Three-Fifths E-Book

John Vercher

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 321

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

NOMINATED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER'Mesmerising' SUNDAY TIMES'Short, lucid and harrowing' OBSERVER'Dark, gritty and thrilling' DAILY MAIL'Incredibly suspenseful' ATTICA LOCKE***An Observer, Guardian and Sunday Times crime fiction/thriller of the month***Set against the backdrop of the simmering racial tension produced by the LA Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial, comes this powerful hardboiled noir of violence and obsessionPittsburgh, 1995.When Bobby's best friend Aaron returns from prison a newly radicalized white supremacist, Bobby feels even more conflicted about hiding his own identity as a biracial Black man.During the night of their reunion, Bobby witnesses Aaron mercilessly assault a young Black man with a brick.In the wake of this horrifying act of violence, Bobby must conceal his unwitting involvement in the crime from the police, as well as battle his own personal demons.Three-Fifths is a harrowing story about racism and brutality that is more urgent now than ever.NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVELNOMINATED FOR THE ANTHONY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVELNOMINATED FOR THE STRAND CRITICS AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT NOVEL

Leseprobe

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OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR THREE-FIFTHS

NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL NOMINATED FOR THE LEFTY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL NOMINATED FOR THE ANTHONY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL NOMINATED FOR THE STRAND CRITICS AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT NOVEL

“Vercher deftly explores identity and the ethics of accountability in this debut. Fans of realistic social issue narratives will be immersed in the moral dilemmas of this timely novel”

LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)

“Vercher builds strong, multifaceted characters with bold strokes, using the tools of noir to present what is finally a full-blown tragedy”

BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW)

“John Vercher uses an explosive act of violence to tell a very harrowing, very relevant story about race, but also family and friendship and masculinity—and all the dangers that come with those things. Keep your eye on Vercher—any writer who comes out of the gate this strong is bound for great things”

ROB HART, AUTHOR OF THE WAREHOUSE

“An incredibly timely narrative that packs a violent, heartbreaking punch. Vercher is now on the map”

CRIMINAL ELEMENT

“A sad, swift tale bearing rueful observations about color and class as urgent now as 24 years ago”

KIRKUS REVIEWS

“This is a crime story that masterfully, beautifully, ingeniously reveals the duplicity of racial psychology and the far-reaching violence it spawns on the American landscape”

STEPHEN MACK JONES, AUTHOR OF THE AUGUST SNOW THRILLER SERIES

“Feverishly entertaining. Resoundingly important. A book treading this kind of ground should not be able to move this fast. Three-Fifths is an honest, fearless page-burner. Vercher is a writer to watch”

DAVID JOY, AUTHOR OF THE LINE THAT HELD US2

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THREE-FIFTHS

John Vercher

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For Michelle, JJ, and Miles You are my everything

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONONETWOTHREEFOURFIVESIXSEVENEIGHTNINETENELEVENTWELVETHIRTEENFOURTEENFIFTEENSIXTEENSEVENTEENEIGHTEENNINETEENACKNOWLEDGMENTSABOUT THE PUBLISHERCOPYRIGHT

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ONE

MARCH, 1995

The dumpsters stunk of half-eaten food and the sweet sour of stale beer. Streetlamps lit snowflakes that hovered in the stillness like trapped fireflies. The cold air stiffened Bobby’s lungs and he fought back a wheeze. He tucked his cigarette behind his ear, took a hit from his inhaler, then lit up. The sulfur from the match pierced his nose and made his eyes water. He wiped the blurriness away and saw through the fence surrounding the dock that someone was on the other side.

“Who the hell is that?” Bobby asked Luis.

Luis shrugged. Bobby moved closer, fingers through the chain-link. A large white man sat on the edge of a red pickup bed, parked in the shadows between the streetlights. Thick arms wrapped around his knees, which were pulled into his chest.

Bobby and Luis traded nervous glances. He felt at the knot of cash in his pocket and gave Luis the once-over. The scrawny fry cook stood a head shorter than Bobby and a good twenty pounds lighter. No help there if whoever this guy was decided to make a move.8

“You want to go back in through the front?” Bobby asked Luis.

