The Raven

by Mike Nappa

  “April 14?” I say again to nobody. “I guess that’s when I’m performing at tables for a Max Roman fundraiser.” I kind of wish Mama Bliss had mentioned that to me when we were talking in the wee hours of the morning. I wonder why she didn’t.

  I hear a sound, and Scholarship is suddenly standing in my doorframe again. “Forgot my drink,” he says. He heads to the kitchen and comes out a second later with a can from my stash of Mountain Dew. He stops and gives what appears to be a look of paternal approval.

  “That was a good play,” he says to me. “Unexpected. Your best trick so far, I think.”

  I’m not sure what to say, but I don’t have to respond because he continues as if he’s talking to himself.

  “Not even Viktor would have predicted that.” He raises the Mountain Dew in salute. “Still, you should be aware that Mama Bliss can be a mixed blessing. She’ll protect you from Max Roman, for sure. Even from Viktor and me. But if she wants to, she can make your life a living nightmare.”

  He heads to the exit. “See you on April 14.” He closes the door behind him, and I’m alone again.

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Did I really just say that out loud? And mean it? I almost grin.

  Dad would be happy to know God and I are on speaking terms again, I think. Then I remember. Of course, my daddy and I still aren’t on speaking terms.

  I don’t blame him, really. I wouldn’t speak to me either.

  I was already halfway through the Hawaiian Punch, about a third down in the pint of Everclear, and forty minutes late when I finally remembered I was supposed to pick up my mom at the doctor’s.

  “I’m fine,” I told myself. “Maybe she won’t notice. Maybe she had to wait for the doctor anyway.”

  Ten minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot and saw her, waiting, sitting on a metal bench situated beside the front door of the doctor’s office. I think she might have been praying because her eyes were closed and she didn’t notice my car at first. Either that or she was angry and trying a little meditation to calm her nerves.

  I tapped lightly on the horn, and her eyes flew open. The first emotion I registered on her face was relief, followed quickly by irritation.

  “Where have you been?” she said breathlessly when she got in the car. “I was worried you might have been in an accident or something.”

  “Nah,” I exhaled. “Just lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

  “Lost track of—” She stopped. “Why do I smell alcohol in here?”

  “Who knows? It’s your nose, not mine.” I thought that was pretty funny at the time. Mom didn’t share my drunken sense of humor.

  “Tyson.”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” I said, straightening in my seat and cutting off my sluggish laughter. I made a left turn and headed toward the I-35 freeway. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time. I’ll get you home real fast, though, so you and Dad can get on with your painless, boring lives.”

  “Honey, don’t. Your father and I both love you. There’s no need to be angry at me.” There was hurt in her voice. She reached out and touched my shoulder gently. “Pull over and let me drive, baby. You can rest awhile at my house. Your dad won’t be home until late tonight, and we just won’t tell him about this, not this time, okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I didn’t shout at her. I never shouted at my mom, not like I shouted at my dad at least. But now I was getting irritated. I shrugged her hand off my arm. I’m fine, I told myself again.

  “Tyson—”

  That was the last word I ever heard my mother speak. Tyson. My name. That was it. Up to that point, I’d always kind of believed that a person’s last words would be important, that they’d mean something significant, like “Give me liberty or give me death.” I never thought that they could just be an interrupted sentence. Just a lost moment trying to talk sense into your stubborn eighteen-year-old son’s head.

  I still don’t believe there was a traffic light at the corner of Northeast 23rd Street and Martin Luther King Avenue.

  And if there was a light, I can’t fathom how there was no car stopped at the light in front of me or how I missed seeing that it was red.

  All I remember is seeing the Ralph Ellison Library coming up on my right, hearing my mom say, “Tyson,” and then feeling the impact as that lady’s northbound SUV plowed into the passenger side of my rusty old Mustang.

  There was shattered glass everywhere.

