by Mark Leidner
“I don’t know,” I said, lighting two cigarettes as we left the parking lot. I passed one to her. “I think he’s depressed.”
“Well, we gotta get our weed back.”
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“It was six hundred dollars’ worth, April. My car payment’s due in a week. My momma’s gonna kill me. That was the whole point of this. To get ahead, not behind.”
“I know!” I said. I was frustrated with her because I should’ve been the one to deliver the weed. Sasha was too easy to scare. Dudes saw her and only saw a piece of ass. People saw me and saw the crazy bitch who stabbed her brother. I think that was even the reason Casey Bentley had never tried to fuck with us since we’d been selling. Or maybe it was just the fact that we didn’t move weight.
“Did you ask Reggie?” I asked her.
“Yeah but he just laughed.”
“I figured.”
“He said he couldn’t front us nothing either. Too risky.”
“Well, he ain’t a dumbass.”
“What’re we gonna do?”
“Well,” I said reluctantly, “I know one thing that would solve the problem.”
“Damn it, April, I’m not fucking nobody for weed.”
“That’s the only reason Reggie gave us that first bag.”
“I like him! There’s a difference!”
“I don’t really see it,” I said, looking out the window. We were passing the Methodist Church where I’d once gone to hell in the form of a summer camp.
“There’s a big difference,” Sasha said.
“I guess.”
“Would you fuck Tyler for it?” she asked.
“I ain’t the one with those,” I said, pointing at her boobs with my cigarette. The seatbelt helped me make my case.
Sasha rolled her eyes, then thought about it and asked, “Well, if you had these, would you?”
I thought about it.
“I guess not,” I said.
“So let’s think of something else,” she said.
“ARE YOU SURE THIS IS a good idea?” Sasha said.
We had parked in front of Casey Bentley’s trailer. There was two trucks besides his in the drive, and a dog was barking its ass off somewhere nearby. I didn’t answer her question. I was getting my nerve up.
“Why do we have to do this now?” she said.
I turned to her sharply. “Getting our shit back today is gonna be easier than tomorrow. The day after that, it’s gonna be even harder.”
Sasha looked at me sideways.
“It’s like cancer,” I said. “You either cut it out or it kills you.”
I opened the door and got out of the car. I walked through Casey Bentley’s yard. When Sasha caught up, I told her to let me do the talking. She nodded, and I knocked on the door.
A dipshit I hated named Chuck answered it. “Oh shit,” he said when he saw me.
“Fuck you, Chuck.”
He took a good long look at Sasha then hollered for Casey. I could see another jersey-wearing loser inside too. They were all football rejects. The guys who played because they were big or fast and it gave them something to do that got them laid for a little while, but everybody knew they weren’t going nowhere with it and, even more pathetic, after they quit the team they still wore the jersey. Maybe on some level I didn’t even blame them. Maybe I would’ve wore a jersey if I could. I don’t know. Maybe everything would be different if anything was, but everything is what it is and probably always has been.
Casey smiled at me when he came to the door. “What’s up, Apeshit.” That’s what some people had started calling me, and I did hate it, but I’d yet to let a single person know it.
“Sup, Casey.”
His glassy eyes looked past me as if at a prize. “Sasha Shaw. You wanna come in?”
“Hell no,” she said.
“Yes we do,” I said.
WE WALKED IN AND IT was dark and smelled like ass and a million cigarettes. It was times like this that I was grateful Daddy never let our house get to smelling like a goddamn ashtray. On the TV was some kind of machine gun killing video game, and I saw Chuck slide a flat-looking tackle box under the couch with his heel as we sat down. I had to wait until they all got done eyeing Sasha again before we could get anything done. Finally, Casey looked over at me.
“So what’s the deal, April?”
“You know Tyler, that son of a bitch from Florida?”
Casey and Chuck exchanged a look. Then Chuck looked at me.
“You talking about Mad Dog?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know his fucking nickname.”
“That’s what they call him,” Chuck said to Casey.
“Mad Dog?” Casey asked, flicking a Zippo with a fat thumb and toasting half his cigarette trying to light it. “He some kinda bad-ass or something?”
