Where the Line Bleeds

by Jesmyn Ward

  One of Joshua’s earliest memories was of him and Christophe in the yard with their grandfather, and of his grandfather coaching them to drive a sow and her two piglets back into the sty. The pigs had been fat and short and obstinate, and stank of sour corn. His small, chubby hands had slid away from their muddied skin uselessly, and Pa-Pa had laughed at the two of them. Joshua thought that had to have been easier than this conversation.

  “Doing what?”

  “You know what he was doing.”

  Christophe, who never drove with both hands on the wheel, had one at seven and one at two. Joshua pulled his shirt over his head; it rasped against his skin wetly. It was like skinning a squirrel, and his naked back felt good as the wind buffeted him through the window.

  “She was sure?”

  “He was leaning into Javon’s car.”

  The sweat chilled him as the wind flashed across his skin. Christophe hit a bad, marsh-eaten patch of road, and a dull throbbing bloomed in the small of Joshua’s back. Christophe was frowning and ignoring him. Joshua had heard stories about boys who never really knew their fathers who met them when they got older and didn’t recognize them. The twins had been at least thirteen or fourteen the last time they saw Sandman: what would he look like now?

  When Joshua followed Christophe into the house, the living room was dark and empty; Ma-mee was in her room. He could hear her humming and shuffling, faintly. In the bathroom, he turned the cold tap on until he couldn’t turn it anymore.

  Under the spray of the water, a loop of Sandman twelve years younger on one of the last occasions he had spent time with them kept playing in his head: Sandman, in a dirty T-shirt and navy pants with a spindly fishing pole in one hand, handing him and his twin two overlarge, taped fishing poles with string tied to the end with ragged, dirty bits of orange feathers and sinkers attached. He had taken them fishing out at one of the boat launches on the bayou. Joshua had dropped his stick, and the water had closed around it like a fist, had sucked at the small leaden sinker, and it had sunk.

  Christophe had offered to let him take turns holding his own stick but Joshua had refused and spent the rest of the time seated on the edge of the launch, a shadow of his twin, and watched Sandman. He stared at Sandman’s mouth, which never seemed to close, and counted the teeth he could see and his moles. Sandman had not noticed until it was time for them to leave that Joshua did not have his fishing pole, and then he scolded him because he said the sinkers cost money. He had seemed big, absent, and mean. Joshua walked into his room, wanting to recall that day to his brother so he could grasp the situation, could think it out, so they could remember again who Sandman had been and who they were now, and found his twin gone, and the room empty. The curtains at the windowsill fluttered a weak hello.

  Christophe needed to move his stash from the house, so he left before his brother finished showering. Ma-mee was shaking out the pillows of her bed, and when he left she was beating one of the cushions from her chair in her room against her dresser, and muttering something about dust. After shoving both bags in his underwear, Christophe went around the back of the house to the shed; his grandfather had used it as a barn and later, as a workplace for his carpentry, and when they were young men, his uncles had kept their car there after his grandfather had gotten rid of the cow and his horses. Ma-mee and the twins never used it for anything; the tin roof sagged, and random car parts, feeding chutes, and stalls crumbled into one another in a stuffy, sweltering maze. Christophe faltered at the door; the barn seemed to gather heat inside, to pull it lovingly into its mouth.

  Christophe crouched to the right of the opening, clutching at the bags. His fingers hurt. He picked his way past a hulking car engine and an empty oil barrel drum laced with cobwebs and rust, and cleared a space on the sawdust and dirt floor. He took out the weed and set it on his lap and began to measure it out carefully. Christophe peered at the silver scale in the dim light of the barn and counted under his breath, culling the stems, filling and weighing and adjusting the bags; too little here, and too much there. He pulled sandwich bag after sandwich bag from his pockets like a magician; he had forgotten to take them out after Dunny gave them to him. Sweat ran down his forehead and pooled in the creases of his eyelids; when he blinked, they rolled in fat teardrops away from his eyes and down his cheeks, and stung. He bagged it all, and the sacks lay on the earth in front of him in a small semicircle. He squinted at them. In the dark, they looked like small spiders’ egg sacs. He put three dimebags and one dub sack into his pocket. He bagged the rest together in one sandwich bag along with the scale, stashed it in an old Community coffee can, scanned the yard, and ran out the door.

