That fantasy faded when Martin pulled this stunt and disappeared into the woods. This trip could have been their chance to really connect, to talk it out, to mend. Instead, she was crawling around on all fours, sorry she ever met the guy.
Scratch that. She could never think that way about Martin. They might not be able to live together any more, but the love was still there. Sara knew the love would always be there.
But right now, she wanted to stab the bastard in the eye. Figuratively, of course.
“Sara? Where you at?”
“I’m here.”
“You sound far.”
“I’m only a few yards away, Laneesha. The flashlight has to be close. Shit!”
“What? Sara, you okay? Sara!”
“I caught a nail on something. Damn, I think I broke it off.”
Sara parted her lips reflexively, ready to suck her injury. She stopped before her hand reached her mouth, a horrible stench wafting up from the ground. It blanketed her tongue and invaded her nostrils, rank and vile and forcing her to gag.
The unmistakable smell of rot.
“Sara? You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sara coughed, spat. The odor brought back memories of her college years, coming back to her dorm after Christmas break to find her goldfish belly-up in the aquarium. When she lifted up the tank cover, the smell of decay was so bad she gagged and spit up.
That was just from a tiny little fish. This stench was coming from something much bigger.
Sara backed away, and her other hand locked onto a large branch. She gripped it, instinct telling her a weapon would be good, and yanked.
The smell got worse, so bad it was like being immersed in spoiled milk. She could feel it in her eyes, her hair, all over her skin and on her clothes.
The branch broke free from the ground, her fingers clenching it tight.
And then the same instinct that made her grab it told her to throw it away, but she was too frightened to open her hand.
The smell was coming from the branch. Because it wasn’t a branch at all.
It was a bone.
When Tyrone was a little boy, he wanted to be a cop. But not a cop like the cops in his neighborhood. Everyone hated those cops. They hassled kids, and never came quick enough when they were needed, and everyone called them pigs and 5-0 and they got no respect at all.
Tyrone wanted to be a cop like the cops on TV. He watched a lot of TV. The neighborhood where he grew up had a bad element, his moms always said.
“Being poor don’t make people bad,” she would tell him. “But it makes some people desperate.”
He didn’t get to play outside very much, because desperate people might try to hurt him, so he watched TV all the time. His favorites were the cop shows. The cops on those shows, they got respect. They actually helped people, and people liked them, and no one on TV had to live in a house with bars on the windows like Tyrone did so the bad element couldn’t steal his stuff.
When he told his moms he wanted to be a cop, she patted him on the head and gave him a big kiss and said he could be whatever he wanted to be when he grew up, as long as he got out of the neighborhood. And Tyrone promised her he would, and every night, when he said his prayers, he asked God to make him big and strong so he could someday become a cop and take Moms and Grams out of the neighborhood and to someplace really nice, where he got respect, and no one had bars on the windows.
Tyrone frowned as he lost another marshmallow to the fire. It plopped onto a burning log and melted down the side, solidifying in the heat. He watched as it went from bubbling white, to brown, to black ash.
“This sucks.”
Tom was pacing again, but he paused long enough to ask, “The woods? Or the Center closing?”
“The woods.” Tyrone smacked at a mosquito on his arm. “The Center. Shit, both. Don’t wanna spend the rest of my sentence in no detention center. An’ I don’t wanna spend the night on no freaky ass island. I’m street, not woods. Holla back.”
Meadow tapped his fist. “Hells yeah.”
Tom laughed, but it sounded clipped and forced. “So you guys are scared?”
Tyrone felt the challenge and narrowed his eyes. “Ain’t scared of nothin’. You sayin’ I am?”
Tom squatted next to Tyrone. He picked a pine cone up from the ground and chucked it into the fire. “You don’t have to sell me. I know you’re all bad ass. But when you saw that guy get shot when you were eight, did you look into his eyes when he died?”
What was it with white people? Tyrone thought. Why do they feel the need to talk about stuff like that?
He shrugged. “Naw, man. My moms hustled me inside soon as the shots were fired.”
Tom stared at Tyrone. He had a pretty intense gaze.
“I was holding Gram’s hand when she died, looking her right in the eyes. I know this sounds shitty, but we weren’t really close. I mean, she was my Grandma. She was always there, for my whole life, giving me money and shit for holidays, babysitting me when I was a kid, going to church with us every Sunday.”
Tom seemed to be waiting for a response, so Tyrone said, “Me ‘n my gramma are tight. She’s a good lady.”
“So was mine. But we weren’t tight. When she got sick and moved into our house, my parents made me sit with her. I didn’t want to. She smelled, you know? Had diapers on and shit. Plus she was on so many drugs she didn’t know where she was most of the frickin’ time. Or who I was. Or what was going on. But right there, at the very end, she could recognize me. She knew who I was. And she said something.”
Tom looked around for another pine cone. Instead he found a small rock and tossed that into the flames.
“What did yo gramma say?” Tyrone asked.
Tom’s face pinched. “She said, ‘There’s nothing, Tommy. Nothing.’ Then, when she was still staring at me, her eyes went blank. I mean, they were still open, still looked exactly the same. But blank. Like something was missing. Like she wasn’t a person anymore.”
Tyrone stared at Tom. The skinny kid got busted for jackin’ a car and joy riding. No damn purpose to it. Wasn’t to sell it, or strip it for the parts. Just for shits and grins. Tyrone thought it was a real stupid-ass crime. But maybe it made sense. When people were scared on the inside, sometimes they did things to show they weren’t scared.
“My moms, and my grams, they say your soul leaves your body.”
Tom shook his head. “Naw. There was nothing spiritual at all. One minute she was a person, the next she was just, I dunno, meat. There wasn’t any soul.”
Tyrone didn’t like that explanation. He remembered having to say his prayers every night before bed. Soul to keep, and all that. If men didn’t have souls, what was the point?
“You can’t see a soul, dog.”
“It was scary, Tyrone. Like a light turning off. And her saying there’s nothing. I mean, she went to church every week, never missed it once, and she was about a hundred years old. I thought there was supposed to be a bright light, and clouds, and an angel choir. That’s how it is supposed to be, right?”
“Maybe there were,” Tyrone said.
“So why’d she frickin’ say that?”
“Tom, you said she was on drugs, acting funny. Maybe she saw all the lights ‘n clouds n’ shit, but her words were all messed up. You don’ know for sure.”
Meadow guffawed. “Man, this conversation is wack.”
Tyrone stared at Meadow. “Don’t you believe in God?”
“If there’s a God, what he ever done for me? Grew up poor, my moms spendin’ the welfare on drugs. I joined a gang just to keep my belly full. God? Bullshit.”