Bang! (14 page)

I AIN’T GROWN, so I shouldn’t be up at six in the morning mixing paints and smelling turpentine. Kee-lee says the same thing. But people like the prices his aunt charges for our painting. And they like how we don’t just paint a wall blue, we leave something special behind.

“How you do that?” Mrs. Windsor asked the other day. “How you make him look so real?”

Her husband died six years back. She wanted his picture painted on the ceiling, right over her bed. In the picture she gave us, he had on a gray pinstripe suit and a bowler hat with a lion’s-head cane in his hand. “He always had hisself some class,” she said, blowing kisses up to him.

It was Kee-lee’s idea to start drawing dead people. “Folks just might slide us a few extra bucks if we do.”

He was right. When they seen the paintings, they cried mostly. Then dug in drawers, pockets, or bras, and stuck a few more dollars in our hands. “Shhhh. Don’t tell your aunt, but this here’s for you; a little something ’cause you gave me back what the good Lord took from me.”

One morning, Aunt Mary wakes us up early. She feeds us a good breakfast. She says she gonna drive us to a new customer’s place and for us to finish up soon as we can. “Y’all got three more places to paint this week.”

I tell her that I can’t paint today. My hands hurt. So do my back.

She grabs the meat behind my neck. “You a man, ain’t you?” She rolls and squeezes my skin and don’t care when my legs go out from under me.

Kee-lee stands up and punches his chest. “I’m a man.”

She holds tight to my skin and pulls me to her. “And you?”

I think about all I drank and all I did at her place. I punch my chest. “I’m a man!”

“Then do what you gotta do.”

I look at my hands. They’re cracked and swollen where the lines are. When Aunt Mary leaves the room, I ask Kee-lee if he likes it here. He says it’s okay. Me, I wanna go home now. I don’t care if I ever see my dad again, but I wanna see my mom. Kee-lee says he misses his mom too. But he don’t miss all his brothers and sisters. And he doesn’t miss watching ’em while his mom’s at work. “But we can’t go home. ’Cause we ain’t wanted there.”

He ain’t wanted, but I am. My mother wants me back. She’s probably worried about me; Ma Dear and Cousin too. But if I go back now, my dad’s gonna think I punked out. And when my mom and Ma Dear ain’t around, he’s gonna let me know what he really thinks of me. Might even put me out again. I ask Kee-lee why his aunt doesn’t tell his mom where we are. He says his aunt can’t stand his mother, so she wouldn’t give her the time of day. “And now that we making money for her, she’s really gonna keep her mouth shut.”

There’s five gallons of paint sitting by the door when we get to where we going. “This won’t take no time,” his aunt says. “It’s a little apartment.”

She’s right. The apartment is small. The man only wants three rooms painted. But the walls are cracked. Chunks of plaster big as pancakes and frying pans are missing. I point to the ceiling and the plaster. “You need that fixed first.”

He says for us not to worry about the holes. Just to paint around them. He’s got company coming and he needs the work done today. Yellow paint bubbles and cracks right where a leak is dripping into a rusty coffee can behind the couch. I point. “You don’t fix that leak, it’s just gonna mess up the new paint.”

Aunt Mary didn’t come in the house with us. If she had, I wouldn’a said nothing, because she woulda got mad. She woulda told me to give the man what he wanted, even if he was throwing good money after bad.

Mr. Mac rides up to me in his wheelchair. “The landlord don’t fix nothing here. He takes the rent. He spends the rent. But he don’t use none of the money on this place.” He rolls over to the can of brown water and pitches it out the window. “I been here ten years. Know how many times the place’s been painted?”

Kee-lee rubs the greasy wall. “Never. Won’t get painted today neither. It’s got too much grease on it to hold a good paint.”

I touch the yellow wall too. “Gotta be washed first.”

He asks what that’ll cost. We let him know we don’t wash walls. “Don’t plaster neither,” I say.

He rolls into the kitchen. “Then don’t wash ’em. Don’t plaster neither.” He digs in his pocket and lays money on his shriveled-up legs. “Just paint.”

