But something told Bill Gibson to stay put and stay out of sight. There was a current in the air. He smelled the ocean, but the sounds of waves slapping the shore in the distance escaped him. He crossed his arms and ran his fingers from elbows to palms. His skin tickled and tingled and he tried in vain to hide the sound of his own breathing.
“ I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we should stay out of sight till the last minute,” Gibson said.
“ Gotcha. Good thinking,” Oxlade said. For a second Gibson wondered why he’d say something like that. Then it hit him. Oxlade thought they were going to mug the person out there and Gibson was surprised to find that it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The folks in this town had been looking down on him long enough. It was time for him to get a little of his own back.
Still there was something in the air.
“ Hey, Billy Boy,” Oxlade whispered, “you getting any off that Lucy down to the bowling alley?”
“ Maybe,” Gibson whispered back, puffing up.
“ Me, too,” Oxlade said. All of a sudden Bill Gibson wasn’t so sure he liked Seymour Oxlade.
“ I didn’t know that,” Gibson said.
“ She tells me everything, and I mean everything,” Oxlade winked and Gibson didn’t think he’d be seeing Lucy or Oxlade anymore.
“ He’s moving.” Gibson turned away from the smirking Oxlade to the figure down the block.
“ Aw, come on, let’s go.”
“ No, there’s two of us,” Gibson said. If Oxlade wouldn’t have told him about Lucy, he would have called it quits and gone home. But not now. If Seymour wanted to back out, well who was the chicken then.
“ How we gonna do it?” Oxlade asked, his superior attitude gone now.
“ Let’s wait and see who it is, then we’ll know how to play it.”
The figure came closer. It was an old woman, nothing more. He had been hiding for nothing. He started to get up, but a wave of nausea gripped him and a blast of ice cold something ran from his buttocks along his spine and gripped him at the back of the neck. And the old woman got closer.
“ I don’t know about this,” Oxlade said, and Big Bill Gibson could tell that Oxlade felt it, too. But he wasn’t going to back down. He needed to put the man in his place. To show him who was a coward and who wasn’t.
“ It’ll be easy. It’s just an old woman,” Gibson said. Maybe she was his salvation. Maybe she was carrying cash. All he had to do was jump up when she passed by, push her over and grab her bag. He could be down the road in a flash, leaving her face to face with Oxlade. He’d love to see the expression on their faces as they faced each other. Would he hit her to keep from telling or would he turn and run, too. Either way he didn’t care.
She stopped in front of the place where Arty had crawled into and stared at those bushes like she knew someone had gone in there. Gibson felt cool, salty sweat run into his eyes. He tried to brush it out with the back of his palms, but he only drove the stinging sweat in deeper.
“ How we gonna do it?” Oxlade asked again and Gibson turned to look at him. His fists were clenched. He was flexing his muscles. The man was pumped. Maybe he’d misjudged him.
“ We grab the purse and run,” Gibson said, abandoning his idea of taking off and leaving Oxlade behind to take the rap.
“ What if she sees us?” Oxlade said.
“ It’s dark. She’s old. I don’t think it’s a problem,” he whispered. Why was she staring at those bushes? Why wouldn’t she come closer? He wanted to get it over with.
“ I think we should waste her,” Oxlade said and Bill Gibson felt like he’d been hit on the side of the head. He’d never done anything like this before. He could see grabbing an old lady’s purse and making a run for it. Chances are they’d get away with it. Hell, with all the crime these days, the police wouldn’t want to be bothered. But murder-he hadn’t even thought about hitting her. Just grab and run.
“ You gotta be crazy.”
“ Who’s chicken now, Billy Boy?”
“ What are you talking about?” It was like Oxlade had been reading his mind.
“ I know what you was thinking. He don’t wanna do it no more. He’s yellow. I’ll show him. I know you, Billy Boy. I know you worry about folks thinking you’re yellow.”
“ How could you?” But he knew as soon as the words left his mouth. Lucy, his one true love.
“ That’s right, Billy Boy,” Oxlade said, reading his mind again. “You talk too much and she tells me everything. I know every little thing there is to know about you. You think our meeting in that pissant little bar was an accident?”
“ Why?” he asked with his eyes on the old lady, still staring into the bushes.
“ You got something I want.”
“ What?” he asked looking as deep into Oxlade’s eyes as the night would allow. What could he possibly have? He was as poor as dog shit.
“ Your boy.”
“ Arty?”
“ I don’t want him for keeps. Just bring him over on Friday after school. You can have him back on Sunday morning. Plenty of time for him to do all his chores.”
“ Why would you want Arty?” he asked. Then he knew and he was repulsed. He might be a coward at heart, and he knew it. He might light into his wife and boy a little too often, but he wasn’t a fucking pervert. Arty might be a fat little hog, but he was his boy.
“ Little harmless fun. Who knows, the boy might even learn to like it.”
Bill Gibson stared at Oxlade. All his life he’d been a coward. And the hot, green jungle came screaming back. He was lying in the wet, being pelted by rain. “Cover me,” the sergeant had said, before he charged across the clearing to get the wounded man, but he froze, and the sergeant was cut down while he watched, kept quiet and didn’t give himself away. And nobody knew what a coward he was. Nobody except Lucy, because when he was with Lucy he drank too much and he talked too much.
But what Oxlade was asking was out of the question. Even if he told everyone down at the bar and the bowling alley and the whole damn town. He’d sooner live with that, then turn his boy over to a pervert. So he looked Oxlade square in the eye and did the only brave thing he’d ever done in his whole miserable life. He said, “No.”
“ What?”
“ No.”
And she started to come closer.
Oxlade turned away from him and said, “Okay, after we finish this we’ll see where we stand.”
Gibson wanted to get up and take off, but something held him in place. It was out of his control, he told himself. An insect landed on his hand and he brushed it away. He felt another on the back of his neck, weaving its way through raised neck hairs. He squashed it with his thumb. He had to piss so badly his thighs were quivering. Another insect landed on his neck, but he was too absorbed with the frail figure moving toward them to notice.
She moved slowly, without grace. A passerby or someone looking out of their front window would pass their eyes over this old black woman and not see her. She was remarkable only in the fact that she wasn’t remarkable. She was old and slow, that was all. Nothing to remember and nothing to be afraid of.
She stopped and raised her head slightly. She folded her hands, as if in prayer, and sniffed the night. She stared again at the space between the two houses.
Gibson wondered what she was doing, then she turned back toward them and he pulled back between the cars. He felt the new insect threading its way through the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt the sweat trickle under his arms. He felt the pain caused by a decaying tooth. His dirty skin itched. His bladder was about to burst. He wanted to jump up and run. He wanted it over and he wondered if Oxlade would go through with it and if she would scream.
But he knew Oxlade was going to do it. He wondered if he’d be quick. He forced himself to wait. Only a few more seconds, he told himself, then it would be over. Then he noticed that she didn’t have a purse. That meant Oxlade would have to go through her pockets. It would take longer.