by Richard Dry
“What we got to do now?”
“We got to wait.”
“Here, in this old toilet?”
Love nodded.
“What about our trunk?”
“I told them bus people to hold it for us until we’re ready.” The loudspeaker announced a departing bus, and a few passengers began to run. Li’l Pit laughed and then started to drone and nod his head.
“Yuh yuh yuh yuh yuh.”
“Cut that shit out,” Love said.
“YA YA YA,” Li’l Pit yelled louder, but then stopped. “I’m going in there.” He got up and walked into the darkened video arcade. After wandering around looking for quarters on the floor, he stood next to a taller kid playing Street Fighter. As he watched, he shook his head.
“Here,” Li’l Pit said. “I’ll get you a free man.” He grabbed the controls and pushed the kid to the side so he wouldn’t have time to argue. He played the game for a minute and got an extra man.
“Here,” the boy said, trying to get his play back.
“Just a minute.” Li’l Pit was fighting intensely and pushing the controls. A minute later the boy spoke up again.
“Here, let me play.” He pushed Li’l Pit, but Li’l Pit didn’t budge, so the boy wandered off. Love came over and watched his brother. Li’l Pit punched the enemy one more time and the game awarded him another new man.
“Bet you wish you was that good for real.”
“This is for real,” he said. “There ain’t no one in the world can beat me at this, and that’s for real.”
A policeman came up to them with his hand on his club. He tapped Love on the shoulder.
“Outside, both of you.”
“What for?” Li’l Pit said.
“Out.”
“I was just getting him extra men. He said I could play.”
“Now.”
“Shit, man. Can’t never do anything nice for no one.”
Love and Li’l Pit walked out of the arcade, shaking their heads, the policeman following them. Li’l Pit started to babble: “Libily libily libily.”
“What’s wrong with him?” the policeman asked.
Love shrugged. “He’s not doing it on purpose.”
The policeman thrust out his arm and pointed to the wall. “Stand over there.”
“Damn. Poh-Poh ain’t gettin none at home,” Love mumbled, and his brother laughed.
“Is this them?” the cop asked. Love turned and saw the bald man who’d sat across from them in the bus.
“What’d we do?” Love yelled.
The whole bus station seemed to be watching them. The man nodded and the cop came up behind Love and handcuffed him. He then patted Love down all over his body.
“Get your hands off me, faggot.”
The cop reached into Love’s jacket and pulled out the paper bag. He looked in and then rolled it up.
“Give me that back,” Love yelled. “You don’t have any right to take my stuff.”
“Lay on the ground.”
“Give me my bag!”
The cop pushed on Love’s shoulder and forced him to his knees and then flattened him onto his stomach.
“You too,” he said to Li’l Pit. Li’l Pit began to bark: “Rah rah rah rah! Rah rah rah rah rah!” But when the policeman raised his club, he got down and lay on his stomach.
“What’d your bag look like?” the cop asked the old man.
“It was a black case, a soft briefcase, with silver locks. There were watches in it.”
“We don’t have his stupid bag,” Love yelled. The cop went into the arcade. Passersby stared at the boys, handcuffed and on the ground, some with convinced looks, nodding their heads, others with convinced looks, shaking their heads.
“I don’t see your briefcase in there,” the cop said. “They may have put it somewhere or sold it already. They have a bag here with money.”
“That money is my money,” Love yelled. “My grandmother gave me that money.”
The cop continued to speak as if Love were just one more video game screaming in the background.
“I’ll tell you what you can do. If you want to press charges, I can take them in and confiscate the money. We can call up the kids’ parents. If we can prove they took the watches, then the money is yours. But I don’t think you’ll probably see your watches again. In fact, there’s not much chance we’ll prove they took them, and then they keep the money. You can fill out a report, though, if you want; but my feeling is to just take the money and send them on their way. That’s just my suggestion. But you can do what you want.”
Love stood up and shouted, “That’s my money, motherfucker. You can’t keep my money. We’re supposed to use that for food money. You can call my grandmother. You can’t steal my money.”
“Get down on the ground, now.” The cop took out his nightstick and approached him. Love lay down again.
“I don’t know if he took my bag for sure,” the man said.
“He took it,” the cop said, standing over Love. “I’ve seen his kind a thousand times. They dress up nice and hang around here all day and snatch people’s stuff. Believe me, he took it and sold it right outside. Then they use the money to buy drugs and turn that around for more money.”
“We’re going to South Carolina. You can look at my tickets,” Love groaned.
“Maybe we should look at their tickets,” said the old man.
“Listen,” the cop said. “If you don’t want me to do my job, then why did you ask me over here? I don’t care if they got tickets to Kalamazoo. Where do you think they get money like this, huh? And in a paper bag.” He held the bag open in front of the man’s face. “They take a bus, they steal some luggage, and then they get money to buy crack outside the station to sell for even more. I see it every day. It’s a gang thing. It’s an initiation. They’ve got to steal somebody’s stuff and then they can be a part of the gang.”