“Nah, my car is parked back here. Whatever, man, don’t be a pussy.”

Bobby flashed his middle finger. Fuck it, if he isn’t scared… He pushed and the gate creaked open. The man’s head popped up. He jumped down from the bed of the truck.

Bobby and Luis both paused before they continued on, keeping their distance while trying to appear that they weren’t. Show no fear, but don’t look at him, either. He gave the guy a quick nod and watched from the corner of his eye as the stranger held his hands out, confused.

Luis and Bobby walked faster.

“Yo, Bobby,” he said. “Where you going?”

Bobby slid to a stop. When he turned, his mouth fell open and his cigarette stuck to the inside of his lip. Aaron had shaved his head completely. His pale arms were covered in tattoos, their designs obscured in the darkness. He sparked his lighter and the flame illuminated his face, revealing a topography of violence past. A raised scar ran across the bottom of his eye; another on his lip curved up towards his nose. Bobby wanted to look away, but instead squinted for a better look. Aaron snapped the lighter shut, throwing his face back into the shadows.

“Holy shit,” Bobby said. “Look at this Hulked-out motherfucker.”

Aaron smiled a mouthful of large, bright-white teeth. Bobby jerked his chin back in surprise. Aaron tightened his smile, covering them with his lips.9

“Get your narrow ass over here,” Aaron said. He held his arms out and Bobby walked into Aaron’s tight embrace. Bobby gave him a couple of hard slaps to the back to get him to let go but Aaron squeezed harder. He stunk of beer and body odor. Aaron kissed the top of his head. Bobby pulled away and Aaron looked him in the eyes.

“I missed you, man,” he said.

“All right, all right,” Bobby said. He pushed Aaron off and laughed. “Let go of me, you queer.”

“Hey, fuck off with that shit,” Aaron said. He gave Bobby a playful shove. Bobby caught a look behind Aaron’s half-hearted smile and remembered that first day in the visitors’ center. Stupid. He opened his mouth to apologize when Luis called to him from the open driver’s side door of his car.

“Bobby! See you tomorrow?”

Bobby gave a dismissive wave. Luis sucked his teeth and got in. Aaron took unsteady steps back to his truck where an empty six-pack container sat next to another half-empty one in the bed. Aaron sat on the edge and traced the toe of his boot in the snow. Bobby sat next to him as Luis drove off.

“Hanging with the beaners, now?” Aaron said.

“Luis? He’s okay,” Bobby said. He elbowed Aaron in the arm. “One of the good ones, you know?”

“Uh huh.”

Bobby stopped smiling. Aaron winked at him and elbowed him back.

“Three years!” Bobby shouted and smacked him on the shoulder. “Jesus, kid, it’s good to see you.”10

Aaron laughed and reached back to hand Bobby a beer. He pushed it back towards him. “Still, huh?” he asked. Bobby nodded. “You’re of age now, man, and we didn’t even get to celebrate.”

“I’m good, man. You know that.”

“Come on, one won’t kill you. Three years, you said it yourself. How many times do I get out of prison?”

“Hopefully just this once.”

“Exactly. So throw one back with me, huh? Besides, alcoholism isn’t genetic, man.”

“Are you retarded? Yes, it is.”

“Really? How about that.”

Aaron chugged his beer and sent the empty sailing into the lower parking lot, where it shattered into musical shards. Now under the streetlight, Bobby studied Aaron’s face. His nose looked like it’d been broken more than once and the scar under his eye looked raised and swollen, as if someone had stitched it together with barbed wire. There was something more than the physical damage to his face. A veneer of sadness, of pained and disingenuous smiles. He picked at the label on a fresh bottle. Bobby squeezed his shoulder and gave him a shake.

“You all right, kid?” Bobby asked.

“Don’t I look it?” Another tight smile.

Bobby shrugged. “Eh. Kind of.” He patted the truck. “This is a beauty, by the way.”

“The old man had it waiting for me. A welcome-home present.”

“That’s a hell of a present.”

