It rained during the funeral, and the girl bent down, her tiny hands touching the coffin, caressing the silver-colored box. Shiv spoke to her dead mother, but Queenie and the others couldn’t hear what she said. When she was finished, Shiv turned to Queenie and opened her mouth to speak but didn’t. After a moment, the girl spoke to everyone standing there watching her, pimp and whores alike. She said, simply, “I see you.”
For the first time, Queenie viewed the girl as a double-edged sword. Sure, she could kill for her, but the girl could also kill her and anyone else she desired at any moment she desired it. What use was a weapon that volatile? What happens when the child outgrows its parent?
Queenie invested her money, started her business, and it thrived. When the numbers business got off the ground, she put dress suits on the girls and sent them out on the corners to hustle numbers for her. They made more money running numbers than they ever had on their backs, and it was decent, respectable work. Her Forty Thieves and two dozen ex-whores worked magic on the corners of Harlem.
By this time, Dutch Schultz, a white mobster who distributed liquor during the Prohibition, had gotten a whiff of the money that could be made running numbers in black Harlem. He wanted a piece of the action, and he would kill to get it. Dutch had the cops and politicians in his pocket, and he began to wage war against her. Queenie had wanted to avoid blood in the streets, and she had for a while. Eventually, though, it had been inevitable, and she supposed she had been naive in thinking that it was even possible to do so. Bumpy and her Forty Thieves had set the streets ablaze protecting her interest, killing Schultz’s men in the process. In return, Schultz killed hers. Her only advantage was Shiv.
The girl was able to infiltrate Schultz’s community where whole groups of his men would die off slowly, methodically. They would choke themselves to death on their own forks, step out in front of Mack trucks, shoot each other to death for no apparent cause; it didn’t matter, they were dead and couldn’t challenge Queenie. Shiv began to kill wiseguys with a frank regard that even scared Queenie. The girl withdrew. It was in her eyes. Always the indicator of a child’s suffering, Shiv’s were empty, devoid of anything, any emotion. Any empathy. Queenie enjoyed the money, the power. The people around her enjoyed the perks of that power. Her errand boys, her cooks, her cleaners, everyone won because of her success. Shiv gained more than most.
None of it seemed to make the child happy. And everyone at this point worked to make Shiv happy. They were afraid. When the girl wasn’t around, people would whisper about her. When she was around, they benefited. Either way, Shiv didn’t care, she wasn’t happy. Queenie reasoned that happiness was all but impossible with her mother gone. Shiv had willingly worked for her when she thought she was protecting her mother. Now that just couldn’t happen.
Queenie had said that the girl was always an enigma to her, and this was true. But the woman believed that she knew Shiv because she knew herself; Queenie related to her as she related to the women like her. The women in this hopeless, useless place, this life. Shiv was every child, every woman who was never given another option.
Queenie hated herself a little more each day for what she’d done. Still, Shiv killed for her.
Queenie hadn’t been there the day it happened. Story went that one of the Thieves, Bumpy’s right hand man, Hurts, had made the mistake. Hurts was a big man. He dressed like he bought all his clothes out of a secondhand shop, but he was brutal. He carried a baseball bat and would beat the hell out of men who annoyed him in the streets. A short fuse did not mix well with her new establishment. Not with Shiv.
The man had disrespected the girl’s position in the Thieves. Shiv didn’t care about a lot of things, but she had earned her way into the gang; and she would not accept anything less. Bumpy had named her, and she deserved it. If Queenie had been there, she would have had Hurts’ tongue torn out, but that wasn’t his luck. Shiv walked up to the big man, who sat laughing at the girl, and slid her fingers across his face as a baby would. The next day, Hurts sliced off his dick with a rusted shiv. He bled to death in the alley behind Queenie’s new place.
The following week, two more of the Forty Thieves died after having run-ins with Shiv. Everything Queenie had built was falling apart. On the business side, Schultz had gotten to the police, and despite having paid them off, the cops began harassing her, placed nearly half of her men in jail. Including Bumpy.