The old man shook his head.
“I know it’s a sad thing to see,” the policeman continued. “But when you’re out here like me, seeing these kids stealing and killing day after day, getting away with everything, you don’t feel sorry for them anymore. You got to stop looking at them like kids. They’re rotten seeds. By this age, it’s already too late. You got to just lock them up and throw away the key.”
The old man was looking at the boys lying on the dirty ground, Li’l Pit in his V-neck red sweater, babbling in a quick monotone.
“I can’t prove they took it,” he said. “But I can’t see anyone else on that bus taking that case.”
“What do you want me to do?” the cop asked.
“What will happen to them if you arrest them?”
“If they have records already, which they always do, then they might go to Juvi, or to a camp. Either way, they’ll be out again in a few months and you’ll be minus your money. If I book them, I’ve got to keep the money as evidence.”
“We’re going to South Carolina,” Love said in a whisper.
“We should just at least look at their tickets,” said the old man. The policeman went to Love and rolled him over like a carpet. Love lay perfectly still as the cop unzipped his jacket and got the tickets from his inside pocket.
“Yep. Norma, South Carolina. Probably some national gang ring. If you want, I’ll put them on the bus. They’ll just hop off at the next stop. But then you can have your money and at least they’ll be out of my hair.”
“Yes. I guess that’s what I want you to do, if you don’t mind.”
The cop shrugged. “Here’s the money; it’s obviously yours.” He held the bag out to the man.
“I don’t know. I guess so. It’s so hard,” the man said. He looked at the boys on the floor and shook his head.
“Damn right it’s hard,” said the cop. “Every day of my life I wonder how I keep going.”
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER they sat in silence on the midnight bus out of L.A., thinking of how the old man and cop screwed them over. Every on
ce in a while Love would look down and shake his head. Upon seeing him shake his head, Li’l Pit would shake his head too. But then they’d go off into their own thoughts again, staring at the back of the seat, or out the window into the darkness.
Li’l Pit’s mind was racing so fast that he couldn’t speak. Every time he was going to ask Love a question, a more important question popped into his head: Why did the man think they took his bag? Why did the cop make them lie on the ground when they were already in handcuffs? He would have liked to have hit that old man, stand on top of him and take the cop’s club and smack him right between the eyes. But the man did let them go because Love had the tickets to South Carolina. But why did Love have tickets to South Carolina? It must have been just in case something like this happened. But if they were really going to stop in Dallas on the way, as the bus driver had announced, maybe he could go to Texas Stadium and see Emmitt Smith. But then Freight and Curse would kill them. Except Love had said at first that they were going to L.A., so they must be waiting to get off at the next stop. But how were they going to buy the stuff now that the cop had their money? That cop was just lucky he had that club, or he would have tore him up. There was no excuse for putting them on the floor like that in front of all those people. Li’l Pit shook his head. Love looked at him and shook his head too, and they both smiled.
* * *
THE BUS PULLED off the freeway and stopped outside a small terminal in Indio, California.
“Five minutes,” the driver said. He opened the door, left the engine running, and got off. Li’l Pit looked at Love, but Love put his head against the window and closed his eyes.
“Ain’t we gettin off?” Li’l Pit asked.
Love rolled his forehead back and forth against the window. It was just past two A.M., and the three-day trip to Norma included three more transfers, one in Dallas, another in Atlanta, and the last one in Augusta, Georgia.
“Ain’t we goin back to L.A.?” Li’l Pit asked again. “You afraid that cop still there waitin for us? We don’t have to go back in through the station.”
“We can’t get another ticket back to L.A. What money are we going to use? We only have this ticket to Carolina.”
“We could sell it back.”
“You can’t sell nothing back once you got it. You got to just keep on going.”
“Shouldn’t we call Curse and tell him what’s up?” Li’l Pit asked.
“No. Definitely no.”
“We have to. This is my job, and I’m saying we should go back. I’m getting off.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch.”
Love grabbed him and Li’l Pit screamed: “Let go of me!” The passengers turned and stared.
“Listen. Wait,” Love said.
“Naw. It’s my job.”
“But you don’t know something.”
“I know we sposed to be in L.A.”
“No. Something else that you’ve got to know before callin Curse.”
“What already?”
“You’ve got to sit down before I tell you. I’m not going to yell this all over the bus.”
“Fine.” Li’l Pit sat in the seat.
“Okay.” Love’s face stretched into a smile.
“Stop playin.”
“Okay, okay. This is real important. I’m just smiling because it’s so important it’s making me nervous.”
“Hurry up. The man’s gonna come back.”
“Okay. You can’t call Curse because Curse doesn’t know we’re down here.” Love’s smile returned.
“Yeah he do.” Li’l Pit moved to the edge of his seat, as if he were about to get up and go.