“Said I earned it.”11

They laughed. Aaron hadn’t earned much of anything as long as they’d known each other. His father was an investment banker and a major donor to the campaigns of local government officials. Father and son took great advantage of the resulting perks. Speeding tickets disappeared. Arrests for shoplifting comic books erased from permanent records.

Then possession with intent to distribute. A third strike. And he had mouthed off to the judge. Long, hard time awaited.

And yet, only three years. Membership had its benefits.

“Look, I’m happy to see you and all, but it’s fucking freezing out here. Let’s go somewhere, and give me them keys because you’re already wrecked.”

“Just a couple more minutes, all right?” Aaron pleaded. “I’ve been indoors for over a thousand days. This air feels so good, man. Even when they let us in the yard, the air there felt different. Like when it passed through the fence, it got dirty.” He brushed snow off the side rail of the truck bed. “This thing felt like a coffin on the way over here. Hell, you want it? You can have it.”

A few of the guys in the kitchen were on work release or parole. Russell, the general manager, had done time when he was younger. He often told the story of how he made it, how he got out, and how he wouldn’t let them make the same mistakes twice. “You have to understand that this system is designed to keep you young bucks in it. Once you got that label, that prison stink on you? You never really have a shot after that. Especially not when you look like us. They’ll look for any reason to put you back 12inside. Can’t pay your court fees because that job keeping the walk-in clean only pays minimum wage? Back in. Get caught hanging with one of your homies who caught a charge, too? Back in. You young brothers have less than half a chance. People will talk to you about accountability, tell you that you have none. That you have a commitment to that life. If you keep going back in, that might end up being the case. If you’re in long enough, if the things that happen to you are bad enough, you don’t know what to do with yourself on the outside. Even though you tell yourself differently, that there’s no way you ever want to go back, it’s become the only home you know.”

Bobby never bought it, the system being out to get them. Invariably, the cops would show up and haul one of Russell’s pet projects out the front door, leaving Russell standing in the doorway, shaking his head. But as Bobby sat on the edge of that truck and watched Aaron chew at his nails, some of what Russell said resonated. Aaron was no long-timer, but the life he’d led before prison had been easy. Problems of his own making disappeared with a phone call from his father to the right people. Maybe now, back in the world, Aaron realized he had gotten used to the dirty air of incarceration. Maybe that world, in some way, held more comfort for him than this one. It seemed so irrational and yet there it was.

Bobby shrugged off the thought and held his hand out for the keys. They climbed into the truck. When Bobby reached down to adjust his seat, his hand brushed against something rough. He pulled out a brick, broken at the edges.13

“They teach you masonry in the joint?” Bobby forced a laugh, but Aaron didn’t smile. He took the brick from Bobby and set it on the floor next to his beers. “Seriously. What’s that for?”

“You remember that little mini-bat I used to keep under my seat in case shit went sideways?” Bobby nodded. “There was a pile of these broken bricks by a dumpster outside the prison, so I grabbed one. Not everyone out here is going to be as happy as you are to see me.”

“Yeah, all right, I get it, I guess. But a brick?”

“Until I get a gun, yeah.”

“O-kay, tough guy,” Bobby said. He laughed, but Aaron remained silent. They shut the doors and Bobby started the truck. Aaron pulled his knees into his chest. The tight space in the truck made him turtle in on himself. For all of his new bulk, inked skin, and scars, he was an anxious mess. He was scared.

“Man, you weren’t kidding, huh? You sure you’re all right?”

Aaron reached for the radio. Bobby felt the inside of his ears tense, steeling himself for the bass-heavy hip-hop Aaron loved to torture him with whenever he drove him to school.

Instead, classical music filtered through the speakers. Aaron let his knees go. He stopped gnawing at his nails and relaxed into his seat. Bobby flashed him a side-eye. Aaron laughed.

“Okay, okay,” he said.

“Look, if there’s something you need to tell me…” Bobby said.14

“Take it easy. There’s a reason, I swear.”

“I can’t wait to hear this.”

Bobby shook his head and pulled the truck out onto McKnight Road. The light dusting of snow slithered back and forth on the street behind the cars in front of them like phantom snakes, and the heat of the defroster made the wipers drag and groan across the windshield. They stopped at a traffic light and the piece ended. The public radio station delivered a newsbreak.