  I must’ve blacked out a little, because when I blinked my eyes, my car was stopped and lights were flashing and people were yelling and there were suddenly prickly little shards scraping my neck and in my hair and covering the driver’s-side airbag that was already deflating in my lap. The window beside my left ear was cracked and broken where my head, or the airbag, I wasn’t sure which, had smacked into it. I felt woozy, but I couldn’t tell if that was from the accident or the Everclear. And I felt exhilarated. Almost giddy. I’d just had a near-death experience and, from what I could tell, had only suffered some minor cuts and bruises.

  “Whoo!” I said. “That was something, huh, Mom?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I looked at the passenger seat, and it slowly registered with me that my mother’s airbag had failed to deploy.

  “Mom?”

  She wouldn’t speak to me. She didn’t speak to me at all. She just stared past me, looking at nothing, seeing everything. There was an ugly red gash that ran across the side of her head, into her temple, and across part of her forehead. Blood spilled down the right side of her face, and I knew instantly what I’d done, what I could never change, what I could never forgive.

  “Mom.”

  Her skin was eerily pale. Her body stayed upright, held in place by the seat belt. I smelled alcohol and copper and the awful stench of fear.

  Beside me, someone finally wrenched open the driver’s-side door, said something about getting me out to safety. But I heard only one word, repeated over and over in my concussed head.

  Tyson.

  My father and I didn’t talk after the accident. We’ve never talked since that stupid, stubborn, awful, drunken moment that took my mother from us all.

  The police arrested me for drunk driving and a few other random crimes. They threatened to charge me with involuntary manslaughter, but in the end, they went with reckless endangerment. I never knew exactly why. Either way, that night I found myself in a jail cell with the beginnings of a nasty hangover.

  I heard that my father came unhinged when they told him what had happened, that he was in his office at the church when the call came, and that his secretary found him crumpled under his desk, weeping uncontrollably, lost to the world.

  There was only one person to blame: me.

  My dad left me rotting in jail overnight. After one of my roommates finally bailed me out the next morning, I did what came naturally. I ran, from everything and everybody. I put all my earthly possessions into one oversized backpack, got on a bus to Nashville, and never looked back. When Dad’s private investigator tracked me down in Nashville, I paid off the PI to keep quiet and sneaked away to Baltimore during the night. When I ruined Baltimore, Atlanta was next.

  And now what?

  Maybe it’s time to fly away again, I think. That’s what I do best, after all.

  Now that I’m free of Max Roman, the impulse to run is strong. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. Fly out of this town with not much more than the clothes on my back, land someplace new, someplace big where I can get lost. Change my name. Again. Start over.

  I look at the coffee table, and there’s ten one-hundred-dollar bills telling me to go. But something inside is holding me back.

  You have a restless little soul, son.

  My daddy used to tell me that.

  But whose voice is this now, speaking silently into my being?

  Like that raven in the Great Flood.

  I’ve heard this soundless voice before, I think. It’s been a long time.

  My living roo
m is still, the air stagnant around me, the sounds of the day outside distant and dim. I find myself sitting on my couch again, straining to listen, wishing I could hear . . . anything. In front of me is a letter from Mama Bliss and a thousand dollars in cash. I hear myself exhale.

  “So what do you think, Jesus?”

  It’s a hoarse whisper, but I know we both hear it. I’m surprised at how easily I can fall back into praying, even after all these years.

  Nobody says anything.

  Not me, not him.

  But I feel something I didn’t think I was ready for.

  Before I can stop myself, my chest shakes with choking tremors and my stomach clenches like it’s doing push-ups without my consent. I can’t cut off the flow of tears. They drip down my face like little rivulets of pain, soaking my cheeks and the front of my shirt.

  Why am I crying?

  I tell myself I want to stop, but something inside won’t let me. I realize I haven’t cried since . . . since I left Oklahoma City four years ago, when I was eighteen. When I had to run.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I mean it this time. I have no excuses, not anymore. I have no backup options, not now. No escape plan. Just me, finally facing me.

