by Victor Yates
A bird flapping its wings against a window wakes me in the morning. The bird chirps. Then, a flock of birds follows the first. As I lie in bed, I notice someone has unhung a photograph I shot and propped it against the wall. In the picture, the best man at a Somali wedding hands the groom a silk cummerbund. The red material swallows the bottom half of the groom’s stomach. I have to look away. The doorknob clicks. As I watch it turn, I slide the knife from under my pillow. The door opens halfway as my feet touch the carpet. My brother squeezes through the crack. I slide the knife back under the pillow.
“Shhhh,” Junior whispers, tiptoeing to the bed. He hands me a sheet of paper, growls to disrupt the silence, and sneaks back out.
The scribbled note reads: Reed is leaving in twenty minutes for a wedding in Detroit. Be quiet as possible. Both Ricky and I are going.
Exactly twenty minutes later, I hear tucka tucka tucka tucka as Reed reverses out of the driveway. I laugh looking out the window, knowing Junior is in tears listening to the new sound. As the car disappears, Brett appears on the side of his house. Bits of cement cover his arms, jeans, T-shirt, and a pink bandana around his forehead. His curly hair is slicked back into a ponytail with the end puffed out. He waves neither overjoyed nor unexcited and points toward the front door. I kick my bloodied shirt from yesterday under the bed, change into a clean shirt, and then jog downstairs.
Pat, pat, pat, bits fall to the ground in the embrace. His neck smells like wet pebbles. Cement stuck to his shirt scratches my face. His fingers smooth out knots in my back. As we let go, I notice long hairs sticking out around his Adam’s apple.
“Where have you been?”
“Reed kicked me out.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. At least he allowed you to come back.”
“He didn’t. He doesn’t know I’m here. I’m leaving in a few minutes.”
“Where are you staying now?”
“At the studio.”
“Your getting kicked out is my fault. What can I do to help you?”
“It’s not and nothing. But something happened yesterday.”
Brett’s face twitches into a tortured grimace after I finish telling him everything. “You need to turn yourself in.”
“I can’t. You know what will happen to me.”
“It was self-defense. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“I stole from a man and stabbed him. I’m not innocent.”
“What if he’s dead?”
“And what if he isn’t?”
“It has to be tearing you up not knowing what happened. Let’s drive there. See if he walked out.”
“Then what?”
“You decide what happens next.”
“Okay, I can do that,” I say to him. However, I know turning myself in would be like holding out my hand to a scorpion and not expecting a sting. All Africans know that the sting of a scorpion burns deeper than the lash of a whip. Under every stone, a scorpion sleeps and under every police station roof, Black men bleed.
Chapter 33
Dark, almost purple, blood splatters color in a shoe print by the entrance. The print, with wavy lines, is identical to the new prints that my shoes have left. More blood, but a smaller amount, is clumped where I stood and knifed the man. Brett points a canister of pepper spray out in front of him as he creeps around the display case with the altar. A church bell rings five times outside. What an odd location for a church. Every other building on this block looks dilapidated. Rolling wheels on the sidewalk crack the silence that follows the bells. High heels click on the pavement. The woman’s infant cries. My foot touches the remains of a mop head. The yarn, now blackened, resembles a child’s hair. Staring at the mop head, I invent a life for the terrifying man. What if the man collapsed on the street and died and left behind a child?
“I want to turn myself in.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
The fear I felt yesterday somehow masked the smell of urine and sewage in the alley. I lift up the inside of my shirt at the collar to cover my nose and mouth. As I look left, before crossing the street, I see an angel. The statue is abstract, life-size, and four-sided. It resembles a torch, with a slender lower half and bulbous wings. The wings, painted with feathers, surround the statue. The feathers touch the words Baptist Church on a repurposed office building. A few feet away from the angel, I recognize a parked car with dent marks.
While pointing, I tell Brett, “That’s Reed’s car. I should tell him what happened first. Then we can go.”
Behind us, a man yells, “Hey.”
Brett and I ignore the yelling and continue walking. A gunshot throws me off balance. I duck down low and flat-backed, sprinting to a car covered in graffiti.
“Come out or I’ll shoot your friend.”
My stomach drops to my feet. The man that I knifed shoves a gun in my face. His pale face looks monstrous. Thick white spittle drips down the creases of his mouth. His nostrils flare out. About eight pink rings are under his eyes. His bleached hair is disheveled, sticky-looking, with random black strands.
