for groceries, and splurged on forties of King Cobra at
$1.50 a bottle once a weekend. He tried not to spend much, but the
money still disappeared from the small stash he kept hidden in a shoebox
in the top of their closet. Cille called once when the twins weren't home
and talked to Ma-mee for only a minute because there were customers in
the store. Cille had told Ma-mee to tell the twins she said hello, and that
she was planning on taking a trip down to Mississippi to see them toward
the end of the summer when she got a little vacation time. Joshua had
hated to admit that something in his chest eased when he heard Ma-mee tell him that. Something had opened behind his ribs and he'd felt wistful,
sitting at the kitchen table with the light bulb burning, the radio playing
old R&B, Luther Vandross crooning from the windowsill of the open
window, greens on the table and the sun setting outside. He hadn't said
anything in return, had kept the surge of emotion in his chest quiet, but
Christophe had grunted and shrugged out, "That's cool," before shoveling
another forkful of seasoned, steaming greens and rice from his plate into
his mouth.

Bills were due. He knew Aunt Rita collected all the bills and paid
them with money from Ma-mee's Social Security and disability checks
and Cille's Western Union money orders that she deposited in Ma-mee's
account every month. Without Cille's help, they would come up short
this month, or barely scrape by. He figured that Uncle Paul or Aunt Rita
would give them more money if they needed it-but something in him
balked at the idea. He watched Ma-mee hover over the phone and check
it when she thought he wasn't looking, and every day that it didn't ring
with a call about a job, worry tightened his head like a vise. He knew
Christophe had more money than he did saved up in his own secret
stash (on the floor under his bottom dresser drawer), but he also knew
that while he grew quiet and tight with dread and frustration over their
unemployment, Christophe reacted by getting angry, by refusing to limit
his spending. It was almost as if he believed that if he spent like he had
money, if he acted like he didn't have to worry about money, then he'd
have it: a job would inevitably make itself available. He refused to live
like he was poor.

When he and Christophe lay in bed at night and Joshua attempted
to talk about putting in applications at businesses that were four or five
towns away, a forty-five minute or hour commute, he'd reply, "That's too
far away from Ma-mee. We can't be that far away. What if something
happen?" Joshua did notice that he stopped taking the car out riding as
much, that he called Dunny more often to pick him up: gas cost money.
Christophe went out to visit girls more, played ball at the park, and
instead of paying to go inside, hung out in the parking lot at the one
black nightclub in Germaine on Saturday nights. They revisited the places
on their list, filled out more applications just in case the employees had lost the first ones. Joshua fidgeted around the house, washing clothes or
sweeping or vacuuming or attempting to make red beans and rice and
cornbread for dinner. While Joshua made the follow-up phone calls,
Christophe harassed Uncle Paul and Eze, insisting that they needed to
talk to somebody. None of it seemed to be working.

After four weeks of reality rolling over them like an opaque fog,
Joshua sat on the front porch steps, his hair a wild brownish-red afro.
He was picking it out for Laila, who'd agreed to braid it. Christophe had
parked their car in the front yard alongside Dunny's: they were shirtless,
leaning half-in Dunny's trunk, shifting his speakers around and adjusting
the controls on the amplifier. Joshua had just washed his hair, but the
water had already evaporated from it. It was tangled and dry and getting
harder to comb through. A strong gust of wind cut through the leaves of
the lone beech tree that grew in the front yard, and the leaves chattered
over the call of the brush of the ubiquitous pines, the tinny rattle of bass
from the trunk of Dunny's car. Were they taking speakers from Dunny's
car and moving them to the Caprice? Inside, the phone rang. Ma-mee
picked it up before the end of the first ring.

"Hello?"

Joshua peeled his T-shirt away from his stomach and closed his eyes,
straining to hear Ma-mee's voice.

"What's up, Laila?" Dunny drawled.

"Hey Dunny. Hey Chris. Where your brother at?"

From inside the house, Joshua heard Ma-mee answer, "Yes."

"He over there on the porch steps, waiting for you. Why don't you do
my hair after you do his?"

"You gonna have to pay me something for that. Five dollars at least."
Laila laughed.

"Aaaw, that's messed up. Is he paying you?"

"Hey, if I'm going to be here for three hours doing hair, one of y'all
got to pay me something. You asked second, so it's going to have to be
you."

