by Bill Beverly
East looked up and tried to swallow the bad taste in his mouth. Above them, a big plastic dinosaur spun on a wire. Cars rushed by out on the highway, and East had to keep himself from staring down each one. Things moving. At first, the ride had felt like getting out, like being set free. Into nothing. But since Vegas, this felt like being stuck back in it. Like every headlight that rolled past was pointed at him.
“That boy is trouble,” Walter said, looking away into nowhere.
“Which one?”
“Your brother.”
East’s back went up in spite of himself. “My brother is on the job. College boy is the problem.”
“You talk like you’re sure,” said Walter, “but you best be sure.”
East was not sure. What East didn’t know about his brother would fill the van. You heard stories. Things he’d done, scenes he’d been on, that he could get in anywhere, was too little to catch, too young for the police to bother with. Only stories, and nobody, least of all Ty, would say what was true.
Gloomily East glanced at the closed, smoky window where Ty lay listening to them talk. Or not. Then across the pavement came Michael Wilson, white shirt glowing, white teeth grinning, paid up and ready, his hands clean.
6.
Then it was late and dark, the scenery switched off, somewhere in the flat, empty Nevada that lay past Las Vegas. “So this the Wild West, huh?” Michael Wilson said. “Like, if the sun was up, they’d be riding horses and shit.”
Walter rode beside Michael Wilson, who drove, and Ty slept, his video game switched off, across the back bench of the van. East sat tired and worried on his middle seat, crouched forward, hands uselessly figuring atop his knees, listening to the two boys in front telling lies.
“One time when I was at UCLA, man,” Michael Wilson remarked, “we had a horse.”
Walter said, “Horses don’t like black people.”
“Why don’t horses like black people?”
“Why you think?” Walter said. “Who owns them?”
“But black dudes train horses. That one horse, what’s his name, in the movie. Secretariat. Old nigger trained that horse.”
“Train him to what?”
“He was a racehorse, man.”
“Huh. He any good?”
“He won the Kentucky Derby.”
“Course he did,” said Walter. “All right, that’s one.”
“Anyways,” said Michael Wilson. “This horse liked me fine. He was a stolen horse.”
“What do you mean, a stolen horse?”
“Some dude stole the horse,” said Michael Wilson. “And he kept it on campus. The horse grazed the yard and shit on the sidewalk. Everybody giving it ice cream and pizza all the time.”
“Horses don’t eat ice cream.”
“This one did,” Michael Wilson said.
“Could you ride the horse?”
“Wasn’t that kind of horse.”
“What kind of horse was it?”
“I don’t know what kind of horse it was, fat boy. Just stayed put and made a mess.”
“What’s interesting about that?”
Michael Wilson exploded. “You ain’t supposed to have no horse in college, man. Simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because you ain’t. You got to follow the rules, or they kick you out.”
“Why they kick you out?”
“They didn’t,” said Michael Wilson. “I left.”
“You told Diamonds you got kicked out. I heard you.”
“Oh, you were there for that?” Michael Wilson laughed. “Don’t nobody tell Diamonds the truth, man.”
“Who is Diamonds?” East put in.
“Eastside runner,” singsonged Michael. “Sorry-ass Covina wannabe with one gun and a Nissan, trying to muscle in. Didn’t know what he was doing. Fin involved him in a little business for about three weeks.”
“Why they call him Diamonds?”
Walter said, “I think that’s cause it’s his name.”
“Diamonds Wooten.” Michael Wilson nodded. “Nice name. Back in Covina now.”
“I don’t like horses,” Walter said. “They big and they bite and they mess you up. You like horses, East?”
“I never seen a horse,” East said, “except with a cop on it.”
“You a professional street nigger, East. I like you,” Michael Wilson said. He laughed delightedly at himself.
Walter told a story about the U who’d walked into his house one day a few years ago with a Food 4 Less bag with two rattlesnakes in it, trying to scare his way into a fix. It might have worked, except the rattlesnakes went into a hole in the wall, and when the word spread, nobody wanted to use that house till Walter announced he’d gotten them out—though he never had. The snakes might still be in there.