“Naw,” Chuck said. “I mean, I think his name’s just Maddux.”
The guy whose name I didn’t know was wearing a backwards Denver Broncos hat, and he nodded. “Like Greg Maddux,” he said, still playing the video game. “Future Hall of Famer.”
Casey nodded as if this was somehow significant, then pointed his blackened cigarette at me. “So, what about him?”
“He stole our weed,” I said plainly.
Casey raised his eyebrows. “So?”
“Casey,” I said, leaning forward. “Ain’t no Florida pretty boy just gonna come up outta nowhere and start stealing shit from people like me and Sasha. We’re from around here.”
“Sasha ain’t,” Chuck said. “She’s from Luther County.”
“Shut the fuck up, you fat piece of shit,” I said.
Casey and the guy in the Broncos hat laughed.
“Fuck you, slut,” Chuck growled.
“You wish I was a slut,” I snapped back. Then I said to Casey, “Listen. Everybody knows all the shit you got going on. With me and Sasha though, it’s just green. It’s just spending-money. But this fucker Tyler, he’s just gonna keep getting bigger until one of y’all steps up.”
Casey took a long drag, looked at Sasha, then back at me. “Your limp-dick brother know where you are right now?”
“Oh shit,” Chuck boomed, snapping his fingertips like he was packing a can of dip.
I stayed staring at Casey. “No,” I said. “He don’t, and that ain’t got nothing to do with anything.”
“What’re you saying I should do then, Apeshit?”
“I’m proposing that me, you, Chuck, Sasha, and your booty buddy over there if he wants to, all go over to Tyler’s and get our weed back. We’ll let you take half.” I glanced at Sasha. “What’s that, about two ounces?” Sasha nodded half-heartedly. I turned back to Casey and pretended not to know its exact worth. “That’s like, I don’t know, four or five hundred bucks. Free money.”
“More like two or three,” the guy in the Broncos hat corrected. He was looking at me now, and I saw he was fine as hell. “Free money either way,” I said to him. “And from here on out, nobody has to worry about Tyler getting to be a bigger asshole than he is.”
Casey looked at Bronco boy, but he’d gone back to playing the game. Casey looked at Chuck, and Chuck shook his head. Finally Casey nodded, and then he leaned back and crossed his big leg over his knee and slid an arm around the back of the couch and took a drag and blew smoke in my face. “Why should I trust you?”
I waved it away. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“Because I don’t know that mother-fucker. He ain’t done me no wrong. Besides, I know Rawls ain’t done thinking about how I fucked him up. For all I know, we get to Tyler’s, and him and Tyler and who knows who else jumps us. You think I’m stupid?”
“Rawls is a pussy,” I said. “Ain’t nobody jumping anybody but us jumping Tyler. And it ain’t even jumping him either. It’s just justice.” I looked at them all, one by one. “And everybody in Oak Park will benefit.”
After another look at Chuck, Casey pointed his cigarette back and forth between me and Sasha.
“Alright,” he said. “We’ll do it for some ass.”
“Fuck you,” Sasha said, standing up. “C’mon, April. Let’s go.” Casey, Chuck, and the other guy were laughing, but I stayed put.
“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing my arm.
I stared back at Casey and shook my head. “I thought you were a bad-ass.”
He laughed. “I am, bitch. Alright.” He nodded. “Get on these nuts and I’ll do it.” He nodded at Sasha, then at me. “She can go, you stay.”
I didn’t say anything, I just stared at him.
“C’mon, April,” Sasha insisted. She was pulling me.
“You’re lucky,” I finally said.
“Lucky?” said Casey.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get cut that day you jumped Rawls.” I stood up and looked down at him. “That’s the only reason your fat ass is still breathing. Luck. And one day it’s gonna run out.”
“YOU ARE CRAZY,” SASHA SAID as we walked back to the car. I pulled out two cigarettes and lit them and passed one to her.
“This whole town is full of shit,” I said.
By the time she dropped me off, we had resigned ourselves to never getting our weed back, and, in addition, to never having boyfriends for the rest of our lives, and, also, to being lonely old biddies watching soaps all day, and we’d laughed about that.
