"Where do I start?"
"Go back and clean up what you messed up." Pastor Winburn put a tentative hand on King's shoulder, not wanting to crowd him if he wasn't ready. But King neither flinched nor pulled away.
"You always have a lesson for me. Just like a father."
"King, I… I was never your father. Though I'd have been proud to call you my son."
"There's more to being a father than blood. How about you listen to someone else other than yourself."
Lott dribbled the basketball three times, took aim, bounced it three more times, held his pose for a moment, then released his shot. The ball arced through the net-less rim without sound. Putting on a limp pimp roll strut to chase down his own rebound, he pretended to evade a couple of defenders before laying back with a fade-away jumper. The game was easier this way.
The other day he was in a pickup game with folks he knew from around the way. And he was every bit as alone. No one on the court chatted with him. No girls flirted with him from the sidelines. No one met his eyes. No one passed him the ball. Getting a rebound resulted in elbows to his gut or face. Too aware of their scrutiny, their wariness, he retreated. He knew what to expect, but the pain of the reality was nearly too much. Maybe underneath it all he wasn't this awful person — the villain in everyone's story — maybe he was still the caring, loving little boy his grandmother tried to raise. But it seemed, he could sense it in his heart like stomachs turned in his presence. He just wanted to get away. To retreat.
Lott's disheveled hair needed tightening up, a week overdue. His large brown eyes checked for anyone who neared him. His tongue traced where his row of faux gold caps once grilled his teeth. A scraggly beard scrawled along his face in tufts like a child's cotton ball art project. Lott had lost his job at FedEx. It was the job Wayne had helped him get through Outreach Inc which took him out of the streets, and he'd been there for a couple years. He'd been doing well. They were even talking about promoting him again. Then the stuff with King and Lady G went down. He loved them both. He'd hurt them both. It was selfish of him to get with Lady G no matter the love he believed he had for her. She was King's girl. He was King's ace. And he betrayed them and it grieved him. He carried the weight of the pain he caused to work with him. The shame ground him down, affected his performance. His supervisor said he'd become bored and spiteful at work, not all the young man he thought he was giving a second chance to. And definitely not living up to the potential he thought he saw. Then that was that. Lott didn't disagree with his boss's assessment and would've fired him his own self. But the part that hurt was the fact that even during the firing, his boss had a sting of pain in his eyes, as if begging Lott to find the words to keep him from doing what he had to do. As if it hurt him to be adding to Lott's pain. Lott welcomed the firing. He welcomed the punishment. He knew he had to suffer for what he'd done and just wished everyone would stop giving a damn about him so he could throw his life away in peace.
"Why'd they have to do him like that? He was a good kid."
"He was into some dirt."
"No more than anyone else. And he was trying to put it behind him. Folks wouldn't let him."
So the whispers about him went. But he knew how they saw him. This unfeeling monster. Beyond tears. Beyond redemption. Sometimes a body had to move on, get away from a place. Run from the memories, history of hurts and betrayals, otherwise they became trapped by a story. A tale told by others and believed by more. Such was his story. A story that would define him in such a way that he began to believe it himself. One that wouldn't allow him to grow out of it. He had to break his routine, his habits, shake up his world and paradigm.
The ball swished through the net. But there was no roar of a crowd. Nor any elation in his heart. Only the dull ache of moving when he didn't want to. He ran down his own shot then dribbled out for another.
Lott could never figure out why he wanted, needed, to block it out, to kill off the person he was. Because he hurt. The pain bobbed and ebbed, varying in intensity, but always there, and he simply never wanted to hurt again. Pain drove people mad and the self-loathing he felt was a raging fire fed by bits of his soul. One he'd do anything to quench. His life in drugs was no different than how he treated women, they were both attempts for his selfish need to come first and allow him brief moments of escape. What he hated was how he was powerless to make any of the changes he knew he had to make. His life was a runaway train, one he tried his best to ride out because to change, to stop, meant he'd risk losing Lady G or his friends and that he couldn't bear.
Instead, he lost everything.
The scorched earth of his life left him with a profound regret at having taken himself away from the people who loved him. Whom he loved. Pangs of guilt gnawed at him whenever he went by their old spot, overwhelmed by a sense that home was forever lost to him. No one wanted any part of him, they all turned their backs on him so that he could move on. And perhaps they could escape the chaos he brought with him. He didn't blame them. He hated himself probably more than they did. He had no idea what real betrayal was, what depths he was capable of sinking to.
"I am not a man," he thought.
He always had this vision of the kind of man he wanted to be. Noble, but a bit of a roughneck. Honorable. Honest. True. Trustworthy. A hoodrat knight. He didn't want to be the kind of man his father was. Quick to dive into any bit of pussy that strayed across his path. No matter whose woman she was or whether Lott's mother was in the picture, Lott's father was a ghost in his childhood and absent in his adulthood.
Lott lined up his next shot. Dribbled again. Let it fly. It clanged off the rim and off to the side toward a group of fellas.
"Li'l help," he said, nodding toward the ball that rested in the grass by them. The men cut him a sideways glance, one sucked his teeth, and kept playing. Lott picked up his backpack and walked off, not wanting to feel their judgment or their pity.
Off 52nd Street and Georgetown, along a windy bend, was a tiny church, Bethel United Methodist, behind which was a cemetery. The last few weeks he'd called the spot home. All the drama in his world sucked up all the emotional energy, and he had nothing left to care about anything else. Not his job. Not where he lived, which was a good thing since he lost his room at the Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, soon after losing his job. And the graveyard matched how he felt. Dead inside.
Lott knew too many bodies buried in this yard.
There was a spot under a tree out of view of most of the cemetery and far from the street where he stayed. The closest thing nearby was the utility shed of the apartment complex. Three men chatted up a girl. Lott's wary gaze followed them. He'd seen the "hey, you girl" routine often enough. Brothers pushing up on a girl, trying to talk to her. He didn't like their predatory leer nor how they crowded the girl. A pack moving to cut off her escape routes. A feral gleam leapt to the eyes of the tallest of them. With the hint of a nod, the man behind her grabbed her while the other scanned the deserted lot and unlocked the storage shed. They dragged her in with the tallest man being the last to enter the shed.
"Careful. Don't jump if you can't see bottom," Lott heard an internal voice say, but he was to his feet and half-running toward the shed before his mind caught up to things. The latch on the shed had been torn out at the hinges and the rust on the nails indicated that it hadn't been secure in a while. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard the sounds of struggle and muffled cries. His blood heated up. The door slammed open behind the force of his kick.