Black Gum

IMAGINATION

Shane and I walked from Charlie’s house to the bookstore next to the Walmart. Along the side of the store a man wearing leggings and a long shirt hopped over a small ditch run through with a trickle of brackish water. He saw us walking in and waved us over.

“Watch this shit.”

He jumped over the ditch.

We didn’t say anything.

“Now check this shit out.”

He jumped back over it.

“That’s the castle and I’m jumping over the moat.”

He wasn’t wearing any shoes.

We went inside. I browsed the shelves and picked out a few books and thumbed through them and went and sat in one of the chairs set up for customers. Shane sat next to me and tore the plastic off a porn magazine.

I flipped through my book and glanced over at him. “You do realize there’s this thing called the internet, yeah?”

He licked his thumb and turned a page. “I’m old school.”

“Old school.”

He tapped his head. “Can’t let the mind waste away. Gotta use the old imagination.”

I saw a picture of a woman having sex with a bedpost. “Imagination.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I read the first chapter of the book. Shane chuckled next to me.

I got up and got some coffee. Sat back down. “So where did you get off to last night?”

“Had a big delivery to make.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. House out in Turtle Creek.”

“Hood shit?”

“Not really. High school hey-bitches.”

I placed the book in my lap. “High school?”

“Yeah, like fifteen, sixteen. Something.”

“Oh.”

“In the trap, though.”

“I see.”

“Yep. Got like three hundo and a phone full of titty pics. Overall I’d say that’s a win.” He plopped the magazine down on the endtable between us. “What’s that shit?”

I showed him the book I was reading.

“That seems nice. You should buy that and let me read it. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

He stuck his tongue out at me. Split like a snake’s.

I said, “Mr. Imagination over here.”

Shane thumbed through the pictures in his phone. “Keeps me out of prison.”

UZI UP ON INSTAGRAM

Got a text from a number I’d never seen. I told them to meet me at the Cellar. I ordered a Natty Light and leaned against the bar. Few weeks ago they’d done it up for Halloween, rubber rats all along the back bar, skulls with light-up eyes and witches and a mummy in the corner. Taken it all down and replaced it with tinsel and a Christmas tree, but they hadn’t taken the time to get the cobwebs down from the cross beams and the chipped ceiling tiles. I plucked a wisp off my beer and balled it up and dropped it over the side of the bar.

Hank Williams on the jukebox. The old white folks roared and howled. The bartender sat on a stool with her legs crossed, engrossed in her phone.

I looked over at the thin man playing the slot machine in the corner.

“You winning?”

The man blinked behind his round glasses. “It’s not a money machine.”

I took a sip. “I’ve seen you pump a hundred dollars in that thing.”

The thin man pressed the red square. The slots spun on the TV screen. “Twenty maybe.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s my stress relief.”

I shrugged.

“You need some stress relief.”

“I got this eucalyptus candle.”

His face lit up. “Those are good. The three-wick?”

“The three-wick.”

The man nodded at me and pressed the button on his slot machine.

My customer pulled the heavy door back and stepped in. I could feel the cold all the way at the back. He weaved around the pool tables and the cowboy hats that turned one eighty to watch him take his seat and hold up a finger to the bartender.

“And I thought it was white outside.”

I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He took it and smiled at me. “Richard Beck.”

Beck paid for his beer and the bartender brought him a couple quarters back. He spun one of the coins and leaned back. “I feel like I’m about to be lynched.”

It had gotten quieter. I told him, “Let’s just finish our beers and we can head out to my car.”

He nodded.

We sat in silence for a long time. A talent show on the TV. Big girl belting something out. The jukebox quit and the bar was quiet.

Beck said, “She’ll never make it.”

“Nope.”

“America only has five seats in its heart for fat entertainers, and they’re taken up by Adele and Precious.”

I blew beer out my nose and signaled for another.

“What happened to ‘finish the beer?’”

“Oh shit. Sorry.”

