Where the Line Bleeds (9 page)

Christophe watched the tree line, smiling faintly when he realized he
could tell where he was going in Bois Sauvage by the tops of the trees,
that he recognized the big oak at the corner of Cuevas and Pelage, and
that the dense stand of pines on his right indicated that they were in the
middle of St. Salvador St.: he and Joshua had played chase under those
trees when they were little. Dunny and Javon were always team captains,
and they would always pick the same teams: the twins and Marquise, all
small and squirrelly, for Dunny, and Big Henry, Bone, and Skeetah for
Javon. The smaller team invariably beat the larger team. Christophe and
Joshua would always skip past Marquise and Dunny to hide together
deep in the woods while the other team was counting loudly on the street.
Christophe was the fastest, so he led Joshua in a general direction, but
Joshua always had the better eye for hiding spots: he would bury them
underneath a hill of dry brown pine needles or in the heart of a full green
bush with dark leaves the size of their fingernails or in the top of a small
oak tree, silent and perching like crows.

The other team seldom caught them. Dunny would give up and walk
out into the open, into the dim light of the forest and give himself away,
mostly because he was hungry or tired or had to go to the bathroom.
Marquise would follow him, tagging along for food. Joshua and
Christophe would stay hidden for hours, giggling breathlessly as Javon or
Big Henry crashed through the underbrush beneath them, calling their
names loudly and threatening forfeit and talking shit. Their members
would drift away, complaining: Big Henry insisting he had chores to do,
Bone yelling he had dinner to eat, and Javon spitting that he had TV to watch. Christophe and Joshua would stay where they were until there
were no other human sounds around them, sometimes until the sun was
setting, and then they'd run out to the empty street, hopping in delirium,
drunk with their cleverness, wrestling each other down the length of
the road. Christophe let his eyes close and his head loll back onto the
headrest, and felt the car stop.

Dunny had taken him to the basketball court. What he could see of
the grass in the court lights was long and bunched in tufts, overgrown
with weeds. The iron barrels they used as garbage cans were rusting along
the rims. Nobody had bothered to line them with black garbage bags
since the last time they'd been emptied. The small, warped stand of white
wooden bleachers was empty, the swings silent, the small wooden play
set the county recreation board had commissioned without playmates.
Dunny switched off the ignition, opened his car door, and said, "Get that
ball from under the backseat." Christophe willed his arms and torso to
move, grabbed the ball and threw it at Dunny, who ran to the court with
it and made a sloppy, easy lay up. He dribbled the ball, half-walking and
skipping back and forth on the concrete, shooting jumpers. Christophe
watched Dunny on the court. When had he become the one who followed
one step behind, the one who eyed and followed the other's back, the one
who was led?

Now, he would have to find his way alone. He lurched toward the
court that shone like a snow globe: the pale gray concrete spray painted
with blue gang signs, the halo of the fluorescent lights that cast the scene
in a glass sphere, and all those damn bugs circling and falling like black
snow. He shuffled through the grass at a slow run and the long, blooming
strands bit into his knees, etched fine stinging lines into the skin of his
shins. By the time he reached the court, the high was pulsing through his
head, his arms, and his legs with the beating call of the night insects: in
and out, up and down, over and under and through. Dunny threw the
ball at him, and he fumbled to catch it, his hands clumsy. He dribbled the
ball through his leg; it glanced against his calf.

"You sure you can handle that?" Dunny asked. He stood with his
hands on his waist underneath the goal. Sweat glazed his face.

"Nigga, I know you ain't asking me if I can handle a damn ball. I'll
show you some ball handling, fat boy."

Christophe dribbled the ball again, bouncing it with his fingertips.
Something about his handling was off. It felt like he was dribbling on
rocks; the ball was ricocheting everywhere.

"What the hell are you trying to do to the ball? Dribble it or flatten
it?" Dunny loped toward Christophe and raised one arm in defense. His
fingers grazed Christophe's chest.

"Why are you locking your knees? Damn, Dunny, you think I'm that
easy?" Christophe bounced the ball through his legs again. It cleared his
thigh this time, clean and easy. He caught it, wobbled, and smiled. "Just
needed to warm up, that's all."

"You been hitting the bottle in the car? You got a thirty-two ounce
hid under the passenger seat?"

"I ain't drank shit and I'm about to school your ass."

