Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  I waited. Some perverse part of my brain was begging me to check my watch, but I knew time didn’t matter. I refused to move first.

  Finally. The Kid reached over, picked up the car, and set it down at the end of the line of other cars.

  It looked right there.

  I waited some more.

  “Kid? It’s time to go. Mrs. Carter says I have to get you back to school. I got us a special car today. The same as your new car there. The BMW Z4. Blue.” I didn’t bother to mention that it cost—with taxes, fees, mileage, and gasoline—about a thousand dollars a day. But if it worked, it was worth it. Besides, we could afford it.

  The humming stopped.

  I held the back of my hand out to him. He bent forward and sniffed.

  An eternity later, he held out his hand to me. I sniffed it. His arm dropped and he began to collect his cars one by one and put them in the pockets of his blue shorts. He stood up, his knees as stiff as my father’s on a February morning, but his hips so loose as to seem double-jointed. His fingers curled and he began tapping the thirteen-beat progression. He was stressed—severely stressed—but he was fighting for control. I let him take his time. He grunted loudly and turned to me.

  Across his left cheek, hidden from me until then by the angle of his head and the dimness of the light, was the unmistakable bruised print of an open hand.

  The man who’d just been released from prison would have lost it. He would have jumped up and gone looking for someone to hurt.

  “Your Grand-mamma get you your cereal this morning?” I made my voice light.

  He grunted in three syllables.

  “You were Crunchatized?” I forced a smile. It didn’t matter, he never responded to a smile. He didn’t know what it meant.

  “Good. Then we are out of here, bud. We’ll get you something to eat on the road.”

  He gave a disgusted look.

  “No,” I said. “We’ll stop at a diner.”

  I let him walk out first. I still didn’t trust him above me on a flight of stairs.

  Mamma had stopped talking. She was yelling. The sound was punctuated with repeated thumps on the front door. I ran down the stairs and cut in front of the Kid just as the door slammed back and bounced against the wall. There was a spray of wood splinters and brass fittings. Mamma had stopped yelling. She was screaming.

  TeePaul pushed the broken door and walked in. He ignored Mamma and her unintelligible shrill squawks. He looked at me briefly and dismissively. He spoke to the Kid.

  “Hey, Boo. You come with me now, boy. We’re going to see your Mamma. I hear she’s up at Lafayette with her sissy brother.”

  The Kid began to moan, his eyes unfocused, and his neck and shoulders began to twist and turn as though his whole upper body ached in one huge cramp.

  “You’re not taking my son anywhere,” I said. “And from what Mamma tells me, Angie doesn’t want you around.”

  “Oh, she’ll see me. If I got that boy with me, she’ll see me.” He grinned at me, making it a challenge.

  I wanted to hit him. Beat him into dust. I didn’t know that I could do it, but I wanted to try. The old Jason wanted to try.

  Mamma was sobbing into a lacy handkerchief.

  “This would be a good time to call the sheriff, Mamma,” I said.

  She looked amazed, then ran for the phone.

  TeePaul and I locked eyes, each waiting for the other to make the next move.

  Mamma dialed. TeePaul’s jaw clenched.

  “That’s enough of that, old woman.”

  She spoke into the phone. “This here is Mrs. Oubre over on Hoptree. There is an intruder in my house. Yes. I’m very frightened.”

  TeePaul snickered.

  She hung up.

  We all stood in an awkward tableau; the only sound was the Kid’s soft moan.

  TeePaul licked his lips—a tell—and tried one last bluff.

  “Hey there, Mr. Wall Street Man. Always doing deals, right? I got a deal for you. You leave and I don’t hurt you. The boy stays. That’s the best offer you gonna get.”

  I wanted to throw that first punch. To try to take him down before he had a chance. Then I realized that was exactly what he wanted me to do.

  I thought of leaving with my son. Our life in New York. I thought of Skeli. I relaxed and called the bluff.

  “I’m leaving now, TeePaul. Jason is coming with me. You will not try to stop us. If you try, I will kill you. You will not touch him. If you try, I will kill you.”

  I thought of Angie—the catalyst of her own destruction, forever running to leap over the nearest cliff. Still, she deserved better than this man.

  “And if you ever lay a hand on Angie again, I will know. I will hear of it and I will find you. And I will kill you. Have I made myself clear?”

  “You think I’m afraid of you? You threaten me and I’m supposed to jump? That right?”