“This is real, what I’m saying to you. You got to know sometime. There was no job. I made all of that up.”
“Curse told us to go on the job.”
“Curse thought I was talkin about some other job, some job for Freight.”
“What other job?”
“I don’t know. Some other job he had in mind when he paged you.”
“What you mean?”
“I mean, we really are going to South Carolina.”
“For Freight?”
“No. We’re going to South Carolina to get you all out of that mess.”
“When we going back?”
“Listen, dog, you’re not going back. From now on we only going forward. You’ve seen the last of Oaktown and all that G thing.”
“What you mean we goin to South Carolina?”
“We got family there.”
“What about Nanna?”
“She’s the one who wanted us to go. Haven’t you been listening to nothing I said in the station? She’s the one who gave us all the money.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh man.” Love put his hand over his forehead.
“We sposed to be pickin up somethin for Curse, that’s what you said. We got to call and tell him. They gonna kill us.”
“They don’t care.”
“They will when they find out you lyin.”
“They already probably found out, dog. But now we gonna be long gone.”
“But what about when we go back?”
“I told you, dog, we ain’t goin back.”
Li’l Pit shook his head like he was hoping all this confusion would shake itself into place.
“But what about Mama?”
“Forget her.”
“You can’t just take me, that’s stealin,” Li’l Pit yelled. “That’s kidnappin.” People in the bus shushed him but he didn’t care. “Naw. Naw. We got to get off.” He ran down the aisle and off the bus.
“Fine. Go on.” Love closed his eyes and gave all his weight over to the cool glass of the window. He put his headphones on to show how completely disinterested he was, but after a few seconds he opened his eyes and watched his brother out the window.
Li’l Pit walked toward the station with the determination of someone who knew he was being watched and had a point to prove. He walked up to the door just as the driver was coming out. He said something to the driver, and the man pointed inside the adobe building.
The driver let the door to the terminal shut behind Li’l Pit and labored back toward the bus under the yellow light of the parking lot. Halfway across the dirt expanse, he threw his cigarette on the ground. He hoisted his pants and cracked his neck. After taking a look up to the stars, he climbed the steps of the bus and sat down, adjusted himself in his seat, opened his side window, and pushed a button that shut the door with a loud hydraulic swish. Love stood up and climbed into the aisle.
“Wait,” he yelled. The bus moved forward and swung around in a U-turn toward the parking-lot entrance.
“Wait,” Love yelled again when he got to the driver.
“Calm down, son.”
“My brother’s still in there.”
“I know he’s in there. Have a seat.” The bus slowed down. “I’m just pulling up to the door.” Love stood there, half crouched, looking through the front windshield at the terminal. The door swung open, and Li’l Pit ran out of the building waving his arms.
“Wait,” he yelled. “Wait.”
Love quickly walked back to his seat and pretended to be asleep. The bus driver pulled up to the curb and opened the door again. Li’l Pit ran up the stairs. Out of breath, he bent over and put his hands on his knees.
“I thought you were leaving me,” Li’l Pit spat out.
“I ain’t leaving you out in the middle of nowhere, little man. Don’t worry.”
“I thought you were,” he said again.
“No one’s going to leave you.”
“How am I sposed to know that?” He shook his head. “I was just in the bathroom.”
“I know where you were. Wasn’t I the one who told you where to go?” He started the bus moving again. “Think I forgot about you?”
Li’l Pit shook his head.
“You better take a seat now.”
Li’l Pit walked back to the middle of the bus
where Love was sitting, his head against the window, eyes closed, and headphones over his ears. Li’l Pit kept walking and sat in the empty row of seats behind his brother, watching him through the crack.
As the bus drove onto the freeway ramp, Love opened his eyes, and when he saw no one next to him, he jumped up and looked around the bus. Li’l Pit laughed from behind him.
“You’re hilarious,” Love said, and sank back down into his seat.
They remained in their separate rows. For half an hour, as the bus traveled across the desert at night, neither of them spoke or looked to see if the other was asleep. There were no lights on in the bus, nor were there any lights outside. The darkness was complete and impenetrable, except for the few dots of light in the sky. Time went by slowly, and they never seemed to gain any ground against the desert.
“I’m hungry,” Li’l Pit finally said.
“I know.”
“When we gonna stop again?”
“Probably not for a long time.”
“But I’m hungry,” Li’l Pit whined.
“What you want me to do? Ain’t you never been hungry before?”
Li’l Pit didn’t say any more. He knew the hunger would pass. First it would get worse, turn into pain, like a piece of glass cutting him from inside, and then just as he would think it unbearable, it would vanish, as if his stomach had been lying to him all that time. But until then, until it stopped poking at him, he knew he couldn’t get to sleep. He took a deep breath and let out a quiet chant as he did when he was banging his head to sleep: “Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh.” He stopped to inhale, and after every deep breath, he let out the chant again, each time a little louder.
“Shut up, dog,” Love whispered between the seats.