The following week, Madam St. Clair walked into the newspaper office and placed an ad in the paper detailing the corruption of the police force, all of the monies that she had paid them, and whom she had paid. Her business might fall apart, but she would take as many people with her as she could.
The day Bumpy was let out of jail, Queenie received a letter from Schultz himself. She met him in an alley, off the record, as he had said.
“I know about the girl.” Dutch Schultz always looked like he was waiting to take a mug shot. His eyes were large and sat too far apart on his head. He was a Jew—Jews and blacks didn’t mix.
“The hell you say?”
“The nigger girl who you keep as some kinda lucky charm or something.”
Queenie just stared at him.
“You know what I’m talking about, bitch.”
Queenie made a circular motion with her hands, and she, Bumpy, and what was left of her men moved to walk away.
“Wait,” Schultz called after her. He ran to her, his men staring, surprised. “I’m sorry. Please hear me out. I … I want a truce.”
She stopped, looked at him.
“You keep Harlem. I get a cut.” She started to protest, but he continued, “You can expand farther out, have more territory. More money than you’ve ever dreamed. I’ll get the cops off your back, the people uptown, too.”
“What do you want?”
“The girl.”
“No.”
“I know you have lost men. Several. You could lose more. You could … die, too. Does she mean that much to you? Think about it.”
The woman looked at Bumpy, who turned his head. She couldn’t tell if it was in disgust or reluctant acceptance. “I want the body.”
The white men shot Shiv down in the streets two weeks later. Queenie buried her in a plot next to her mother. It didn’t rain. No one but Queenie and Bumpy mourned for the child. The women who had helped to raise the girl were too fearful by this point, and they had all simply wanted it over. Queenie had given it to them. She believed that they all felt guilty. She did.
A year later, Dutch Schultz was gunned down at the Palace Chop House restaurant in Newark, New Jersey. He was in the hospital, dying of his wounds.
Queenie sat down, placed her head in her hands. After a long while, she opened her drawer, took out pen and paper. She wrote simply, Qui sème le vent, récolte la tempête. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” She addressed the envelope to the hospital in care of Dutch Schultz and called for Bumpy.
“Send this by telegram.” She handed the letter to the man, who stared at it suspiciously. Finally, she said, “After you mail that, let Johns go with a message: I’m out.” Bumpy smiled briefly but long enough for her to recognize his out-of-form expression. Then he nodded and walked out of the room.
Queenie stared at her place; thought of the much smaller one from which she had come. Thought about the little girl, Shiv.
I make people do bad things, the girl had once said.
Moi aussi, Queenie thought. So do I.
Blood Drive
Jeffrey Ford
For Christmas our junior year of high school, all of our parents got us guns. That way you had a half a year to learn to shoot and get down all the safety garbage before you started senior year. Depending on how well off your parents were, that pretty much dictated the amount of firepower you had. Darcy Krantz’s family lived in a trailer, and so she had a pea-shooter, .22 Double Eagle Derringer, and Baron Hanes’s father, who was in the security business and richer than god, got him a .44 magnum that was so heavy it made his nutt
y kid lean to the side when he wore the gun belt. I packed a pearl handled .38 revolver, Smith and Wesson, which had originally been my grandfather’s. It was old as dirt, but all polished up the way my father kept it, it was still a fine looking gun. It was really my father’s gun, and my mother told him not to give it to me, but he said, “Look, when she goes to high school, she’s gotta carry, everybody does in their senior year.”
“Insane,” said my mom.
“Come on,” I said. “Please …”
She drew close to me, right in my face, and said, “If your father gives you that gun, he’s got no protection making his deliveries.” He drove a truck and delivered bakery goods to different diners and convenience stores in the area.
“Take it easy,” said my dad, “all the crooks are asleep when I go out for my runs.” He motioned for me to come over to where he sat. He put the gun in my hand. I gripped the handle and felt the weight of it. “Give me your best pose,” he said.
I turned profile, hung my head back, my long chestnut hair reaching halfway to the floor, pulled up the sleeve of my T-shirt, made a muscle with my right arm, and pointed the gun at the ceiling with my left hand. He laughed till he couldn’t catch his breath. And my mom said, “Disgraceful,” but she also laughed.