“I’m so sick of this trial,” Bobby said. “I don’t even have a television and I still can’t get away from it.” Aaron gave a little laugh but kept staring out his window. “I mean, you should hear the guys in the kitchen, just swearing he’s not guilty. Like they win something if he’s found innocent. It’s fucking crazy.” Bobby watched Aaron for a response, but nothing. “Oh, now you go quiet? You better say something, because right now I feel like you’re going to like flip out and murder me, like Colonel Mustard, with a brick, in the red pickup.”

Aaron turned to face him and squinted. “You think I’d hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m kidding. Kind of. You’re just kind of hammered already, which is cool, you should be, totally, but we’re listening to this sad-old-bastard music and you got arms as big as my legs and you don’t even talk like you used to and, fuck, man, I don’t know what to think.”

“How did I talk before?”

“Come off it, man, that wannabe wigger shit. You know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He puffed his cheeks and breathed out through pursed lips. “Okay, so the music. 15I got a library detail when I first went in. You remember how skinny I was. After—”

He stopped. Bobby glanced away from the road and towards Aaron. Headlights from a car in the opposite lane illuminated his face. His wet eyes glistened.

“After it happened, they thought I’d be safer working there. There was this section where you could actually listen to CDs. Nothing but classical, though. Nothing aggressive. No metal. Definitely no rap. But then I read in one of the books there—”

“They got you to read? Maybe this wasn’t so bad for you after all,” Bobby said, smacking him on the shoulder. Aaron didn’t return his smile and Bobby cleared his throat.

“I found out that a bunch of this shit actually caused riots the first time they played them. That’s a trip, right?”

Something new in his voice, an almost imperceptible crack, a slight waver, made Bobby not like where this story was headed. He nodded to answer Aaron’s question and longed for the quiet about which he had just complained.

“What was I going to do?” Aaron asked. “I was just this kid, scared shitless. I never slept, and even when I’d start to pass out from exhaustion, the slightest sound made me jump. So I’d find a corner in the library stacks and just listen over and over again until I had to go back to my cell. And I waited for the end of the week when I’d see you.” He started to fidget again and cracked open another beer. He finished in five fast swallows.

“It didn’t take me long to memorize the movements of the pieces. Ten thousand repetitions, right? I must have doubled that. I started to hum the songs to myself to fall 16asleep. The first night it worked, the night I got my first hour of undisturbed sleep, it was the night before you visited,” he said.

He stopped. He twisted his hands around his beer bottle like a wet rag. “It was just a beating the first time. That’s what got me the library duty. The night before you visited, Bobby, I tried to fight him, I promise you I did, but he was so strong. He bashed my head against the wall of the cell and my body wouldn’t cooperate anymore. At least not with me. All I could do was try to make the music loud enough in my head to drown out the sounds. It didn’t work.

“Later, in the infirmary, it did, though. While they stitched me up, my brain kept trying to make me relive what he did to me, kept repeating how he told me that this was just the start, that the others would have their turn after he broke me in. So I hummed while the doc went to work on me. I remember how she looked at me, like, how could I be humming after all of that. It was the only thing that kept me from opening my wrists up with the teeth I had left.”

Bobby curled his hands around the steering wheel and blinked away the burning in his eyes. He could not shake the vivid image of Aaron’s violation. He remembered Aaron on the other side of the visitors’ window, just hours separated from the incident, and now he understood why Aaron had never wanted him to return. They had broken far more than his face.

“Aaron,” Bobby said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Did you put me in that cell?” Bobby shook his head. “Then don’t be sorry.” Aaron turned to look out his window 17again and Bobby reached for his shoulder, but pulled back, not sure why he had done either.

Aaron shook it off and slapped his cheeks. “Sucked they didn’t have any comics in the library,” he said with a belch. “You got a lot to catch me up on. But they kept me on library detail and I did read. Just fiction and stuff at first. Anything to get out of my head, you know? But then I got some assignments. I had to start reading language, world history, all kinds of stuff.”

“Assignments?” Bobby asked. “What do you mean?”

“Your last name means ‘of a swarthy complexion’ in Sicilian,” Aaron said. “Did you know that?”