Beck said, “Two whiskeys.”

The bartender handed us two beers. “Just a beer bar.”

“No liquor?”

She stared at him. “Well, it’s just a beer bar.”

I said, “I’ve seen tons of liquor in this place.”

The bartender’s eyelids went sharp and she put her hands on her hips.

Beck turned to me. “Bro, please.”

I began chugging my beer. Beck followed suit.

As we caught our breath we watched a man in a velvet tie-dye sweatsuit talk to a pool stick. Tipped his tie-dye cap back and rubbed chalk on the stick’s end. Still whispering to it.

Beck grabbed my shoulders in mock panic. “Save me from these honkies.”

We headed out into the snow and watched our feet.

Beck tapped my shoulder. “Sample.”

I gave him one.

He made a face. “Hate dry swallows.”

My car was parked in the alley behind the bar. We got in and I turned the car on and blasted the heater. I gave him the pills and he gave me a roll of twenties.

The speed started to take effect. He talked a mile a minute. He asked me if I rapped, and I told him no. He asked me if I knew anyone who rapped. I said no. He asked me if I had an Instagram.

I said, “I know what it is, but I don’t have one yet.”

He reached into his pocket and took out his phone. “I’m gonna show you some shit, my friend.”

“I don’t really have the eye for it.”

“Hold up. Hold up. Check this shit out.” He held out his phone. “Scroll through.”

A picture of an Uzi.

“That’s my Uzi.”

“You put a picture of an Uzi on Instagram?”

“Hell yeah. I got my boy to set it up. It’s like, triple locked or some shit. He knows computers and phones and like, technology. It’s all good.”

I scrolled. Three men in ski masks. They didn’t have shirts on. They were standing in front of a table holding up several pounds of cocaine.

“Real shit.”

I scrolled. There was a video of five men beating a man. The man was holding his head and screaming at them to stop. They yelled back that this is what happens when you’re a pussy-ass bitch.

“Put that nigga in the hospital. Look at his shoe fly off! His shoe done ran for help.”

I scrolled. A woman fellated the cameraman. In the background, on a mattress, a girl lay prone. Several men stood over her. One man crouched behind.

I handed the phone back. “They’ll shut down your account for shit like that.”

Beck looked at me like I was crazy. “No one’s gonna report shit. This is like a documentary.”

“It’s very raw.”

“Straight raw, man. Everything on this earth is straight raw.” He glanced down at his phone. The video was still playing. He laughed. “This bitch needs better friends.”

DISC GOLF

There was a disc golf course down the road from Charlie’s house.

Shane tossed his disc and it went wide and hit a tree. The branches shook and ice sloughed off them to break on the hard snow. We gave him shit and he flipped us off.

“Can’t wait for those biscuits,” Charlie said.

“The biscuits are the best part,” I said.

“I’m not buying either of you biscuits.” Shane stepped aside so Charlie could throw.

His disc landed near the goal.

Shane frowned. “Shit.”

I geared up for mine. Did a couple practice tosses. I hurled it. It hit the very same tree and landed next to Shane’s.

“Maybe we’re both buying biscuits,” I said.

“We can’t both lose.”

We hiked down to our discs.

Shane said, “I ran into five-oh last night.”

Charlie’s eyebrows raised.

“Nothing happened. I was just going to sell. It was like two, two-thirty. When I got there cops were everywhere.”

“So you dipped?”

“I asked them what was going on.”

I blinked. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

Charlie said, “You have got to be some kind of retard.”

I said, “What was going on?”

Charlie put his hand on Shane’s chest. “If you bring that shit to my house, I swear to god.”

Shane picked his disc up and brushed the snow off. “No one’s bringing anything to your house.”

I asked again: “What was going on?”

Shane tossed his disc. It landed wide. “I don’t know. Something about a guitar and nunchucks.”

BEAST

Charlie’s house was packed again.

Same shit.