  7

  CHRISTOPHE HEARD DUNNY BEFORE HE saw him cruising toward the park. Dunny drove to the basketball court, dodging Skeetah and Marquise, who were walking their pit bulls, and parked his car in the dirt parking lot. Javon, Bone, and Remy had parked their cars under the shade of the pine trees at the edge of the park: Christophe watched them pass paper bags he knew held thirty-two ounces of beer back and forth across the gleaming hard tops of their cars in the distance. Crackheads circled them warily, like mosquitoes. Dunny walked over to them and spoke. Christophe slumped, almost curled in half over the picnic table bench. He watched Dunny approach, and did not move when his cousin sat next to him. He had not been able to approach the boys: he had not known how.

  “Sold anything?”

  “Naw.”

  Dunny pulled at him then, away from the empty court and bench hard as a tomb, back across the park to the dirt lot to his car and the other boys. Christophe followed to Javon’s car, where the boys stood in a cluster. Skeetah and Marquise had jogged from the street to the park, and they stood by the bumper of Javon’s car with their dogs. Skeetah’s was a bitch, stocky and so white that it hurt Christophe’s eyes to look at her. Marquise knelt behind his black dog and smoothed its haunches, whispering into its clipped ears, which he had pierced with silver bars. The dog turned and licked his face. Javon, tall and lanky, leaned against his car, a ’65 Impala he’d had painted a variety of blues and black; it reminded Christophe of a waning sunset when the sky faded from a deeper blue to darker. Javon laughed at Marquise’s dog as Dunny walked closer. Javon was a couple years older than Dunny; Dunny had followed him through elementary, through junior high, and on to high school. When Christophe saw him on his first day of first grade on the bus, he’d been shocked at Javon’s pale skin, the freckles like splattered grease across his face, and his coarse, fiery red hair. Christophe could not understand how someone who looked black could have such white coloring. His eyes were most unsettling: his iris blended into his pupil so that it was all black, fathomless. He had stared at Christophe that first day on the bus and Christophe had turned back around in his seat and scooted closer to Joshua. Later, as Christophe grew up and played with Javon and the other older boys in Bois Sauvage, he stopped noticing Javon’s color; now it mostly occurred to him only when he looked in Javon’s eyes.

  Javon was funny, always laughing or joking about something, the center of attention. He had a strange, predatory temper, though. Once, in a varsity basketball game, Christophe saw Javon take offense at a whispered comment by a white boy; Christophe had heard Javon tell Dunny later that the boy had called him a “red-haired wigger.” Christophe and Joshua had been on the junior varsity team, but during varsity games, the coach would let them sit on the bench with the varsity players, fetch water, and learn plays by osmosis. Christophe had been close enough to see the white boy lean into Javon, smack him with his chest. Javon had dropped the ball and rushed the boy, punched him in the jaw and then fell with him to the floor, where he straddled him and started choking him. It took both referees to pull him off the boy. Later, they found Javon had cracked the boy’s jaw. Javon had used his intelligence, his charm, and his legendary temper to work his way up from a petty dealer to a supplier; he was the main carrier of cocaine in Bois Sauvage.

  “I don’t know why he went and did tha
t—piercing his ears like that and putting them bells in there. Ain’t shit but a waste of money. What if another dog rip them out in a fight? And look at him licking all over Marquise. Damn dog look gay.” Javon laughed. Next to him, Bone passed Remy a black and mild cigar. Remy put the cigar in his mouth and inhaled as he pulled his long, bleached dreadlocks away and tied them into a knot at the back of his neck. The smoke curled around his face like a veil.

  “Guess he thought it was cute.”

  Bone coughed a laugh of smoke. Christophe twitched a nervous smile.

  “Y’all better stop talking about my dog.” Marquise stood. He was as short and small as his dog was large and wide, and skinnier than Skeetah, which Christophe thought was hardly possible. Marquise loved fighting dogs. He worked at Wal-Mart as a stock boy and had saved up to get his canines capped in gold. He grinned wide and they showed. “He love dark meat.”