Then I told her I was sure that if we put our heads together, we’d find a way to get the money for her car payment. She said she could get me a job at Applebee’s, and I nodded politely at the idea.
I watched her drive off, and then I checked to make sure no one at home had seen me come in. Dad was asleep on the couch in a shirt and his gross little pecker was poking out of his boxers. I threw a blanket on him and checked Rawls’ room. A couple science books were scattered on his bed, including one big yellow one about becoming an electrician. The beers I brought in the other day were unopened on the dresser where I’d left them. I don’t know what I thought about that. I guess I was impressed. But mostly I was happy that he wasn’t home so he wouldn’t see me grab the butcher knife and strike out.
IT WAS A LONGER WALK to Tyler’s than I thought, and by the time I got to the end of Oak Park and turned onto the highway I was covered in dust and had second guessed my plan so many times I wasn’t even sure if I had one. I don’t know what drove me, but I just couldn’t have sat at home doing what, watching TV? Studying? Fuck that. I’d never studied a day in my life, and it was too late to start now. Plus I couldn’t have sat still for ten seconds knowing some asshole from out of town had fucked me and Sasha out of what was ours. And made her cry. And made me waste my whole afternoon high. And changed my biggest problem in life from mosquito bites to a car payment that wasn’t even mine.
A few cars drove past while I was walking down the highway, and it made me hope nobody I knew saw me. I passed a weedy cotton field and another field with a hay barn where some fat old cows looked at me, then a white church, and then I turned down the dirt drive that led to Tyler’s falling-apart-ass green-ass house. It was a two-story but the roof was slouched, and a bunch of half-dead pecans were reaching over it like the Devil’s hand. Tyler drove a red Prelude and I looked at my reflection in the window as I passed it and decided that even if I did look like shit, at least I didn’t look scared. I made sure the knife was covered by my shirt and tight in the back of my shorts, then I knocked on the door.
When Tyler Maddux answered the door, I’d forgotten how fine he was. His eyes weren’t cold, they were actually watery-looking, like they were full of light and tears, and he was barefoot in blue jeans and wore a half-unbuttoned red-and-black button-up shirt. He looked like a model playing a lumberjack on a TV show. The only thing wrong with him was his teeth, which were all kinds of crooked on the bottom row. He looked like one of them fish who lived under the sea with a light bulb hanging over his forehead and a mouth full of razor blades. I thought he was beautiful though, and I got insecure again as to what I must’ve looked like to him.
He raised an eyebrow and scratched the back of his neck while looking me up and down.
“Hi, I’m April,” I said.
He didn’t blink. “Nice to meet you,” he said sarcastically. He looked out at the yard, then down at my gross legs and feet. “Where’d you walk here from?”
“I’m friends with Sasha,” I said. Then I added like a question, “She was over here today?”
All his slyness vanished. He shrugged. “So?”
“Look, I don’t know if she told you, but that weed she tried to sell you wasn’t hers.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nodded. “Now, I understand. In your shoes, I would’ve done the same. But the thing is, you didn’t know who she was representing, and I think if you did, you might have paid her what was due.”
He smiled, crooked teeth on full display. “What’re you, the repo man?”
“Cute,” I said. I cleared my throat. I blinked a bunch of times, trying to calm my nerves. “You’re cute-looking too,” I added, stepping forward. I reached out to touch his shirt.
He threw my arm back at me. “Get the fuck off!” He stepped back. “Who the fuck are you? Get the fuck out of here, girl.”
“Fine,” I said, clutching my arm like he’d hurt it. “But can I just ask you one more question?”
He looked completely confused as to why I hadn’t left yet. “You got ten seconds,” he said. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You need to leave.”
I looked down as if ashamed, and I was, although more for what I was about to do than anything I’d done. I took a deep breath. I looked back up at him. I tried to look helpless. I tried to look cute. I tried everything I could to keep his attention and drag out the moment.
“Sasha said you told her you’d let her have it back if she, you know.” I paused. “But she’s got a boyfriend, so…”
“So?”