Shane looking at me, telling me, “I do believe we have gotten silly again.”

Me sitting with the two of them, going on about how we could take this even further. The money was good now, sure, but we could take it up a notch. Hire folks to do shit for us. There wasn’t a reason not to, I’d say.

Charlie humored me and Shane didn’t understand what humor was, same as most people who laugh too much.

He took me aside and told me, “I’ll work on it.”

A cheer from the garage.

A group of folks I didn’t know were out there smoking cigarettes and this big Samoan kid was hitting a punching bag so hard the damn thing went near perpendicular to the wall. He stepped away from it and said, “I’m a beast,” and we all told him he was a beast. A tweaker took me aside and started up. His girlfriend was pregnant and he was scared. “I’m looking forward to being a dad, I’m gonna be the best dad ever,” he said, “but I don’t know.” He bit the inside of his cheek and shifted from foot to foot. I tried to focus. He went on about his own father and how he wouldn’t do that, and I nodded and paid attention though my mind was thirty places at once.

Most notably my attention was on the girl on the couch.

When the garage party dissipated, Shane went back inside and looked back at me and mouthed the words “next level” and then it was just us and I sat across from her. She had a bunch of holes in her jeans and I told her “I can see your pussy through those rips,” and she spread her legs a little wider and she smiled and got up and left.

DAY-TO-DAY

I ignored the texts from my wife.

I ignored the texts from my mother.

I shut down all my social media accounts.

I woke up to the powder and I fell asleep shaking.

POSSUM

The ink had started to take and so Shane’s gums turned black.

He handed us each a button of peyote.

The temperature had dropped that night. The snow came down. The three of us huddled in the tornado shelter in Charlie’s backyard. We had 40s and a case of beer and a bit of pot. There was a sac of black widow eggs in the far corner and we contemplated leaving, but eventually we convinced each other that black widow babies aren’t born under snow.

Shane lit a cigarette and handed one to me. I crushed the menthol ball in the filter. Snow flurries whipped down the concrete steps and we closed the top and breathed in the dirt and the mint smoke.

Shane said, “Last night I was so high I could see around corners. I want to say that I was blackout drunk, too, but I don’t think that’s right because I can remember things.”

The light from the lone bulb hanging cast shadows over his face. His tattoos moved down his forehead, across his cheeks, dripped off his chin.

“Started off at the Dragon.”

“The Dragon!” we echoed, and raised our beers.

“I met up with Cassandra there. She was dancing. I made it rain.”

“Cassandra,” Charlie said. He made his hands into claws and held them out in front of his chest.

“Oh yeah. So I get a private dance and we’re talking about this and that. It’s almost like a checklist. Boyfriend problems, drug problems, on and on. While she’s telling me this, though. She starts choking me.”

“Choking, like…your dick?”

“My throat. She’s choking me. Fucking strangling me. But I rolled with it. It was kind of nice. I saw stars and passed out and when I came to I felt a lot better about life in general.”

The shelter was my ribcage and it was moving.

“I went back to her sister’s place. They were gone for the night. She gave me a tuggie in her niece’s room. That was weird. Toys everywhere.”

“Did you skeet on the toys?”

“I skeeted on her.”

Charlie said, “Good man.”

“So after that, we went over to her neighbors house and smoked meth in their basement. I gave them a ride to the casino. They were these old-ass Indians. The woman had a face that looked ready to fall off. We went to the casino and they gambled and I gambled a bit too. Lost like fucking two hundo on that shit. But the old Indian chick had this prosthetic leg, and she’d sit at the blackjack table and she’d try to use her leg like a sword. Tried to knight the dealer. When she was at the slots, she’d try to knight the slot machine. The place was mostly empty at this time of night and it was weird quiet. I got on my knee and I let her knight me. Then the stripper hey-bitch and I went to her dealer’s house and he fucked her in this room and I just went through all his shit. Got cash, I got a machete.”

“I’ll trade you for the machete.”