  I’m sorry, Daddy.

  I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so, so sorry.

  And the hardest of all. I’m sorry, Jesus. For blaming you, for hating you. For running from you.

  The world is silent, save for a stupid, stubborn street magician—deception specialist—quietly losing his all, and gaining back something he thought he’d given up long ago.

  Finally the waterworks begin to dry up. My circumstance hasn’t changed, not really. I’m still the drunk who caused the car crash that killed my mom, and the guilty criminal who ran away from judgment instead of facing it. I’m still the child who can’t, who won’t, call his own father to make amends, at least not yet. And I’m still looking at a table with a thousand dollars and a protection letter, trying to figure out if Mama Bliss is actually looking out for me or just using me as cover for something else.

  But somehow, even though my broken life is the same as it was five minutes ago, everything feels different inside. Hopeful, maybe? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely not the same.

  “So,” I wonder aloud, wiping tear-smear off my face, “now what?” Maybe I should call Detective Hill after all, arrange to meet him for real? I consider the idea for a moment, but that moment passes quickly when I realize suddenly there’s one more apology I need to make. She’ll probably never want to see me again, I think, but I send the text anyway.

  Three words, and that’s enough.

  I’m sorry, Trudi.

  I wait awhile, checking my cell phone every few minutes, hoping. But, as expected, she doesn’t answer.

  32

  Bliss

  Atlanta, GA

  Little Five Points

  Friday, March 31, 1:49 p.m.

  14 days to Nevermore

  “He’s here, Mama. As you requested.”

  Bliss rolled her wheelchair out from behind the desk in her back office. Darrent was standing in the hallway, leaning in, trying not to intrude on her private space.

  “Well, bring him in, honey,” she said. “Time we met, I think.”

  Darrent nodded and disappeared. A moment later, he reappeared with a young man in tow. The teen was handsome, in that thug-lifestyle kind of way. She could tell he’d been coached on how to dress and carry himself when meeting Mama Bliss. His neck and hands were empty of the clunky jewelry Kipo boys often adorned themselves with, though he did have a diamond stud earring in one lobe. He wore baggy jeans and a black Falcons jersey, and under the jersey she could see a gathering of tattoos that decorated his arms. His hair was braided into neat cornrows, and his face was scrubbed and clean.

  She liked his eyes. They were light brown, alive. Shame, she told herself, that he got himself mixed up in a Max Roman gang.

  “Have a seat,” she said.

  He nodded and sat in one of the chairs at the small table in her office. Darrent took the invitation too, sitting next to him. Bliss surveyed them both for a moment.

  “You know why you’re here, honey?” she said.

  He shook his head. “He told me to come.” He motioned to Darrent. “We don’t like to argue with him.”

  Bliss nodded. “You know who I am?” she said.

  “I heard of you,” he said.

  “What you hear?”

  “You don’t like Kipo in Little Five Points.”

  Bliss cocked her head toward Darrent, then raised her eyebrows at the teen. “You Kipo, honey?”

  “No,” he said, sitting up uneasily in his seat. “Not anymore.”

  “Redemption come for you?” she said. “You saw the error of your ways? Turned over a new leaf? Got a new job and making a contribution to society now?”

  “Something like that.” He looked nervously at Darrent, then back at Mama Bliss.

  “Good. Now wait in the hall.” She turned her back on him and rolled toward her desk.

  “Go on,” Darrent said. “Do as Mama says. You wait for me to come get you, got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” he mumbled. A moment later, Bliss and Darrent were alone.

  “So,” Bliss said from behind the desk, “that’s little Andy Carr. Don’t seem like much.”

  “He’s been through a few ordeals lately.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “Nobody can really be trusted, can they?” Darrent said, and Bliss smiled. He was parroting her late husband, and they both knew it.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, he knows what he’s supposed to do. And he’s got incentive to do it.”