What the hell did Aaron mean? Who gave him an assignment?

Aaron cracked his last beer. Bobby accelerated.

The truck hurtled past Duquesne and Bobby glanced across the river to the Incline. The tracks were lit by a row of white bulbs on each side. None of this fit. Bobby had envisioned the day of Aaron’s release countless times, but when he had, he’d had a different scene altogether in his head. They’d fall right back into their old rhythm. Bobby would make fun of DC Comics. Aaron would make fun of Marvel. They’d revel in their mutual hatred of Image. Bobby would bitch at Aaron for his shitty taste in music. Aaron would make fun of Bobby’s shitty clothes. They’d compare shitty family lives. They’d have three years back. Instant happiness, just add water.

They joked, they laughed, but it was hollow, wrong. Aaron was different and it went beyond physical change, the bulking up. That much made sense. Even beyond the music, the tattoos, and the way he talked, something 18hovered that dimmed the light that used to radiate from him. His smiles, tight. As though they weren’t allowed.

Bobby had to change that. No matter what had happened to him, his best friend was home. Aaron still needed his help, but not like when they were kids. This was different. Bobby didn’t know if he could fix this. They hit Forbes Avenue. The Cathedral of Learning stood a beacon in the distance.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Bobby asked.

“Oh shit, yeah, North Oakland,” he said. “Got someone I need to meet up with tonight.”

“Just got out and you’re back at it already?”

“No, it’s not like that. I promised somebody I’d check in on someone. Stay with him for a bit.”

“I get it, hanging with me and my mom in Homewood’s going to cramp your style. I’ll give it to you, a cell would seem like a resort in comparison.” Aaron laughed. “So what do you want to do, man? We don’t have to go there just yet, right? You’re out!”

“I’m fucking starving,” he said. “Oh, shit. Let’s hit the dirty ‘O’.”

Bobby groaned. Aaron knew he hated the Original Hot Dog Shop. It was the only place open after the bars let out. Drunken college kids and the gangbangers from the nearby neighborhoods swarmed for forties, five-dollar pizzas, and bags of greasy fries as big as a grown man’s head. But the streets of Oakland were near empty. The college kids had gone home for spring break. It was the last place he wanted to go, but Aaron seemed so excited. He had always lived for their food, especially drunk, which 19he was, and Bobby imagined how good it might taste for him tonight of all nights.

“Fuck. Okay.”

“Really?” Aaron asked.

“I know I’m going to regret it, but yeah, let’s do it. You said it yourself, how many times is my best friend going to get out of prison? Those fries are going to mess up your new girlish figure, though.”

“Fucking A,” he said. The smile now big, his eyes tight and bright.

Bobby parked on Bouquet less than a half-block back from the corner where the “O” sat. Light from the neon sign filled the truck and bathed them both in red. Aaron opened his door, but Bobby stayed put.

“What are you doing?” Aaron asked.

“It’s freezing,” Bobby said. “Get what you want, I’ll keep the truck running.”

“Okay. While I’m in there, I’ll see if they have pads in the bathroom for your vagina.”

“Oh, fuck you, man,” Bobby forced another laugh and turned off the engine.

“Atta boy.”

The air inside tasted like the bathrooms looked to Bobby. As much as he wanted to do this for Aaron, his Spider-sense tingled, and he wanted to go back to the truck even more. Then he saw why.

Two young black men sat at a table near the counter. One had his head down and looked passed out, an almost empty forty at his elbow. He wore a blue stocking cap, and a thick blue flannel coat, a uniform Bobby knew far too well 20in Homewood. The other heaped fries into his mouth and sucked down pop from a plastic 32-ounce cup. No colors on him. Only a tan sweatshirt with a lined hood and dark-blue jeans. He looked younger than both Bobby and Aaron, but he eyed the two of them hard as soon as they walked in. Under the fluorescent lights Bobby saw clearly for the first time that night what doubtless the kid did as well.

Aaron’s tattoos.

Double lightning bolts on his shoulders. An Iron Eagle where his collarbones met.

Spiderwebs on both elbows.