Michael Wilson told about the research he’d done for Fin at UCLA. Michael Wilson said Fin wanted to know how much weed he could run at UCLA, thinking the college kids had to be underserved. What Michael Wilson found out was that there was more weed at UCLA than you could keep track of. More supply, more lines you never saw on the street, varieties, hybrids, designer weed, organic weed, heirloom weed, weed that was vanilla and weed that was chocolate, weed cut up this way and that, kindergarten weed all the way to cop grade. Selling for nothing. Giving it away. What happened rather than Fin trying to move in, said Michael Wilson, is that Fin started bringing weed out. UCLA was like Fin’s docks. What UCLA did not have was cocaine. They didn’t have it, didn’t know how to get it, didn’t know how much to pay for it. So that was a great couple of years, said Michael Wilson.
Walter said he thought Michael Wilson went to college one year. Michael Wilson said that for one year at college he studied; the second year was business.
Michael told about the day when he was sixteen and started working for Fin: his first job was secret shopper, just walking around buying drugs off everyone to see were they doing it right, were they straight, did they treat him right, what did they charge? Every hit he bought, he had to report. At the end of the day he had so much cocaine on him, he’d have gone inside, ten years mandatory, if he’d been hooked. His first day.
A motorcycle flashed by them in the left lane, doing ninety, a hundred, maybe more, a chainsaw roar in the dark. They watched the single red light shrink in the darkness.
“Never catch that,” Michael Wilson said with conviction. “Those dudes got it made. Cops don’t even try.”
Then Michael Wilson asked East what it had been like, who was on his crew again, how long had he been on, when his house got policed. East stirred. Maybe he’d been dozing. His sleep was messed up.
“How was that, when it all came down?” asked Michael Wilson. And Walter, yawning, echoed, “Yeah, how was that?”
East didn’t answer. It had been a weird day, all day a weird feeling, the fire trucks lost on the street, the old guy lying down to sleep in the backyard. For the first time he remembered that guy, the one who said he owned the house. For the first time since they’d pulled out of Los Angeles, he thought about his crew, thought about the police coming down.
He wished he’d gotten in touch with them, Dap and Needle, the ends who hadn’t called in when the police cars had gone by them. He wished he’d found out why.
When he’d run, it had felt like he’d ditched everything. He’d been ready to accept whatever came—whatever Fin or one of his guns dished out. He was no different than the U’s scrambling out, on a fix or wishing they were, trying not to get caught. From the castle of their getting some into the cold should-have-known.
In the darkness inside the van he remembered the whole yard—the porch, the walk, the beaten grass the color of dirt. The fingers of morning light spilling onto the street, the houses across. The helicopter and fire trucks.
And the girl who’d been shot there. He wasn’t ready to think about that.
—
Walter snored once loudly and jerked. “Damn,” he wheezed. “Fell asleep.”
&nbs
p; “You can move back,” East offered. “I’ll ride up front.”
Michael Wilson stopped along the highway so Walter could maneuver out and climb back in. East tried to make out Walter’s face as they traded places. But the night was unreasonably black.
He buckled in as Michael set the van rolling. It was just them and the white lines, one car fading away a mile ahead, a pair of red eyes.
“ ‘My crew is mad deep, I hope you niggas sleep,’ ” recited Michael Wilson.
“Oh, now you gonna rap for us?” East said. He lowered his seat belt and brought the seat forward a notch. “So, at the casino, man.”
He watched in the dashboard lights as Michael Wilson reset his lips, then ducked low under the visor to read the road sign. “Make sure I get east on I-70, man.”
East set his feet. Ignore the ignoring. “What was that, man? That mad-dog shit?”
Michael just rode his hands up on the wheel and bit his lips again. East stopped staring at him after a while, watched the reflectors pass instead. Little blots of light. A million of them already. His eyes were tired.
