As Baylon saw things, Night had his own ambitions, they all did, but Night saw himself as the rightful heir to the throne of the streets and Dred as a pretender to it. Baylon's strategic thinking was what made him valuable to Dred, but not valuable enough. He was being pushed aside, reduced to a consigliere within his own crew.
Dred and Griff turned toward Baylon. After an other check of the streets from the slit of the window beside the door, he nodded. Without instruction, Griff led the way, clutching the bag full of cash, knowing to keep money and product away from Dred. To insulate him. Dred followed. Baylon gave one last glance at the dope dealer who moaned as he crawled back onto the couch. Discarded as soon as he was inconvenient.
The dope dealer stared straight at him. "Sir Baylon, this is the boundary of your life. Turn back and you may save yourself." And with that, the man vanished.
Baylon imagined the trajectory of his life as him running. Running through a dark forest, heedless of what lay ahead, knowing that he couldn't remain where he was. His fate chased after him, undeterred and dogged, closing in on him like an inexorable curtain. He fought against the listing hopelessness. He stood on the precipice knowing the time to change ticked away quickly. He closed his eyes and waited, giving into his destiny.
The squeal of car tires shattered the night like a hunting horn signaling the death of their prey. The car slowed to a deliberate crawl. Griff released his hold on the paper bag, whatever warrior sense or maybe just in tune to the scent of violence and blood and death in the air alerting him to action. Without hesitation, he leapt between the approaching car and Dred. For his part, Dred stood there. Not frozen, as if the impending violence caught him short. No, he wore a different face. One of resignation. Of giving in to the inevitable. Of a time coming full circle.
Baylon withdrew his knife. The blade snapped to life with a sharp click.
From the lowered car windows, several gun barrels protruded. The first shot caught Griff before he could reach Dred. The shot caught him in the shoulder spinning him, then a second shot caught him in the side sending him towards Baylon. As Griff's body ca reened toward him, Baylon – perhaps on instinct, perhaps the knife had a will of its own, perhaps many things Baylon preferred to not think about – brought the knife to bear. It plunged into Griff's gut. His accusing eyes widened in shock, fresh pain atop his bullet wounds. He gripped Baylon's shirt, a desperate grasp which pulled him down on top of him. The action drove the blade deeper into him as they landed. Baylon cradled his head. The blood from the mortal cut covered his front. He peered into Griff's eyes until the light left them, but not before his countenance fixed in a look of knowing. There were no secrets from the dead.
Dred arced his fingers down in a wave. The night seemed to split, carved open with the gesture, eldritch shadows catching the first volley of bullets. A shotgun barrel leveled at him. Its thunderous report caused Baylon to cover Griff as if he could shield him from any further damage. The shrapnel tore through the arcane shield Dred had cast and caught him fully in his gullet. The blast knocked him from his feet.
The car sped off into the night.
Baylon stood, surveying the damage. Not realizing his cell phone had found its way into his hand or that he had punched in the digits 911 and babbled non sensically into it. He folded the knife and tossed it down a sewer grate until he could retrieve it later.
Baylon wondered if he had ever had an honest moment in his life. A time of perfect truth. The ritual of dressing in front of the mirror, the care he took in picking out his wardrobe, the fastidiousness of his look was so much wasted effort. He knew it. His men knew it.
"There it is." Baylon's arms hung at his side. He didn't know how long he had stood there, staring at his reflection as the memories overwhelmed him. "The cost of my sin."
"What sin?" Griff asked.
"Bad luck."
"All your wounds are self-inflicted."
His life was an inexorable spiral leading to a point he dreaded to think about. Somehow not thinking about it made its inevitability less real. Night and Dred. He and King. He and Griff. He and Michelle. There was no warranty on friendships. They began, they ended, each in their own season. And when they ended, the ripples of those relationships spread into the next. A cycle of pain he would continue to pay for.
"Sometimes I feel like it's cursed. Either of them."
"The knife?" Griff asked.
"Yeah. All it has ever brought is blood and trouble."
"The cost of defending yourself."
"But it shouldn't have to be that way."
"You still the fairest of them all… punk motherfucker.
CHAPTER NINE
No one knew who threw the first punch and for damn sure who fired the shots that dropped Alaina Walker. Truth be told, even when the video was shown and re-shown on the news later that evening, the mob scene in the park was little more than fifteen to twenty girls wilding, a sea of arms and blurred faces scrabbling in a cluster of aggression. Investigators determined the fight actually started at Northwest High School.
"I need to go ahead and get my GED." Lady G swatted at one of the lazy bees who flitted after her can of soda. A thin trickle of sweat trailed down the side of her face. The heat of the day already fouled her mood and the incessant buzz only furthered her irritation. She tugged at her gloves.
"What for?" Rhianna's small rasp of a voice scraped at her ears. A sweatband with a skull and crossbones insignia on it encircled Rhianna's head. A dozen jelly bracelets choked each wrist. It didn't matter that she never spoke of things on her mind. She wore them, or rather, they wore her. She shirked whenever men neared, moreso than usual. Chipped nail polish wasted along the fingertips of her ashy hands. Dark circles welled under her eyes.