"You just think Joshua cute-playing favorites and shit." Joshua
could tell Dunny was speaking around the tip of his black, could hear the
clench of his lips as he spoke.

Laila giggled, and through the wind, Joshua felt the sun slashing
across the skin of his legs, making them burn. Inside the house, Mamee asked, "You sure you don't have another DeLisle on that list?" He
opened his eyes to see Laila leaning against Dunny's car, punching him
in the bicep and smiling, and Christophe placing two ten-inch speakers
and an amp in the trunk of the Caprice. There was a fine red dust in
the air. Joshua followed Ma-mee's voice into the living room to see her
breathe, "Alright then. Thank you." She hung up the phone and stared in
his general direction. Her eyes were trained somewhere in the middle of
his chest. Her housedress was a pale yellow, the color of the light shining
through the pine needles and cones outside. He stopped just inside the
door.

"Who was that?" Joshua asked.

She gripped her forearm so that her arms crossed her lap. She smiled,
let it slide away, and looked across the living room in the direction of the
porch and the front yard.

"Man from the Dockyard. Say he want you to come in Monday at ten
for an interview." Ma-mee pulled at the neck of her dress.

"What about Chris?" The bass thumped through the door behind
Joshua.

"They didn't say nothing about Chris." She looked away from the
door toward the silent TV. "They just want you." She ran her hands over
the lap of her thighs, and then let her palms fall open at her sides, facing
upward, facing him. "Somebody else'll call for Chris. Or maybe they just
want you to start first." She paused. "I don't know."

Behind him, Joshua heard the door open and close. Christophe's
face was dark in the shadowed room, his eyebrows a taut line across his
forehead.

"Who going to call for Chris?"

Ma-mee opened her mouth as if to reply, but said nothing. Joshua
thought that her forehead was wrinkled and her lips drawn up in a way
that made her look like she was about to cry. His arms felt heavy and long
and apelike at his sides.

"Man from the docks just called." Here Joshua's voice thinned, and
he had to expel the rest of it like a cough from his throat. "Said he wanted me to come in next Wednesday for a interview, but-he didn't say nothing
about you."

"Oh."

The tips of Christophe's fingers were pinched and burning from
cutting the wires, from twining them one about the other to gather the
sound, to harness the music and amplify it in the speakers. Installing the
equipment was like guessing at a combination lock, feeling for the correct
number of turns and stops, for hidden numbers. He'd spent the last big
chunk of his money on that. Underneath his dresser drawer, he had two
twenties, a five, and five ones. Fifty dollars. He'd bought the speakers,
CD player, and amp from Marquise through Dunny, who was selling his
system because he was getting a new one. He'd thought it too good a deal
to pass by. He felt duped, standing there, the sun beating at the windows
of the shadowed room, all of it dark and quiet, the atmosphere of it
seeming to wait on something. Stupid thing to say, oh. He turned toward
the door, away from the dim-lit expectant silence of the room, from their
searching eyes. He thought of an insect tearing itself from a web with the
help of the wind.

"Okay then." Christophe pushed the screen door that opened to the
porch. "I got work to do," he said. It slammed behind him. The floorboards
of the porch, uneven and swollen in the heat, snagged his feet. Dunny
was in the trunk again.

"Joshua in the house?" Laila asked.

Christophe loped past her. The brightness of the sun, the sky, the red
dirt of the driveway, the flowering fuchsia and green of the azalea bushes
was blinding after the inside of the house. He slammed into the side of
the trunk of the Caprice and leaned over Dunny, his forearms braced on
the warm metal. Why was it parked? It wasn't enough for him. He needed
motion: he needed to move.

"Leave it."

"What the fuck you talking about leave it? We almost done,
young'un."

"Man, I don't feel like working on it right now. We can work on it
later. You got a cigar?"

Dunny stood straight, his white T-shirt brown across the stomach
where he had been leaning on the car, his braids tight and clean over
the curve of his skull. Christophe glanced at him and looked away. He
realized his leg was kicking by itself at the tire, rousing red dust in clouds
across his worn white Reeboks.

"Let's ride," Christophe said.

"What's wrong with you?"

The hurt and love and jealousy in Christophe's chest coalesced and
turned to annoyance that bubbled from his throat.

