by S. A. Cosby
Run.
The thought pulsed in his head even though he was ten years out of Red Onion. Even though he only had a jar of moonshine in the cabinet and two joints in his truck. Even though he’d basically kept his nose clean since he’d started driving for Kitchener Seafood three years ago. Well, he didn’t have to worry too much about keeping his nose clean anymore since Ricky Kitchener had fired him instead of giving him a week of bereavement time.
Buddy Lee cracked his knuckles and walked to the front door. The temperature had skyrocketed since he’d passed out, so he flicked on the AC unit before he opened the door.
A short squat man was standing on the four cinder blocks that made up Buddy Lee’s front step. His balding head was ringed by rust-colored patches of hair on the sides and in the back of his skull. His white T-shirt sported a week’s worth of stains. They spelled out his eating habits like indistinct hieroglyphics.
“Hey Artie,” Buddy Lee said
“Your rent’s a week late, Jenkins,” Artie said. Buddy Lee burped and he thought all twenty-four beers in the case were going to make a surprise appearance in his mouth. Buddy Lee closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a calendar in his head. Was it the fifteenth already? Time had taken on a strange inconsequential quality since the cops had shown him a picture of Derek’s face with the top of his head blacked out.
Buddy Lee opened his eyes.
“Artie, you know my son died, right? The funeral was today.”
“I heard, but that don’t change the fact the rent is due. I’m sorry about your boy, I really am, but this ain’t the first time you been late. I done let you slide a few times but I gotta have it by tomorrow or we gonna have to have another kind of conversation,” Artie said. His tiny rat eyes sat in his head dull and brown like old pennies.
Buddy Lee leaned against the ragged doorframe. He crossed his wiry arms.
“Yeah, I can tell you’ve really fell on hard times here, Artie. How in the world you gonna keep up your fantastic wardrobe?” Buddy Lee said.
“You can joke me all you want, Jenkins, but if I don’t have full payment tomorrow, which includes the lot fee and the rent for the trailer, I’ll—” Artie said, but Buddy Lee stepped down onto the first cinder block. Artie hadn’t expected the move. He took an awkward step backward and nearly tumbled to the ground.
“You’ll what? What you gonna do? Call the cops? Go down to the courthouse and get a warrant to kick me out of this broke-down-ass trailer? Lord have mercy, what in the world will I do without this fucking mansion that got a toilet that ain’t flushed right since ’ninety-four?”
“Ain’t no free ride here Buddy Lee! This ain’t one of them Section 8 setups. You want that, you can go over to Wyndam Hills and hang out with the other welfare cases. I knew I should’ve never rented to no ex-con. My wife told me but I didn’t listen. Every time I try to give somebody a break they screw me,” Artie said. Spittle sparked from his lips.
“Well, somebody gotta screw you since your wife gave up on getting you to take a bath more than once month,” Buddy Lee said. Artie flinched like he’d been slapped.
“Fuck you, Buddy Lee; I got a glandular condition. You know, you ain’t nothing but trash. Been trash just like all them Jenkins. That’s why your son was a—” Artie didn’t get to finish the statement. Buddy Lee had closed the distance between them in one and a half steps. A jackknife, its brown wooden handle smooth and slick from years of use, was pressed blade first against Artie’s belly. Buddy Lee balled up a wad of Artie’s T-shirt and put his mouth close to the shorter man’s ear.
“That’s why my son was a what? Go on. Say it. Say it so I can slit you from nuts to neck. Split you open like a killing hog and let your guts fall out like we cooking chitterlings for Sunday dinner,” Buddy Lee said.
“I … I … just want the rent,” Artie wheezed.
“What you want is to come over here while my boy ain’t even cold in the ground and swing your dick around like you the cock of the walk. All the time I been here I done let you talk your shit because I didn’t want no trouble. But I buried my boy today and now I ain’t really got a goddamn thing to lose, So, go ahead. Say it. SAY IT!” Buddy Lee said. His chest heaved as his breath came in rapid bursts.
