Michael Wilson cursed. He popped East free, right into Ty and the cold black barrel.
A big truck with a cartoon milkman on its side flew by.
“So, you got a gun,” Michael Wilson said.
Ty didn’t answer. East tried to clear his eyes, get his voice back. He’d bitten himself inside his mouth. But now was his best chance.
“Give Ty the money,” he slurred, his mouth swelling around his teeth.
Ty kept the gun on him, though.
“Fuck no,” Michael Wilson said. He caressed one fist with the other. “Your boy gonna shoot? Don’t look like he’s decided who. So what you gonna do? Put me out?”
“Yes,” said East. He’d thought it before. But now that Michael had said it, it was the only way.
Michael Wilson surged from his toes and hooked East once more, side of the gut. Sucker punch. It crumpled East, and he heaved with the pain. “See?” Michael Wilson smirked. “You ain’t shit.” He stepped and loaded up for another, when a hard crack like thunder hit them all, and East was untouched, backpedaling in the light.
Ty held the gun in the sky. Its hard gray pop echoed back from nothing.
Michael Wilson spat. “Oh, nigger, please.”
Ty aimed the gun at Michael for the first time.
“I’ll take that money now,” he said.
Michael Wilson scowled a terrible scowl at Ty. From his hip pocket he threw a curve of twenties to the ground. They fluttered, and Ty put a foot on them.
“There you go.”
Walter spoke up. “That ain’t all the money.”
Michael Wilson glanced across, measured the overpass to the station.
“Give up the rest of the money, Mike,” said Walter.
“Let him keep the rest. He’ll need it,” East said. “Now you go.”
Michael Wilson chuckled. “Just right out here on the farm?”
“That’s right,” East said. He grabbed the white mesh shirt off the mirror and tossed it at Michael Wilson. Michael shook it out and put it on. “Let me get my bag, then,” he said. East nodded, and Michael fetched it out of the back.
“Pretty bag,” East couldn’t resist remarking.
“Let me tell you something,” Michael Wilson announced. “I ain’t sorry to leave you. I’m glad. I get home with one phone call. And you are lost. You can’t get guns without me. You can’t find the man without me. Don’t none of you even look old enough to drive a car.”
“We don’t need you,” East said.
“Ain’t talking to you,” Michael Wilson said. “I’m only talking to the youngster with the gun.” He turned his back on East. “You a neighborhood boy. You ain’t in no neighborhood now. There is plenty you don’t know, gangster. You don’t know you can’t go back, because when you fail, there’s no place for you. Johnny and Sidney will kill you just for knowing what you know. Or somebody will — it don’t matter.”
“Say what you got to say,” said Ty.
“Just understand the picture.” Michael Wilson chewed off the words. “You ain’t even grown.”
“I hear you,” said Ty. “Good-bye.”
With his immaculate sneakers, Michael Wilson tested the ground. Here, after the fight, in the middle of a cornfield, he looked as polished and bright as he always had: black track suit pants, glossy gym bag, white nylon shirt with his skin dark in the mesh. Stray raindrops blew at him and disappeared.
“Just remember,” he said. “You will die. And fuck you.”
Michael Wilson nodded — at the gun, not at East — and turned and took the first step away. Then he jogged. He ran, and Ty pocketed the gun. For a moment East couldn’t believe it, that Ty had jumped in like that, and then he was letting Michael Wilson go. The Ty he’d expected, the Ty he wanted in the red, bruised part of his brain, would shoot Michael Wilson and leave him off the road for the birds. Not this. Not Michael Wilson on the country road, white shirt billowing under the roiling clouds, his necklace glinting. In a minute he had crossed the bridge and was descending. He did not look back.
8
East’s fingers knew more than the mirror did. His eye looked all right but felt fat and hot, liquid beneath. The napkin full of ice from Walter’s drink just made him wet.
“How bad he get you?” Walter asked again. Checking the mirrors every second. As if Michael Wilson could some way be gaining on them.
Ty sat dully in the backseat, staring out.
East remembered the last time he’d been beaten up. He was eight or nine. Yes, nine — it was in third grade, a week before summer. Third graders were going up to the next school. But four who were being held back would catch a boy each day and whup him, just to say good-bye. The principal wouldn’t suspend them — to be suspended was what they wanted. One of them was being held back for the third time. He was eleven already.
They’d bruised East’s face and shoulders, blacked his eyes, loosened a tooth. His mother screamed how she’d go to the school and there’d be hell. But she’d never gone. That was worse. But this hurt more.
That was the year Fin started taking East under his wing. Started showing an interest, making sure East had what he needed. Ty, he didn’t take much notice of. Ty was not his blood.
—
When East took the napkin off his eye, something was coming out of his skin. Walter took a look and bugged out.
“Telling you, man. Let’s get to a pharmacy. Get you some ointment. You need medicine on that. And bandages.”
East’s voice came small and faraway. “How does it look?”
Walter stifled a giggle. “Like you got your ass kicked.”
East put the napkin back.
“You all right?”
East nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it.
The high battling wall of cloud cut off the sun. Cars switched on headlights along the road. With stiff, trembling fingers, East opened his wallet and counted, one-eyed. He had two-sixty. He checked it again.
“How much money you got?” he asked Walter with his little hollow voice.
“Three hundred twenty-two dollars,” Walter replied without looking.
“How you get three-twenty-two if we started with three hundred?”
“Man, I had money. What, you don’t carry any?”
“They said no wallet,” East said. “What’s two sixty and three-twenty?”
“Five-eighty. And whatever Ty has.”
“Ty. How much money you got?”
They waited, Ty looking mutely out the window.
“Ty,” East said again. “We trying to find out what we got.”
Nothing.
“Here’s a town,” Walter announced. “Let’s get off. I’ll find you a store.”
East surrendered. “All right. How’s this gonna work, five hundred eighty dollars?”
“Minus gas,” said Walter.
“Minus guns,” said East.
Ty coughed. “They said you ain’t have to pay for guns.”
East said, “Oh? Did I hear a noise?”
“You heard me,” said his brother.
Now East turned, showing his brother his swollen eye. It hurt, hot, like a wound that’s poisoned, like a snakebite. “You want to tell me more?”
Ty stared mutely at the sunken median running by.
“You two, man.” Walter shook his head. “I need to be getting combat pay.”
—
East stayed in the van outside the drugstore. Ty didn’t budge. They watched the doorway glowing blue and white, a plastic city. White people teemed in and out, carrying chips bags, cases of drinks. Everyone seemed to know each other, talking or at least waving.
“Ty,” East called back. Here goes nothing. “What do you know about the guns?”