“Mad-dog shit?” Michael Wilson said at last. “You make that up last night standing yard in The Boxes?”
Now East stayed quiet. He’d cast his line.
“Listen,” Michael Wilson came up with eventually. “You ain’t gonna hear it. But when I stopped, I did it for you.”
East snorted. “For me.”
“For y’all. All of us. All right? It didn’t work out. But I was trying, you know, to fire y’all up. I thought you’d like it. I thought we might win or lose, man, but go in and look, play a bit. Come out as a team.” Michael Wilson muttered as if the world were lined up against him. “Every good coach don’t win every game.”
“You ain’t a coach is why.”
“East, honey,” Michael Wilson said. “You want to fuck with me? Do it straight. Not sideways.”
“All right, then,” said East. He took a pleasure in letting it out. Let everyone wake up. “You ain’t a coach. This ain’t a team. This is a job. Keep on the job.”
Michael Wilson nodded. “You done? Is that all?”
“If you can. If you can keep on the job,” he taunted.
“You all, ‘The boy stood on the burning deck.’ ”
“Well, I don’t know what that is,” East sniffed.
“I know you don’t, my brother,” said Michael Wilson. “I know. It’s okay. Be a pal. Don’t let me miss east I-70.”
East let it rest. He didn’t trust Michael Wilson.
“I went skiing up here one time,” Michael said. “I went on this, like, black-diamond motherfucker. Dudes barreling past me on snowboards, I thought I was gonna die. I figured, okay, watch out for them two motherfuckers, then here comes another—”
“There it is.” The sign. The wide green banner across the road. They were already under it. “Go that way, man.”
Neither of them had been watching.
“You sure?”
“East I-70. Go right.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” Michael Wilson hollered, checking his flank and then banking the van right, sharp but smooth, across lines and the apron strewn with gravel bits. “Whoa. Thanks. See? We gonna help each other out!”
If I’d never said, East wondered, what would happen? Where would we be going to? Slowly the compass on the ceiling returned to E.
Michael went straight back to the story: “Anyway, these dudes on snowboards, they be zipping in there. And I think, and I’m, like, man, these dudes gotta be getting high.”
“You skiing?”
“Yeah. So I—”
“No,” said East. “I mean, what? Skiing? You, man.”
“Went up with my dad,” said Michael insouciantly. “He had business.”
“Huh.” A dad. So that was another thing Michael Wilson had. “What he do?”
“Salesman. Pharmaceuticals. He sells medicine.”
“Yeah? Why you do this, then? Why don’t you do that?”
“He don’t like his job.”
“Yeah,” East said.
“So I figure,” Michael Wilson explained, “you could sell a lot up here. Same kind of deal like UCLA. But you got to find the right people. Local.”
“So Fin lets you check things out,” East said. “On the ground.”
“Right,” said Michael Wilson. “Market research, you call it. But the mountains—not for us, E. You can’t be standing yard up here. It’s different. You’re alone. Black boys can’t hide in the snow.” He laughed at himself.
He rattled on. It didn’t matter. Michael Wilson didn’t hear him not answering. Right from the top East had known why Michael Wilson was along: to talk. To front them through. To bore any cop with his shiny record and UCLA smile.
But there was a problem. Michael Wilson was a fool. A rich boy and a gambler. Maybe that was all. You could bring worse problems. And if Fin had picked him, then Fin knew already what he was. What Michael did, that was East’s to handle. But carefully. Because Michael was a pretty face, a storyteller; because Michael did pull Walter along. Even Ty. Even his brother, the real mad dog. He wasn’t following East. He was following the tall boy with the year of college and the wad of cash out of the van.
East did not have those things, so he was pinned down. For now.
He breathed and watched the dark go past, the cold, relaxing nothing. White lines measuring it. There would be so much time just like this, waiting.
The road dipped, into a valley where no lights showed. Space like you never saw except in commercials. Strange dark land without people in it, miles of space between. For as long as he remembered, his business had been keeping people at arm’s length. Keep the U’s quiet and orderly, moving on. Keep his crew watchful, not too familiar. Keep people who didn’t have business from even passing the yard. Keep his mother from worrying.