  “I guess he won’t be coming over here and fucking with me, then.” Javon laughed again, and the gold fronts across his upper teeth gleamed. Marquise pulled at his dog’s leash and began to call commands to the dog. It began to do tricks; it jumped as high as Marquise’s collarbone and spun like a top in the air.

  “Christophe the boy with that fire now. If anybody come to you for dimes and dubs, he got it,” Dunny whispered.

  “You putting him on?” Javon asked.

  “Gotta take care of my cousin.”

  “For sure.”

  Christophe felt those black eyes on him, and he stared studiously at the dog and fingered the bags in his pockets. “I heard the other one got a job down at the pier. Joshua. They make good money down there.”

  “Yeah,” Dunny replied.

  Christophe glanced at Javon, at the sunlight glancing off his face: his stubble glittered.

  “I ain’t seen him around much.”

  “He started working today.”

  “Seen they daddy, though.”

  Christophe tried to look disinterested. It was as if someone had dusted Javon’s cheeks with chili powder.

  “Sandman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “Yeah, just so he know.” Javon turned to the group. “Y’all niggas want to play a game? It’s cool, I understand if y’all don’t. I’d be scared if I had to play against me, too.”

  “All you do is talk shit. Ain’t nobody scared of you, Mutumbo,” Marquise said.

  “Alright, Minute Bowl.”

  The other boys laughed. Christophe spit and scraped his shoe and spread it into a silvery smear. It looked like a long, glittery, serpentine fish.

  “I got a ball in my car,” said Dunny.

  “Let’s go,” Javon said.

  The boys set off across the grassy field to the court. Christophe waited at Dunny’s car while Dunny rooted in the trunk for the ball, which he tucked under his arm like a football. He motioned to Christophe with his head and they followed in Javon, Marquise, Remy, Skeetah, and Bone’s wake.

  “I heard . . .”

  “I know he’s back.”

  “Javon say . . .”

  “Doing the same old shit.”

  Christophe punched the back of the ball so it flew from Dunny’s grasp. It sailed into the golden afternoon air and landed in the weedy grass. Christophe scooped up the ball and dribbled it so hard that it actually bounced back into his hand. He sprinted toward the court and slid onto the asphalt. He dribbled through his legs once, spun like a tornado, leapt, and dunked the ball with a loud clang. The rim rang like a tuning fork, and quivered.

  Joshua woke and was disoriented, and only the sound of Ma-mee laughing and the absence of the rooster crowing confirmed that the sun was setting instead of rising. Ma-mee’s voice rang from the living room; at first he thought she was talking to someone, that some older man was in the house, but then he shook his head and realized it was the TV. He rose and brushed his teeth again, and slipped on some old basketball shorts. He hadn’t seen Christophe since the car ride home, but the evening was cooler than the previous one had been, and he could guess where his brother was. He set out walking toward the court. Light dabbled through the trees, fading and dull; the touch of it on his skin through the leaves was a weak, halfhearted thing, but still it stung, and made him realize that he was sunburned from his first day of work. He heard voices at the basketball court.

  It looked as if Christophe was winning. Joshua stopped at the aging, wood-curled bleachers and sat down. They were empty. Remy sat on the other side of the court on one of the stone benches, a blunt in his mouth. Christophe was tearing across the court, using all the advantage of his smaller build, his short, wiry muscles, his athleticism, to punish the other boys. His voice rang out as he threw a perfect jumper. It flew in a short, quick arc, faster and more clipped than his usual shot, and rebounded off the backboard and through the net.

  “Nineteen.”

  They were playing to twenty-one. Joshua wanted to speak to his brother in their own language.

  “I got next.”

  Joshua saw Dunny nod, so he rose and took off his T-shirt. His muscles groaned in his arms. He ignored them. Christophe scored his last three points while Joshua stretched his back and walked off the ache in his thighs. His brother’s winning shots were violent; they ripped through the air with more speed and power than usual. Christophe called endgame and stood there with his hands on his waist and his head down, breathing hard through his nose and his mouth; sweat rolled down his forehead and flew from his lips to hit the ground like spittle. The other boys ran to the water spigot the church had installed at the edge of the bleachers and drank. Joshua walked toward his brother as the others wandered back to the court slowly.