“I’m sorry about Derek. Jesus Christ, I’m so fucking sorry. Please let me go. I’m so damn sorry,” Artie said. From his armpits a fetid odor wafted up that made Buddy Lee’s eyes water. At least that’s what he told himself. With the mention of his boy’s name, the rattlesnake in his heart that Artie had poked slithered back down into its hole. The fight flowed out of him like water pouring through a sieve. Artie was a mean-spirited, unhygienic son of a bitch but he didn’t kill Derek. He was just another asshole that didn’t understand who or what Derek was. That was something he and Buddy Lee had in common.
“Go back to your fucking house, Artie,” Buddy Lee said. He let go of the man’s shirt and put his knife back in his pocket. Artie scuttled backward and sideways. When he felt there was enough distance between him and Buddy Lee, he stopped and flicked him off.
“That’s your ass, Jenkins! I’m calling the cops. You ain’t gonna have to worry about the rent now. You gonna be sleeping in a jail cell tonight.”
“Go away, Artie,” Buddy Lee said. It came out flat and listless, all the bravado gone. Artie blinked hard. The sudden de-escalation confused him. Buddy Lee turned his back on him and went into his trailer. The AC hadn’t so much conditioned the air as suggested it might want to cool down.
He sprawled across his sofa. The duct tape on the armrest snagged a few of the hairs on his forearm. He fished around in his back pocket and grabbed his wallet. Behind his driver license was a small wrinkled photo. Buddy Lee pulled the photo out by the corner using his thumb and forefinger. It was a picture of him and a one-year-old Derek. He held the boy in the crook of his arm as they sat in an aluminum lawn chair. Buddy Lee was shirtless in the picture. His hair was down to his shoulders and black as an ace of spades. Derek was wearing a Superman shirt and a diaper.
Buddy Lee wondered what the young fella in the picture would think of the old man he’d become. That fella was full of gunpowder and gasoline. If he looked really close, he could see a small mouse under his right eye. A souvenir he’d acquired collecting a debt for Chuly Pettigrew. The man in that picture was wild and dangerous. Always down for a fight and up to no good. If Artie had spoken ill of Derek in front of that man, he would have waited until dark and then cut his throat for him. Watched him bleed out all over the gravel before taking him somewhere dark and desolate. Knocked out his teeth and cut off his hands and buried him in a shallow grave covered in about fifty pounds of pulverized lime. Then the man in that picture would have gone home, made love to his woman, and not lost a minute’s sleep.
Derek was different. Whatever rot that lived in the roots of the Jenkins family tree had bypassed Derek. His son was so full of positive potential it made him glow like a shooting star from the day he was born. He had accomplished more in his twenty-seven years than most of the entire Jenkins bloodline had in a generation. Buddy Lee’s hand began to shake. The photo fell from his fingers as the tremors worsened, working their way through his hand. The photo floated to the floor. Buddy Lee put his head in his hands and waited for the tears to come. His throat burned. His stomach was doing cartwheels. His eyes felt like they wanted to burst. Still no tears came.
“My boy. My sweet boy,” he muttered over and over as he rocked back and forth.
FOUR
Ike sat in the living room sipping on some rum on the rocks. He’d changed out of his suit and was wearing a white tank top and jeans. Despite the ice, the rum burned as it went down his throat. Mya and Arianna were taking a nap. In the kitchen, containers full of chicken, ham, and mac and cheese were spread across every available surface. A few of Isiah and Derek’s friends had brought vegetarian barbecue. Whatever the hell that was.
Ike brought the rum to his head and finished it in one huge gulp. He winced but k
ept it down. He considered getting another one, then changed his mind. Getting drunk wasn’t going to make things easier. He needed to feel this pain. Keep it fresh in his heart. He deserved it. In the back of his mind he’d always thought that he and Isiah would come to an understanding. He just assumed time would thaw the glacier between them and they would both experience an epiphany of sorts. Isiah would finally understand how hard it was for his father to accept his lifestyle. In turn, Ike would be able to accept that his son was gay. But time was a river made of quicksilver. It slipped through his grasp even as it enveloped him. Twenty became forty. Winter became spring, and before he knew it he was an old man burying his son and wondering where in the hell that river had taken him.