“I gave you the railroad knife.”

“I’ll trade you that for the machete.”

“I made that knife. I put care into it.”

“But I’ll trade you.”

I thought of using a machete to hack through thick ferns and at the center of all the trails I met a jaguar.

“I got this, too.” Shane reached into his pocket. A Ziploc bag. He took out the sheet of acid and tore it into ten-strips and dropped one each into our respective 40s.

We chugged the malt liquor.

Charlie said, “That’s a crazy story, man.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe you got a squeezer from Cassandra.”

Outside was like staring into a chasm. The snow had dusted the backyard and underneath it there was a black earth shifting. A possum clung to the chainlink fence. We all took a good look at it but the thing didn’t move.

We wondered if it was dead.

We wondered if it was real.

I picked up a stick to poke the thing.

Shane said, “Don’t poke the possum.”

I walked toward it, holding the stick like a lance. “I’m gonna poke it.”

Shane stepped in front of me. “Don’t poke the fucking possum.”

I put the stick down. “All right. Jesus.”

We all kind of stood out there for a moment. Then we went back inside.

We smashed all the potted plants in the house. We lay on the floor and bit into Keystone cans and poured the beer on our faces. We stripped naked and stood in the kitchen. There was a standing inch of beer on the linoleum and there were purple and green layers to it and I dug my toes into it like sand.

Charlie and Shane melted and stepped out of time and space.

Shane yelled, “I’ve got the big one coming. The big job. The big money.”

I went into the guestroom and lay on the floor. My asshole felt very warm. I put my palm between my butt cheeks and looked at it, checking to see if I’d crapped myself.

I shivered and the spackle in the ceiling bled and dipped.

Two aliens appeared before me in the corner. Their heads shaped like windmills.

Purple fog at their feet. They dressed in shirts that hung off one shoulder and I could see their bra straps.

They showed me the weapon of the apocalypse. Three shapes.

I shut my eyes and went to the deepest door in my brain and opened it and touched the darkest ink. They told me if I didn’t get away, I would die.

I checked my ass again.

For as long as I was awake, I was convinced that I was shitting on the floor.

DRYWALL

I woke up and stepped out onto the porch. The ice in the trees let light through and skeletons coming up over the tops of the section 8 housing was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I felt new.

Charlie was leaning into the guts of the Mustang. Hood propped up and buckling with the wind.

When he saw me he stopped what he was doing and turned.

“What’s the big thing?”

“What big thing?”

“Shane. What Shane was talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, don’t do it.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I love my cousin. But that motherfucker is nuts. Before you met him, he was in prison. Do you know why he was in prison?”

I just wanted to look at the ice on the trees. “No.”

“He came home one day. He had this big pit bull. While he was gone, the pit bull had eaten a chunk out of his drywall. So he dragged the thing out onto his front yard and beat it to death.”

I kicked a rock off the porch. I suddenly realized how cold it was.

Charlie wiped his black hands off on a rag. “Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

THAT’S THE WAY

Last Call hosted a fake orgasm contest.

We got drunk and headed over. Shane entered and sat down looking pleased with himself. I tried to picture him murdering a dog. He stuck his split tongue out at me. I could maybe see it. Charlie had been quiet all day. He kept with that vibe at the bar.

Shane said, “I found out this morning that Cassandra’s boyfriend has been beating on her.”

Charlie said, “She’s a stripper. That’s part of the job.”

Shane said, “I invited the entirety of the Comanche bloods over to his house tonight. Told them it was a big party. Lots of beer.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

Shane had a way about him.

Some of the contestants were very good. The young girls imitated what they’d seen in porn, which was fine by us. An old woman with big hair and a sparkly Eiffel Tower shirt moaned monotone and said, “That’s it. That’s the way.”

We repeated that throughout the night. “That’s the way.”

Shane got up and took the mic. Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” faded into the background. He said, “Ah! Awe, shit. Sorry about that.”