“Jesus,” Bobby whispered to himself.

Bobby stood behind Aaron as he ordered at the register. He heard the kid at the table suck his teeth in disgust.

“Some mark-ass busters up in this piece tonight,” he said. Bobby pretended not to hear and stole what he thought was a surreptitious look over his shoulder. The kid met his eyes before Bobby spun his head forward again. “Yeah, you hear me talking,” he said.

Bobby stared at Aaron’s wide back. Aaron either didn’t hear or didn’t care and continued to place their order.

“Where you get them spiderwebs, huh?” the kid asked Aaron. “In the joint, right? Guess you a hard rock.”

Aaron turned around to look at Bobby and smiled.

Don’t smile, please don’t smile. Why the fuck are you smiling?

He slapped Bobby on the stomach with the back of his hand.

“Got to piss,” he said. “Be right back.”

“What? No,” Bobby said. “Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave—” But Aaron walked off. The old man behind the 21counter scooped floppy fries into a white bag until it wouldn’t close, dotting it with translucent grease spots. Bobby darted quick glances over his shoulder to see if the kid was still watching.

He was. His boy next to him remained half-conscious but stirred. Aaron came back from the bathroom as the old man slid the pizza and fries across the counter.

“We good? Can we go now?” Bobby said.

“What, we’re not gonna eat here?”

“What?”

“Relax,” Aaron said. “Pay and let’s go.”

“Very funny,” Bobby said as he slid his money across the counter.

“Bitch ass motherfucker,” the kid said to Aaron.

Aaron laughed. A chair scraped against the floor. The kid was right behind them. He was taller than Aaron, but slender. His face was lean, the skin pulled tight on the bone beneath.

Bobby’s heart pounded and he felt the familiar pressure of an approaching asthma attack filling up the spaces in his chest.

“I say something funny?” the kid said to the back of Aaron’s head. Aaron turned, food in hand and looked up at the kid. “What?” the kid said. “Yeah, I know what those tattoos mean, and no, I’m not scared of you. Y’all lucky my boy sleeping.” He popped his shoulders at Aaron.

Aaron didn’t flinch and smiled at him.

“Excuse us, please,” Aaron said. He sidestepped the kid and Bobby followed close behind. Thank Christ. They headed for the door.22

“That’s what I thought,” the kid said. “Get the hell up out of here.”

So close. They were almost out.

Aaron’s hand was on the handle. He let go and turned back to the dining room. He put his tongue inside his upper lip and made monkey noises while he gave the kid the finger. Bobby pushed him out, but he already heard the footsteps behind them.

Aaron walked and Bobby shoved him again to rush him towards the truck. He took a few running steps, then slowed again while he pushed a handful of fries into his mouth. The door of the “O” flung open and slammed off the wall.

“You got jokes, huh?” the kid shouted. He ran at them. Bobby tried to take off but the sidewalk was slippery and he nearly fell. The kid caught up to him and grabbed the collar of Bobby’s jacket. Bobby yelled for Aaron, who now was running for the truck. Bobby panicked at Aaron’s sudden cowardice, frightened that he’d leave him to get pummeled or worse. Bobby pulled free of the kid’s grasp and bolted for the driver’s side of the truck. He jumped in and swung the door shut. The kid pounded on his window. Bobby started the truck, ready to floor it when he turned and saw Aaron wasn’t there, just the pizza box and fries spilled out across the seat. He looked up to see Aaron cross in front of the headlights, heading for the kid. The kid backed away from Bobby’s window, and he saw him motion for Aaron to bring it on. Bobby yelled for Aaron to stop. To come back and get in the truck. Then he saw the brick in his hand.23

Brick cracked bone and the kid collapsed, a marionette with cut strings. Bobby heard his head smack against the sidewalk. He grasped the door, breath fogging the window. He pulled back to wipe away the haze.

Deep lines cleaved the flesh of the boy’s face, bloodless, until his mouth opened, gaping and silent. Then blood poured out of every cut. His boots churned the snow to dirty slush as he writhed. He moaned, quietly at first, then louder, like an approaching siren. His arms trembled as he tried desperately to push himself up from the pavement. Bobby went to open his door, but he had locked it in his panic. As he found the switch and pulled on the handle, Aaron threw open the passenger door. Bobby jumped. Aaron dropped his brick on the floor in front of him.

