“Sit down, ole man, and strap your ass in, ’cause we headed to the goddamn moon.”
The engine start with a chug, chug, chug and y’all is rollin’ out hard as that edge of the lake, where it look like black glass, is turnin’ all purple with the sky.
Y’all is flyin’, skippin’ over tiny little waves listenin’ to Mystikal tellin’ the world to get out his way. Salty mist hittin’ your eyes. Tastin’ the lake on your lips.
JoJo holds on tight.
Bronco finds himself standin’ right by Cash, lookin’ into the wind.
You see that old man’s smile match the thug’s.
70
“We need some weight,” Christian yelled to Teddy. “Teddy? You listenin’, man? I said, we got some weight?”
“You’re right, Malcolm. It’s all right. We get the weight. Sweet Jesus. We got that weight.”
Christian started laughing. “Stone-cold crazy. Stonecold. Malcolm. Yeah, boy.”
The speedboat cut hard and picked up speed. I felt the water beating hard on the hull and slapping us up and down with the chop. I kept my eyes closed, growing nauseous.
Christian kept rapping along with the radio station in his khakis and sandals. I peeked back at Teddy standing by his side. I looked over at Trey and the way his head bobbed, his body slapping down with the hull every few seconds.
I felt bile rise in my throat.
I got to my feet. Everything shaking. My balance teetering, head swimming in long Olympic strokes. I held on to the rail and, without any great stealth, made my way, trying to get the revolver Christian wore tucked in his belt.
I was within a few feet when he spiked the throttle and threw me onto my back with a thud. He laughed. Teddy peered down at me – but it wasn’t Teddy in his eyes – and he looked away. Dumb and mute.
Christian slowed the boat. A constant chugging from the motor.
He stood over me and kicked me hard in the head.
He kicked me again.
I curled into a ball and then rolled to my hands and knees.
I used the rail and got to my feet, puking all over my shirt.
Everything felt like it was spinning and turning.
“Teddy,” I said. “Come on, man. What happened? It’s still you. It’s still you.”
He slowly twisted his head from side to side. “No.”
“Come on, man.”
Christian leveled the gun at my head, the biggest wicked grin forming on his lips. Green eyes slanting. A pink, blue dawn sliding over the black water, framing his body.
He jumped and fell.
On the deck, Trey’s hands wrapped around Christian’s ankles. Blood poured from his mouth and he made a gurgling, croaking sound.
Christian fired off three rounds into Trey’s head, sending misting blood across the white fiberglass of the hull.
I leapt for him, grabbed his throat, and head-butted him. I plunged my thumbs into his voice box and he made a muted shriek as it cracked in my hands. The gun clattered to the ground.
Teddy never moved as Christian fell. I picked up the gun.
Without hesitation, I aimed it at Christian’s head and pulled the trigger.
Click.
I pulled it again.
Click.
I heard another click and turned.
Teddy was back. Or some part of him.
He had the hammer thumbed back on his. 357 Magnum. His eyes and face were dead. No light, no feeling. His black skin slick with sweat. He aimed the barrel toward me and said in his deep voice, “Sit your ass down till we find a good and dark place to kill you.”
71
Cash Hugs that coast of Pontchartrain, that mean ole humpbacked levee running for miles out on-shore. Look like the spiny back of a dragon blockin’ you from seein’ anything off the lake. The sky is so pink and gray. These big-ass long clouds that crack and stretch like broken slabs of concrete in the early day. The sun just a slice of orange over that long, green levee, colorin’ these old fishin’ shacks on tall crooked wooden legs that stretch out long and crippled. Some of them is just legs now, weather and time and shit bleachin’ all that wood away.
Cash slow his purple boat, his right hand on that wheel that look like a racecar. He open up his C-phone and start talkin’. He yellin’ into it, tellin’ them to “Work ’em. Work ’em.”
He flick it shut and turn to JoJo. “My boys seen ’em. They was right down by the causeway and must’ve got scared. They’s runnin’ ’em back toward us. Both my boats like two pit bulls.”
JoJo smiled. “Hot damn,” he said. But then he stopped smilin’ when Cash turn the boat toward the bridges headin’ out of the city. “They see Nick?”
Cash shook his head. “Just Teddy and some other brother.”
“That brother is Dio,” you say.
“What?” Cash says, wealth flashin’ in his mouth. He starts to laugh.
“Dio ain’t dead,” you say. “Some rich motherfuckers over in Metairie made him up. He ain’t neva real.”
“What you mean, not real?” Cash asks, lookin’ back. Real concerned now.
“I said that nigga weren’t eva real,” you say. “This boy Christian just actin’ thugged up. They weren’t his rhymes, man. He stole them off a dead man he knew in Angola and then made his own self disappear. They schemed all them lost records and shit.”
Cash shook his head. “That the boy on the boat?”
“Yeah.”
“He got to win the Academy Award,” he say. “I even heard folks out in Calliope say they his people.”
Bronco reach into a duffel bag and hands JoJo a long, black pistol.
“Teddy know about this?” Cash ask.
You say he did.
“Lord help ’em both,” Cash say. “You gonna kill ’em, old man?”
“I kill anyone gets in my way.”
“You with him, Tavarius?” Cash ask.
“All the way.”
“Y’all just thugs and don’t even know it.”
Cash lay down the throttle and that long green levee break behind you. Y’all runnin’ down a long old railroad bridge crossin’ the water.
“The Trestle,” JoJo says, to no one in particular.
Christian steered the boat while Teddy tied Trey’s body with thick white rope and wrapped the cord of a ship radio around his neck, letting the heavy transmitter fall to his chest. He duct-taped a big red fire extinguisher to his dead body and pulled the cover of a black pillowcase over his head.
“Goddamn, he wouldn’t quit lookin’ at me,” Teddy said. “You like that, Malcolm?” He started to laugh. “You like that?”
“Yeah, Teddy,” Christian said. “Good boy.”
I held my place on a backseat, rolling and rocking with the boat. My entire body smeared with my own blood and vomit. Dark maroon stains across my palms.
“Teddy, you remember that time you won the Atlanta game? You scooped up the ball and ran in for a touchdown. We went down to that bar in the Quarter and later on you danced on a table with that midget. You remember that? Man, we had a good time.”
I smiled up at him.
He tilted his head at me. His eyes narrowing. “You ain’t nothin’.”
“I’m your friend. It’s Nick.”
“Nick?”
He smiled for a moment, eyes softening.
His shape darkened as we headed for the long train bridge – Christian squeezing through the narrow opening – sewing our way under two more long bridges of the old highway and then the interstate twisting north. He smiled as the day softened all pink and gold all the way to the Gulf. Christian running us close to the shore and cursing God for only finding marsh.
We slowed to a chug as he looked for solid ground.
I held out my hand to Teddy.
The smile shut off.
“It’s all gone too far,” he said.
We were on the far edge of Orleans Parish, the edge of the Bayou Sauvage.
I could smell the foulness of the bayou rot as we moved away from the lake and deeper into the high grass. I’d hunted around here sometime back with JoJo, a place called Blind Lagoon.
I heard the scream of a nutria in the slate-gray-and-pink morning. The swamp rat’s bloated body swimming in the high grass, slabs of yellow and brown teeth like a prehistoric animal. Red eyes watching us in the fresh light.