"You can't blame me. Drugs, they like a tornado or some shit. Can't be mad at them neither. They just do what they do." It sounded like every bit of bullshit to him. Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he dropped the wadded napkin into his half-eaten piece of peach cobbler and pushed away from the table. He left a five-dollar tip on the ten-dollar tab and didn't know why. He left the building unsettled, something nagged at him. Some detail he'd missed.
The last thing he saw was an empty forty bottle coming toward his head.
How did one refer to the recently dead? They were still alive, still real in the memory of those who knew them in the present. But they were still gone. Past tense. Alive in name only. Baylon had been without power or control for so long he wasn't about to go back to either state without a fight.
"What brings you to the front lines?" Baylon asked Dred.
"Just checking on things." Dred's voice a conveyer belt of shifting accents. A hint of Jamaican patois in one breath, formal English in another, and relaxed hood-cent in the last. Shifting with his identity of the moment.
"Surprised."
"By what?"
"That you still remembered the ones you came up with," Baylon said sardonically.
"I remember." Dred let the slight pass. He'd allowed Baylon the one as long as he didn't cross the line.
"Those you hurt."
"You hurt, nigga?" Dred desired to control everyone and everything around him by the tools at his disposaclass="underline" fear, threat, intimidation, violence, and death. Remorseless eyes marred his prettyboy looks.
"Look at me. I gave everything to you."
"Listen to you. You sound like my bitch."
"You right. Shit." Baylon hated this. What he wanted to do was break out a sawed-off. But he couldn't raise a weapon to the man. It was as if, despite all Dred had done, Baylon was still bound to him. To the end.
"Guess you had to get that out your system."
"Something like that."
"Now can I get to the business I came to speak on?"
"What's that?"
"Them Julios." Every Mexican was "Julio" to Dred.
"What you need?"
"We need to end this once and for all. You need to put the word out that you want a parlay."
"If we fly the truce flag, you can't do anything. So how's that gonna help."
" We ain't flying the truce flag. You are. They probably still think you speak for me. That's they fault. Call for it at the site of the new Camlann."
Not that Baylon had much of a name to trade on, but he hated that Dred could so casually play it for nothing. Not too long ago, Baylon stood tall. His word was bond. Now he'd been drained of most of his life. By Dred. "That how you going to do them?"
"I'm in a loose-end-tying mood. It's time to tighten up the ranks. I still got to rock the cradle on my latest crew."
The storm, relatively calm now, would soon pick up in intensity. Tristan carefully followed the road along its snaking path. The rain beat a harsh rhythm upon the roof of the car as it snailed its way down the long, winding road. Like cotton tufts churning in oil, the clouds choked the indigoblanket sky, plunging the night into deeper shadow, a foreboding whisper in their overhead passing. Large, looming trees lined each side of the dismal, dark road like protective guards. Tristan wiped away the angry tears that pooled in her eyes, checking herself in the rearview mirror. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of tears. The windshield wiper danced madly as she continued to fight them back. The rain fell unceasingly in annoying splatters. The low moan of the wind left her undaunted. Headlights sliced through the thin drizzle of rain as the car headed up the forgotten, dimly lit access road. Plenty of sound filled the silence. Birdsong. Gravel spit up by tires. Crickets in dusk light. The gurgle of torrents of water. No words needed to be said, even as the car slowed to a halt in front of a locked fence. A narrow footpath, full of thorny branches, circled him, leading to a denser stretch of woods. Tristan shoved Mulysa in that direction. The constant rain splattered tree branches and leaves, slickening rocks as the pair nearly stumbled several times as they walked. Twigs snapped in their passing processional.
She kicked him in the back of the legs, forcing him to ground. If he tried to defend himself, it only brought on more punches. Her blood pumped with righteous fury. She hooked him in his head, groin, stomach, and throat. He curled into a ball, brain seized up. Mulysa's head fell forward, his chest tightened as if he had shards of glass in his lungs.
"Are you afraid to die?" Tristan asked.
"Yeah. I guess. We all are," Mulysa said like a general tired of war.
"That don't sound like the Mulysa I knew. The Mulysa I knew didn't let anyone's needs come before his own. Didn't back down from anyone. Didn't care whose territory he ran in. He wasn't afraid of anything.
"I'm afraid to meet God." The words came softly, without irritation or bravado. More resigned than anything else. "For Him to tell me that I wasted my life down here. That I pissed over all the opportunities He gave me."
She put a dirty look on him. Meek like a tree trunk, he disgusted her. He was too easy to insult. This wasn't the Mulysa she wanted. This animal was already broken and beaten down. This one sounded too much like the little girl trapped in her that she never gave voice to. The one who was also afraid, not of His judgment, because she was ready for that. She could carry that. No, she feared "… that He loves you anyway."
"Love. I don't even know what that means anymore."
She understood the resignation and the black hole from which he operated… but he was still a dog that needed to be put down. Tristan reached over his shoulder and stabbed him in the chest. He bolted, running on pain and adrenaline, already dead. It hurt to breath. He tripped, his head bouncing off a stone, leaving his ears ringing and his world blurred. Tristan landed on him and stabbed until he quit defending himself.
Classes in school would always have a timeout whenever a student entered holding a note. Prez's heart skipped a beat. If the student knew him, they'd try to catch his eye and give him a nod, but most times the kind of students trusted to run the administrative errands of the principal's office weren't the kind who ran in the same circles as Prez. In the usual routine, the teacher took the note then read it silently. Like they were on some reality show, all of the students studied each other for any tell as they waited to see who had been voted off the island, whose journey would end here. The teacher then called out a name and the student perked up with a "who me?"/"what did I do?" look of complete innocence. Too many times, Prez's name was called. All eyes turned to him, accompanied by a few stifled snickers and some exhales of relief that their name wasn't called. He'd march to the front of the class — under the weight of the glaring eyes — to receive the note like a communion wafer and then pass into the hallway.
His mind turned over the devious things he did, which ones might rise to the level of being called to the office. A dead man walking the green mile to his execution, the journey and the wait did their psychological jobs. He reflected on the cost of his antics. He pondered the various crossroads moments of his life and the decisions he'd made. He'd wonder "what if?"
Prez hated being called down to the principal's office. There was a bench right outside of her door where those awaiting her judgment waited. Not only could she watch each delicious squirm — and she'd let you wait there, stewing in your anxiety, dread, and guilt until you were fit to burst before she called you in — but her office was the first along the corridor. That meant that students and teachers had to pass in order to get to the other offices — the nurse's station, the guidance counselor, and so on — becoming tacit players in the shaming game.