“Hey, Kid!” The smile was a pit of flickering rot and silver. “You really doing nice here, huh? Beautiful, yeah. Beautiful.”
“Well, I’ll be a motherfucker!” Kid announced, “I didn’t even think you were gonna live another twenty-four hours, much less show up here.”
Pepper gaped wider. “Sort of…hungry!” His chin jutted on the syllable. He joggled a wine bottle in his spiky hand. “You got a really nice nest here; and I’m all ready for a run.”
“Help yourself.” Kid gestured over the heads around him. “You just go right on and help yourself.”
A very blond and square-jawed scorpion pushed from the center of a bunch of blacks (Raven, Jack the Ripper, Thruppence, D-t, Spider) stepped up behind Pepper, and said, “Jesus Christ…Shit!” He seized Pepper’s scrawny shoulder. “What are you doing back here, you sad-assed motherfucker? Why don’t you get your ass out of here before I—”
“Hey, now…” Pepper said. “Hey…!”
Others, looking, moved aside. The short-haired woman stepped forward. Copperhead stopped her with a freckled hand on her chained and vested shoulder.
“Come on and get the fuck out of here,” the square-jawed blond said. “Nobody wants you around stinking up the place now. You been run out twice. Somebody gotta run you out again?”
“Man, I’m hungry!” Pepper complained. “Kid said I could—” And under the thrusting hand, stumbled into Kid.
Kid stepped back, thought, no, with no word on top of it. He swung his hand, and caught the back of the blond head so hard his palm stung.
“Owee…!” came unaccountably from Pepper, who scurried to the side.
The scorpion Kid had hit turned, his face screwed up.
No, Kid thought, this time with the word. I got a bum leg, I’m half drunk, and I’m beating on people? No. This is going to get me in trouble. “Leave him alone!” Kid said loudly.
Scorpions shuffled in the silence.
Kneeling over the ham, Priest squinted. He was so close to the fire his dark shoulders sweated.
Kid walked toward the scowling blond and took his shoulder. “Now you just go on and get yourself something to eat!” He shook the scorpion’s shoulder in large motions. “There’s enough for everybody, see?” Am I really getting away with this? Kid began to laugh. “Come on, give him a piece of ham.” He pushed the scorpion toward the fire. And I’ll just turn, walk away, and wait for a fork in my shoulder.
Kid turned.
Copperhead stood before the others, arms crossed, Glass to one side of him, Spitt to the other. The short-haired woman, shaking her head, was walking away.
Kid moved toward them thinking; I can’t tell whether they’re about to back me or jump me. Do the others know? “Whyn’t you get yourself something to eat, too?” He walked by.
Some tension had broken with his laughter.
Thruppence said, “You got a ladle or a cup or something?”
Jack the Ripper said, “We got bowls and cups and things. Somebody washed all the fuckin’ dishes.”
Half a dozen crouched together behind the fire, shoulders smooth as great plums, hair wrinkled as prunes, holding forks over the coals, shifting hands suddenly sucking their knuckles.
He looked at a bottle.
“You want some of—?”
“Yeah.” He took the bottle and another drink, “Thanks,” and kept circling. Two were necking under a tree. Momentarily he thought they were both boys.
Dollar lifted his face from the black girl’s disarrayed hair. “Hey, Kid…” He blinked in the firelight, his stubbly jaw blebbed here and there.
Kid stepped over Dollar’s boots.
“You got something to eat yet?” Denny asked.
Kid shook his head.
“You take this. I’ll get another one.”
The cup was hot and soup had run down the sides. “Thanks.”
“You won’t get trichinosis from that ham if it isn’t cooked through, will you?” Denny asked.
“If it comes out of a can,” Kid said, “it’s cooked.”
“That’s what I thought,” Denny said.
He sipped, stinging the roof of his mouth. The sensation took seconds to subside to simple heat. He was looking, desultorily, for either Pepper or the scorpion who’d harassed him. He could spot neither around the fire. And people were going in and out of the house again.
Glass, Spitt, and Copperhead, less formally posed, but still together, stood to the side of the yard eating ham and soup. Kid doffed his cup.
“Can you hear that?” Glass asked.
“Hear what?”
“Listen,” Spitt said.
Kid bent over the soup while it steamed his chin. The yard was filled with voices. “What?”
“There,” Spitt said.
Perhaps two blocks away, a man screamed. The sound went on and on, died at the length of a long breath, and began again, this time shaking and breaking.
“You wanna go check it out?” Copperhead took another bite of ham. A line of grease glistened from the corner of his mouth into his beard.
“Naw,” Kid said.
“You’re the big hero, man,” Copperhead said. “Don’t you wanna go help a gentleman in distress?” Copperhead laughed.
“No, I…”
The man screamed again.
Momentarily Kid pictured the four of them foraging beyond the firelight, through darkened streets, the ululation filling the night about them.
“No, I don’t wanna. I got Pepper fed. That’s my heroics for the night.” He sipped loudly and walked back among the scorpions around the fire. When the neighbors are shrieking…went through his mind but could not remember who’d said it.
“Here, Kid. You wanna use my fork?”
It was the blond scorpion who had tried to eject Pepper.
“Thanks.” It was a long-handled, three-pronged laundry fork. Kid took a chunk of ham and squatted beside the fire. He squinted before flame. Trying to drink his soup, he spilled more over his hand. And even with the long fork, his knuckles were painfully hot. The blond scorpion, squatting beside Kid, watched the meat bubble and char. “Thanks for the fork,” Kid said again after a few minutes and sipped from the cup once more.
The screaming had stopped.
Or there was too much noise to hear.
4
“Hey, Tak!”
“Kid?”
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing? Can you get down from there? You better watch out…”
Kid let go of the beam and crabbed down the rubble, raising dust banks behind and an avalanche before.
“That was impressive,” Tak said. “You’re still going around with one shoe? You must have a sole on that foot like an oak board.”
“Naw.” Kid beat his foot against his black jeans, both legs grey to the knee. “Not really.”
“You exploring in there?” Tak pushed up his cap to watch the smoke curl back through the girders. “How come you don’t have the rest of the nest? I didn’t think scorpions ever traveled alone.”
“I come,” Kid shrugged. “I go. I take them on runs. Where you going?”
“I’m on a mission of mercy for your girlfriend.”
“Lanya?”
“I volunteered to help her with her dress for your party.”
Kid tried to hold back his laughter. It burst his lips’ seal and lights shot either in his eyes or in the windows of the warehouse across from them.
“What’s so funny?”
“She’s got you turned into a seamstress?”
“She does not. Come on and I’ll show you something interesting.”
They walked the littered streets.
“You’re going to come to the party, aren’t you?”