Standing yard.
Out here, everything kept at a distance. You could go an hour on the freeway without seeing a person walking, standing. One red ghost eye of a car a mile up. Maybe the same car. Maybe different. You’d never know.
He reached back onto the floor for the thin red first-aid blanket and doubled it up between his head and the window. After a minute he closed his eyes. But they would not obey; his lids would not soften. Every rise, every little tick in the inertia: they were hard. He checked Michael, checked the road ahead, the black nothing in the side mirror.
They were to trust each other, Fin had said. But East trusted nothing.
—
East stirred. Michael Wilson was slowing the van—a long parking lot, lights hung high, angled spaces. He pulled in and killed the engine.
“Gotta sleep,” he murmured.
East sat up. Weird, sculpted land with no trees. Signs everywhere. “What is this place?”
“Rest stop, dummy.” Michael Wilson breathed, his eyes shutting. “I miss my motherfucking phone.”
East flexed his legs. He looked around outside. Nothing moving. Walter and Ty lay sleeping in back, and Michael was passing out against the window.
East took Michael’s keys from the ignition and stepped out. The pavement seemed to clutch at him like pond mud. A whole day riding, his legs and ass had gone numb.
Half a dozen cars and trucks slumbered. A back lot over the rise showed the lights of big trucks, their box tops white under the high lights. At his feet, sprinklers fed a few planters, bright yellow flowers alert in the night. A pair of small buildings. Fiercely he looked around for whatever.
Restrooms. Cautiously he approached. THIS FACILITY BUILT AND MAINTAINED BY THE STATE OF UTAH. Utah, then. He pissed sleepily into a urinal in Utah. Green light. Moths stumbled drunkenly around the walls. The strange white soap gobbed automatically onto his hands when he reached. A man came in and looked at him with interest. He ducked his head and left.
The second building had Coke machines. East bought two cans. A dollar apiece. A clock said two-something in the morning.
Nea
r the van, atop the weedy rise, sat a picnic table with a view of everything: front lot, back lot, all there was. East sat and drank. The van was dusty. He watched a truck, tipped with light like a fantastic ship, fly past.
There were no trees.
When he awoke with a start, the can was tipped over, dry to the touch. Grainy light. Flat clouds smudged the eastern horizon where the light was beginning. He cursed himself for falling asleep in the open.
Some of the parked cars had changed. A man combing his hair outside a Maxima was the same man who’d eyed him a few hours earlier. One of those. Dark birds hung like kites.
East descended the slope to the van, tapped Michael Wilson, and thumbed him over. Michael nodded, ashen, and squirmed across to the other seat. As soon as he’d fastened his belt, he was asleep again. East split open the warm can of Coke. He shortened the seat up and cranked the mirrors down.
Driving. He’d driven a few times for Fin, or dropped someone off, someone too gone to drive. He knew how.
On the other hand, he’d never been north of forty miles an hour.
For some miles he ran slowly, feeling the van track on the road, letting traffic funnel past. More cars now than in the evening. He could see them.
Then he picked it up to seventy-five.
The scene of the night before troubled East still: the flashing light under the canopy, the blood on the pavement, the chance that Ty was carrying a gun out here where they were supposed to run clean. And before that: the four of them bolting the van, leaving the job behind for—for what? Just a taste. It was all on camera—they’d made trouble. Maybe running down the road would let them leave it behind.
Only option he had.
The land changed—orange sky, light, the white of the flats giving rise to orange stone, crumpled and ridged, and dirt. The windshield filled with sunrise working its way up to blue.
He could glimpse the people in cars, the pickup-and-toolbox men, hidden behind wraparounds, heading to some job. The sleeping families, drivers with their coffee cups. The lone rangers, a man or a woman, sometimes intent on the road ahead, sometimes on the phone yammering. White people. Maybe some of them outrunning something too.