Everyone went wild.

He sat back down and we killed more beers and he leaned over to me and said, “We’re gonna sell hippy crack at the Rage Rave down in Texas.”

“Yeah?”

“I got the nitrous from a local. We’re gonna go down there and they’re gonna give us two grand each.”

Charlie looked over at me, his beer poised halfway between the table and his face.

A large woman lay on her back on the stage with her legs in the air and yelled, “Fuck me till I go back in time. Right there. That’s dead center. Right on the money!”

I said, “Hell yeah. I’m in.”

HIPPY CRACK

Rockville was two gas stations and a post office. Farmland. Tobacco fields out to the horizon. The festival sprung up from the sparse trees. Steel spires and flashing neon lights and girls in belly shirts, their skin painted pink. Boys with no shirts at all. Hyperventilating kids lay prone in the bitch tent, EMTs asking them if it felt strange when they touched their arms. I bought a funnel cake.

I inhaled a balloon before going out to sell. Curiosity. Everything went white and my head rang and then it was gone.

Five dollars for this?

Shane inhaled one every fifteen minutes or so. He’d giggle and I’d tell him to focus.

I didn’t try to make sense of the appeal. No point. White people are smiling enigmas.

The unwashed masses had lined up through the parking lot, this long snake, and I filled their balloons, took their five or made change, and they’d inhale it right there, some of them stumbling, flaccid Mohawks plastered against their young faces already going tight and lined with abuse.

I saw most of them two, three times. Everybody seemed to sweat under the cool sun. I shed my hoodie early in the day, but once night fell I went back and put it on. Texas weather swinging.

At the end of the day we left the empty canisters in the parking lot and walked to our car. Set the heavy bag of cash in the floor and covered it with our backpacks. We sat down and started the car. We saw the women moving toward the rave, the cutoff shorts and long legs and smooth skin, and I turned the car off.

Thought about it.

We went back through security and into the party.

I bought a beer from a vendor and watched a DJ play a set. Kids in giant glowing fish costumes walked by on stilts. Hippies rode tandem bikes. Women hula hooped and men wore gloves with LED tips, spinning them, the colors flashing. I drank another beer.

We decided to roll.

Three minutes to find a kid with a backpack. Little green X pill down the hatch.

The bass swept over and through me. My chest expanded.

Shane scampered off to the foam machine.

I wandered.

A giant, hairless man stood in a field between two large Tesla coils. He held a metal rod in each hand. Arms outstretched. Webs of current flowing through him. The coils cracked and buzzed. He smiled electric blue.

I popped gooseflesh and felt the music. It rained and I shivered and I was a creature inside of a tree in a bed of mud in a rainforest. The women passed me and I could feel the tightness of their bellies and I could picture their faces twisted and how I could take them in my hands and lay them down.

I went to piss in a port-a-john and my legs shook. Zipped up, sure that I’d wet myself. And then I was sure that the port-a-john had blasted off into space and that if I opened the door I’d fall back to earth. Stayed cooped in there forever, steady breathing, trying to convince myself it would all be okay. Folks banging to get in.

When I finally opened the door, the ground rippled like the ocean and I stumbled through the tangles of bodies and saw young men and women lined along the fence. I joined them and vomited with them and saw the stars swirl in tight whirlpools, the last little bit down the drain forever over and over.

Shane laid his hands on the fence and hurled. He looked at me with eyes as wide as a child’s. “There was something wrong with that X.”

We stumbled back to the car.

Out my windshield, I saw the music festival disappear and reappear, blinking in and out of existence like a turn signal.

SPIDERS

I dreamt I had a son. I called my mother and told her. I went shopping and the kid was in a stroller. He looked just like me. Then he turned into a tiny blue and red spider and a dog came out of nowhere and ate him, so I shoved my hands down her throat and made her throw him up. I woke up sifting through the pile of vomit, wondering how I was gonna tell my mother that she wasn’t a grandma anymore.

