Bang! (8 page)

IT’S STILL GONNA be a while before it gets dark. So Kee-lee and me pocket a few rocks and set off walking. “To hit somebody,” I say, “if they start something with us.”

Neither one of us has ever been to a place like this. There’s people everywhere: sitting outside of tents or in parked cars or vans, grilling stuff that smells so good it makes you wanna beg like a dog. Kids are everywhere too. Running. Laughing. Playing cards, catch and tag, hoola-hoop, b-ball, and jump rope, or just lying across somebody’s lap, getting their hair braided. All the stuff we used to do round our way, till the killings started four years ago.

We head up a dusty trail that winds around the lake and lets you out near a field of trees so thick it shuts out almost all the light. We climb over rocks that look rusty from too much rain. I lie on my stomach. Look over the edge and drop stones into the muddy water. Kee-lee lights up a blunt. I lay my ear on the rock and listen. He shakes his head like I’m nuts. I take a hit. Hold the smoke in till I spit it out and cough my head off. Then I check out the water some more. It’s just sitting there. Still. So gray you can’t see to the bottom; so quiet it seems dead. I stand up and push Kee-lee in.

“Ma-a-ann!”

I dive in behind him. The water’s warm, at first, like a nighttime bath in the wintertime. But the deeper I go, the cooler it gets. Stuff’s floating and swimming past me. Sticks and string. Soft-shell turtles. Snakes. Go down some more, I tell myself. So I kick harder. Move my arms faster. Feel my baggy jeans get heavier when I go deeper.

Get yourself some air, I’m thinking. But the water’s nice and cool now. I wanna bring myself something back from down here. So I pick up a slimy green rock and stick it in my pocket. Grab a little brown turtle and stick it down my drawers. Snatch a black baby snake that slides out my hand.

My lungs burn like hot wax got dripped on ’em, so I head up—fast. My mouth’s trying to open. My nose is trying to suck in air.
You gonna die.
I’m telling my head to stop saying that.
You gonna drown.
My feet kick, but they don’t get me nowhere. My arms are dropping as fast as books out a second-floor window. My eyes close and my nose is doing what it wants to—breathing.

“Mann!”

I’m coughing. Choking.

“Boy, open your eyes.”

Kee-lee’s laughing. Sitting on the short cliff, watching me cough up snot and spit.

“You wasn’t down that far. I seen you the whole time.” He kicks my sneakers in the water. “It’s a lake. Not no ocean.”

I grab my sneakers, walk over to the sand, and sit down. I unzip my pants and feel around in my shorts for the turtle. It’s gone. I lie on my back and look up at the sky, watching a crop plane pulling a sign: BUY ONE GET ONE FREE, MASON’S GROCERY STORE.

Kee-lee’s kicking sand. “Move over.”

A spider crawls in between my fingers. A yellow jacket flies next to my ear, buzzing around my legs and feet. Me and Kee-lee just watch it. Then we both fall asleep, right there by the water—outside in public, not worrying about nobody bothering us.

WE SLEPT ON the ground last night. We were in sleeping bags. Had us some pillows too. But a pillow don’t make the ground no bed. That’s what I told my dad. He said for me to quit complaining. We been here two nights and I’m ready to go home. The bugs bite. The grill burns the eggs, and I’m tired of seeing trees and swimming in water that leaves your underwear brown.

My dad says not to complain, but he’s still in the tent, sleeping. He tells us it’s our turn to make breakfast, then he pulls the sleeping bag over his head. “Look around the place some more.”

We saw everything already. Yesterday we swam in the lake. We walked until our feet hurt. Then we ran into a woman grilling corn on the cob, red potatoes, and shrimp. Kee-lee wasn’t gonna pass that up, so he walked right up to her and introduced hisself. She and her sister liked him right off and set paper plates on their picnic table for us. We ate and drank till our stomachs hurt. Then we thanked them and left. Soon as we could, we found us a place to go to sleep. When we woke up four hours later, we were bored all over again. That’s when Kee-lee came up with this idea—race up the tallest trees we could find.

I said okay. I mean, if he can do it, so can I. We shoulda went back to our tent, though. It was getting dark before we even started. And the trees are really tall here.

“First to the top gets five bucks,” Kee-lee said.

I started up. Didn’t wait for him to say go or nothing. Kee-lee don’t like to lose. So he climbed the tree, two branches at a time. Walked up one branch that was thick as a bench and the next thing I knew I was looking up at him.

“That don’t mean you gonna win,” I said, sticking my foot in a hole the size of my head, ducking when bird poop dropped down on me. I pulled myself up by a branch and climbed up three more. The tree was tall as two houses stacked on top of each other. The branches were long as a car. Some were thick enough to climb; some were thin as wire. We’re close to a forest, so there were lots of trees here blocking out the sky.

Kee-lee was sitting on a branch, kicking out his legs. “Give up yet?”

I started climbing again. “Never.” I looked down at the ground. Couldn’t hardly see it from the leaves in my way. I pushed back a branch. My stomach turned. “How far up you think we are?”