"Chris, I was dunking on niggas when you was still pissing the bed."

"I ain't never pissed in the bed, bitch."

Christophe faked to his right, then jerked to his left, leaned back, and
bought his legs together. He crouched and shot a fade away. He felt the
ball roll from his wrist, across his palm, up the spine of his middle finger
and away toward the basket. The release was good, but the shot flew wide.
It hit the corner of the backboard, bounced off the edge of the rim, and
arced back toward the court. Dunny snatched the rebound. Christophe
grimaced.

Dunny hugged the ball to his chest, breathing hard. Christophe eyed
his mouth, the pouch of fat and skin quivering under his neck. Dunny'd
been good in high school: he'd had a flawless jumper, and he was the goto man for defense on the inside. Christophe had gone to every one of
his home games. Dunny had teased him mercilessly, grilled him, when
he'd begun to play seriously in seventh grade. Dunny had sweated with
Christophe on the court, had been an indomitable brick wall, and had
yelled at him for hours. He was small, so according to Dunny, he should've
been quicker, handled the ball better, and had a nastier jumper. He'd
made Christophe so mad he'd wanted to cry, several times, but instead of
crying, Christophe had flared his nostrils, rasped through the pain in his
chest, and kept playing. He'd skirted and darted and struck at Dunny like
a small, irascible dog. He'd gotten better.

Christophe remembered that Joshua had mimicked Dunny, had
wrestled with his cousin chest to chest under the goal. He had learned
to be the big man on the inside to Christophe's squirrelly point guard.
By the twins' senior year, they were unstoppable. They spoke in a secret
language on the court, communicated with their shoulders, their eyes,
smirks and smiles. Christophe could tell whether Joshua wanted him to
pass the ball to him into the inside for an easy lay-up by the set of his
mouth. It was effortless, invigorating. They never smoked after a game:
there was no reason to; they were already high.

Now Christophe looked at his cousin and felt something like hands
behind his sternum constricting. Dunny had softened and spread like a
watercolor since he'd graduated five years ago. Beer and weed had blunted
his edges. The old Dunny would've shook him, spun, made the shot, and
taunted him. This Dunny clutched the ball to his middle as if he were
injured, as if the ball was staunching a flow of blood from his stomach.
Even the blink of his eyes was slurred. Christophe lunged at his cousin
and swatted the ball with the flat of his palm so hard it echoed through
his fingers with the stinging burn of slapped water. The ball slipped away
from Dunny, and his hands met in prayer before his chest. Christophe
began to dribble back and forth between his legs. He meant it to be hard
and sure. He wanted the impact of the ball on the court to sound like
gunshots, for the ball to slice its way through the air into his hand, but it
didn't. It meandered; it strayed. There was a line of tension pulled taut in
his shoulders, and no matter how carefully he followed the old lessons of
Dunny's phantom, he could not loosen it.

"You're palming the ball."

"Shut up, Dunny."

"You're supposed to finger it," Dunny said.

Christophe lurched to his right and snapped the ball, faking at Dunny
with it. Dunny cringed. Christophe felt something in his knee stab at him
with a quick, piercing pain.

"Who said I needed lessons from you?" Christophe crouched and
shot. The ball rang the rim like a bell and fell away. Dunny caught it.

"Your sloppy playing did, that's who." Dunny grinned and shoved
one large, meaty shoulder into Christophe's chest. He shot a fade away. It
grazed the rim and escaped the capsule of light surrounding the court.

"You lost it....now go get it."

"It's your ball, Chris."

"No it ain't, Dunny. If I go get this mothafucka, you're not getting it
back. I'm going to make you eat it."

Dunny breathed wetly. He shuffled into the darkness and reappeared
with the ball. The night and the insects and the foliage flickered in and out
of being like a fractured film. Christophe knew he'd smoked too much.

"I think you forgot who your Daddy was."

Dunny shoved Christophe hard with his shoulder as he dribbled.
Christophe stole the ball and pulled away to shoot. He felt the skin of
his face, his ears, and his neck burn hot. He narrowed his eye at Dunny's
flaccid throat, his profuse sweating, his labored breathing, and spat
his reply.

"I don't have a daddy!"