HE SAID A CLOUD

We woke up to a cop rapping on our window.

In that moment you take stock of everything you’ve done with your life.

He told us to move on.

I turned on the car and my head felt heavy and we drove.

He found us at a Love’s not fifty miles from the rave. Had to have clocked us instantly: two fuck-ups hunched over taquitos at a Formica booth. He loomed. I recognized him. I grew up with him. Shane must have known. He picked up his phone and hit a button.

“This is all being recorded.”

Danny Ames borrowed a chair from a neighboring table and sat down. “My throat hurts. I’m gonna sound bad.”

I said, “It goes to a cloud.”

“Yeah,” Shane still had a taquito in his other hand. “Saved to a cloud.”

Men in sandals bought bags of chips and soda. Women browsed dreamcatchers. Kids pointed up at the animal heads mounted over bottles of motor oil.

Ames laughed. “He said ‘a cloud.’”

We looked at each other.

“No, but seriously. That’s cool.” Ames cleared his throat. “Am I sounding hoarse?”

Shane said, “You sound good.”

“Oh, okay. I hate to tell y’all this, but you’re gonna have to give me all that shit in your trunk.”

For a moment, we just looked at him. At each other. Ames saw it all click and his muscles relaxed.

Shane said, “They’re gonna kill us.”

Ames shrugged. “Yeah.”

We loaded the canisters into the Impala. Ames slammed the trunk and put his keys in his pocket. Anubis on the keychain. He copied our names and addresses from our driver’s licenses onto his smartphone.

Shane toed rocks in the asphalt. “So what happens now?”

“I’ve seen it go both ways.”

“Which ways?”

Ames peeked in the bag at the cash. “Imagine the two ways it could go. I’ve seen both. I won’t see it either way.”

The Ozarks hid behind a fog. Shane said, “At least beat our asses or some shit.”

Danny Ames took a vape pen from his pocket, pressed the button. Cinammon. “We’re in the parking lot of a Love’s. Beat your own asses.”

He got into his car. Shane said, “They’re gonna kill us,” again.

“Don’t care. Make sure you tell Eloise that Danny Ames took her shit. Make sure you’re clear about that.”

I pointed at his teeth. “Do those come out?”

“What?”

“Your grill. Are the teeth permanent, or can you take them out?”

Danny Ames opened his mouth and pulled out his platinum dentures. Grinned bare gums. “I can take them out whenever,” he said.

THE NEAR-MISS

“It’s slippery out,” Shane said on the drive home. “We could flip the car. We could say that we flipped the car and when the cops showed up they confiscated the money.”

I shook my head.

“We could do what we said. We could hit each other.”

“I’m not going to hit you. Or get hit.”

Shane turned in his seat. Prairie rolling by out the window. “Do you understand how fucked we are?”

I nodded.

“There was a lot of money. That was a lot of money.”

“I know that.”

“We should flip the car. The cops come.”

“We’re both still a little high. I’m not flipping the car.”

“I should have brought a gun.”

“You don’t have a gun.”

“I should have bought a gun.”

“You wouldn’t have used it.”

“I would have shot him.”

“You were just as scared as I was.”

Shane chewed his thumbnail. “Your aura is different.”

I took a deep breath. “Oh yeah?”

“It’s yellow but I don’t know which yellow. You’re either afraid or you’ve come to some new point in your life.”

“I don’t know if I came to a new point in my life. I think I remembered a point from before all this. You know the feeling you get when you almost get in an accident? You just barely miss the car coming at you. You know that adrenaline? That’s what I’ve got right now. I feel like I forgot. I feel like I forgot that I’m the guy who gets pulled over for running a red light. I forgot that the universe has this conception of me as someone who does the right thing. Good things. I don’t know how I forgot that.”

Shane was quiet for a bit. “We’re just different.”

“I think so.”

“I’m the guy who can’t ever see his mother. You know she has a restraining order on me?”