“Go, go, go,” he said.

Aaron was breathing hard, but his voice was calm. His breath stunk of beer. Bobby forgot he’d already started the truck and the engine’s insides scraped when he turned the key again.

The tires screeched as he took the corner onto Forbes Avenue. Aaron squeezed Bobby’s knee. “Slow down.”

Aaron craned to look out the rear window while Bobby watched the rearview. The police station across the street often kept an empty patrol car parked outside as a deterrent. As they passed, the car didn’t move. No lights. No sirens. Bobby took a last look back and saw the door of the Original open before the neon lights disappeared from view.

“Jesus, Aaron, what the fuck did you do?” Bobby said. His breaths got shorter and his chest tingled, his asthma 24forming an iron maiden around his airways, the spikes poking at his lungs. The deeper he tried to inhale, the harder it got to take another breath. He wheezed, reached inside his front jacket pocket and grabbed his inhaler, but dropped it on the floor. Aaron picked it up and held it out to him. The blood on his fingers smeared on the plastic case and Bobby wondered if it was Aaron’s or the kid’s. He stared at the inhaler in Aaron’s outstretched hand. Aaron saw the blood and wiped it off with the hem of his white-ribbed tank top.

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry. Fuck, I got it on your pants, too.”

When he handed it back, the periphery of Bobby’s vision had already begun to blacken. He snatched it and took a deep puff. Aaron popped open the glove compartment and grabbed a pack of smokes. He held one out for Bobby while he pushed the lighter in on the console. Bobby reached for it and pinched it between his dried lips.

“Fuck, man,” Bobby said. “What did you do? What did you do?”

“You’re going to miss the turn. Up here.”

The lighter popped. Aaron and Bobby reached for it at the same time, but Aaron let him take it. Maybe if he jammed it into Aaron’s cheek, or better yet his eye, something soft and painful, whatever would give him enough time to get away, he’d jump out of the truck and let it swerve into a pole while he ran off into the night. He could hide out in St. Paul Cathedral and call the police.

And tell them what?

Tell them he took off and left some kid for dead, and by the way, the maniac that did it, he was too drunk to 25drive himself away from the scene of the crime, so guess who took care of that for him? They’d lock him up too and he’d end up looking like Aaron did the day he went to visit him, or worse yet he’d get his skull smashed to shit like that kid he just left back there squirming on the sidewalk.

That kid. Jesus, that was someone’s kid. Eighteen. Nineteen, maybe? Wouldn’t see his next birthday. Probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.

Bobby imagined the boy’s mother. The police knocking on her door to tell her someone had caved her son’s head in with a brick and left him to die on the street. He thought of his own mother, Isabel, imagined her wails of grief, but all he could hear were the boy’s moans. Both her imagined cries and the boy’s real ones sounded like “why.”

“You missed it,” Aaron said. Bobby blinked back a tear. “Take the next left.”

The lighter wobbled as Bobby brought it to the tip of his cigarette. Aaron wrapped his fingers around Bobby’s hand to hold it still. Bobby felt the heat of the orange coil on his lips, breathed in the toasted tobacco as the end sizzled. His lungs felt stiff from the asthma attack and he hacked until he nearly gagged. He was grateful. It provided an excuse for the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Aaron wiped one away with a calloused thumb. Bobby smacked his hand.

“Get the fuck off me,” he said.

Aaron held his hands up in surrender, then gently took the lighter from Bobby’s hand. He lit up and cracked his window. Cold air leaked in as the smoke sucked out. He slid down in the seat and thumped a boot up on the dash. 26Aaron might have killed the kid, yet he reclined in his seat in a near-post-coital glow. The Aaron Bobby knew, or rather the one he thought he knew, couldn’t have gotten laid if he paid for it. Buzzard-necked Aaron, a buck-thirty if he was a pound. Aaron, Bobby’s fellow comic-book nerd. His best friend, Aaron the wannabe. Aaron the wigger.