  “I’m not threatening you, TeePaul. I’m just telling you how it’s going to be.”

  He tried the stare again, but he didn’t have the hand. A siren sounded a few blocks away.

  “You’d best go,” I said.

  He turned and stomped out the door, the shreds of his cowboy dignity keeping him from running until he hit the bottom step.

  I waited until the big pickup was roaring down Hoptree.

  “Mamma, the boy and I are going. You come visit sometime, all right?”

  She nodded and looked away.

  The Kid was amazing. His fingers were flying, tapping out his odd rhythm, his eyes were blank, focused on some point beyond the horizon, and deep in the back of his throat there was the sound of an almost silent growl. But he was maintaining. He was holding himself together.

  “You’re doing great, son. We’re all safe now. It’s time for us to go. Say good-bye to your Grand-mamma, Kid.”

  His body gave one last shake. Then he turned and very politely said, “Good-bye, Grand-mamma.”

  He stepped out the door and I followed. He rocked slightly as he walked, side to side, like a toddler. I walked past him and held open the door of the Z4. The kid’s eyes were gleaming.

  “Climb in. Hop onto that seat.”

  He looked at the booster seat and shook his head.

  If I had to pick him up, I risked a bite.

  “Listen, I got you this seat special. Special! I told the man that my son needed to see out the window like a big person. He didn’t want to give it to me! They don’t give them to just anybody. You have to be special. Christ, Kid, I don’t know anyone more special than you. I told him you wouldn’t ride in the car without it.”

  The Kid sighed as though the whole responsibility for our continued relationship rested on his shoulders and humoring me in this was only one of the dozens of ways he sought to accommodate his idiot of a father. Then he climbed up onto the seat and flopped back, arms spread wide, ready for the crucifixion of the seat belt.

  “Have I ever mentioned that you seem to have inherited some of your mother’s more dramatic ways of expressing herself?” I snapped him in and closed the door.

  He took the toy out of his pocket and held it in both hands. “The Z4 350 has a straight six with Twin Turbo and direct High Precision fuel injection with a maximum output of 300 hp at 5,800 rpms. . . .”

  For the first half-hour, the Kid babbled happily about his new car. The booster gave him just enough lift to see over the door, but he ignored the view. The toy was more real to him than the rental; the world inside his head more interesting than the sights along the way.

  I thought about having to face a long trek through the airport with him—again. The last time we had barely known each other. He must have been terrified. In hindsight, it was a small miracle that it had gone as smoothly as it did. We would certainly be
able to do better this time around.

  The closer we got, the less sure I became.

  “So, Kid. I was thinking maybe you might want to drive all the way home. Take our time. Enjoy seeing a little of the country.”

  I took his silence for acquiescence.

  I made a quick call.

  “Skeli?”

  “Jason! How’s it going? How’s Jason?”

  “We’re both doing much better. In the car and on our way.”

  “Already? You’ll be back tonight?”

  “Well, no, actually. We’ve decided to drive. It’ll take us a few days.”

  “Hmm. Any problems?”

  “No. The Kid’s not a great flier.”

  “I meant, any problems getting him?”

  “Ah. No,” I said proudly. “I didn’t hit anyone.”

  “Well done.” Her voice became as sultry as a Louisiana night. “Get back here soon.”

  “I’ll call tonight. From wherever.” I rang off.

  The last blood-red aura of the setting sun filled the rearview mirror. Already, the road ahead of us was fully dark.

  “How about we pick up 59 to Chattanooga and then cut over and drive up through the Smoky Mountains? We’ll get on Skyline Drive and take it all the way up to 66?”

  The Kid looked over at me as though I had suddenly started barking or speaking in Urdu.

  “It’s faster up 81. I’ve got a pretty girl waiting for me, but all you’ve got is Heather, so I’ll leave it up to you. It’s your day. You decide.”

  He turned his head away and watched the flickering reflections of headlights in the side-view mirror.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “We take the scenic route, but if we get bored we cut over and pick up the highway.”

  His head rested on the seat—his eyes closed.

  “There’s this bakery I’ve got to take you to. In College Point—by Pop’s place. The best black-and-white cookies in New York. You won’t believe how good they are.”

  He was asleep.

  “I know, I know. You don’t like chocolate. No problem. That’s the cool thing about sharing black-and-white cookies. You get the white half. I’ll take the black.”

  He might have smiled. It was hard to tell in the light from the dash.