Ike held the empty glass to his forehead. He should have walked across that goddamn glacier instead of waiting for it to melt. Sat down with Isiah and tried to explain how he felt. Tell him he felt like he had failed as a father. Isiah, being Isiah, would have told him that his sexuality had nothing to do with Ike’s shitty parenting skills. Maybe they both would have laughed. Maybe that would have broken the ice.
He let out a sigh. That was a nice fantasy.
Ike sat his empty glass on the coffee table. He sat back in the recliner and closed his eyes. The recliner had been a gift to himself. A place to rest his weary bones after ferrying bags of peat moss and mulch all day long.
Ike’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked the number. It was one of the detectives who were supposed to be working Isiah’s case.
“Hello,” Ike said.
“Hello, Mr. Randolph, this is Detective LaPlata. How are you holding up?”
“I just buried my son,” Ike said.
LaPlata paused.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Randolph. We are doing everything we can to find the people who did this. To that end, would it be okay if we came by and talked to you and your wife? We are trying to see if any of Isiah and Derek’s friends or associates have reached out to you. We’re having a hard time getting them to talk to us,” LaPlata said.
“Well, you’re cops. A lot of people don’t like talking to cops even when they’re innocent,” Ike said. LaPlata sighed.
“We’re just trying find a lead here, Mr. Randolph. So far, we can’t find anyone who has a bad word to say ’bout your son or his boyfriend.”
“They were … they were married,” Ike said. More awkward silence clogged the line.
“I’m sorry about that. We talked to your son’s employer. Did you know he had a death threat sent to him earlier this year?”
“I didn’t know that. Me and Isiah … we weren’t as close as we could’ve been, so I don’t think there’s anything I’m gonna be able to help you with,” Ike said.
“What about your wife, Mr. Randolph?”
“This isn’t really a good time to talk to her,” Ike said.
“Mr. Randolph, I know this is hard but—”
“Do you? Did somebody shoot your son in the head, then stand over him and empty a clip into his face?” Ike said. The phone creaked in his hand as his grip tightened.
“No, but—”
“I have to go, Mr. LaPlata,” Ike said. He hit the END button and put the phone on the coffee table next to the empty glass.
He walked over to the cheap pressboard entertainment center that housed their television and dozens of framed photographs. Isiah kneeling with one hand on a basketball in his gold-and-blue Red Hill County High School uniform. A picture of preteen Isiah pinning Mya when she graduated from nursing school. A picture of Isiah, Mya, and Ike the day Isiah graduated from college. Mya stood between them. A demilitarized zone to keep them from arguing. That came later. At the cookout they had for Isiah getting his journalism degree. It was supposed to be a day to remember. It had been, but for all the wrong reasons. Ike picked up the graduation picture and ran his thick callused fingers across the glass before putting it back on the top of the entertainment center.
Ike walked through the kitchen and out the back door. He headed for his shed. He opened the door, stepped inside, and flicked on the light. The air was filled with the scent of fuel and iron. The shed was large. Forty by forty with a skylight and a vent. On one side of the structure a collection of tools and yard equipment were stored with military precision. Two leaf blowers and two weed trimmers hung on hooks and gleamed like showroom models. Rakes and shovels were stacked next to each other like rifles in an armory. A push mower and an edger sat next to each other without a trace of grass or dirt anywhere. Suspended on the right side of the shed in the corner behind motes of dust was a heavy bag. The lonely light hanging from the ceiling cast odd shadows against the wall behind the bag. Ike went over to it and began bouncing on the balls of his feet. He bobbed and feinted, then started peppering the bag with punches. Quick one-two combinations, feeling the sting of the weathered leather against his bare knuckles.
Growing up, Isiah had been a natural athlete. When he worked the heavy bag, his movements were powerful and fluid. His footwork was exceptional. His head movement was elusive.
When Ike was released, boxing was the only thing Isiah enjoyed doing with him. They didn’t have to talk when they wrapped their fists and worked over the weathered cowhide. Ike had wanted him to enter the Golden Gloves or join an AAU team. He had hoped boxing would be the thing that would bridge the gap between them. But Isiah refused to fight. Ike pressed and pushed him but he wouldn’t budge. He was as stubborn as any other fourteen-year-old kid. Finally, Ike had pushed one too many times, and Isiah had cut to the heart of the matter.