"I don't know. Maybe go to college."
"Why? What you gone be? A toxicologist or something?"
"Nah…" Her voice trailed, the tan brick walls of the school seeming suddenly formidable. "Just talking I guess."
The park was next to the Jonathan Jennings Public School 109 elementary school, though that didn't stop graffiti artists from tagging the slide or tables with profanities and gang designations, marking their territory like so many dogs pissing over themselves. Nor did it stop folks from coming up here to get high. The pair, along with a few of their girls, sat along one of the two dilapidated picnic tables under the shelter. Rhianna wanted to get her head up a little since Prez hadn't spoken to her since the night at the bridge. In fact, she and Lady G hadn't said a word about it either. It was like if they never mentioned it, maybe it didn't happen. Sure, they'd been questioned by the police and released, but the evening blurred into a haze of half-remembered conversations. Still, the image of the black tarp spread over two distinct lumps of flesh that had once been Trevant haunted her. That and the sight of all the blood. There was no tarp large enough to cover all the blood.
"Come on, now. Beyonce sang about doing for her man 'what Martin did for the people'," Lady G chirped to lighten the mood.
"That song is an earworm. I'm tired of these fools who call themselves singers these days. You see Justin Wiggerlake's ass trying to dis Prince? Come on now." Rhianna scanned the front of Breton Court for any sign of Prez. Prez was alive enough, still selling for Dollar over here at Breton Court, not that he acknowledged them. He certainly wouldn't describe the ineffable dread he felt whenever he thought about being with the girls as fear, but he, too, kept a discreet distance from them.
"You're still talking about my baby."
"I'm just sayin'. You never saw Hall and Oates dissin' Earth, Wind, and Fire."
"Come close so I can cut you." Lady G rolled up her sleeves, in feigned anger, unconscious of how conspicuous her gloves now seemed.
"Shut up."
"Someone hold my earrings." Lady G pantomimed removing her earrings and waited for Rhianna to give into her smile. "Some fools need to be cut."
In order to put on a pleasant face for rush-hour commuters, Breton Court had been fr
eshly painted. The townhouses were two storey, two or three bedrooms depending on the layout. The end cap of the rows were one level, one bedroom. Its landscape was fairly well maintained, as an old Jamaican fatherand-son team tended the lawns every Saturday morning. Life percolated along at its usual rhythms. A Hispanic family, a grandmother with her two adult children and a few toddlers, chatted amiably in a doorway. A few children rode their bikes unsteadily along the drive. Some teenagers huddled under trees engaged in the play dance of hormone-fueled flirting and banter. Green's people loitered on porch steps or ducked between patio enclaves in order to conduct business.
As one went deeper into the court, the pleasant façade broke down. A gradual erosion into dilapidation the further away it got from casual eyes. Cars jacked up, tires missing, windshields cracked if not entirely knocked out, glass shards still pooled beneath them. The townhouse window shutters shattered or dangled at odd angles. Chipped paint and rotted wood made up many patios. A couple of end condos had the back patios missing entirely. The siding on the end townhouses missed a few slats. A patch ran perpendicular to the rest and still revealed wood rafters of roof. The disrepair from storm damage when a tornado touched down a few years back. This was where King lived. He removed the 'For Sale' sign from his front window.
King couldn't pinpoint when he'd developed spiritual eyes – soft eyes some folks would say – able to take in everything, the full picture, and even feel it on some level. He was connected to the court and its people. Up until then, all he'd wanted was to keep his head down, mind his own, and muddle through. No, that was a lie. In his heart, his life had always been one of quiet discipline, despite his circumstances. Reading. Meditating. Working out. Always in a state of preparing for something. Maybe he sensed something was coming. It had to be more than simply knowing that he was meant for something, a purpose, because who didn't have their childhood daydreams fueled by a belief that they were destined for greatness? King sat on the porch of his condo, whiling away most of his days peoplewatching. Every time he wandered toward the front of the court, Green's crew declared a time-out. Lingering at the front of the court, he had an unobstructed view of the park.
School dismissed barely twenty minutes earlier and those who walked home trickled into the park. A lot had changed at Northwest High School even in the few years since King attended there. Back in his day, before every major holiday break – Christmas, Spring Break, even summer vacation – the school collapsed in a cauldron of racial tension. Too often, the police helicopter circled the school as mini-riots spread throughout the campus, the slightest spark – a jostle in the lunch line, the wrong color boy rebuffed by the wrong color girl – provided all the excuse needed to pit black against white. Now, with the major Hispanic influx, the game had done changed for real.
A white Toyota Corolla, a decade old with a rusting bumper, screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, drawing everyone's attention as a half-dozen girls tumbled out. Alaina Walker just got out of juvey and was not allowed to associate with her gang sisters. The crossroads moment of her life was between a boring-ass life with no friends or risking her probation by standing tall with her girls. Some folks couldn't help but gravitate to chaos. If chaos was all they knew, chaos was their comfort. Chaos was safe. Alaina marched her crew into the face of Lady G. The two simply hated each other and neither, if pressed, could tell anyone why. It was as if the air between them poisoned with a pheromonal hatred whenever they neared each other.