  “I should hope so,” Bliss said. “His bail money alone was a nice chunk of incentive.”

  Darrent nodded. “True,” he said, “but now he’s got more riding on this than just that. He’ll do what he’s supposed to do.”

  “Where you been hiding him?”

  “After his uncle got him out, we took him up to Jasper, just south of the border of Tennessee. Isolated him out on forty acres, on a farm with cows and pigs, a racist overseer, and a few angry rednecks. Let him know that some places are actually worse than prison. He was happy to come back to civilization.”

  Bliss paused to take a good look at her senior manager. “You are good at taming things, Darrent,” she said. “I mean, look how you got me tamed.”

  A short laugh broke through his lips. “Mama,” he said, “nobody’s ever been able to tame you. Not even William, and I know he tried.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’m all set.”

  “Your vacation?”

  “Yep. A long cruise. Leaves in a week.”

  Bliss nodded. “You’re going to enjoy that,” she said. “Time on a boat is like time without worry.”

  “Well, that’s what William used to say.”

  Bliss felt warmed that he’d recognized her husband’s sentiments. “What about the other reformed Kipo boys? They in place?”

  “For the last three weeks,” he said.

  She sighed.

  “You’ve done well, Mama,” Darrent said softly. “William would be proud of you.”

  Couldn’t have done it without you, she thought, but aloud she said, “Well, we’ll see. Nothing’s done till it’s done.”

  He nodded. “Ready to make the call?” he said, returning to his seat at the table.

  “Yeah,” she said, but she hesitated. “I hate to see Samuel Hill mixed up in this, Darrent. I’ve known him for years. I owe him a little bit, owe him in ways he doesn’t even know about.”

  “I know, Mama.” To his credit, Darrent didn’t try to say anything else, didn’t try to convince her that his way was best. He just waited, loyal soldier to the end.

  “Almost done, though, aren’t we, Darrent?”

  “Almost, Mama.”

  “You’re going to enjoy that cru
ise,” she said again. Then she tapped the speaker button on her telephone and dialed a number.

  “Samuel Hill,” a voice said after the second ring. “Mama Bliss, is that you?”

  “I’ll never get used to that calling-ID thing,” Bliss said.

  “Sorry, Mama,” Samuel said. “How are you feeling this afternoon? Did you get any rest last night?”

  “A little. Slept in. Got up in time for lunch.”

  “How’s your security guard?”

  “Still stupid, but his ankle’s going to heal, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s all wrapped up and sitting pretty at home now, eager to collect worker’s compensation from me.”

  “Well, that’s good—except for the worker’s comp thing, I mean.” There was a strained silence between them. Bliss let it linger just a moment longer than she normally would have. She wanted this call to go the way she’d planned it.

  “All right, Samuel,” she said finally, “you waiting for me to apologize? I apologize. I was cross and cranky last night, and I took it out on you and that sweet little Trudi. I’m sorry. You happy now?”

  She heard him squirming. She liked that. “Aw, Mama, hey, it was a strange situation. And I’m sorry too. I never would have come storming in if I hadn’t heard a gunshot.”

  “All is forgiven, sugar. Now, you wanted to ask me some questions last night. I’m rested and awake now. Tell me what you need to know, and I’ll tell you anything I can.”

  She held her breath. Now would be when she’d find out whether or not he still trusted her.

  “Sure, Mama. Thanks. You want me to come by and we can talk in person?”

  “No, Samuel. Believe it or not, I got other work to do today than babysit you.” She kept her voice light, teasing, trying to keep him off balance without antagonizing him. “What is it you want to ask?”

  “All right, Mama. Now, some of these questions might seem odd, considering our friendship. But I’m just trying to follow all leads and rule out things that need to be ruled out.”

  “Sugar, do you think this is the first time a police detective ever questioned me about something going on in Little Five Points? Ask your questions. I’ll answer with the truth.” She was lying, of course, but he didn’t know that.