I went to the firing range with my dad a lot the summer before senior year. He was a calm teacher and never spoke much or got too mad. Afterward, he’d take me to this place and buy us ice cream. A lot of times it was Friday night, and I just wanted to get home so I could go hang out with my friends. One night I let him know we could skip the ice cream, and he seemed taken aback for a second, like I’d hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry,” he said and tried to smile.
I felt kind of bad and figured I could hug him or kiss him or ask him to tell me something. “Tell me about a time when you shot the gun not on the practice range,” I said as we drove along.
He laughed. “Not too many times,” he said. “The most interesting was from when I was a little older than you. It was night, we were in the basement of an abandoned factory over in the industrial quarter. I was with some buds, and we were partying, smoking up and drinking straight, cheap Vodka. Anyway, we were wasted. This guy I really didn’t like who hung out with us, Raymo was his name, he challenged me to a round of Russian roulette. Don’t tell your mother this,” he said.
“You know I won’t,” I said.
“Anyway, I left one bullet in the chamber, removed the others, and spun the cylinder. He went first—nothing. I went, he went, etc., click, click, click. The gun came to me, and I was certain by then that the bullet was in my chamber. So you know what I did?”
“You shot it into the ceiling?”
“No. I turned the gun on Raymo and shot him in the face. After that we all ran. We ran, and we never got caught. At the time there was a gang going around at night shooting people and taking their wallets, and the cops put it off to them. None of my buds were going to snitch. Believe me, Raymo was no great loss to the world. The point of which is to say, it’s a horrible thing to shoot someone. I see Raymo’s expression right before the bullet drilled through it just about every night in my dreams. In other words, you better know what you’re doing when you pull that trigger. Try to be responsible.”
I was sorry I asked.
To tell you the truth, taking the gun to school at first was a big nuisance. The thing was heavy, and you always had to keep an eye on it. The first couple of days were all right, cause everyone was showing off their pieces at lunch time. A lot of people complimented me on my gun. They liked the pearl handle and the shape of it. Of course, the kids with the new, high-tech nine millimeter jobs got the most attention, but if your piece was unique enough, it got you at least some cred. Jody Motes, pretty much an idiot with buck teeth and a fat ass, brought in a German Luger with a red swastika inlaid on the handle and because of it, started dating this really hot guy in our English class. Kids wore them on their hips, others, mostly guys, did the shoulder holster. A couple of the senior girls with big breasts went with this over the shoulder bandolier style, so their guns sat atop their left breast. Sweaty Mr. Gosh in second period Math said that look was “very fashionable.” I carried mine in my Sponge Bob lunch box. I hated wearing it, the holster always hiked my skirt up in the back somehow.
Everybody in the graduating class carried heat except for Scott Wisner, the King of Vermont, as everybody called him. I forget why cause Vermont was totally far away. His parents had given him a stun gun instead of the real thing. Cody St. John, the captain of the football team, said the stun gun was fag, and after that Wisner turned into a weird loner, who walked around carrying a big jar with a floating mist inside. He asked all the better-looking girls if he could have their souls. I know he asked me. Creep. I heard he’d stun anyone who wanted it for ten dollars a pop. Whatever.
The teachers in the classes for seniors all had tactical 12-gauge short barrel shotguns; no shoulder stock, just a club grip with an image of the school’s mascot (a cartoon, rampaging Indian) stamped on it. Most of them were loaded with buckshot, but Mrs. Cloder in Human Geography, who used her weapon as a pointer when at the board, was rumored to rock the breaching rounds, those big slugs cops use to blow doors off their hinges. Other teachers left the shotguns on their desks or laying across the eraser gutter at the bottom of the board. Mr. Warren, the Vice Principal, wore his in a holster across his back and for an old fart, was super quick in drawing it over his shoulder with one hand.