“I’m not like you. I don’t like hurting people.”
That was it. They’d never gone into the shed together again. Ike unleashed a flurry of elbow strikes. He jumped backward, tucked his chin into his chest, then fired off a series of rights and lefts in a staccato rhythm. The steady beat of his knuckles smashing against the taut surface of the bag reverberated throughout the shed.
Ike always pushed Isiah too hard and Isiah pushed right back. Mya said they were so much alike Ike should have given birth to him. Their last conversation, a few months ago, had been a verbal shoving match that ended with a slammed door. Isiah had come over to tell his mother he and Derek were getting married. Mya had hugged him. Ike had gone into the kitchen and poured a drink. After a few more kisses from his mother, Isiah had followed him.
“You don’t approve?” Isiah had said. Ike had gulped his rum and sat the glass on the edge of the counter.
“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove. Not anymore. But you know this ain’t just about you. Y’all got that little girl now,” Ike had said.
“Your granddaughter. Her name is Arianna and she’s your granddaughter,” Isiah had said. A vein in the furrow of his forehead began to pulse. Ike crossed his arms.
“Look, I stopped trying to tell you what to do a long time ago. But that little girl, she gonna have it hard enough already. She’s half Black. Her mama was somebody you paid to carry her, and she got two gay daddies. So now what? You gonna make her a flower girl in your wedding? Y’all gonna rent out the Jefferson Hotel and make a big production out of it? And in a couple of years you gonna walk into her kindergarten class and all the other little kids can ask her which one is the mommy. Did you or Derek ever stop and think about that?” Ike had said.
“That’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I tell you I’m marrying the love of my life? Not congratulations. Not even an insincere ‘I’m happy for you.’ But what people might think. What people might say. News flash, Isaac, I’ve dealt with what people have to say ever since I had to explain that my father was a jailbird. I guess you’d rather we said our vows in a shack in the woods at midnight. I don’t know if you are aware of this, but not everyone thinks the way you do. Not everyone is disgusted by their children. And the people that do think like you? Well, they’ll all be dead soon enough,” Isiah had said. Ike didn’t remember picking up the glass. He didn’t remember hurling it against the wall. He just remembered Isi
ah turning on his heel and slamming the door on his way out.
Three months later his son and his husband were dead. Shot multiple times in the front of a fancy wine store in downtown Richmond. Once his son and his husband were down, the shooters had double-tapped them both. The sign of a professional. Ike wondered if the last image Isiah had of his father was a glass shattering against a kitchen cabinet.
Ike started to scream. It didn’t build in his chest first then erupt. It came out fully formed in one long savage howl. The heavy bag began to jerk and jump spasmodically. Technique was tossed aside in favor of animalistic instinct. The skin on his knuckles split and left red-hued Rorschach paintings on the bag. Droplets of sweat ran down his face and dripped into his eyes. Tears ran from his eyes and stung his cheeks. Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.
FIVE
Buddy Lee checked his watch. It was five minutes to eight. The sign said that Randolph Lawn Maintenance opened at 8 A.M. Monday through Saturday. Ike should be rolling up any minute.
The AC in his truck wasn’t much better than the AC in his trailer. The air blowing from the vents was tepid at best. The system needed a dose of Freon, but his electric bill was due this week. When it came down to having a working fridge at home or a working AC in his truck, the fridge was going to win every time.
Buddy Lee changed the station on his radio. Nobody played real country anymore. Just a bunch of baby-shit-soft male models singing about bumping and grinding over a steel guitar. A logging truck flew down the road past the gas station where Buddy Lee had parked his truck. Randolph Lawn Maintenance was housed in a single-story sheet-metal warehouse across the road from a Spee-Dee Mart and down the road from the Red Hill Florist. Buddy Lee resided in Charon County, which was about fifteen miles from Red Hill. Buddy Lee thought it was funny his son and Ike’s son had grown up only twenty minutes apart but found each other in college. Life sends us down some strange roads on our way to our destiny.