So we paint. We paint the kitchen peach. But the grease on the walls is so thick, the paint won’t stick good. It takes us three coats to make it look like something. We want to paint the woodwork white. But dust from the floor keeps getting on the brush and making it look like the baseboards are growing hair.

After that, we quit. Mr. Mac’s mad because he’s got company coming—a woman friend. Kee-lee’s at the kitchen sink washing paint off his hands. I’m feeling sorry for the guy. His friend’s coming tomorrow. “Maybe,” I say, picking plaster off the wall. “Maybe we can come back later. Wash the woodwork and finish painting.”

Kee-lee says to forget it, and he asks for our money.

The guy rolls his wheelchair over to the door. “What money? You get paid for what you do, not for what you leave undone.”

Kee-lee sticks his hand out. “Seventy-five bucks a room. Pay up.”

He puts a twenty in Kee-lee’s hand and says he ain’t paying full price for sloppy work.

Kee-lee holds on to the wheelchair handles. The doorbell rings. It’s Aunt Mary, here for her money. He pulls Mr. Mac up by his shirt, turns him loose and laughs when he almost falls out the chair. He’s begging Kee-lee not to hurt him, and goes to his bedroom for more money.

When I open the door and let Aunt Mary know what’s happening, she tells us not to leave before we get what’s ours. Then she goes to her car and leaves to make a quick run. Mr. Mac takes so long, Kee-lee and me take our drop cloths and brushes downstairs and sit them by the curb. When we get back, the door’s shut. I turn the knob. Open the door. Put my hands in the air. The old man smiles, points the gun at Kee-lee and . . .

Bang!

I RAN. I TOOK off down the stairs—flying right by Aunt Mary. She asked me what happened. I didn’t answer. If I did, I woulda said they was both dead, which they was. Only I wouldn’t have told her everything that happened anyhow, ’cause she wouldn’t believe me. Nobody would.

See, when the door opened, Kee-lee got shot at first. The old man couldn’t shoot straight. So he shot at his ear and made a big hole in the wall behind us. Kee-lee was carrying my father’s gun. I didn’t know that till he got mad at the old man, pulled the gun out his pants and stuck it right in his face.

Kee-lee ain’t no criminal. He don’t kill and hurt people. Only he forgot that, I guess, and every dollar that man had in the house Kee-lee took. All the time he was checking drawers and threatening the man, Jason was whispering in my ear,
Go.

Where I’m gonna go?
I wanted to ask.
Every place I’m at, there’s guns and trouble and people dying . . .

I wasn’t finished with my thought before the guns went off. The old man had two guns on him, I guess. Him and Kee-lee shot each other at the same time. Blood sprinkled my hands and face like juice from an extra-sweet orange. Some was on my lips. I wiped it away with my tongue.

Go,
Jason said.

I’m gonna be sick, I thought.

Go.

I sat down by Kee-lee.

Go, dog. Go.

Wherever you go around here, bad things happen. So you might as well stay where you are. Just sit, wait, and let it get you. I thought about Jason. ’Cause it’s gonna get you. Can’t stop that.

My father’s gun was right by Kee-lee’s hand. I turned away from it at first. But then I picked it up and—well, Kee-lee was gone and I couldn’t go home, and even if I did go home, somebody was gonna do what I’m gonna do anyhow—shoot me dead—so I might as well just get it over with and do it myself right now. I pointed the gun at my head. Right in the middle of my forehead to make sure I was dead when I was done.
What’s it like, Jason?

My eyes kept blinking. And sweat was beading up on my forehead.
What’s it like, being dead?

Jason’s all the time talking to me. But when I ask him something worth answering, he don’t say nothing.

The gun was heavy. And my hand was shaking, so I put it down. But then I picked it up again.
Shoot,
I told myself.
Do it, before they do.

I sat up straight like I was gonna get extra credit for good posture. I started to pull the trigger. Then I dropped the gun. “I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die, Kee-lee.”