He leaned over, holding the trunk with one hand. “Far.” He climbed some more. “But I like far.” He stared up. “Too far ain’t even far enough for me.” He was yelling. I was yelling and watching the sky turn dark yellow, then fire orange. “It’s gonna be dark soon. We better get down.”

“Naw. I’m liking it here. Gonna climb till I touch the moon.”

I looked down, but kept on climbing. I took my left leg, stretched it out, and held on tight to the branch over head.

“Mann! I’m falling. I’m—”

Kee-lee ain’t never gonna be no actor. “Shut up.” I leaned over. He was up, way up. High as a rooftop. “All right. You win. I ain’t going that high.”

He started down, climbing like a spider on the run. Jumping from branch to branch. I was taking my time. Careful not to fall.

A half hour later, I’m still in the tree, trying to get down. Kee-lee was on his second blunt. “I’ll get your father,” he said, lying back in the grass and staring at the sky. “Hey. I didn’t know stars come out before dark.”

I told him not to get my dad, because he’d be mad when he saw I was too scared to get myself out that tree.

Kee-lee was tracing stars with his fingers. “How they got more stars out here than we got back home?”

I smashed a red beetle with my thumb. I looked up. It was like every star in the galaxy was right here. I checked out the ground again. If I jumped, I was gonna break something. If I didn’t jump, my father was gonna break something on me.

“Jump,” Kee-lee said. “I wanna see what happens.” He was laughing. Throwing a stick at a brown spotted frog. Saying he was gonna make me eat it when I got down.

“Ready,” I said, watching campfires light up like candles on a cake. “Set,” I said, praying to Jason to make my bones stay put when they hit the ground, “Go! . . .”

“Boy! You out your mind?” It was my father. He was carrying the brown bag. The one with the gun and knives in it. He’s gonna shoot me down, I thought.

“Get down. Now!”

I told him I couldn’t come down. I didn’t say I was scared. But he knew.

People didn’t notice me all that much before my dad came along. Now they were stopping and staring. Offering to help. “No. No. We just fine,” he said to them. Then he told me to come down. I tried. But my foot slipped and I fell down three branches and cut my cheek.

“I’ll get him,” a boy said, starting up the tree.

My father held the boy’s shoulder tight. “Naw. He can do it.”

Women with long, stringy hair and sad faces shook their heads and whispered. Kee-lee was lying on the ground, watching me one minute and pointing up to the sky the next. “Hey, Mann. Ain’t that the Big Dipper?”

People got tired of watching and waiting, so there wasn’t nobody around after a while. Just me, my dad, Kee-lee, and the boy who’d said he’d climb to get me. “Well, you gonna get cold but you won’t die.” My father patted Kee-lee on the shoulder and told him to come on. “Food’s cold now. And I’m sleepy.”

“Don’t go!”

“Men don’t . . .”

“I ain’t no man!”

My father put the brown bag under his arm and kept walking. “Kee-lee. Do like I say, boy.”

Kee-lee hunched his shoulders and followed my dad. The boy skipped after them. Before long, the sky was dark except for the stars and the moon. Things crawled over my fingers and walked on my head. They whistled, and they clicked like the hands on a stopwatch, and they scratched like a mouse in a drawer. I reached for another branch. Stretched my leg out and stepped down onto a limb that cracked like an old egg. I was falling, feeling sticks dig into my ankles and arms and rip holes in my shirt and shorts.

But I didn’t hit the ground. I held tight to another branch. I stepped down, stepped over, stepped on branches. I heard owls. I heard things sliding across water, hopping in the grass, and listening like they was gonna tell what they heard later on. I leaned on the tree trunk. Held it tight. Reached my foot way down. Grabbed a branch. Stepped over two more. Wiped a six-legged black bug off my arm. Kicked at a squirrel that wouldn’t get out my way. I held on to the tree trunk. Slid down. Scratched my face. Jumped to the ground.

It was pitch-black out, but up the road just a little, I saw campfires, and lanterns hanging from campers. I brushed wood off my clothes and out my hair. Wiped blood off my face and felt around for bumps and bites I got all over me. Then I headed for the light, walking slow; dipping low like the men round my way always do.

“SHOOT!”
I close my eyes, point the gun, and almost
squeeze the trigger. “I—I—can’t.”
Kee-lee runs up to me. “Let me shoot. I ain’t
scared.”

We are outside the campgrounds, in the woods. My father is sitting on a stump, shaking his head at me. He makes me step aside so Kee-lee can take his turn.

Kee-lee licks his lips. “All ri-i-ight.” He closes one eye. “I always wanted to pop a cap in somebody.” He holds both arms straight and tight, and points the gun at the target my father made—a head made of stuffed newspaper, with blueberry eyes and sticks for hair.

Bang!

My ears ring.
Bang!
My eyes close.
Bang, bang, bang!
I’m watching Jason in that little white casket, in that little white suit—smiling. “I’ll be back,” I say, running into the woods.

Kee-lee’s right behind me. “You shoulda done it. It was sweet.”