“So what about me,” I finally said with perhaps more pride than I intended.
He looked at me like I was bat-shit. I tried to show off my hips, but I guess in a clowning way because we both knew I didn’t have any, and he almost seemed to smile. Maybe that was my game, I thought, making fun of myself. So I played it up and did a hand gesture.
He squinted at me, like I was something in the distance, and for a second he really looked like he was a movie star, then his squint broke into loud laughter. When he didn’t stop laughing, I stepped back. I put my hand on the porch post and picked off some paint and flicked it at him. He stopped and looked at me with something like surprise. He shook his head and turned around. He walked inside and left the front door open. Then he said over his shoulder, “Come on in then.”
I felt more alive and afraid than I’d ever felt, and when I took the next step forward, I wondered not for the first time if being really afraid was all living ever really was. The first thing I saw was our weed on his kitchen table. I knew it was ours because it had a camouflage twist tie at the top of the bag, and nobody did that but Reggie. Next to the bag was a tin full of a shitload of other bags, and a little cigar box that had pills in compartments, and beside the cigar box was a gun. Tyler saw me eyeing it. Somehow without me knowing it, he’d stepped behind me and closed the door. Then he walked toward me, and I walked backward, deeper into the kitchen. I glanced down a hall and realized how big the house actually was. My heart was pounding. Half from fear, half from wondering what it would be like if we had sex. When I realized I was acting like I was afraid, I stopped.
“So what now?” I said, hoping he didn’t hear the fear.
“You tell me, girl. What’s your name?”
“April,” I said. “And I already told you.” I tried smiling.
He seemed unamused. “April what?”
“Cousins,” I said.
He frowned like he was thinking. I glanced under the table and saw some grocery bags full of what might’ve been bricks of weed, and he had another plastic bag spilling over with different-sized baggies—I guess ever
ything you might need to start selling a bunch of shit to a bunch of dumb-asses like me and everybody I knew. Mine and Sasha’s sad $600 bag suddenly seemed like nothing compared to the hoard he was fixing to unload.
“Cousins,” Tyler said finally. “I used to know a drunk named, um, Nick Cousins down at Smithy Sheetrock. Y’all related?”
I looked up from looking at his stash. There was a long pause. “He’s my daddy,” I said.
He looked me over again, then nodded knowingly and sadly and said, “I see it.”
“How long you worked at Shitty Shit-rock?” I said, smiling again. “That’s what we used to call it.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “I’ve heard that one.”
“How long ago did you work with him?”
“I said I knew him, not worked with him.”
I nodded. I began to imagine a younger version of Tyler, maybe even younger than me, selling my mom and dad drugs when I was still in junior high, maybe even middle school.
“How long ago?”
He scrunched up his face. “I don’t know.”
“I thought you were from Florida.”
“I started up here.”
“You started?”
“That’s what I said, girl.”
I felt like I’d hit a nerve, so I tried to be friendly again. “How long you been back in town?”
He took a step toward me. “Just a little bit.”
I stepped backward, into the hallway, looking behind me into the dark.
“How old are you?” I asked.
He seemed offended. “How the fuck old are you?” His eyebrows shot up as if he’d made some brilliant point. I made sure to picture exactly where the butcher knife was against my back, and then I took a step toward him.
WHEN I LEFT TYLER’S HOUSE, what was left of mine and Sasha’s weed was in a baggie swinging from my hand, as light as it was heavy. My knees were jelly, and my heart was pumping like it was gonna pop. My legs were moving as fast as they could without running.
I’d had to show Tyler the knife and explain I’d only brought it in case there was drama, and he’d only nodded.
It wasn’t bad, I guess. It just wasn’t what I’d stupidly hoped. I’d only been with a couple other guys, and none of them had been anything worth mentioning. All Chucks, to be honest. I thought that it might be different with Tyler because he was old and fine and a bad-ass, I guess. But maybe there was something about getting down with someone that sucked all the mystery out of them. It’d definitely turned everyone I’d ever done it with into ten times the asshole they were before, and Tyler was no exception.