I don’t know why, but right then I jumped up and got the charcoal pencils Kee-lee had in his back pocket. “I want some apples, Kee-lee.” I stuck my finger in his face like he could hear. “And . . . and some chicken. I like chickens, Kee-lee. Live ones. Not just cut-up pieces that you fry up and eat.”

I wasn’t making no sense. I knew that. Talking to a dead boy. Staying when I shoulda run a long time ago. Asking Jason to tell me what to do when everybody knows you can’t talk from your grave. But that ain’t stop me from jumping up and sketching a picture of Kee-lee on the living-room wall, sitting under an apple tree holding Keisha in his lap, laughing. It ain’t take me no time to do it, neither, ’cause I’m good. I can draw anything, anytime, anywhere. And Kee-lee’s picture was one of the best things I ever drew.

It had to be, ’cause he was my other brother, the best friend I ever had.

I wanted to sign my name under the drawing, like I do all my stuff. But I didn’t, not at first. I went to the door, looked back at Kee-lee and Mr. Mac lying there in all that blood. I walked back into the room, dipped my finger in Kee-lee’s blood, and wrote the number thirty-one on the wall. Nobody’s gonna know what that means. But Kee-lee would. “You’re number thirty-one, Kee-lee,” I said, walking out the door. “Wonder what number I’m gonna be?”

Wasn’t nobody in the halls. Wasn’t nobody screaming about calling the police. So I closed the door; ran down four flights of steps, out the front door, and right past Aunt Mary. She grabbed my shirt. But she couldn’t stop me. “Mann,” she yelled. “Where’s my money?”

I’M RUNNING MY legs off; wearing ’em out like an eraser on a pencil. But I ain’t stopping. Can’t stop.
Take the bus
, my head tells me. But my feet won’t quit running long enough to stand still at a bus stop. “Rest,” I say. But I can’t. I’m scared if I do, I’m gonna be next.
Bang!

Kee-lee and me was supposed to open our own art gallery when we grew up.

Bang!

He made me promise not to never tell nobody; not even my dad.

Bang!

“I wanna draw stuff like I see on TV,” he said. “Pictures on ceilings and walls like that man, that man . . .”

“Leonardo da Vinci?”

We were at Kee-lee’s house. He was down on the floor, looking up at a roach walking across the ceiling. “Yeah. Him. I wanna do like he did. Draw something nice and make people pay big-time to come see it.”

Kee-lee saw a show about Da Vinci on TV. That’s when he started drawing on walls. “Getting ready,” he said, “for when I’m famous.”

The sides of my feet burn, right where my sneaker is rubbing it raw. I keep running. I don’t stop when old people block my way. I knock ’em in the side with my elbow. I don’t stop at red lights, or wait for cars to pass. I jump in their way and make them break quick or swerve to keep from hitting me.

Go, dog. Go,
Jason says.

My arms feel like they pulling tires. My legs feel like they wrapped in plastic and running across wet sand. But I can’t stop, can’t never stop, even though I don’t know where I’m going.

“COUSIN . . . come . . . come get me.”

I’m at the pay phone on the corner of Ivy and Dixon. It’s five hours after the shootings. I’m starving and tired. Scared too. I called my mom and dad at first, only they weren’t home. Then I called Cousin. Ma Dear was there. I told her everything. She was crying before I finished. “Baby. Now you stay put. Cousin will come get you.”

I tell her where I am.

“I didn’t shoot nobody.”

“Shhhh,” she says. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

No it won’t. That’s what I want to tell her. But she’s old, and she believes that things get better. “Ma Dear,” I say, with my eyes closed. “You think . . . you think . . . my father’s gonna . . .”

Ma Dear tells me my father loves me. “This idea he had was insane. But he—”

I ask her where my mother is. How I can reach her. She says she’s living at home by herself. That she’s been there for weeks, going crazy trying to find me. Cousin snatches the phone. “Your father . . . your father musta lost his mind, thinking this harebrained idea was gonna work.”

Cousin says he’s gonna try to get a restraining order against my dad to keep him away from me. “Your mother’s in agreement,” he says. “She put him out when he told her what he did. She’s had the police looking for you everywhere.”