I bend down and pick up a daddy longlegs. “I don’t like guns.” He crawls up my finger.

“You ain’t gotta like a gun to shoot one.”

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Kee-lee runs. “Let’s see if your dad killed something.” He stops when he sees I ain’t moving. “He mighta got a raccoon.” He’s up the road and back before I take a step. “He just blew the face off the paper head is all.”

I sit it in the grass and set the daddy longlegs free. “Moo Moo . . .”

Kee-lee sticks sunflower seeds in his mouth. “Moo Moo’s dead.” He takes his arm and holds it out. Closes his eyes and shoots. “If he had a gun, he would still be living.”

“Jason . . .”

“Why you all the time gotta talk about dead people?” He spits the shells out. Then he tells me that I’m lucky to have a father trying to teach me how to protect myself.

I walk behind a gray rabbit hopping into the bushes. Kee-lee follows me, only not too close. He says he’s sorry Moo Moo’s gone. “But I ain’t dead. Don’t wanna die neither.”

The rabbit looks back at me, shakes like it’s wet, and runs. Kee-lee says he don’t wanna hurt me, but he’s gonna if I don’t stop playing with critters. He pushes back some bushes. Bends down low. Grabs a rock. “Let’s knock it out and then shoot it.”

It’s a baby rabbit, so I catch it quick, and tell Keelee to carry it back. He’s scared, like I figured. So I turn the rabbit loose. “You too scared to carry it, but you wanna kill it. That ain’t right.”

The rabbit runs under a bush. Me and Kee-lee go back to my dad. My palms are sweaty. The tip of my nose is wet. My throat is so dry, words won’t come out. So I just hold out my hand, and tell it to quit shaking, when my father puts the loaded gun in it.

“Morning,” the man in the camper across from us says. He’s old. White and old and full of questions my father ain’t up to answering. So that means me and Kee-lee gotta talk to him and his wife.

He’s sitting in a green lawn chair with his pink, wrinkled legs spread open. “Been camping before?”

I dump coals on the grill. “No.”

“No? Well, you haven’t lived then.”

He and his wife got on matching shorts. Blue veins run up and down her legs like lines on the map we used to get here. “We already ate. Pancakes, sausage, eggs . . .”

Her husband walks over and starts lighting our grill, even though I ain’t ask him to. “Hot black coffee first thing in the morning while you’re camping. Now, you can’t beat that.”

My father is reading the sports section, acting like them people ain’t here.

“They got any stores around here?” Kee-lee asks. “I want some orange soda and a glazed doughnut.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out one little sunflower seed. “Mr. Adler, I need some seeds.”

“Oh,” the old lady says, holding on to the chair and trying to stand up. “I have some. Lots.”

Her feet hardly leave the ground when she walks, so dirt follows her wherever she goes. “Told you I had plenty,” she says coming back outside and handing Kee-lee a fat brown bag.

He’s smiling. Digging his fingers in the bag. “Thanks,” he says, throwing seeds in his mouth. “Ill! What’s these?” He drops the bag and seeds fly. “Bird seed? I don’t want no bird seeds.”

The old man’s name is Ralph. He laughs. Walks over to my father and asks if he can sit down. The old lady’s name is Sara. She tells Kee-lee they ain’t for eating. “They’re for the birds.”

Sara sits back down. I take out one of my mother’s frying pans and set it on the grill. Kee-lee spoons lard in the pan, since we forgot butter. I crack open five eggs, stir them up with salt and pepper, and pour them in the pan. Next thing I know, black smoke is covering the pan and choking my dad and Ralph. The pan is too hot, so in a few minutes, our eggs look like bubbly black tar.

Ralph thinks everything’s funny. “Won’t be the last time you burn your food out here. Camping takes some getting used to.”

My father shakes his head. “No breakfast, I guess.”

“We have lots of eggs,” Ralph says.

My dad talks real low so Ralph don’t hear. “A black boy don’t get a hundred chances to get it right.

Sometimes he just gets one. That’s it.” The veins on the side of his head push out. “You blow your chance, you blow your life.”

Kee-lee opens the truck door and looks inside. “I’m hungry. Where’s the peanut butter?”

Them old people won’t stay out of our business. Sara lets us know she’s got leftover sausage and plenty of cinnamon toast and warm honey.

I look at my dad. “No, thanks,” I say, even though cinnamon toast is my favorite.

Kee-lee walks over to her. “I want some.”

He’s gonna catch it, I’m thinking. But Sara’s kicking up dust again. Holding out her hand so Kee-lee can help her. Ralph is right behind them. “Come on in,” he says, waving me and my dad over. “We’ve got plenty of room inside.”

My father tells him no. He wants me and him to go fishing instead. Kee-lee’s in the camper. I’m headed for the truck, pulling out our rusted fishing rods. Listening to Ralph try to talk my dad into letting me eat breakfast before we go. My father don’t answer him. He goes in the tent to change and heads for the lake. For a little while, I just watch him go. Then he yells for me to come on—now. I follow. But all the while I’m thinking, If you drown in that lake, it would be all right with me.