“You know where I live, right?”
“Nah, I mean have you seen this girl?” Bachs asked, flashing a picture of a teenage black girl. She was not particularly attractive, with straightened, pseudo-blond hair and a pudgy face. “Her mom called her in as missing two days ago. They live in your area. Crime usually starts close to home, you know.”
“Cracka, you know all black folks look alike,” Amos said, smiling.
“Right. But you will tell me if you see her, right?”
“A’ight,” Amos said as he turned away. He never liked it when Bachs asked him to snitch on people who broke the law. Amos never knew when those same people would be his only fix.
* * *
Amos bought a pack of Twizzlers with part of the money this time. He blew the rest on crack and a forty to wash it down. Promise kept.
He walked out of the abandoned house that his dealer’s gang had taken up in, a fresh bag of rock in his hand. He walked to the side of the house where the streetlight didn’t shine, even though he could have smoked up right there. This was the Backyard Posse’s block, and they kept it tight. Since Amos gave them all his money, he was a’ight by them. He was still a crackhead, though, to be made fun of, slapped around, humiliated.
Amos hooted as he fumbled with his glass pipe, the tiny metal screen already crunched into place, and his lighter, which he hoped had enough fluid to light his world up one more time. He almost dropped the rock as he put it into the pipe, but he got it. The lighter sparked, the fire danced.
The smoke streamed into his mouth, and his lungs went numb as that familiar feeling crept in. It felt like his entire body buzzed, as if every nerve vibrated with every shock and tingle of experience imaginable. The rock let off the smell of burning aspirin and baking soda. One minute later, his stomach turned sick, and he began vomiting uncontrollably for far longer than the fun part of the ride.
After the high wore off, Amos found himself on all fours, searching in the grass of the unkempt lawn. Crackheads know when they are out, but just maybe he’d dropped some when he was on another planet. Lucky for Amos, he’d brought a forty to even out the comedown.
When he heard a loud scream coming from the front of the house, Amos backed against the wall, his left hand protectively cradling the forty. It was a girl’s scream. Inching toward the front of the house, he peered around the corner through one bloodshot eye to see two thugs from the Backyard Posse dragging a girl into the crackhouse. She almost broke free, but one punched her in the back of the head, rendering her silent. Amos watched as they tossed the limp girl through the door.
He sat trembling, clutching close to his heart the only vice he had left to blot out his conscience.
* * *
With the hum of the police radio crackling and then going quiet for a moment, Officer Bachs’s partner sniped, “Man, you must take building contacts seriously to hang out with that reject. I mean, I know we have to deal with scum, but that guy? He smells worse than shit!”
The chatter on the radio kicked back on, but Bachs paid it no mind. “Yeah, but Amos gets around. And he was a battle buddy, you know?”
“Oh, come on! Even his mom said he’s just a crack pipe looking for a rock.”
“No, I guess you don’t know. We went through training together, to Iraq together. Looked after each other,” Bachs said, knowing that the time when his friend could look out for anybody, even himself, was past. “You know?”
* * *
In those desperate moments of coughing agony that wracked his body when the crash came, Amos always remembered the worst he ever felt in his life. When he found out that no-good woman ran around on him, it hurt him so bad that all he wanted was revenge.
Amos got back stateside only two years into a five-year contract, so he got himself kicked out. She was banging some piece-of-shit Navy boy back in Memphis, and he decided to kill them both.
After getting dropped outside the base gate and told to not come back, he set out to find the whore. He hitched a ride back home and found her mama’s house, where he planted his feet on the porch of her unit at the housing project.
“Hey, Tanisha! Yo’ man is back. Git yo’ skank ass out here!” Amos yelled under the midday sun.
Silence. A couple kids around the project yard stopped playing and stared.
“Tanisha, I know you home, ’ho! Git yo’ ass out—”
The door creaked open.
A’ight, he thought to himself, go time.
The woman peering at him was not Tanisha. It was her mama, giving him a drop-dead look perfected over years of experience. “What you want, Amos?”
He had no time for this. “I’m here for yo’ daughter, my fiancée. We gots to talk.”