“Walk to the store,” the terrifying man says. “Both of you.”
“No,” a different man screams from further down the street.
The terrifying man yells a Spanish curse word at the other man.
When the other man screams again, I recognize his voice. Reed throws his body in front of me and says, “Take my wallet and leave us alone.”
The second gunshot is similar in sound to a heavy-duty dumpster lid slammed shut. Reed collapses to the ground on his back in his church shirt and pants. I slide my hand under his head and catch the blood. His left earlobe is missing as if someone held a hot comb over his blackened ear, and the earlobe burnt off. Above the missing lobe, the burned skin is blistered and swollen. Blood covers his neck and shoulder.
“Help,” I yell.
“Shut up,” the man screams and kicks my arm.
He bashes Brett across his head with his gun. Brett falls forward, but catches himself. He cross-punches Brett in the gut with his free hand. His hands are also weapons. Brett’s knees drop to the ground. The man hops up on his left leg, swinging his right leg high behind him. The kick cracks Brett’s side.
“Up,” he yells at Brett and he digs the gun barrel into the back of my head. “Get him.” He motions the gun between Father and me.
I place Father’s arm around my shoulder. Brett repeats this, standing on the opposite side. A fine mist of blood covers my right arm. Maroon blotches break out on both my arms. Father’s breathing becomes heavier as we lift him up to his feet. We move, as hand puppets, obedient and without objection, into the camera store. Then, we ease Father onto the floor and prop him against the wall parallel to the entrance.
“Sit,” the man says.
Brett sits to my left, positioning me in the middle of him and Father. The terrifying man motions with the gun for me to stand.
Father starts to say something, coughs instead and spits blood on the floor. “Let my son and that boy go.”
Brett grips my hand. A movement from the corner of my eye becomes the gun. The gun flies back in the air and forward. Father’s head bangs against the wall. Fear and dust burn my eyes. Father doesn’t move, and I can’t hear him breathing. The man cracks him in the head again with the gun.
“Stop,” I yell.
“Up,” the man screams.
The church bell rings five times, and the man turns away.
Brett sets a compact object in my hand. “Back pocket. Don’t look,” he whispers and rolls my fingers over it.
I tuck the object in my pocket without the man seeing. Something crunches under my shoe. My knees start to wobble as I walk, and then my entire body shakes. The man snatches the back of my neck. Our noses almost touch. His eyes are unhuman, wild, like a feral dog that is suspicious of an unfamiliar man.<
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“No,” comes out from somewhere inside of my mouth.
His hand, high in the air, swoops down at my face like a predatory bird, hungry for a kill. The gun cracks me in the jaw. I stumble back, dizzy, falling, but not falling, the violent pain swelling in my head. The man yanks my arm toward him.
“Stop,” Father yells.
A bullet lodges into the wall an inch above his head. With the man’s back facing me, I see a second gun tucked in the back of his pants. I wrap my fingers around the object in my pocket. His head turns to the side as if sensing my movement. I jump, almost flying like a daredevil cliff diver, throwing out my arms. I wake up with his throat clamped in the bend of my arm. He yells an unfamiliar word in Spanish. I pull him back toward my body and push down the pepper spray nozzle. The gun flies back. I tighten my elbow-grip around his throat. His finger pulls back on the trigger. Fire, real fire, like a campfire, glowing orange, shoots out of the barrel. My ears ring. He thrashes around as I continue spraying him in the face. The gun drops to the floor, and he wails. White flakes from the ceiling flutter over us and dust rises from the floor. Brett hurries and grabs the gun. I cough, having inhaled pepper spray. The man claws at his face. Brett jabs him in the gut and punches him again and again.
The man stomps down on my shoe with his back heel crushing my toes. I squeeze my elbow tighter around the man’s neck, hoping he loses consciousness. His head slumps forward. Blond hair slams in my face. I hear a cracking noise. Every color in the room is sucked out, and every object, even the people, turns white. The whites bleed into each other and become one image. Teeth bite into my arm. I punch where his head should be and hit bone. I hear a fist punch and shoving. A piece of glass falls and shatters. Rising dust irritates my nose, and I sneeze. A scraping sound outside of the door startles me. Someone else is coming into the store. I step backward and slip on something round.