"Shit, ain't nothing wrong with me." Christophe heard this come
from him in a hiss. "I don't want to talk about it right now. Can we
just go?"

Dunny closed the trunk. The metal sounded hard and loud, as harsh
as the burning sun, when it clattered shut. Dunny pulled a black from
behind his ear, a lighter from his pocket.

"You need a smoke." This trailed behind him as he ambled toward his
car. Christophe beat him it, jumped through the window, and slid into
the passenger seat, Dukes of Hazzard style. Sometimes the passenger door
jammed and stuck when he tried to open it. He didn't feel like jiggling
the handle for a good three minutes. Dunny leisurely pulled his own door
shut.

"Don't be putting your feet on my seat when you jump in the car."
Dunny lit the black and handed it to Christophe.

"Fuck you."

Dunny laughed, and the car growled to life. The stereo intoned. The
music shook the air; it squeezed Christophe's throat. Christophe saw
Laila, her shirt pulled tight against her chest, her hand on the front porch
screen door, watching them leave. He pulled on the black, the tip of the
filter hot and malleable between his lips, and felt a cool tingling coat the
simmer in his chest and begin to eat away at it in small bites. He blew out
the smoke, and inhaled deeply on the second toke. As they turned from
the red dirt driveway to the rough gravel of the street, he draped his arm
out the window and tapped the ash away. Three small brown children
with overlarge heads and bony knees were in the ditch as they passed,
picking blackberries and dropping them carefully in large white plastic ice cream buckets. Cece, Dizzy, and Little Man. They jumped when the
bass dropped in quick succession like a trickle of pebbles turned to an
avalanche. The smallest and skinniest one, his belly showing through the
front of his red jumpsuit with the curve of a kickball, dropped his bucket.
When Christophe passed, he could see gnats in small glinting bronze
clouds around their heads, illuminating their bulbous skulls like halos.
Christophe saluted them with his pointer finger, and leaned back into the
seat as Dunny accelerated.

They rode until the sun set, until it slipped between the chattering
branches of the trees and painted a broad sweep of the sky in the west pink
and red, until the heat wasn't so oppressive in the car. When Christophe
got out at a gas station in Germaine to grab another cigar, he could feel
the heat rising from the concrete of the lot. The streetlight over the gas
pumps had attracted great swarming gangs of large black flying insects
that were intent on racing each other into the bulb and dying. They met
their deaths with loud pops. Christophe bought the cigar and was glad to
get back in the car, to ride away from the buzzing lights, the streetlamps,
the lonely, dusty gas station and the red-faced forlorn attendant, to drive
along the highway on the beach, to cruise along the coastline.

Solitary, sparse stands of pine trees dotted the sandy median as they
rode along. The moon was full and white in the black, nearly starless sky. As
they turned from the beach and rode through St. Catherine to the bayou
and neared Bois Sauvage, Dunny seemed to tire of the music. He pushed
a button, and the lights on the stereo went off: the music stopped. Dunny
hadn't asked Christophe about his sudden change in mood, his need to
run away. Once they'd left Bois Sauvage, he'd simply pulled a sack from his
pocket, and told Christophe to look in the glove compartment for a cigar
and roll up. The marsh grass was a pale, silvery green as it whipped by
outside the window. Here, the night sounds of the insects chattering one
to another like an angry congress were loudest. The pine trees were inky
black and lined the horizon, and the water was a dark blue, the reflection
of the moon shimmering like a white stone path on its surface. Christophe
thought it beautiful. He squinted against the salty marsh wind and saw
that Dunny was focused on the road, his eyes half-lidded. Christophe
took a long pull of the last of the last blunt, and handed the roach to his
cousin. He was glad he wouldn't have to explain himself.

In Bois Sauvage, Dunny rode down the middle of the pockmarked
streets, steered away from the edges of the narrow, ancient roads where
the asphalt crumbled into pebbles that mixed in with the red dirt, the
thick summer grass, and slid down into the ditches. The oaks reached
out with tangled arms to form a tunnel over the car. In the yards of the
few houses they passed, people, small shadows, sat on their porches or
their steps drinking beer from cans, fanning themselves with fly swatters,
burning small cans of citronella, and eyeing the patches of piney woods
suspiciously, muttering about the descending summer heat, mosquitoes,
and West Nile, which they'd heard about on the news.