Her mother’s silent gaze did not move, but her large, round eyes began to glisten.
Anger rose in Amos. “I’m not messing with you, woman. Call Tanisha, and tell her to get her ass out here. I got words for her.” He readied himself, minding the gun in his pocket. He was ready for that Navy piece-of-shit lover of hers too.
“Amos, go home. She ain’t here. She dead, boy. My baby girl is dead. She ain’t gonna be botherin’ you no mo’. God bless you, Amos,” she said, closing the door.
He stood there, stunned. The little kids in the courtyard told him she got ate by pneumonia. They went to the funeral last month. She looked real pretty in her dress.
He was mad. He was jealous. He loved that bitch. He was gonna jack her up for how she hurt him. He was gonna make her cry and say she was sorry. When she did, he would forgive her. He would take her back.
But now he never could. Amos sat on top of her tombstone, rubbing his hands up and down his withered arms. His lips convulsed as he wanted to cry out the words he never got to speak when it mattered, and now could not.
A very human scream broke the night. It was the girl’s scream, not far away, but too far for help to come. He used to know what courage was. He used to be a man. He had been trained to kick in doors and take on bad guys. The girl screamed again.
* * *
When he woke up and wiped off the morning dew, Amos staggered away from the graveyard behind the church. He stole and sold a little girl’s tricycle, carelessly left sitting in a backyard. It took all day to sell it, but now four dollars richer, it was time for a smoke.
He opened the door to the crackhouse and saw three members of the Backyard Posse sitting on busted-up recliners. The leader, a brother named Jamal, sat next to the unconscious body of the girl, lying facedown on the ragged carpet. She was naked, maybe breathing.
They were all high, so Amos got the drop on them, rolling up on Jamal with his handful of dollars. “Hey, man. Got enough for one more.”
Jamal scrambled in alarm. “Man, fuck you, bitch. Damn, don’t be sneaking up on people like that.” He dug around in his hoodie for the goods all the same.
One of the others spoke up: “Hey, snitch nigga. We know you dropped a dime on Trey to the 5-0.”
The only thing that could distract Amos from getting a rock was being called a snitch by people who kill snitches. “What do you mean, man? I don’t snitch. You know me . . .”
They glared at him. “Bitch, you ain’t worth killin’. But we got you. And we got yo’ bitch friend, that cop. Next time we see him, we gonna kill him and fuck his dead white ass.”
Another barked, “We gonna hit it so hard, his white ass gonna holla!”
As they all laughed, Amos only managed a quiet, “You trippin’.”
Jamal piped up, “Naw, nigga, it goin’ down tonight. We know when he be ’round here, we know where he go, how to get his ass. We gonna fuck him up.”
Amos said nothing, because he still had no rock. Whatever jive they be talking, he needed that rock. Jamal handed it over and smacked Amos in the face when he bent to grab it. Another jumped up to kick him in the ass all the way to the door. He took his beating like a bitch, and they shoved him outside.
Amos didn’t know what to do: those guys had murder
s on their rap sheets. That girl looked bad. The way they talked about Bachs was different from when they just talked shit before. They sounded for real this time.
He grabbed his pipe and started fumbling for a rock. He pulled out his lighter, maybe good for one more light. He shook so much that the lighter fell out of his hand into the high grass. Clutching the rock to his chest, he dove toward the ground, desperately trying to find his fire. His hand combed the grass, clawed the dirt, only stopping when he felt the sting of a broken needle bite deep.
He pulled his hand back and saw his blood ooze out under the streetlight. For a moment, it reminded him of all that blood Jesus shed for him, like his mama used to talk about.
In that moment, his head cleared. He looked at himself, realizing he wasn’t a man anymore: he was just a dirty soul trying to drown in sin. His mama used to love him. Jesus used to love him. Bachs still called him Battle.
Those guys want to kill his Battle. Fuck those guys.
* * *
“Hey man, it’s my birfday. Lemme share my rock with somebody, wish me a happy birfday.” Amos was standing in the half-open doorway to the crackhouse.