Like a white light switched on in the darkroom, the colors return. The man knees Brett in between his legs. Brett squeals, holds himself, collapses to his knees, and falls over into a pile of cottage cheese flakes. Father, his face wrinkled cabbage, clutches his neck in desperation. The man’s eyes are slits. More spit drips from his mouth. He pulls his leg back to kick Brett on the ground. I push him to stop the kick. The man punches me in the chest and grabs the other gun tucked in the back of his pants. He raises the gun. Glass explodes. More light comes into the store. Then, another gun is shot. Blood gushes down the man’s shoulder.
“Drop it,” an unseen man with a husky voice yells through the open door.
The husky-voiced man steps into the store with his gun pointed at the man. Two more police officers, also in bulletproof vests, rush in after him. The man turns his head toward the sound of the officer’s voice.
Seeing a pipe on the ground, I grab it and smash the pipe across his back.
“Police, freeze,” the officer yells. “Drop your weapon.”
Slowly, I pull Brett by his shirt to the wall. Father struggles to stand and leads us, hunch-backed, behind the closest glass case. A long string of watery snot dribbles from the man’s nose.
“Don’t think. Do it,” the female officer shouts.
The man screams, lowers the gun, and the officer rushes him. The man coughs violently; the coughing turns into wailing. His skin turns gray. He gags. Another male officer, not in gear, takes the man, in handcuffs and pushes him out the door.
Squeak, rattle, squeak, announces two paramedics before they run in wheeling a stretcher.
“You’re going to be okay,” the husky-voiced officer says to Father.
I sit cross-legged beside Father on the floor. His blood glues my underwear to my thighs. He grabs my hand and blood and dirt squishes between our fingers. Blood soaks the top half of his shirt. Two cuts are on his forehead. His fingernails look bluish from the dust. Through photography, I learned faith is the meaning of love between men. If faith deepens through prayer, photography is our prayer. I start praying. Who would I be without photography: someone else’s child? Without photography, I wouldn’t have worked for the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Defender newspaper. Without my cameras, I would not have bothered telling Father I loved him every night when I lived with him because that would’ve been a lie. I love him because he has given me purpose and an occupation. I have seen the world through countless cameras, and I’m made of all that I have seen. I am a photographer. Eye to camera to print.
The paramedic slides two gloved fingers down his neck. He twitches and bites his lip. His bottom lip bleeds. He squeezes my hand harder. His glassy eyes focus on something by his feet.
“Pick that up,” he says weakly and breathes through his mouth using his whole rib cage. His lips seem pasty gray; however, it does not appear that dust is on his lips.
Under pellets that look like salt crystals, the white of my business card shines. Light flickers as I hand him the card. Light coming in from outside reflects on the display case. In the broken glass, the scene is multiplied. Father’s body shivers and I realize his brown skin is pale under the dust. A rattling sound comes out from the back of his throat.
“I love you,” Father says and stares at me with enlarged pupils as if staring through my body.
Hearing those words, “I love you,” the shock is so incredible that I squash his hand in a death grip, and I continue squeezing even when his hand loses its warmth.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the Otis College Graduate Writing Program, Beyond Baroque Fiction Workshop, the City of West Hollywood, West Hollywood Library, the Ann Arbor District Library, and Tishuan Scott for your generous support.
Specifically, I would like to thank my writing workshop instructors Peter Gadol, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Jen Hofer, and Honoree Jeffers for pushing me past the ordinary to delight in the unexpected, to reach for strange-sounding words, and to write with an unusual magic. To my unofficial instructors, Staceyann Chin, Michelle Tea, Daphne Gottlieb, Samuel R. Delany, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Toni Morrison, thank you for your guidebooks to writing.
Diana Robertson, Paul Vangelisti, Daniel Lazar, David Groff, Hank Hendersen, Michael Che, Keith Boykin, Jeffrey King/In The Meantime, Winnie McCroy, Jason St. Amand, Raspin Stuwart, Kara Mondino, Joel Garcia, Laura Manchester, Kurt Thum, DJ Baker, L.R., and Antonio G.
©Garen Hagobian
Victor Yates was raised in Jacksonville, Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Windy City Times, Gorgeous, and Edge. As a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Otis College, he is the recipient of an Ahmanson Foundation grant. He is the winner of the Elma Stuckey Writing Award (1st place in poetry). Two of his poems were included in the anthology, “For Colored Boys,” which was edited by Keith Boykin. The anthology won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award. Also, he has taught writing workshops at the University of Southern California (for the Models of Pride Conference), Job Corps, Whaley Middle School (Compton), Gindling Hilltop Camp (Malibu), and Bright Star Secondary Charter Academy (Inglewood). This is his first novel.