  “Three on three. Me, Joshua, and Dunny against Marquise, Javon, and Bone. We play to twenty-one,” said Christophe.

  “Take the ball out, nigga.” Dunny threw the ball at Christophe and Christophe caught it with the tips of his fingers.

  “Alright.” Christophe stepped off the court into the grass and eyed the boys. Marquise jumped and waved his hands in front of him, looking like an overexcited, anxious squirrel. Bone hit Joshua hard with his shoulder. Joshua glanced over to see Dunny almost wrestling with Javon to get in position. Christophe slapped the ball with one hand and raised it over his head and Joshua looked at his brother. Christophe was staring at him, really seeing him for the first time since the phone call, it seemed, and Joshua felt his stomach lurch. They were talking again. Christophe brought the ball cleanly across his chest, looked to Dunny, and then let the ball fly to Joshua. Bone stumbled; Joshua knew he had forgotten such a big boy could move so quickly. Joshua went in for a lay-up and scored. Bone grabbed the rebound and passed it to Christophe and mumbled, “Your ball.”

  For the next thirty minutes, the twins talked to each other for the first time in days, even if they only opened their mouths to grunt, to bare their teeth, and to emit forceful breaths like expletives when they suddenly stopped to shoot, to spin, to score. Joshua played with a small, tremulous smile on his face. He set the picks for Christophe. Christophe fired nasty, quick passes to him under the basket. This was their conversation. Christophe’s frown grew more severe as he played; it cut into his face, pulled the edges of his mouth down. He played well. Christophe spoke to Joshua in three-pointers. Joshua answered with soft nods: brisk lay-ups on the inside.

  Christophe lobbed the ball at Joshua, who stepped to his right, shook Bone, and scored. No one spoke. Joshua knew that he and his brother were speaking over each other in the wordless speech of twins, that they were talking so quickly their play was becoming blurry and indistinct, slippery and unknowable: it was a foreign language. Javon pulled his shirt over his head and threw it into the grass. He was good; he was almost as fast as Christophe, and Dunny seemed too slow to guard him. He was scoring most of the other team’s points. Marquise stole the ball from Christophe and made a hasty, high lay-up that verged on a dunk. He hung from the rim slinky as a dangling bead. Still, Christophe led them, gri
m and determined, and as Dunny yelled out the score, Joshua realized they were leading by three: 19–16. The last two points were harder to make; Dunny pulled something in his knee when he came down from making a shot, so they had to wait for him to stretch it out. When Dunny walked back on the court, he was even slower, but this just seemed to make Christophe better. The ball ricocheted between the twins like a pinball. Christophe faked a lay-up and passed the ball to Joshua, who scored. Christophe took the ball out and passed it to Joshua, who passed it back to his brother, hard, and Christophe sank a fade-away. He called, “Game.”

  Joshua bent over, and he inhaled and it sounded like he was sobbing: the breath dragging through his throat. Christophe was standing under the goal, his head down, so all that Joshua could see was the intricate line of his braids, his dark, slick neck. At the spigot, the others drank and walked away in a joking clump back through the brothers, across the court to Remy on his stone bench. Joshua heard Javon over the others.

  “Shit, after that workout that little nigga gave us, I need to smoke.”

  Remy sent out a sputter of blue smoke in the air and coughed, “Good game.” Joshua joined his brother at the spigot. Christophe turned the handle so it emitted a warm, sulfurous stream. He slurped at the water. He was more winded and tired than Joshua thought. Christophe’s back undulated with his drinking. He dunked his head beneath the flow and stood, and the water ran down his forehead and face in a deluge. Joshua wanted to wipe it away; it bothered him, it reminded him of the veil of blood on the big Jesus statue hanging from the cross in the St. Salvador Catholic church that had always scared him when they were younger and attended mass with Ma-mee. Joshua knelt to drink as his brother had; Christophe sank down the fence. Joshua made himself stop drinking even though he wanted to continue, and lowered himself into the grass next to Christophe and looked over his head. Weed smoke wafted to him from across the court.

  “So, you seen him today?”

  “Naw. I only came down here about an hour ago and ran into Dunny.”