The sun is full up now, not that we can see it. The gray just got lighter is all. “Lord,” DC says, “I’m tired. I’m past tired. Exhausted.”
I, too, feel like sleeping. Just too cold and hungry and in pain.
Ray is coughing more, seems to be comin’ down with a bad cough.
The air feels warmer now, but the wind when it kicks up cuts like a knife. My belly growls loud as a man talking, and I could use something to drink. DC looks sleepy. A squirrel rustles the dry grass and leaves, and Ray jerks, like he’s scared by the racket. He smiles a mean rusty saw-blade smile.
“I’m hungry,” DC whines too loud.
Ray’s face is dark.
“How you sure somebody gonna come?” DC asks.
Ray looks like he wants to waste DC now.
Finally DC says he’s cold and hungry and can’t sit out under no bush with stickers on it no more.
“What we need,” Ray whispers, “is somethin’ to eat and drink, somethin’ to warm us up.” Only his mouth is smiling. Eyes not smiling. Then he says to me, “Get down to the creek and follow it back to Yolanda. Can’t use no path. And don’t let nobody see you. Bring back some good stuff.”
“What if somebody comes while I’m gone?”
“Me and DC handle it.” Still, just his mouth smiling.
So I pick my way down the hill, almost falling it’s so steep, and walk alongside the creek, under the bridge, back up to where I know good the way up the hill to find Yo’s place. I knock and knock before she comes to the door. She’s sleepy-eyed in a big soft pink thing wrapped around her, nothing under that, far as I can tell. Just the pink thing wrapped around Yo’s smooth skin. She’s sweet like a sleeping baby, her voice tiny.
“Where’s Ray?” she asks.
I come in and tell her no more than she makes me tell. She’s been with Ray long enough to know better than to ask too much. I go in Yo’s kitchen and start looking in the fridge and in the cabinets. “Ray needs this,” I say, grabbing a plastic bag and throwing shit in it like crackers, cheese, meat.
She sits down in a raggedy-ass chair and puts her head in her hands. When she looks up at me, one big tear rolls down her cheek.
“He’s in trouble?” she asks in that tiny voice.
“Naw,” I say, “we just hungry.”
“So why did he not come himself?”
“He’s busy. Comin’ by later. Just to see you.” And no sooner I say it I know it’s a lie. Soon as that money is Ray’s and he thinks nobody can trace him, he leaves town and never sees Yo again. Truth is, Ray’s not taking me or DC to LA either. Then who is left around for the money-man to whack? Everbody — Yo, police, everbody — will think me and DC are responsible for whatever’s stole, whoever’s dead. And we’ll be too dead to stand up for ourself.
I grab the cognac off the table, pull out the cork, and take a big two-gulp swallow that burns like fire. Yo is still sitting at the table when I go into the bathroom and sit the cognac on the sink and close the door and put up the seat to be nice-like. I’m feeling gray and dirty, and I smell my own self. I’m not looking in the mirror because there’s nothing there I want to see. That ol’ cognac bottle sits on the sink, right below the medicine shelf, so when I zip up, I open up that mirror door and look inside. Cough stuff, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, a bottle of stuff YoGirl takes off her fake nails with, deodorant. Usual stuff. I’m just standing there with both hands on the sink, leaning and thinking, when it comes to me. I take the cork out the cognac, drink down a whole bunch more, and then I take the top off the rubbing alcohol and pour some in that cognac bottle. Then I take the cough stuff bottle, open it up, pour some of it down the sink to make room, and then pour some of that nasty-smelling nail-remover shit in there with the cough stuff.
I shake it all up real good.
When I come back out, I can see more of Yo’s tears streaking down her face. I hold up the bottle of cough stuff. “I’m takin’ this to Ray,” I say.
“He sick?” she asks in that sweet little voice.
“Naw. Just coughing a little,” I say. Then I find in the fridge a blue Pepsi can for DC. Me and DC go way back to when we played Little League down at McFarland Bottoms, then middle school, then high school. Him pitcher, me catcher, but we could only do that when the rich coach’s own son got too tired to pitch. When I get back to that pine tree and hand DC that blue Pepsi can and look him in the eye a certain way, I tell you this much: he’ll know just what I mean. If DC don’t see me drink no cognac, he won’t be drinking no cognac neither. We read each other minds, me and DC. That’s my plan. First get Ray to drink a bunch of that cough stuff that probably tastes like poison anyway. When he says it tastes bad, I’ll tell him he must be coming down with a cold, and that’s when I hand him the bottle and tell him the best thing to do for a cold is to drink a big swig of cognac. Soon after that, he’ll be so sick we’ll have to take him to the hospital. He’ll be safe there. And me and DC can figure out what to do.
I didn’t even know I’d warmed up at YoGirl’s till I hit the outside again and the cold air slaps my face still too numb from cognac to hurt too bad. Air racing around with what my grandma call hominy snow in it, like little-bitty sleet but not enough to stick or pile up white on the ground. Bits of hominy snow caught in the dead leaves my boots push around trying not to fall down in the creek on the way back. Dead leaves covering the rocks make me stumble once and make a big racket, but I slow down and wait and listen. Sky still gray and the wind slows down. Creek runs slow, just a tinkle. Everything nice and quiet. I pick my way soft-like back to DC and Ray. Maybe the man has done come back for his prep-ass pack and is lying there dead, Ray and DC gone already. God knows what I’ll be walking up on, so I think I’d best be easing up that hill, one step, another step. I take so long and am so careful the wind starts back up, rattling all the dead leaves again, so I get off the trail and walk below the big rock DC pissed off of before. Then I start crawling up the side the hill, hanging that plastic bag on one wrist. When I get near the top, I look up and it is still there, that black backpack up in the tree, so I ease on up, thinking Ray and DC are still squatted back behind that prickly bush.
But what I see: DC lying there in a lump behind the prickly bush, not looking like he’s asleep but something worse, one leg twisted up under him. A cold clear feeling runs through me like I’m in a bad dream and I’m just now waking up to something worse. The backpack man has done sneaked up, I’m thinking. The backpack man might be two men. Somebody sure laid DC out like this.
I throw down the plastic bag and head to DC as quick as I can. I need to straighten him out, see if he’s still breathing, thinking I myself might be jumped any second, when Ray scares the shit out me, runs up from where the trail starts.
“What happened?” I ask.
“DC fell. Hit his head. I went lookin’ for you.”
About this time I see a big rock in Ray’s hand. I look down and feel the lump on the side of DC’s head and too much blood. When I start to move DC, blood is all under him. Then Ray comes at me. My head goes boom and my neck cracks, and I fall down hard over DC.
I try to get up and my head gets whacked again. I try to get up but my arms and legs are not doing what I say. My head hurts hot like part of it’s gone. I’m trying to tell my hand to feel my head but mostly my arm goes limp. I pass out and then a loud noise wakes me up and I know again that I’m lying on DC, which don’t seem right. Something tells me DC is dead and then me too if I can’t drag my ass up from here. But I can’t even pick my head up. My one eye is open, though. My one eye is seeing it all.