"Perhaps we should, as a community, just put an embargo on bad weaves," Lady G said.
"What are you doing here? Trying to fit in?" Alaina tossed her hair back from her neck, revealing a tattoo that read "Numba 1 Dick Sucka". Her doorknocker ear rings and gold bracelets combined for a symphony of jangles whenever she moved. Most days, Alaina was all right. East side fools tripped so easily when they thought their man was being stolen out from under them. She had two brothers and one on the way, but she was the oldest. A man, especially one with long money, represented the hope of stability and a way out. Even Baylon. That was Alaina's way. Being too desperate and short-sighted to get out was a contagion which led her to choose bad men to cling to. Lady G had seen her too often around the way with too many bruises for the occasional scuffle. But that, too, was Alaina's game and she played it like the soldier she was.
"Pissing off mommy and daddy. You should know about that," Lady G said.
"You want to get down? We can get down."
"I'm telling you, she's Baylon's girl," a girl stagewhispered to Alaina.
"I. Am. Not." Lady G bristled, rolling her eyes at the sudden respect by proxy she was given. She could fight her own battles and didn't need the shadow of Baylon as a cloak of protection. She never trusted the chivalry of men.
A second car pulled up and that's when things truly went to hell. Percy jumped out of the notquite-stopped car. Standing just over six feet, a buck eighty and change, he could have been a running back on Northwest's sad-ass JV team. A soft-spoken boy who carried himself like he was afraid he might accidentally break those around him, he, Rhianna, and Alaina stayed over at the Phoenix. Alaina's mother had slammed the car into park and squeezed her six month pregnant self out of the driver's seat and waddled quickly into the fray.
"You girls don't need to do this." A sweet, a pure fool, Percy called himself intervening, trying to calm the situation. He had a way about him. Pain didn't become a part of him, wasn't something he marinated in or dined upon like so many others. Like air, he took it in and let it out. Not that he could express such lofty notions himself. Even now, he realized the escalation was a simple misunderstanding, but he lacked the words to communicate it to any of the girls. His hope was that a mother could quell the situation. Poor deluded fool. As if adding maternal estrogen into the mix had any hope of doing anything except fan the flames.
"You need to mind your own," Lady G said.
"Stay the fuck away from him," Alaina reared, rarely letting the opportunity to spray her particular brand of venom pass.
"No one gets to tell me who I can and can't be friends with." Lady G was pissed at Alaina getting loud. She didn't even like Baylon, but the effrontery of being checked by this heifer, well, pride was pride.
"You spread your legs for any trick who'll buy you a Happy Meal."
"Don't hate cause you don't know how to keep a man," Rhianna chimed in. Most people dropped their guard around her. She had an angel's face, soft and round, her toffee-colored complexion seemed darker against her white teeth and gray eyes. With her small frame, no one expected her to be able to scrap like she did. But the girls knew. Lady G knew. And Alaina for damn sure knew.
"You know what? You a nigga and I don't mean that in no nice way!" Despite the three inches Alaina had on her, Lady G neither cut her eyes away nor stepped back. Neither girl was about to be punked, especially not in front of their people. Not to mention that cell phone cameras were already being waved about with nosey folks ready to parade their shit all over YouTube. "He's from our neighborhood. People like you shot and killed my cousin (rest in peace)."
"Fuck you and your neighborhood." Lady G put her hands on her hips in a now what? pose.
Sometimes when confronted with situations one couldn't control, instinct dictated either of two responses: fight or flight. The crowd surged forward as Lady G and Rhianna got rushed. Alaina dropped her head and charged Lady G in a tackle. Lady G let her body go slack to take the hit but control the fall to the ground. Her legs sailed over the girl's shoulder. Alaina squatted over her belly, throwing punches into her. Lady G could handle Alaina. A fight wasn't no thing – the cost of doing business out here. Some you won, some you lost; it was about how you carried it afterward and Lady G could carry this and its attendant scars. No matter which way it turned out.
The flutter of panic which tripped her street antennae was the chaos. The fight had degenerated into a mob. Folks were straight up wilding, fighting just to be fighting. She took a kick to the ribs from a fac
eless body – barely felt beneath her layers of clothes – her focus on Alaina. The fight had become a stalemate. Without room to maneuver, the two wrestled about essentially entangling each other's arms and interlocking legs so that neither could get in a clean blow. An unspoken message between them as the fight was no longer about them. As they strained against one another, each took a second to do a glancing assessment at the scene about them. The vibe was ugly. They flew under the radar of the crowd, largely unnoticed.
• • •
Neither claimed a set – the investigating detectives would later breathe a quiet sigh of relief over that. The last thing they, the neighborhood, or the school needed was escalating gang retaliation. A crowd of looky-loos gathered around, cell phones out to capture as much as they could.
King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 Page 17