“I know.”

“We owe a ton of money to people who have made other people disappear for far less.”

“We’ll figure it out. I’ll get a job. We’ll pay them back.”

“You’ve still got that adrenaline going?”

“Definitely.”

“I wish I could say I understood it. You’re the near miss, but I’m the oncoming car.”

He reached for the wheel and turned it. I stomped on the brakes and the car spun. It stopped on the side of the road and the engine died.

When I started hitting Shane, I’d only meant to knock some sense into him. Eventually he was yelling stop, and after a few more I put him out.

I fired up the ignition and drove us home.

NEW BOSS

A week later we were sitting in the living room. Charlie cut out lines on the coffee table. None of us spoke. We hadn’t said more than a couple words to each other since we got back from Rockville.

Two large men came through the door carrying guns.

Charlie hopped up and said, “I know you’re not coming in here on some bullshit.”

They pointed the guns at Charlie.

He said, “At least knock.”

The big man on the left said, “I’m Turtle, and this is Little John.”

Charlie said, “Turtle. John.”

Turtle noticed Shane sitting on the recliner. “Shane! Why don’t you answer your texts, fool?”

Shane looked at his hands.

“The rave was several days ago, homie. Where’s the spoils?”

“Danny Ames took it.”

The color went out of Turtle’s face. “Come again?”

“Danny Ames took it.”

Turtle rubbed his face. He said, “Do you know how to use your phone? Phones are pretty amazing. You could have texted that to me and we wouldn’t have bust in this motherfucker and been all rude to our host.” He pointed at the coffee table. “May I?”

Charlie extended his hand.

Turtle did a line.

Little John did a line and yelled, “Holy cows!”

Turtle said, “Don’t pay attention to him. Pay attention to me. He’s a waterhead.”

Little John said, “Better bring my floaties.”

“So Danny Ames took the money.”

Shane nodded.

“It was what…”

“I don’t know. I didn’t count it.”

“We priced it out at about fifteen k. Would you say that sounds right?”

Shane thought about it. “Sounds right.”

“Okay. So, do any of you have fifteen thousand dollars?”

Turtle looked at me. I shook my head. He looked at Charlie, who said, “This isn’t my fuck-up. I didn’t have shit to do with any of this.”

Turtle nodded. “All right. Now, a part of me is wondering if there’s not some subterfuge going on here.”

Shane’s eyes went wide.

“Hold on. I’m not done. You coming back here, just sitting there waiting to get fucked, that’s not what guilty people do. So I believe you.”

We all deflated a bit.

“But you still owe us.” He turned to me. “How much do you have on you?”

I went into the guest bedroom and opened up the drawer. Brought them back around five hundred bucks.

“Don’t you motherfuckers sell drugs?”

I told him, “Mostly I eat them.”

“You ever heard ‘The Ten Crack Commandments?’”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t take?”

“No.”

Turtle and Little John stood up to leave. “It’s like this, guys. Your buddy here hooked it up. And we’ll subtract the four grand we were gonna give you guys. That puts it at ten-five. I don’t want it from this little faggot, I want it from you, Shane. It was your job, and this is your fuckup.”

Shane drummed his fingers lightly on his knees.

Turtle waved. “I’m being nice, but only because I hate Danny Ames even more than you do right now. Holler.”

Little John said, “Don’t holler in the house!”

They left.

Charlie held Shane in a bear hug. The tattooed man thrashed and screamed. Black gums bared.

I watched.

Shane calmed and eventually fell asleep.

Charlie got a blanket out of his room and covered his cousin sleeping there on the floor.

He said to me, “If you’ve got somewhere else to go, you’d better go there.”

I slept in my car.

Like that it was over.

I lived my whole life on a path and for a moment there I strayed. I lived low and found out that I wasn’t equipped for it. Charlie didn’t call me anymore. I lived in my car for a bit.

Shane disappeared.

I just kind of floated.

Then I decided to try life again.