“Get yo’ stank ass out of here,” Jamal said. “You ain’t got no cash, we ain’t got no time. Now get out, before I shoot you.”
One of the thugs felt a twinge of pity. “I gots you,” he said, and headed out back.
Amos went to walk through the house to the overgrown backyard, but Jamal yelled, “I said I’d shoot yo’ ass! You go ’round, bitch!”
Amos took the hint and headed outside. When he got to the backyard, he saw a silhouette in the dark. “Got a light?”
The thug reached into his hoodie, and Amos sprang like a serpent, grabbing his throat and smashing his head into the busted concrete on the ground. The thug let out a groan, and Amos took the pistol from the guy’s pocket, along with his cell phone. And the lighter. Can’t forget the lighter. And screw Jamal: Amos went through the back door.
He tactically stalked into the unlit kitchen with the confiscated Cobra and followed the light coming from inside the den. When his first target came into view, he put one round into that thug’s chest. When Jamal sprang up, Amos raised the pistol and pulled the trigger, but he got nothing for it. Cobras were crap and jammed like a champ.
Jamal popped a couple caps into Amos, staining his threadbare undershirt with blood. When Amos went down, Jamal started punching.
Amos took it. He was not strong enough to fight back on a good day, much less now. Acting from pure instinct, Amos broke his crack pipe and stabbed that nigga in the throat. Jamal gargled in panic, struggling toward the front door, but it would do him no good. He would bleed out before the ambulance ever got there.
Amos drifted into silence, toward unconsciousness.
Then he heard something that brought him back: it was the girl. With his bloodshot eyes, he saw her screaming, terrified by the carnage. Slowly focusing, he motioned for her to pull him up. She struggled to help, and eventually he was upright again.
Steadying himself on her shoulder, Amos said, “It’s okay: I’m a Marine. I protect people. I won’t hurt you.”
They hobbled out the front door into the street, and Amos pulled out his cell phone.
“911 Emergency, how can we help you?”
Amos coughed. “Hey, I found that missing girl.” He handed the phone over, saying, “Tell them where you are, and don’t hang up. Ask for Officer Bachs. You’ll be a’ight.”
Confused, the girl took the phone, but when her rescuer started limping away, she shouted, “Wait! Where are you going?”
“I got something to settle,” he called back, and kept moving.
* * *
Officer Bachs sat her down in the car, covering her shoulders with a blanket. There were flashing lights in front of the crackhouse.
“Wait! You got to find him—the guy that saved me! He’s going to die!”
“What guy?” Bachs asked.
“The guy . . . He’s been shot, the guy who called.”
Bachs told his partner he had to check on a potential perp and set off on foot, flashlight on. The blood was easy to follow.
It led behind a church, the one Bachs knew Mrs. Gladys went to every Sunday. Noting that the front door was closed, he moved to check around back. The small cemetery would provide an easy hiding place, so Bachs made straight for it when he saw the back door was locked.
Making his way through the headstones, Bachs’s flashlight fell on Amos, lying on a grave. He was shivering, his clothes soaked in blood.
“Amos! What the hell? Hold on, you’re going to be okay,” Bachs said as he called for assistance over his radio. “We’re going to get you help. Hold on.”
“Naw, man,” Amos mouthed, “I got you.”
“What?”
Amos smiled, blood staining his teeth, but the joy reached his fading eyes. “I got you, Battle. I got you . . .”
PART IV
ABANDONED MEMPHIS
Stinkeye
by CARY HOLLADAY
Medical District
Late to an exam on the inner ear, Sheila Allen, a med student, leaned over and kissed the man she’d spent the night with. He was a guitarist named Mark who hoped to revive the Antenna Club. His sheets and walls were purple.
His eyes opened, purple too, and Sheila’s heart squeezed: he would never love her; he was too good-looking. He said, “I kept hearing a baby last night. Did you?”
“No, I didn’t hear any babies.” She recalled meeting him at a tattoo parlor, going out for drinks—she stuck with hard cider but still got drunk—and having sex in this room, which smelled of grapefruit. A memory pinged in her brain, of a shadowy shuffling from closet to door, but it was dark. “There was nobody else here, was there?”
