“I knew about Eagle’s pistol,” Sovereign said.
“So did I,” Eddie replied. “So did Zenith. All the kids knew, man. And me an’ Pops fought because I’ve always been what I am. You know I was born to live my life, brother. Born to it.”
“But you were just a kid.”
“Not really, Sovy, not really at all. By the time I was thirteen I’d had sex with half a dozen girls. At fifteen I’d already stole a car with Porky Kidd. We sold it to a chop shop that Porky’s brother knew about in L.A. and took the bus home.
“No, Sovy. I wasn’t a kid long enough to talk about, and I’m grateful for the life I got.”
“So if that’s true,” Sovereign James said to his long-lost and now found brother, “it means that I was born to my life and I should be grateful for what I got.”
Eddie smiled and held up his hands.
“That’s your problem right there, JJ,” he said. “You think that life is an argument. There you are, thinkin’ that if you could just say the right words then you could make everything make sense. But you know that ain’t so, brother. It’s not some game you playin’ that you just count up the points at the end of the night and go to bed havin’ played your best. People wanna bring you down, Jimmy J. And even if you got the high score at the end, they’ll just say you cheated and throw you in jail anyways.”
Sovereign understood the wisdom of his brother’s words. He appreciated the fact the Drum-Eddie had risked his own liberty to give that speech eye-to-eye.
“You’re right, Eddie,” Sovereign said. “I know you are. I knew before you got here, but hearing it makes me know even better. You got to understand, man; you got to understand that I’m not like you are. I don’t know how to pick up and run. I’m like a tree, rooted in the ground. For me there’s only here where I am and that’s it. There’s no there. There’s no elsewhere. There’s only right here where I am.”
“So you not comin’ down to Brazil?”
“I can’t.”
“What if you went to sleep tonight and then when you woke up you found yourself in a cottage on the shores of Bahia? What if you didn’t have to move but somebody dug up your roots and replanted you on a beach somewhere?”
“You could do that?”
“Man, the government and the television got people thinkin’ that they ain’t free, not really. They make you believe that the only way to get to the end of the road is to follow the street. But the street is a lie, man. The street is a lie. You got alleys and buildings and shortcuts. You got the long way ’round and you don’t even have to go where they say you wanna go. They don’t own you. They don’t own the street. They don’t own a mothahfuckin’ thing. All they got is you agreein’ that they know and they own and they control. But all you got to do is say no and that’s all she wrote for them.”
Sovereign realized that his uneducated brother had encapsulated his entire graduate career in those few words.
“I want to wake up in my own bed, Eddie. I know I’m small-minded and a slave to the system of my mind. I know too that the thoughts in my head don’t belong to me, that what I see isn’t necessarily what’s there. I live a life informed by corporations, ancient religious belief systems, and governments that care more for their own maintenance than the people who comprise them. I used to think that it was racism that blinded us, but now I know that all of us, except for the special few like you, are tied by our necks to an unstable anchor — that that weight can pull any or all of us down at any time.
“It’s like living at the base of an active volcano or volunteering for the army while there’s a war raging. There’s nothing wrong with giving up, brother, not while there’s people like you out there keeping the truth alive and refusing to accept the lies.”
“You talk pretty, Sovereign. They teach you that in school?”
“What else do you want, Eddie?”
“Let’s go to the airport in Hartford.”
“Why?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I thought I just told you that I don’t like surprises.”
“Trust me, JJ.”
In the private wing of the small public airport, Eddie and Sovereign were led to a largish hangar where a midsize private jet was housed. The pilot wore reflective sunglasses and had a walnut mustache that was shot through with gray.
“Mr. Jinx,” the pilot said.
“You ready, Fydor?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got clearance. You and your guest can board anytime.”
The pilot climbed in and Drum-Eddie put a foot on the first step. His brother held back.
“I told you that I’m not going to Brazil, Eddie.”
“I hope you don’t think this little plane can go that far,” the bank robber said. “We just takin’ a day trip, JJ. You will be back in time for your next court date.”
The copilot was a broad-faced, middle-aged white woman who was already seated in the cockpit.
The body of the jet had twelve seats, six on each side. The first two rows faced each other. Eddie sat with his back to the cockpit and Sovereign opposite him.
“Is this your plane, Drum?”
“No. A guy named Ryan Herkle owns it.”
“And how did you get him to let you use it?”
“Ryan has a son named Lloyd. Lloyd killed a guy in a fight on a yacht off of the Florida Keys. When the boy was out on a million dollars’ bail I was engaged to smuggle him down to a little Chilean village. Ryan gives the town one hundred thousand dollars a year and they look after the kid. Because I’m the go-between he does me favors when he can. I make sure never to lean on him too hard.”
“Where we going?”
“An airstrip outside of Riletteville.”
“South Carolina?”
“Mama wants to see you, JJ. If I can’t save you at least I can give her something.”
The flight was smooth and exceptionally silent. Sovereign decided that the inside of the plane must have had extra soundproofing so that the usual roar of flight was reduced to a mild hum.
Eddie spent his time reading documents on an electronic tablet, while Sovereign found a book in the netting behind one of the chairs — a very old paperback entitled Hothouse by Brian Aldiss.
It was a slender text about a far-flung future where mammals, reptiles, insects, and fish had been mostly supplanted by aggressive, all-encompassing plant life. One of the few nonplant forms of life that had survived were minuscule green humans who had barely held on in the billion years of plant evolution. These beings were tiny and primitive, matriarchal in their social structure, and existential inasmuch as their lives were immediate and their sense of a future nonexistent.
“Good book?” Eddie asked as the plane began its descent.
“Yeah. Yeah. It makes you think that maybe life has a sense to it even if you can’t see it when you’re living it.”
“Philosophy?”
“Science fiction.”
“Pretty much the same thing, wouldn’t you say?”
“Have you gone to college, Eddie?”
“I once helped a guy move a nuclear bomb out of the Balkans and return it to some dudes in uniform in Moscow,” he said. “Yeah, man. I been to school.”
Not long after Eddie made that admission, the wheels touched down and they disembarked from the plane.
“We got a call while in flight, Mr. Jinx,” Fydor the pilot said to Sovereign’s brother. “We can’t wait for you. But Mr. Herkle has made reservations for you on the flight back to New York day after tomorrow. You have to pay for them but your seats will be held.”
A driver picked the brothers up at the dark airstrip and drove them, in a teal Cadillac, to a motel on a highway that had no other buildings in sight.