At lunch, across the soccer field and back by the woods where only the seniors were allowed to go, we sat out every nice day in the fall, smoking cigarettes and having gun spinning competitions. You weren’t allowed to shoot back there, so we left the safeties on. Bryce, a boy I knew since kindergarten, was good at it. He could flip his gun in the air backwards and have it land in the holster at his hip. McKenzie Batkin wasn’t paying attention and turned the safety off instead of on before she started spinning her antique Colt. The sound of the shot was so sudden we all jumped and then silence followed by the smell of gun smoke. The bullet went through her boot and took off the tip of her middle toe. Almost a whole minute passed before she screamed. The King of Vermont and Cody St. John both rushed to help her at the same time. They worked together to staunch the bleeding. I remember noticing the football laying on the ground next to the jar of souls, and I thought it would make a cool photo for the yearbook. She never told her parents, hiding the boots at the back of her closet. To this day she’s got half a middle toe on her right foot, but that’s the least of her problems.
After school that day, I walked home with my new friend, Constance, who only came to Bascombe High in senior year. We crossed the soccer field, passed the fallen leaves stained red with McKenzie’s blood, and entered the woods. The wind blew and shook the empty branches of the trees. Constance suddenly stopped walking, crouched, drew her Beretta Storm, and fired. By the time I could turn my head, the squirrel was falling back, headless, off a tree about thirty yards away.
She had a cute hair cut, short but with a lock that almost covered her right eye. Jeans and a green flannel shirt, a calm, pretty face. When we were doing current events in fifth period Social Studies, she’d argued with Mr. Hallibet about the cancellation of child labor laws. Me, I could never follow politics. It was too boring. But Constance seemed to really understand, and although on the TV news we all watched, they were convinced it was a good idea for kids twelve and older to now be eligible to be sent to work by their parents for extra income, she said it was wrong. Hallibet laughed at her, and said, “This is Senator Meets we’re talking about. He’s a man of the people. The guy who gave you your guns.” Constance had more to say, but the teacher lifted his shotgun and turned to the board. The thing I couldn’t get over is that she actually knew this shit better than Hallibet. The thought of it, for some reason, made me blush.
By the time the first snow came in late November, the guns became mostly just part of our wardrobes, and kids turned their attent
ion back to their cell phones and iPods. The one shot fired in the school before Christmas vacation was when Mrs. Cloder dropped her gun in the bathroom stall and blew off the side of the toilet bowl. Water flooded out into the hallway. Other than that, the only time you noticed that people were packing was when they’d use their sidearm for comedy purposes. Like Bryce, during English, when the teacher was reading Pilgrim’s Progress to us, took out his gun and stuck the end in his mouth as if he was so bored he was going to blow his own brains out. At least once a week, outside the cafeteria, on the days it was too cold to leave the school, there were quick draw contests. Two kids would face off, there’d be a panel of judges, and Vice Principal Warren would set his cell phone to beep once. When they heard the beep the pair drew and whoever was faster won a coupon for a free 32-ounce soda at Babb’s, the local convenience store.
One thing I did notice in that first half of the year. Usually when a person drew their gun, even as a joke, they had a saying they always spoke. Each person had their own signature saying. When it came to these lines, it seemed that the ban on cursing could be ignored without any problem. Even the teachers got into it. Mr. Gosh was partial to “Eat hot lead, you little motherfuckers.” The school nurse, Ms. James, used “See you in Hell, asshole.” Vice Principal Warren, who always kept his language in check, would draw, and while the gun was coming level with your head, say, “You’re already dead.” As for the kids, they all used lines they’d seen in recent movies. Cody St. John used “Suck on this, bitches.” McKenzie, who by Christmas was known as Half-toe Batkin, concocted the line “Put up your feet.” I tried to think of something to say, but it all seemed too corny, and it took me too long to get the gun out of my lunch box to really outdraw anyone else.
Senior year rolled fast, and by winter break, I was wondering what I’d do after I graduated. Constance told me she was going to college to learn philosophy. “Do they still teach that stuff?” I asked. She smiled, “Not so much anymore.” We were sitting in my living room, my parents were away at my aunt’s. The TV was on, the lights were out, and we were holding hands. We liked to just sit quietly with each other and talk. “So I guess you’ll be moving away after the summer,” I said. She nodded. “I thought I’d try to get a job at Wal-Mart,” I said. “I heard they have benefits now.”
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