“I’m all right,” I say.

Ma Dear’s in the background saying for Cousin to stop talking and just go get me. He says he talked to a lawyer. The lawyer says they have a case, since I’m a juvenile and parents are supposed to protect kids. “Not abandon them.” Cousin says now that Kee-lee’s dead, they could maybe charge my father with something too. “It was his gun. So he’s just as responsible.”

Ma Dear yells at him to shut up and go get me now. I slam the phone down on the hook and take off. I don’t know why. I don’t know where I’m going. Only I can’t let them send my dad to jail.

I head for a store across the street. Look around at the chips and doughnuts, chicken and cheese sandwiches sitting on ice. While the cashier rings up a customer, I suck on a piece of ice that tastes like tuna. She smiles at a guy asking about her long nails. I open the cooler. She asks the guy if he’s married. I pull out two grape-juice boxes. Pick up two chicken sandwiches and a pack of doughnuts. She writes down her phone number. Gives it to the guy. I dump my stuff on the counter, dig around in my pocket like I got money, and watch the guy head for the door. The girl bags my food and tells the man that he forgot the paper with her number on it. I snatch the bag, run out the door, knocking over boxes of sweet potatoes and string beans, listening to the girl cuss me out for making her break her nail.

It’s dark. I’m outside watching the stars. Every now and then I fall asleep. But then I think about Kee-lee and I’m wide awake again. They tore down the projects that used to be here, so I’m on the porch of one of the new houses they’re putting up. Sawdust is everywhere. Lumber is stacked in the middle of the street like bleachers, and a cement mixer blocks off the street. Before I know anything, I’m asleep for a good long time, and it’s morning.

“Hey, you. Get outta here!”

The workers are here. Three men stand over me holding coffee cups and bagels. “This ain’t no homeless shelter.”

A boot goes high in the air, right over my face. “You steal something?” A hand snatches me up. “Break a window?”

“Better not be no broken windows. I put them up.”

I’m shaking my head no, rubbing sawdust off me like ash. A whistle blows. Hard hats push down on big heads and heavy boots stomp across the porch and down the steps. “Go somewhere, kid.”

I head for the backyard, hungry, tired, and stinking. I take a leak. Stuff my hands in my pockets. Walk up the street and around the corner to a store, thinking about Kee-lee, wondering if they’ve found him. Hoping his mother don’t take it too hard. I ask the man behind the scratched-up plastic to make me an omelet with onions and give me fries and shrimp on the side. I grab two drinks. Pick up a handful of ten-cent candy and two twenty-five-cent bags of pretzels. When enough customers come in, I sneak out.

When I’m far enough away, I sit down and rest, dumping shrimp on my fries and squirting ketchup over everything. I use my fingers as a fork, and stuff the omelet in my mouth. An orange striped cat walks over to my food. I kick it like a can. Watch it roll down the steps, hissing at me.

“I’ll smash you, cat. Kill you,” I say, standing up. “Kee-lee?”

His name’s in the newspaper, right on the front page. I drop my fries. The cat’s licking them before I got the newspaper in my hand.

TWO DEAD.

POLICE LOOKING FOR SUSPECT.

. . . . Steven Mac, 56, lived alone and often hired strangers to work for him. On the day of the alleged murder, Mac was seen opening the door to two teens. One teen, Kee-lee Jones, was found dead at the scene. The second is said to be a black youth between the ages of 14 and 18, armed and dangerous.

STORY CONTINUED ON PAGE 17.

Kee-lee’s mom’s in the paper. Her hands hide her face from the cameras. “‘He was a good boy,’” she said. “‘Never bothered nobody.’”

Aunt Mary told the cops who I was. “‘Mann Adler was the one I saw running out the house. He musta done it. Musta shot my nephew dead.’”

I keep reading out loud. “‘They say his fingerprints were on the gun. But my boy was scared of guns, scared of anything violent or illegal. It musta been the other boy, Mann, that killed that man,’” Keelee’s mom said. “ ‘Kee-lee would never do nothing like that.’”