“You’ll have to ask around,” he said, like it was a joke. “Does your ink hurt?”
Their new tattoos. It was her first, a tiny heart like a cinnamon candy on her knee.
“A little. It’s supposed to, right?” She hated how uncertain she sounded. “Let’s see yours.”
He held up a hand and flexed it. A new purple guitar decorated his wrist. She made an admiring sound.
Through a yawn, he said, “The Antenna Club. I’ll bring it all back—dronebilly, synth pop, country punk, garage punk.”
“You’ll do it. I know you will,” she said. Then: “I have to go. I have a test.”
He chuckled. “What kind of test? Where do you go to school?”
She’d told him last night, of course. It was always that way—she paid attention to everything a guy said, but what she said was forgotten.
So she told him again, adding, “Don’t get up.” She smoothed his ragged black hair away from his temple and kissed his cheek. It hurt that he didn’t ask her to stay. By the time she reached the door, his slow, even breathing indicated he was asleep again.
Thank goodness his apartment was close to the med school. She ran down the steps—how silent the building was, an oughta-be-condemned set of flats—and cut through Forrest Park. High wet grass brushed her bare legs. Her mind was full of hammers and anvils, the mechanisms of the inner ear; oh, she should have studied harder. The park grass was cold; she felt grimy in last night’s skirt and sweater. She tried to put her mind on the inner ear, but all she could think about were the bands Mark talked about—Calculated X, The Modifiers, The Hellcats, Impala, The Grifters, Big Ass Truck. How come the names of bands were easier than the inner ear? Should she call Mark and try to see him again? Yes, she would, and together they would revive the famed lounge on Madison Avenue, reclaim it from graffiti and neglect. More names pounded through her head: Metro Waste, Pezz, Slit Wrist, Raid. Pre-Internet bands, their glamour the dark glitter of pawnshop gold. Oh, she had to pass the test. She needed to look at the inner-ear diagrams again.
When she reached the equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, she set down her pack, pulled out a book, and heard a baby.
Its cries tink-tinked into
her head, above the sounds of traffic. Tink-tink, whahhh. She looked down into the grass and found a tiny baby, naked in the dew. She picked him up. He opened his mouth and revealed a full set of dark, pointed teeth.
She gasped. He was weak but alive as she took him to class with her, because she couldn’t think what else to do. He squirmed in her arms, a wriggly weight, but by the time she burst into the room and held him out toward the other students and the teacher, Dr. Prince, he was limp and blue.
Sheila must have screamed, because later her throat was sore. Must have cried, because there were dried salt streaks on her cheeks. EMTs arrived, instantly it seemed, and took him away. Police came and escorted Sheila into an empty room and asked questions, and she kept saying, “The baby, where’s the baby?”
“Is he yours, ma’am?” the police asked.
“I told you, I found him by the statue,” she said.
Ten minutes of interrogation, and they almost made her believe she’d given birth herself.
“Show us where you found him,” they said, and she led them outside. It was raining, a spring shower, and a morning that should have been lovely was all messed up. She guided them into the park—someone held an umbrella over her head—and pointed at the grass. She hadn’t noticed before how much concrete surrounded the statue, and she couldn’t remember exactly where the baby had been. Rain fell heavily, sweetly.
“There,” she said, “or maybe there.” Her backpack was gone. A bee buzzed into her face, and she swatted it away. “Where is he now?”
“He’s deceased,” a policeman said.
The hammers and anvils of Sheila’s ears shut down. She sank to her knees, hitting her leg against the concrete platform. The men in uniform said things, but she didn’t pay attention. She wasn’t herself any longer, wasn’t a med student on her way to a final. She shed that girl, shucked her off.
“You’re bleeding,” a policeman said, because she’d cut her leg.
She looked into his face—green eyes—and beyond him to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s high bronze head in the rain. She took a handkerchief the officer handed her, not a Kleenex, an actual cloth—her mind registered that—and held it against the cut. Her blood shocked her, running down into her sandal. Turn back the clock. He was right here.
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