The ball sailed through the air and dropped neatly into the basket,
caressing the line of the net as it fell. Christophe snorted, blew his breath
from his chest in one quick huff and barely resisted adding a curt, "Bitch,"
to his declaration. His anger buoyed him, burned him clean and left his
mind and body unfettered by the high. He was a simple working equation
of mind and muscle blessed with a clean shot. For a second, he felt right.
He let Dunny get the rebound.

"So, what was wrong with you today?" Dunny's dribbling echoed in
Christophe's ears like a ponderous heartbeat.

"I don't want to talk about it." Christophe dug his fingers into his
hipbones.

"It's about a job, ain't it? Joshua got called back for something and
you didn't. You had to know there was a chance that would happen."

"Whatever." Christophe watched the ball shoot from Dunny's grip,
meet the asphalt, and rush back to his grip once, twice. Dunny's fingertips
seemed to suction the ball back, to kiss it. Dunny'd been right about that
at least: his ball handling skills were almost perfect.

"Let it go, Chris."

"What you know about it, Dunny? You got a job. You got a hustle.
You got a mama and a step-daddy to help you out."

Dunny stopped dribbling. He gripped the ball casually in one hand
and rested it in the cradle of his hip.

"And you should know, asshole, that you got support too." Dunny
rolled the ball against his belly, and then stopped. "You got your brother,
you got Ma-mee, you got all our aunts and uncles, and most important,
you got me."

Christophe swiped a bug away from his ear with his hand; it stung his
palm. He eyed his cousin's puffy face, his half-lidded eyes.

"What the fuck that's supposed to mean?"

"You actually think I'm going to let you starve out here?"

Christophe watched Dunny's stillness and knew it for what it was: a
gathering of energy and anger. He was pissed. Christophe had watched
him fight several people, knock them to their hands and knees, force
them to eat dirt with long, sure punches that had the force of machinery
in them. Dunny'd fought often in his teenage years over money, perceived
slights, subtle insults. His was a deceptive calm. Christophe stared blankly
through his anger, his unsettled bewilderment, and watched Dunny's
mouth move.

"You really think I'm going to let your dumb, ungrateful ass struggle
out here when I can put you on to my hustle? When I can front you a
quarter pound of weed and have you out here doubling your money?"
Dunny stepped closer to Christophe. His eyes were slits, fringed dashes in
the set canvas of his face. Dunny barely opened his mouth. The whites of
his eyes and the pearl of his teeth were invisible in the dark. "What kind
of a cousin do you think I am?"

Dunny wouldn't hit him. The only time he'd ever hit him was when
they wrestled, and then they were always playing. Suddenly Christophe
remembered the muscle beneath the meat: fat people were really strong.
He guessed it was because they had more to move around. Christophe
waved about in his hazy brain for an answer; he hadn't considered this.
He'd always been somewhat single-minded. He'd grown up picturing his
life in his head, plotting it as he went along: he'd made the basketball
team in ninth grade, lost his virginity in tenth grade, led the team to all
conference his junior year, successfully juggled several girls at one time
throughout his high school career and never had any of them fight one
another or discover his manipulations, and he'd finally graduated. There
was a pattern, an order to his life. He dreamed things, worked for them, and they happened. He'd assumed this would continue after he graduated,
that there existed steps to his life: a job at the dockyard or the shipyard
where he could learn a trade, pay raises, stacking money, refurbishing
Ma-mee's house, a girlfriend, a kid, and possibly, a wife one day. The
idea of a legitimate job had existed as an absolute in his head. It was the
fulcrum upon which the bar of his dreams balanced.

Christophe had dismissed dealing because he saw where it led: a
brief, brilliant blaze of glory where most drug dealers bought cars, the
bar at the club, women, paid bills for their mamas, and if they were really
lucky, houses. That lasted around two years. Then the inevitable occurred.
The coast was too small for anyone to remain anonymous for long. The
county police hounded the local dealers, who depended on bigger dealers
in Houston, Atlanta, and New Orleans for their cocaine. The cops saw the
local dealers at the park, in the neighborhood, making runs for dope, put
two and two together, and that was it. The dealers fell, then. They were
running, hiding, haunted. They scraped together large sums of money
and tried to put them away to support their families and their girlfriends
and their kids and instead found themselves using the money to post bail,
because the police picked most boys up three times a year, if not more.
For most drug dealers, jail and hustling became a job and going home
became a vacation. One or two weeks out, and they were back in again
for violating probation for smoking a little weed, like Fresh.