Something had taken his place. His name. A pale imitation of his personality. Not him. A shaved head and combat boots with red laces replaced the baggy jeans and shell-top Adidas tennis shoes. The once-scrawny neck disappeared into his mountainous shoulders. Each time Bobby glanced at Aaron he tried to picture the boy he knew before he got locked up, hoped every blink would bring him out of some fever dream, sweating under the comforter, huddled up on his couch, but all he saw was that black kid’s face smashed to hell and his stomach turned.

“Hang a right,” Aaron said.

“Why?” Bobby asked.

Aaron looked at Bobby with genuine confusion. “Because it’s the way to get to the apartment?” he asked.

“You’re joking right now? You know what I mean! Why the fuck did you do that to that kid?”

“Why? That kid grabbed you, and you’re asking me why? How many times, Bobby?” he asked. His upper lip pulled back from his teeth. “How many times did you have to save my ass from those fucking monkeys in high school? In the bathroom? In the parking lot? You remember that? Did you think I’d let that happen to you? Because it was about to.”

“I know, but—”27

“But nothing. Jesus, dude, you told me yourself, over and over again. You remember that? I didn’t listen then, but I learned my lesson.” He blew out a cloud of smoke and leaned on the console next to Bobby, almost daring him to make eye contact. He cocked his head back towards the rear of the truck, gesturing to where they’d left the kid. “They’re animals, Bobby. And some animals need to be put down.”

Bobby felt his face go flush. As he pulled on the wheel to make the turn, he remembered a different street.

An alleyway, the one behind his Grandpap’s.

His first fight, one he’d never forget, a story he’d never shared with Aaron, or anyone else. His face recalled the sting in his cheek, the way his own blood tasted like a penny in his mouth.

He had been eleven years old.

It was the first time he’d ever said the word “nigger.”

The same day his mother had told him he was one.

28

TWO

Robert caught the sideways glance the ER nurse shot him. He took one last drag before he flicked his cigarette towards the street. It landed in the snow with a hiss. He certainly wasn’t the only doctor there who smoked, but he was one of the very few who did. He knew it wasn’t a good look, but he’d only just picked up the habit again. He checked his watch. The nurse was part of the shift change. He could leave now if he wanted to, but he was in no hurry to return home. Solitude made everything seem larger. Bare footsteps echoing off the hardwood floor of their dining room that, though it only sat eight, loomed like the feasting hall of some great castle. The endless California king with no edges, always waking in the middle no matter how many times he rolled. The kitchen table stretching on to infinity, nothing interrupting its polished oak surface, save the divorce papers that arrived just days ago.

Papers she had already signed.

The snow that sat atop his tight gray-flecked curls melted and ran in rivulets, cooling his scalp in dots. He cracked the knuckle of his ring finger. Slid the wedding 29band on and off, the light brown of his skin almost white underneath. An old habit, never used to the jewelry—any jewelry—but especially on his hands.

He was heading inside to get his keys when he heard the keening of a siren in the distance. He waited. The Doppler effect faded as the ambulance neared. It slid slightly before coming to a full stop under the archway. The siren shut off, but a muffled wail from inside the vehicle replaced it. The back doors swung open and a paramedic jumped down and helped his partner guide the gurney. A lanky young brother lay strapped down, tan hoodie soaked with blood. The sheet was crumpled at his feet from the writhing of his legs and covered in urine and feces. His oxygen mask fogged with every moan.

Robert followed the paramedics inside and they briefed him on the way to the trauma unit. The bones of the left side of the kid’s face had been crushed, and the right side was lined with fractures, likely from a secondary impact. Few teeth remained intact, and the bite from the impact had lacerated his tongue almost to the middle. Some of the shards from his orbital bone damaged the eye. He’d likely lose sight in it, if not the eye altogether. What neurological testing they had been able to complete when he wasn’t seizing suggested he had a bleed in his brain.

The pieces of red mortar Robert plucked from his skin suggested someone had struck him with a brick. Had they thrown it? Dropped it on him? The force of the impact seemed impossible for one person to inflict on another.

The team of residents moved quickly to stabilize him. After paging the neurosurgeon on call, the team had 30